“There’s a reason why the Oculus headsets aren’t really taking off, and that’s because you can’t access porn.”

Mads Damsbo set up the company Makropol, focused on new technologies and immersive film experiences, back in in 2011. He is also one of the founders of Kaspar AI, the programme trained on the work of Werner Herzog and used to generate the script for Piotr Winiewicz’s groundbreaking feature doc About A Hero (which opened IDFA last year). He is in the Venice Immersive competition with Dark Rooms, an immersive documentary dealing with sexual awakenings and societal taboos.

How did Dark Rooms come about?

It started very specifically with me reaching out to Danish film director Laurits Flendsted. He and I had a conversation very early on about taking his methods into the immersive world. He had an extreme fly on the wall method, and I imagined seeing a documentary in that style. That was the fascination to begin with. When we were discussing together, we realised we had a common interest at the time in exploring the darker sides of our sexuality. When I say darker, I mean the unspoken things. We realised that this was the project that should look further into the darker rooms of sexuality.

How did you get the project developed?

Anne Sofie Steen Sverdrup of Bedside Productions and Morph Film came aboard. They were two very interesting collectives of creators and producers who have worked with what they call ethical and sustainable porn. They have a manifesto of really taking good care of the participants, and making sexual content that is sustainable ethically, philosophically, and climate-wise. They had a huge impact on the project, because they opened our eyes to all the different sexualities, identities, kinks, and fetishes - and also balanced the angle we had. As two white men, cis-gendered, we were looking at it from one perspective, but having them on board really widened the horizon.

Where did the money come from?

It started in the development phase through the Danish Film Institute. Later, we also had some development funding from Taiwan, through a company called NAXS. We also connected with NowHere Media in Berlin, and the Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg also joined.

What was through budget? Less than a feature film?

Around €800,000 to €900,000. It resembles a low, low budget feature film in Denmark.

Is there then now a viable economic model for financing VR and immersive work?

That’s like the million dollar question. It is evolving every year, and we see new players. In Cannes, at their new “Curators Network” event dedicated to accelerating distribution opportunities for immersive art, it was quite eye-opening in terms of the kind of players that are arriving on the scene. They are more commercial than you [might have] thought; retailers, big malls or factories that have now been repurposed to do something more experiential - who put money on the idea that the future audience will want to go somewhere and are going to be tired of sitting at home and doing everything on demand.. [But] for us, who create these very intimate immersive experiences, it is still going to be very hard to sell to them.

What are the obstacles?

The problem is still that we have to deal with some clunky hardware. The problem with VR headsets is still the amount of handlers and cleaning and support that they need to run smoothly.

Is there still an issue with censorship, with hardware manufacturers refusing to show non-mainstream content on their devices?

We have a general problem, especially as European creators, that the hardware is controlled by powers that have a different value system and also are very corporate and capital minded. It’s a big issue, and a lot of European creators are looking to companies like Varjo, the Finnish company, or even looking at ways to bypass these headsets or find a way to hack them. There is a lot of that going on.

If you look at the growth off VHS and of the internet, sex and pornography played an important part. Could the same happen with popularising VR and immersive work?

There is a reason why the Oculus headsets are not really taking off, and that’s because you can’t access porn. You can - but it’s complicated. So, yes, we’re in this weird situation where it probably would be good for Mark Zuckerberg to loosen a little bit his control over that.

How are you distributing Dark Rooms?

We have created a model closer to performing arts - a roadshow experience. It will go from town to town and stay for a certain amount of months in a venue that will do the marketing and ticketing. We will split the revenue on that run.

So you’re not looking to make it available online?

Not to begin with. What we are looking at to begin with is the physical installation piece. With David Adler’s End Of Night (Nattens ende), which won the Best Story prize in Venice VR Expanded a few years ago, it was first an installation and then became part of an online portfolio that you can download now and see at home. But for us, the numbers online are not good enough now really to be prioritising that.

How supportive is the Danish Film Institute of VR and immersive work?

The DFI has always been very supportive of new formats and methods as long as they maintain high artistic quality. This is what makes Danish immersive work so successful at festivals. Still we face the question on how to qualify the work in terms of distribution; what is reach versus impact? How do we find standards while maintaining the uniqueness of the work? We are privileged to have a very open dialogue with DFI about this, and their continuous support and patience as this new artform finds its footing.

How do you respond to that?

The conversation that we should be having with the Institute is “what qualifies as an audience?” Is it just eyeballs that go through your headset and watch the experience, or is it the impact that experience creates on a certain type of audience? And how do we qualify and quantify that? We will never reach the numbers you get in cinemas. That’s not possible for us, at least not in the same timespan, but we can create something else that has a lot more impact and can move opinions and people.