SURVEY OF VENICE BIENNALES

A Discovery of Witches: Hiding in Plain Sight

Franchise, library, horror, romance

A Life in Flowers

Botanical, natural language processing, procedural, installation

A Linha

Romance, handmade, model, puppets

Awavena

Cosmology, rainforest, ecology, Yawanawa

Bloodless

Sex work, military, crime, protest

Bodyless

Folklore, surveillance, authoritarianism, memory

Bonfire

Procedural, communication, rapport, AI

Britannia VR: Out of Your Mind

Folklore, franchise, psychedelics, history 

Buddy VR

Franchise, nonverbal, communication, rapport

Chalk Room/La Camera Insabbiata

Narrative, memory, language, handcrafted

Cosmos Within Us

Memory, Alzheimer’s, theater, haptic

Doctor Who: The Edge of Time

Speculative fiction, franchise, puzzle

Downloaded

Escape room, consciousness uploading, puzzle

Draw Me Close: A Memoir

Motherhood, cancer, hand-drawn, theatre

Eclipse

Multiplayer, speculative fiction, installation, puzzle

Glimpse

Romance, breakup, memory, illustration

Greenland Melting

Climate change, glacier, documentary, NASA

Hver Sin Stilhed

Installation, hospital, coma, psyche

Inori

Keywords Fantastic, surreal, inspiration, creativity

I Saw the Future

Spectacle, archive, speculative fiction

Kobold

Escape room, horror, folklore, puzzle

Loveseat

Reality show, comedy, game show, romance 

Make Noise

Feminism, archive, activism, voice

My Name is Peter Stillman

Keywords

Melita

Climate change, A.I., dystopia

Pagan Peak VR

Escape room, horror, folklore, puzzle

Porton Down

Human experimentation, medical ethics, biometrics, psychedelics

S.E.N.S VR

Perception, illustration, puzzle,

Spheres: Chorus of the Cosmos

Space, gravity, sonification, educational

Sublimation

Dance, procedural, butoh, music

The Deserted

Arthouse, ghost, abandoned

The Horrifically Real Virtuality

Comedy, horror, theatre, installation

The Key

War, refugee, activism, displacement

The Last Goodbye

Holocaust, memorial, survivor, memory

The Roaming – Wetlands 

Haptic, installation, theatre, horror

These Sleepless Nights

Eviction, homelessness, poverty, installation

The Unknown Patient

War, mental health, institution, memory

The Waiting Room 

Cancer, hospital, medical imaging, documentary

Tonandi

Sonification, haptic, procedural, aquatic

Umami

Memory, food, prison 

A Discovery of Witches: Hiding in Plain Sight

Country UK

Director Kim-Leigh Pontin

Developer Sky

Platform HTC Vive

Venue Venice Biennale (2018)

Commercial Availability Oculus

Links https://www.dimensionstudio.co/work/discovery-of-witches

Franchise, library, horror, romance

Produced as a tie-in to the Sky TV series of the same name, A Discovery of Witches: Hiding in Plain Sight transports the viewer to a world where witches, vampires and demons live a secret existence alongside humanity. Viewers can choose to take on the role of one of two characters: Diana Bishop, an academic and witch, or Matthew  Clairmont, a geneticist and vampire. Set in Oxford’s Bodleian Library, the work allows viewers to explore each of the characters’ burgeoning supernatural abilities, and roleplay the characters’ first sexually charged meeting. The work features photogrammetry of sets and actors from the series.

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A Life in Flowers

Country USA/Japan

Director Armando Kirwin

Developer RYOT

Platform HTC Vive

Venue Venice Biennale (2019), Centre Phi

Commercial Availability N/A

Links https://headspacestudio.com/projects/a-life-in-flowers/

Botanical, natural language processing, procedural, installation

A Life In Flowers combines a physical installation by botanical sculptor Azuma Makoto with a voice-driven interactive VR experience. Viewers enter into the physical installation, an immersive environment of Azuma’s botanical sculptures, before entering into the VR experience. Viewers are engaged in conversation by Azuma’s disembodied voice, exploring connections between plants and human life. Viewers’ responses are analyzed using Google’s speech-to-text API, and the results are used to inform the creation of a procedurally generated bouquet of flowers, one flower at a time, as the conversation progresses.  Each bouquet is unique, informed by the word choices and vocal timbre of each individual viewer. 

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A Linha

Country Brazil

Director Ricardo Laganaro 

Developer Arvore Immersive Experiences

Platform HTC Vive

Venue Venice Biennale (2019)

Commercial Availability N/A

Links https://arvore.io/project/the-line

Romance, handmade, model, puppets

A Linha is set in a handcrafted toy model of 1940s São Paulo. The narrative follows two miniature puppets, Pedro and Rosa, who must overcome uncertainties and fears to acknowledge their love for each other. Each scene of the narrative takes place on a miniature set, which the viewer can walk around and interact with in order to animate elements, reveal more layers to the world, and drive the narrative forward. The work won Best Interactive Experience at the 2019 Venice Biennale, and has been critically lauded for its careful and considered deployment of user interaction. Viewers can manipulate elements of the scenery, but not the characters directly, leading the viewer to empathize with the characters when they struggle to perform a task or action–reviewers noted that they frequently attempted to help the characters, but in many situations were powerless to help until the characters were able to overcome the challenge on their own.   

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Awavena

Country USA/Brazil/Australia

Director Lynette Wallworth, Yawanawa Nation 

Developer Coco Films, VR Wallworth Technicolour Experience Centre, Madison Wells

Media 

Platform HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, Valve Index

Venue Venice Biennale (2018)

Commercial Availability Vive

Links http://www.awavenavr.com/

Cosmology, rainforest, ecology, Yawanawa

Winner of the 2020 News and Documentary Emmy Award for Outstanding New Approaches, Awavena combines 360 video with VR to invite the viewer into the world of the Amazonian Yawanawa people. Guided by Hushahu, the Yawanawa’s first woman shaman, the viewer is given a glimpse of Yawanawa ways of seeing and knowing, moving through their environment, ceremonies, cosmology, and worldview. The work additionally focuses on Hushahu’s journey towards becoming a shaman, breaking a longstanding cultural taboo with the aid of the nation’s spiritual leader Tata, and the radical reconfiguration that followed.

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Bloodless

Country South Korea

Director Gina Kim

Developer Venta VR

Platform Not specified

Venue Venice Biennale (2017)

Commercial Availability N/A

Links http://www.ginakimfilms.com/#/bloodless-2017/

Keywords Sex work, military, crime, protest

Synopsis

Bloodless chronicles the last moments of Yun Keum Yi, a sex worker brutally murdered by a US soldier at the Dongducheong camp town in South Korea in 1992. US military personnel stationed in South Korea commit an average of eight crimes every day, including violent crimes such as murder, assault, and rape, mostly directed at camp town sex workers who have few legal rights or protections. 

The film portrays the final hours of Yun Keum Yi’s life in the camp town, with an actress leading the viewer from a brightly lit club, down ever darker and narrower alleys, until at last the viewer stands alone in the dilapidated motel room in which the crime took place. The film was shot on location in Dongducheong camp town, including the actual murder location. The work aims to bring to light the ongoing injustices fostered in the 96 camp towns surrounding US military bases in South Korea. 

Bodyless

Country Taiwan

Director Hsin-Chien Huang 

Developer Virtual and Physical Media Integration Association of Taiwan

Platform HTC Vive

Venue Venice Biennale (2019)

Commercial Availability N/A

Folklore, surveillance, authoritarianism, memory

Bodyless is based on the director’s childhood memories of martial law in Taiwan during the 1970s. The work explores the suppression of folk beliefs and human-centered ceremony under an autocratic regime, while also drawing a connection between historical methods of authoritarian control and contemporary digital surveillance infrastructures. Hsin-Chien Huang is Laurie Anderson’s collaborator on all of her VR works, employing similar aesthetics and strategies.

The viewer follows the ghost of a political criminal descending into a digitally mediated underworld. The ghost returns to the world of the living during a lunar celebration, witnessing ceremonies, his former home, and even his own memories (presented in the form of photographs) gradually being taken over and subsumed by a vast spreading force of digitization.  

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Bonfire

Country USA

Director Eric Darnell

Developer Baobab Studios

Platform Oculus Rift, PSVR

Venue Venice Biennale (2019), Tribeca 2019

Commercial Availability Oculus

Links https://www.baobabstudios.com/bonfire

Keywords Procedural, communication, rapport, AI

Synopsis

Bonfire casts the viewer in the role of an astronaut who has crash-landed on an alien planet while searching for a new potential home for human habitation. Equipped with nothing but a bonfire, a grumpy companion robot, and a bag of marshmallows, the viewer encounters an alien creature nicknamed Pork Bun, who communicates entirely through facial expressions and body language.   

Pork Bun’s behavior changes in complex and dynamic ways through player interaction, moving through a variety of emotional states in response to how they are treated, gaining (or losing) trust in the process. The work also served as a testbed of Baobab’s research into interactive narrative systems and dynamic character AI. Pork Bun’s behaviors are emergent, driven in response to interaction, rather than being scripted, as is typically the case with non-player character behavior. The narrative itself is non-linear, rearranging itself in response to the player’s situation and actions. 

Britannia VR: Out of Your Mind

Country UK

Director Kim-Leigh Pontin

Developer Sky UK, Hammerhead, Vertigo films

Platform Oculus Rift

Venue Venice Biennale (2019)

Commercial Availability Steam (region-locked), Oculus

Keywords Folklore, franchise, psychedelics, history 

Britannia VR: Out of Your Mind is a tie-in to the Sky TV historical drama series, focusing on the Roman conquest of Britain. Photogrammetry was used to capture sets, props, and characters from the tv series, albeit at low resolution and with rudimentary lighting and rendering. Viewers are given the voice of two experiences, corresponding to the Celtic and Roman sides of the narrative. The Celtic experience involves initiation into Druidic mysteries, attending a psychedelic rave, and an audience with an ancient Druid. The Roman experience guides the viewer through an Imperial worship service, minting coins in a founary, and the procession of the Emperor Claudius entering the Oppida. 

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Buddy VR

Country South Korea

Director Chuck Chae

Developer Redrover

Platform Oculus Rift

Venue Venice Biennale (2018)

Commercial Availability N/A

Keywords Franchise, nonverbal, communication, rapport

Described as a “virtual relationship experience”, Buddy VR explores the potential of VR as a medium to build connections and foster empathy. A tie-in to The Nut Job animated film, the work is set in a 1960’s-era concession stand, where a rat named Buddy needs the viewer’s help to safely extract cheese from a mousetrap. Negotiating this task successfully requires the viewer to pay careful attention and response to the nonverbal Buddy’s communication cues, including expression, touch, and gesture. Once the task is complete, the viewer is scaled down to Buddy’s size, and has the opportunity to further intact with Buddy to build a rapport and explore his world. The work centers nonverbal communication and interaction: Buddy tracks the viewer’s movement, responds to touch (in a variety of ways, depending on location and context), and communicates with objects or object references, gestures, and expression. As the experience nears its conclusion, the rapport between Buddy and the viewer is tested, as the viewer can try to save Buddy from a towering child who arrives to carry him away. 

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Chalk Room/La Camera Insabbiata

Director Laurie Anderson and Hsin-Chien Huang

Developer Laurie Anderson and Hsin-Chien Huang

Platform HTC Vive

Venue Venice Biennale (2017), Mass MoCA, Taipei Museum of Fine Arts, Louisiana Museum

Commercial Availability N/A

Links https://laurieanderson.com/?portfolio=chalkroom

Narrative, memory, language, handcrafted, installation

Chalkroom, originally titled La Camera Insabbiata, is an edifice of words, drawings, and stories. Accompanied by Anderson’s narration, viewers fly through an expansive environment of rooms, bridges, and open spaces, covered throughout with chalkboard drawings, text, and grit. Discrete rooms contain interactive and participatory experiences, including a room filled with sculptural manifestations of sound, created by past viewers. Other rooms allow the viewer to manipulate text, revealing it through drawing on the wall, manipulating an amorphous narrative cloud, or flying through a language tree. The work aims to challenge some of the gaming-derived conventions of VR (slickness, task-focus), opting instead for a dark, gritty, non-directed experience fostering exploration and contemplation. 

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Cosmos Within Us

Country UK/Luxembourg

Director Tupac Martir

Developer Satore Studio

Platform HTC Vive

Venue Venice Biennale (2019)

Commercial Availability N/A

Links https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SCaBCQslw0

Memory, Alzheimer’s, theater, haptic

Cosmos Within Us combines a VR experience with live theatrical performance, live sound, live narration. The work is performed by a theatrical cast, in a physical set, whose movements are tracked via Kinect and mapped into the VR experience for a viewer sitting in the midst of it. In addition to the viewer in VR, an audience can also watch the physical and sonic components of the performance. The narrative follows Aiken, a man in his 60s struggling with Alzheimer’s disease. The viewers enter into Aiken’s mind, wandering through unstable memories in a constant state of flux. Gradually, the viewer becomes aware that many formerly happy memories no longer feel right, tainted by something long-repressed. The performers interact with the viewer throughout the experience, incorporating haptic sensation through physical touch, as well as scent, to more fully explore connections between memory and the senses. 

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Doctor Who: The Edge of Time

Country UK

Director Marcus Moresby

Developer Maze Theory

Platform HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, Valve Index

Venue Venice Biennale (2019)

Commercial Availability Steam, PS4, Oculus

Links https://www.doctorwhotheedgeoftime.com/

Speculative fiction, franchise, puzzle

Doctor. Who: The Edge of Time is a tie-in to the long running BBC speculative fiction TV series, featuring voices of the main cast circa 2019. Viewers progress through a variety of stages inspired by the show’s 55-year history, searching for the eponymous Doctor, who is missing somewhere in time. Along the way, they encounter characters from the series, and must outwit monsters and solve puzzles in order to progress. The work has widespread commercial release, receiving mediocre to mixed reviews. Reviewers noted that the experience suffered from pacing challenges–continually prompted to progress, they were unable to linger or spend time exploring environments. Simultaneously, the gameplay elements themselves were described as overly simplistic.

Downloaded

Country Canada

Director Ollie Rankin

Developer Pansensory Interactive Incorporated

Platform No information

Venue Venice Biennale (2019)

Commercial Availability N/A

Links https://pansensory.com/2019/02/20/downloaded/

Escape room, consciousness uploading, puzzle

Downloaded views sincere human connection as contrast and antidote to the superficial and vacuous experience of connection through social media. The work follows the narrative of two friends who have built a machine to enable the digitization of the human mind. The viewer takes on the role of one of them, who has volunteered as a test subject, becoming digitized and trapped inside their computer system. The physical world is depicted through live-action footage on a screen in the virtual environment. The viewer may work with their accomplice to solve puzzles spanning the physical and virtual environments in order to restore them to their body. $0 different permutations of the narrative are possible, depending on the viewer’s actions and the level of connection they establish with their accomplice. 

Further Development

Pansensory Interactive was raising funds to develop the premise into a multipart VR miniseries, described as a less-bleak Black Mirror, starring the viewer. The last progress update was 20th February 2019.

Draw Me Close: A Memoir

Country Canada

Director Jordan Tannahill

Developer All Seeing Eye

Platform HTC Vive 

Venue Venice Biennale (2017)

Commercial Availability N/A

Links Draw Me Close | Trailer

Keywords Motherhood, cancer, hand-drawn, theatre

Synopsis

Combining illustration, VR, and live performance, Draw me Close: A Memoir explores the relationship between a mother and son in the years following her terminal cancer diagnosis. The single viewer adopts the son’s perspective, while the role of the mother is performed by an actor (Tamzin Griffin), who uses realtime motion capture to map her own movement to her virtual avatar. 

The work plays out as a series of narrated and interactive vignettes set over a time period of 25 years, beginning with the son’s early childhood. Tactile interaction is threaded throughout, with the mother figure gently guiding the viewer through sets that map tangible physical elements, such as a moving gate, to their illustrated virtual analogues. The work uses the presence of a real human to foster an emotional connection with the characters and the narrative, using gentle, caring, and intimate touch as a way to ground the viewer in the experience, even as the virtual environment is abstracted.

Eclipse

Country France

Director Astruc Jonathan and Favre Aymeric

Developer Backlight

Platform HTC Vive

Venue Venice Biennale (2018), various commercial venues in France and Belgium

Commercial Availability Licensing available or commercial enterprise (i.e. Escape Room

venues) only. Requires dedicated room scale setup with its own server.

Links http://eclipsegamevr.com/en_us/

Multiplayer, speculative fiction, installation, puzzles

Eclipse is a 4-person VR adventure game, where players are sent to investigate the mysterious disappearance of the spaceship Eclipse. Players take on the roles of the crew of the rescue spaceship Eclipse II, and are divided into two teams. One team must explore the derelict Eclipse, restoring functionality and uncovering what happened, while the other teams remain on Eclipse II to analyze information and direct the exploration team. Players must coordinate communication and actions in order to restore the Eclipse to functionality. The experience is room scale, and spans multiple interior locations on both ships, using body tracking via the MSI VR-One and Vive body trackers. A vibrating floor is also incorporated, adding verisimilitude to the experience. 

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Glimpse

Country USA/Ireland

Director Benjamin Cleary and Michael O’ Connor

Developer Mr. Kite, Electric Skies

Platform No information

Venue Venice Biennale (2019)

Commercial Availability N/A

Links https://mrkitevr.com/249459

Keywords Romance, breakup, memory, illustration

Glimpse places viewers in the role of Herbie, an anthropomorphic panda, who has recently broken up with his girlfriend Rice (an anthropomorphic deer). The work takes place inside Herbie’s illustration studio, where viewers are able to interact with Herbie’s sketchbooks, posters, and other effects. Herbie’s illustrations unfold from the pages of his sketchbooks into animated vignettes capturing moments spanning the arc of his and Rice’s relationship. The version premiering at Venice was a 5-minute demo of a planned longer experience.

Further Development 

The full work was projected to debut as a full commercial release in 2020; as of yet, no further information is available.

Greenland Melting

Country USA

Director Nonny de la Peña

Developer Emblematic Group, X-ReZ Studio, Realtra

Platform HTC Vive, Valve Index

Venue Venice Biennale (2017)

Commercial Availability Steam

Links ‘Greenland Melting’ Venice VR Exclusive Clip

360°: Why Is Greenland Melting? | FRONTLINE + NOVA + Emblematic Group

Keywords Climate change, glacier, documentary, NASA

Synopsis

Greenland Melting combines photogrammetry, videogrammetry, and 360 video to place viewers on a NASA research expedition to analyze and understand the accelerated melting of Greenland’s glaciers. Footage takes the viewer from a low altitude helicopter flight, to the deck of a research vessel, and beneath the waves. Two NASA research scientists serve as the viewer’s guides, outlining the accelerating rate of glacial erosion, assessing data to determine causes, and speculating on potential outcomes. The work is offered as a free release on Steam; many reviewers noted that the urgency of the information is undermined by dated and low-resolution visuals.

Hver Sin Stilhed

Country Denmark

Director David Wedel

Developer Maria Herholdt Engermann, Signe Ungermand, Metta Alson Vittrup, 

Amaile Kroun

Platform No information

Venue Venice Biennale (2017), Cannes (2017)

Commercial Availability N/A

Links https://vimeo.com/207125264

Keywords Installation, hospital, coma, psyche

Synopsis

Hver Sin Stilhed (Separate Silences) is a cinematic VR experience for two viewers, who inhabit the bodies and psyches of two siblings, each in a coma, sharing the same hospital room. The film moves between the siblings’ physical presence in the hospital room, and their inner worlds of imagination and memory, exploring the subconscious, dreams, fear of death, and connection to each other. Each sibling’s experience is different, and viewer pairs are encouraged and facilitated to debrief with each other afterwards to reflect on the shared and disparate aspects of their experiences; both perspectives coming together to complete the story. 

The experience is cinematic, rather than interactive, as befits the narrative content, but, in the words of the developers “even though the audience cannot manipulate and interact with the environment, there is still the possibility of the environment interacting with the audience”. The work includes a human-driven performance element, with actors synchronizing scent, touch, and other haptic stimulation with the video playback in order to ground the physical experience of the viewer in the virtual body that they are inhabiting.

Inori

Country Taiwan

Director Liu Szu Ming and Komatsu Miwa

Developer HTC Vive

Platform HTC Vive

Venue Venice Biennale (2019)

Commercial Availability N/A

Links https://viveoriginals.com/portfolio/inori/

Fantastic, surreal, inspiration, creativity

Inori is a visual spectacle based on the work of Komatsu Miwa. Advertised as exploring the theme of inspiration and the process of artistic creation, the work takes the view through a series of hallucinogenic vignettes filled with surreal and spectacular imagery. 

Kobold

Country Germany

Director Ioulia Isserlis and Max Sacker

Developer AnotherWorld VR

Platform Vive, Oculus, Index, Windows MR

Venue Venice Biennale (2018)

Commercial Availability Steam, Oculus

Links https://koboldhorror.com/

Escape room, horror, folklore, puzzle

Kobold is a horror-themed VR escape room, set in an abandoned villa in the midst of a Brandenburg forest. The viewer takes on the role of an explorer investigating the case of a missing boy. Through finding clues and solving puzzles, more of the villa becomes accessible to the viewer and more of the narrative is revealed. Rather than an introductory cinematic, the work features a tie-in introductory video separate from the experience itself that establishes the characters and the setting. This allows the viewer to enter directly into the interactive nature of the experience.

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Loveseat

Country USA

Director Kiira Benzing

Developer Double Eye Studios

Platform HTC Vive, Bose AR

Venue Venice Biennale (2019)

Commercial Availability N/A

Links https://doubleeye.co/loveseat

Reality show, comedy, game show, romance 

Loveseat is a combined mixed-reality installation and theatrical performance performed simultaneously for meatspace and virtual audiences. The narrative involves two contestants on a reality TV show competing to win the affection of the Perfect Partner–an armchair. The actors wear HTC Vive headsets while performing in front of a live audience, who are seated in an installation evoking a soundstage. The actors’ movements and gestures are mapped to their VR avatars, who perform in a virtual version of the soundstage to a remote audience joining with their own headsets via a social VR platform. The VR performance is also broadcast on a screen behind the actors in the physical set. In between performances, the set becomes an interactive installation with spatial audio, providing insight into the backstory of the characters and the narrative world. Viewers can leave behind their own audio traces, further contributing to the narrative.

Make Noise

Country UK

Director May Abdalla

Developer BBC, Anagram

Platform Oculus Go

Venue Venice Biennale (2018)

Commercial Availability Oculus

Links https://weareanagram.co.uk/project/make-noise

Feminism, archive, activism, voice

Make Noise explores the history, personalities, and struggles of the women’s suffrage movement in early 20th century Britain. Drawing from BBC audio archives, the experience weaves together recordings of British suffragettes, including Edith Pepper, Charlotte Drake, and Mary Richardson, with the viewer’s own voice. The work explores the power and symbolic meaning of “raising one’s voice”, as the viewer’s own voice becomes a tool to enact change within the virtual world. By shouting, singing, and humming, viewers use their voices to smash through symbolic obstacles facing the cause of womens’ suffrage as they navigate through a series of abstracted vignettes representing stages of the suffragettes’ struggle. The project was developed for the standalone Oculus Go headset in order to be broadly accessible, and was made available as a playable experience in a wide variety of libraries across England. 

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My Name is Peter Stillman

Country UK

Director Ashton Lysander

Developer 59 Productions

Platform Oculus Rift

Venue The Space, Venice Biennale (2017)

Commercial Availability

Links https://59productions.co.uk/project/my-name-is-peter-stillman/

Synopsis

My Name is Peter Stillman was produced as a tie-in to City of Glass, a stage production inspired by Paul Auster’s short story of the same name from his acclaimed New York Trilogy. The original story focuses on the gradual erosion of identity of its protagonist as he assumes the role of a fictional detective and becomes increasingly entangled in a case. Fittingly, the VR tie-in recasts the viewer as one of the narrative’s characters, Peter Stillman. Set in a VR adaptation of one of the stage production’s apartment sets, the viewer sees their reflection in a mirror, with their features replaced by the hand-drawn visage of Peter Stillman. The viewer’s reflection performs a monologue as Peter Stillman, as the animation spreads from the face to transform the apartment around them. The work was developed alongside a realtime face tracking and projection mapping system used in the theatrical performance.

Melita

Country USA

Director Nicolás Alcalá

Developer Future Lighthouse

Platform Oculus Rift

Venue Venice Biennale (2017)

Commercial Availability Oculus

Links http://futurelighthouse.com/melita/ (defunct)

Climate change, A.I., dystopia

Melita is a dystopian future narrative where climate change has driven ecological collapse, rendering Earth uninhabitable. The narrative centers Anaaya, an Inuit scientist, and Melita, and artificial intelligence, as they search for a new planet for humanity to inhabit. The work offers multiple modes of viewing: “Director’s Mode”, the traditional “on rails” movement through the narrative; “Dollhouse Mode”, which scales down the entire work to tabletop size, allowing the viewer to walk around it and see it from all angles as it unfolds, and a planned (but never implemented) “Explorer Mode”, which would enable the viewer to explore individual scenes at their own pace, interacting with props and sets to learn more about the narrative world. 

Further Development

Satisfied with producing a single VR work, Alcalá moved on to become a chef. Future Lighthouse is now defunct after failing to raise enough capital to keep running.

Pagan Peak VR

Country Germany

Director Ioulia Isserlis and Max Sacker

Developer AnotherWorld VR

Platform Vive, Oculus, Index, Windows MR

Venue Venice Biennale (2019)

Commercial Availability Steam, Oculus

Links https://www.paganpeakvr.com/

Escape room, horror, folklore, puzzle

Pagan Peak VR is a horror-themed VR escape room. Set in a remote alpine cabin, the viewer plays as a captive of the folklore-inspired Krampus Killer. The viewer must solve puzzles and challenges set by the killer in order to progress through the cabin, delving further into the killer’s psyche in order to avoid becoming his next victim. The work features room-scale environments captured through photogrammetry. The work was nominated for best VR experience, and its commercial releases have very positive reviews. The same studio also produced Kobold, which premiered at the 2018 Venice Biennale to similarly positive reviews. 

Porton Down

Country Australia/UK

Director Callum Cooper

Developer Callum Cooper and Constance Nuttall

Platform HTC Vive

Venue Venice Biennale (2019)

Commercial Availability N/A

Links https://porton-down.com/

Human experimentation, medical ethics, biometrics, psychedelics

Porton Down is a semi-biographical work where viewers re-enact the experiences of former RAF airman Donald Webb as a military test subject at the Porton Down research facility in the early 1950s. Told he would be testing an experimental vaccine for the common cold, Webb was given massive doses of LSD and subjected to a battery of stimulus response tests as part of a research program on the use of psychoactive drugs in interrogation and deprogramming. 

The VR experience weaves together Webb’s narration with interactive segments, where viewers are subject to a similar testing experience, while the environment morphs and shifts around them. At the end of the experience, it is revealed to the viewer that their interaction (head tracking, hand movement, voice, eye tracking, etc) has been recorded throughout and used to construct a biometric profile of them, estimating height, weight, age, reaction time, emotional state, etc, which is shown to the user. The work draws a direct parallel between Webb’s lack of informed consent in a medical research context, and the viewer’s lack of informed consent in data collection: that uninformed collection, scraping, obfuscating EULAs, and similar practices, and can result in similar material and or psychological harms.

S.E.N.S VR

Country France

Director Charles Ayats, Marc-Antoine Mathieu

Developer Arte, Red Corner

Platform Oculus Rift, Gear VR, Cardboard, touchscreen phones/tablets

Venue Venice Biennale (2017)

Commercial Availability Oculus, Google Play 

Links SENS VR, a virtual reality labyrinth | ARTE CREATIVE

SENS VR – Trailer 360

Keywords Perception, illustration, puzzle,

Synopsis

S.E.N.S VR is an adaptation of the comic works of Marc-Antoine Mathieu. Matieu’s works frequently deconstruct form and restrictions of medium, questioning how characters would navigate worlds bounded by the formal structures of comics (panel boundaries, vanishing points, etc), and how characters’ affordances change when these structures are manipulated. In S.E.N.S VR, viewers are tasked with navigating a labyrinth depicted in Mathieu’s spare and economical illustration style. The environment is largely composed of directional arrows, but contrary to conventional use to clarify and direct, the arrows form puzzle elements that must be solved in order to interpret them correctly. Viewers must shift perspective and position in order to untangle the environmental context and navigate it successfully.

Spheres: Chorus of the Cosmos

Country USA/France

Director Eliza McNitt

Developer Protozoa Pictures, Crimes of Curiosity, Atlas V, Kaleidoscope

Platform Oculus Rift

Venue Venice Biennale (2018)

Commercial Availability Oculus

Links https://novelab.net/en/project/spheres/

Space, gravity, sonification, educational

Narrated by Millie BobbyBrown, Jessica Chastain, and Patti Smith, and produced by Darren Aronofsky, Spheres: Chorus of the Cosmos is a three part educational experience and the unseen forces, such as gravitational waves, electromagnetic fields, and perturbations in spacetime, that govern its organization and evolution. Embodied  in the work through a sweeping orchestral score, these otherwise intangible forces can be manipulated by the viewer using their controllers, causing the fabric of the universe around them to respond in kind. The user becomes a conductor and improvisational performer, exploring relationships between forces and matter; between light and sound, energy and motion. The first segment of the work focuses on the Earth and solar system, sonifying gravity and motion. The second segment explores the discovery of gravitational waves, and the manipulation of light by gravity as the viewer falls into a black hole. Finally, the third segment explores the Big Bang, sonifying the tremendous and echoing reverberation of its aftermath. 

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Sublimation

Country Germany

Director Karolina Markewicz and Pascal Piron

Developer Invr.space

Platform Not specified

Venue Venice Biennale (2019)

Commercial Availability N/A 

Links https://invr.space/

Markiewicz & Piron

Keywords Dance, procedural, butoh, music

Synopsis

Sublimation introduces viewers to the Japanese contemporary dance form Butoh, generating a procedural environment and audio soundscape in response to their movements. Viewers are guided through a series of simple and slow movements by the avatar of a butoh dancer, and are then directed to perform the choreography for themselves. Realtime motion capture of the viewer is cross referenced to archived motion capture of the butoh performer. The degree of similarity is used to generate simple geometric imagery that is recursively developed into fractal patterns. These movements create an environment of light and colour that is unique to each viewer, along with a unique manifestation of the work’s soundscape.

The Deserted

Country Taiwan

Director Tsai Ming-Liang

Developer HTC Virtual Reality Content Centre

Platform HTC Vive

Venue Venice Biennale (2017), Tate Modern

Commercial Availability N/A

Links https://viveoriginals.com/portfolio/the-deserted/

Keywords Arthouse, ghost, abandoned

Synopsis

Billed as the first Chinese VR Feature film, The Deserted adapts Tsai Ming-Liang’s slow cinema approach to create a VR experience that feels like a series of painstakingly composed installations. Set in a lush mountain jungle, the almost wordless narrative concerns a man recuperating from illness in a dilapidated ruin. He is visited in turn by his mother, who cooks him food he cannot eat, and a ghost who dwells in the ruin, who is equally unable to enter into his life. His only communication is with a shapeshifting fish he keeps in a tank. The work avoids placing the viewer as a participant in the scene, often psitionitioning the viewer at filmic angles and elevated heights, while still enabling the environment to be experienced in three dimensions.

The Horrifically Real Virtuality

Country France

Director Marie Jourdren

Developer DVgroup

Platform HTC

Venue Venice Biennale (2018), Centre Phi

Commercial Availability N/A

Links https://dv.fr/dvstudio/projects/the-horrifically-real-virtuality/

Comedy, horror, theatre, installation

The Horrifically Real Virtuality is an interactive play performed live in VR exploring notions of illusion, artifice, staging, and theatrical performance. Set in Hollywood in the 1950s, the play centres Bela Lugosi, known for his cinematic portrayals of vampires, agreeing to star in a new film by director Ed Wood, known primarily for producing z-grade horror and science fiction films, including Plan 9 from Outer Space–widely regarded as the worst movie of all time. The audience enters into the work as beings from “The Real Virtuality”–a parallel dimension Lugosi’s character is able to access. Over the course of the production, viewers  first participate in the staging and filming of the movie’s final scene, before donning headsets and trackers and entering into the world of the film they helped create. Throughout the trainwreck of the film’s production, front-stage and backstage blur, audience members become participants, and the artifice of theatre and film is continuously lampshaded.

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I Saw the Future

Country France

Director François Vautier

Developer Small

Platform Not specified

Venue Venice Biennale (2017)

Commercial Availability N/A

Links https://mk2films.com/en/film/i-saw-the-future-2/

Keywords Spectacle, archive, speculative fiction

Synopsis

I Saw the Future is a largely spectacle-driven experience based on an interview with science fiction author Arthur C Clarke. Using a recorded interview from the BBC archive, the work begins with 1960s video footage of Clarke as he speculates on then-current trends in scientific and technological development, and imagines how civilizations will develop in response to technological innovation. As Clarke speaks, his image dissolves into a voxel field, a vector mesh, and other digital structures, flickering and transforming in time with the archival audio and contemporary musical score. 

Kobold

Country Germany

Director Ioulia Isserlis and Max Sacker

Developer AnotherWorld VR

Platform Vive, Oculus, Index, Windows MR

Venue Venice Biennale (2018)

Commercial Availability Steam, Oculus

Links https://koboldhorror.com/

Keywords Escape room, horror, folklore, puzzle

Synopsis

Kobold is a horror-themed VR escape room, set in an abandoned villa in the midst of a Brandenburg forest. The viewer takes on the role of an explorer investigating the case of a missing boy. Through finding clues and solving puzzles, more of the villa becomes accessible to the viewer and more of the narrative is revealed. Rather than an introductory cinematic, the work features a tie-in introductory video separate from the experience itself that establishes the characters and the setting. This allows the viewer to enter directly into the interactive nature of the experience.

The Key

Country USA

Director Celine Tricart

Developer Lucid Dreams Productions, Oculus VR for Good

Platform Oculus rift

Venue Venice Biennale (2019), TriBeCa (2019)

Commercial Availability Oculus

Links https://www.oculus.com/vr-for-good/programs/the-key/

War, refugee, activism, displacement

The Key  is a poignant engagement with the ongoing global refugee crisis. The work won Best VR at Venice 2019, and the storyscapes award at Tribeca 2019. Set in a fantastical world, an unseen narrator (Arrested Development’s Alia Shawkat) guides the viewer around her home, introducing them to her kin: small glowing creatures, each with distinct behaviors and personality. The viewer is tasked with helping them look for a key that the narrator has misplaced. An unseen disaster forces the viewer to flee, narrator and kin in tow, and begin a harrowing journey to safety, facing a series of obstacles and choices, and encountering other displaced figures. At each obstacle, one of the narrator’s kin is forcefully removed. All the while, the viewer must continue to search for the key. The eponymous key is the key to the narrator’s memories, enabling her to recover her past: displaced from her home through violent conflict, and separated from her family during the long and arduous flight to an uncertain future in a refugee camp. The work ends with a didactic breakdown of the byzantine and sometimes decades-long process of claiming asylum and starting to build a new life as a resettled refugee.

The Last Goodbye

Country USA

Director Gabo Arora and Ari Palitz

Developer Here Be Dragons, MPC VR, Otoy

Platform Oculus Rift

Venue Venice Biennale (2017), Tribeca (2017)

Commercial Availability Oculus

Links https://sfi.usc.edu/news/2017/04/14886-%E2%80%9C-last-goodbye%E2%80%9D-virtual-reality-testimony-premieres-tribeca-film-festival

Keywords Holocaust, memorial, survivor, memory

Synopsis

Produced the the USC Shoah Foundation, The Last Goodbye is a recounting of the experiences of Holocaust survivor Pinchas Gutter. Returning to Majdanek concentration camp for the final time, Gutter guides the viewer through the facility where he, along with three hundred thousand others, were subjected to brutal forced labour and systemic torture by the forces of Nazi Germany, and where over seventy eight thousand were brutally murdered by the same regime–including Gutter’s parents and twin sister. Throughout the tour, Gutter recounts his own personal experience with the exact spaces the viewer moves through, which are presented without embellishment. The work aims to preserve a firsthand accounting of these atrocities in a form that enables it to be viscerally experienced. It features a soundtrack by Dražen Bošnjak. The work’s debut featured an installation component by David Korins.

The Roaming – Wetlands

 

Country France/Belgium/UK

Director Mathieu Pradat

Developer La Prairie Productions, DV Group, Satore Studio, Demute Studio, Tamanoir

Immersive Studio 

Platform HTC Vive, Oculus Rift

Venue Venice Biennale (2018)

Commercial Availability N/A

Links https://dv.fr/dvstudio/projects/the-roaming/

Haptic, installation, theatre, horror

The Roaming – Wetlands is a room-scale VR theatrical performance. The narrative centers two children lost in a bayou, on the run from a shotgun wielding killer. Guided by the mysterious Voodoo Man, participants must navigate the wetlands to find the missing children, and rescue them from the killer. The work is extensively mediated throughout: the roles of the killer and the Voodoo Man are performed live in realtime by actors, and stagehands swap out props and physical set elements, including water and vegetation, to expand the perceived space of the play area. Pradat describes the work as an “anti-FPS”, characterizing first person videogames as experiences designed to “bring the beast out” and cater to violent and destructive impulses–though no reference is made to the well established “walking sim” first-person genre, or other similarly narrative-focused and nonviolent first-person games.

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These Sleepless Nights

Country USA/Canada

Director Gabo Arora

Developer LightShed

Platform Magic Leap

Venue Venice Biennale (2019)

Commercial Availability N/A

Links https://www.magicleap.com/en-us/news/partner-stories/these-sleepless-nights

Eviction, homelessness, poverty, installation

These Sleepless Nights is a mixed reality documentary on the American eviction crisis. The work consists of an installation component (pictured below), with an interactive Magic Leap experience. Through moving around the space and touching different points on the cube, the viewer triggers audio recordings, collected from interviews and court proceedings of impoverished individuals and families facing court-ordered eviction. Glowing motes of light form ephemeral, anonymized silhouettes of the speakers, while vector lines draw maps–topographic, economic, and otherwise—across the surface of the cube and throughout the area around the viewer. The viewer uses their physical body to navigate and control the flow of information, moving through the narrative at their own pace and in their own order. Featuring a soundtrack by Philip Glass 

Further Development

The work is planned to be adapted to a location-specific AR-based smartphone app deployed in select cities (Washington DC and San Francisco). The app will also allow direct donation to local shelter and housing projects.

The Unknown Patient

Country Australia

Director Michael Beets

Developer Unwritten Endings, VRTOV

Platform Unknown

Venue Venice Biennale (2018)

Commercial Availability N/A 

Links http://michaelbeets.com/the-unknown-patient-2/

War, mental health, institution, memory

The Unknown Patient explores the lingering impact of war on both the individual psyches of soldiers and the communal psyche of nations. The work is based on the story of an Australian soldier found wandering the streets of London in 1916, with no recollection of his identity, who subsequently spent 12 years institutionalized in a mental asylum in Sydney. Viewers take on the role of the Unknown Patient, and must piece together his narrative from flashbacks, distorted memories, and historical accounts of real events while exploring the environment of an early 20th century mental hospital.

Further Development

The work debuted at Venice as a 9-minute pilot of a projected longer series. While the pilot has been exhibited at several other festivals since then, no information is available on its further development. 

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The Waiting Room 

Country UK

Director Victoria Mapplebeck

Developer East City Films

Platform Not specified (phone-based)

Venue Venice Biennale (2019)

Commercial Availability N/A

Links https://victoriamapplebeck.com/


Keywords Cancer, hospital, medical imaging, documentary

Synopsis

The Waiting Room documents the director’s firsthand experience with breast cancer, from diagnosis, to treatment, to recovery. The work features a re-enactment of the director’s final radiotherapy session, with the viewer in the position of a bystander. In addition to the re-enactment, the work incorporates medical data collected by Mapplebeck throughout her course of treatment, including CT scans, mammograms, ultrasound, and cellular microscopy.These data are reconstructed and animated in order to create a 3-dimensional environment taking viewers inside Mapplebeck’s body. The work aims to explore illness experience and medical intervention from the patient’s perspective. With the goal of reconnecting medical visualization to the human from whom it is drawn. 

Tonandi

Country Iceland/USA

Director Sigur Rós, Sarah Hopper, Mike Tucker, Steve Mangiat

Developer Magic Leap, Dan Lehrich, Brian Jury

Platform Magic Leap

Venue Venice Biennale (2019)

Commercial Availability Magic Leap 

Links

Keywords Sonification, haptic, procedural, aquatic

Synopsis

Tonandi (Sound Spirit) is a collaborative exploration between Magic Leap Studios and Icelandic post-rock band Sigur Rós. The band has a very characteristic sound that is ethereal, ambient, and features washes and textures of sound slowly building over time. Tonandi takes this approach to sound and spacializes it throughout the user’s environment, manifesting sounds visually as abstracted flora and fauna evoking a fantastic underwater landscape. Each visual element has a unique voice, and users experience the soundscape differently as they move through it, changing the spatial relationships of the different voices to themselves and each other. 

Through gesture mapping, users are able to interact with and manipulate the visual elements of the work, which in turn changes the sound. One of the goals of the developers was to create the illusion of haptic feedback through the way the visuals and sound respond to touch. Through embodied, tactile manipulation and play with the visual elements, users learn how to influence the soundscape, discovering which audio parameters they can control, and how, through an intuitive process based on gesture, spatial movement, and continual visual and auditory feedback

Umami

Country France

Director Landia Egal and Thomas Pons

Developer Tiny Planets, Novelab

Platform Oculus Rift

Venue Venice Biennale (2018)

Commercial Availability N/A 

Links https://novelab.net/en/project/umami/

Memory, food, prison 

Synopsis

Umami explores the narrative potential of food and the links between taste and memory, following the French expression madeleine de Proust. Set in a Japanese kaiten-zushi (conveyor belt sushi restaurant), the work places the viewer in the role of a man re-discovering his memories through the exploration of taste. A steady stream of food items is conveyed to the viewer, who may choose which ones to sample using virtual chopsticks. Interacting with food items triggers animated vignettes of the character’s past. The accumulation of memories gradually changes the viewer’s surroundings–characters from the past are brought into the present, and the viewer’s present is revealed to be yet another layer of memory.