Immersive storytelling breaks the fourth wall at Phi Centre

If you could smell Jackie Kennedy's perfumealong with the freshly cut grass by Dealey Plaza, and hear the Dallas crowds cheering, would experiencingJFK's final moments bemore vivid than simply seeing them played out on a screen?

The artists behind Famous Deaths think so and they're inviting the audienceto smell for themselves at the latest Phi Centre exhibition.

• Virtual Reality at Montreal's Phi Centre and abroad
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Embodied Narrative: Sensory Stories of the Digital Ageexplores the future of storytelling with its 13 works curated by New York's Future of StoryTelling (FoST).

Virtual reality, scent technology and interactive storytelling are some of the ways this collection breaks the fourth wall and invites audiences to experience thework on a visceral level.

"By bringing you out from behind a screen and into your own body, these works generate powerful emotional responses,"FoST founder and director Charles Melcher said.

Here's an overview of some of the works in the show:

Virtual Reality

Virtual reality (VR) canbe found inNotes on Blindness: Into Darkness. It's a VR experience based on the audio diaries of writer and academic John Hull, who became totally blind in 1983.Hull's audio cassette diary is used in the experience.

Smell the creativity

One of the more startling pieces in the exhibition is calledFamous Deaths. Two artists from the Netherlands use scent and sound to recreate the final moments of two icons: John F. Kennedy and Whitney Houston.

Famous Deaths recreates the final moments of two icons just before they died: Whitney Houston and John F. Kennedy.

8 years ago

Duration 1:20

Cinq Six host Jeanette Kelly looks at this new experience that removes visual cues to offer audiences a new artistic experience.

You can re-liveJFK'sfinal moments by placing yourself on a stainless steelgurney and being rolled inside a mortuary refrigeration unit.

Visitors experience computer-programmed smells of freshly cut grass, Jackie Kennedy's favourite perfume(Joy)and the sounds of the crowd on the streets of Dallas leading up to the shots that killed the president.

Choose your own adventure

Late Shiftis inspired by video games. The experience gives the viewer ethical choices to make to change the outcome on the screen.

It's by Swiss filmmaker Tobias Weber and is billed as the first seamless, interactive feature film.

"I think interaction is a very simple idea you have when you watch a movie,"Weber toldCBC."You see the protagonist struggling with the choices they have to make and you want to help them."

Late Shiftuses a new technology developed in Switzerland calledCtrlMovie,which is designed to facilitate the production of interactive movie-making. It's screened in a special 16-seat movie theatre built at the Phi Centre.

Listen to BaptistePlanche, producer of Late Shift, in conversation withJeanetteKelly onCinq six June 18 at 5 p.m. on CBC Radio One.