The VIFF Immersed Exhibition honours VR and AR storytelling at its finest. Transport yourself to other worlds from the comfort of your home, with cinematic live-action, animation, documentaries, and cutting-edge virtual reality and augmented reality, created by leading artists from around the world.

This DLC is only available from October 1 to 11, 2021.


Featured Projects: VIFF MARKETPLACE

Nowhere Left to Go

“Nowhere Left to Go” is a 3D VR experience co-created with the indigenous Bedouin of the Negev Desert (Israel/Palestine) designed to amplify the voices of women coming from some of the most marginalized communities in the region. Throughout the VR experience, a group of Bedouin women share their personal and collective histories: guiding the audience, as they immerse themselves into the past, present, and future worlds imagined by the indigenous women of these communities.

Astroport

From the artist Pyaré, Astroport is a multi-sensory journey in two spaces. In Spaced Out, a visitor wearing a waterproof VR headset floats in a pool, experiencing the illusion of being immersed in space—like George Méliès' A Trip to the Moon mixed with an Apollo 11 documentary. The Impossible Voyage is a satire of scientific exploration in which a group of tourists attempt a journey to the sun.

Call me Calamity

Call Me Calamity has taken the challenge of telling the origins of the legend of Calamity Jane.Participants accompany Martha Jane Cannary on her adventures, eventually seeing her transformed into Calamity Jane. From Deadwood to Dora Dufran's brothel, the young girl displays panache and humor in contrast to the harshness of the Western. As she tells her story, virtual reality allows her to change virtual environments, and put on new costumes with the snap of a finger.

Rabiola Tales

Kites are a constant in the skies of Rio's favelas, where Rabiola Tales takes place. The story opens in a kite shop in the northern part of Rio. Paulo, the old man who owns the store, welcomes us and starts telling us why he fell in love with the magic of flying kites. Afterwards, he invites us to fly a virtual kite and gives us simple instructions about how to use the VR controllers. The sky will be full of kites, and as you fly near them, it triggers quick stories from the neighborhood.

Climate Freakout People Are Not Popular At Parties

Back in 2016 a group of five climate activists undertook the biggest climate action against an energy infrastructure in U.S history. They shut off tar sands pipeline valves near Burlington in Washington’s Skagit Valley, Coal Banks Landing in Montana, Walhalla in North Dakota, and Minnesota. Michael Foster (53), the group’s leader, was the only activist incarcerated for this action. ‘CLIMATE FREAKOUT PEOPLE ARE NOT POPULAR AT PARTIES’ is an immersive 6-DoF interactive VR docufiction experience. In the experience, participants relive the events of that day and ultimately shut-off the Keystone pipeline. Throughout the piece, Foster’s own voice and memories accompany them, sharing the sad story of his alienation from his wife and children who were driven away by his passion.

Love & Remembrance

In this VR experience, we take the audience through Nicaragua's popular insurrection, affective moments, and introduce three of the victims. The user has agency to experience some of the decisions protesters made during the civic uprisings, in a safe house witnessing from afar or out on the streets where they can witness and assist the protesters. This interactive first-person narrative centers on the right to memory, to remember who the victims were, and how their families continue to build memory.

Miskatonic VR

Meet Howard Lovecraft, a boy who's already battled Elder Gods and nameless horrors, who now must face his greatest challenge yet: college. Someday, Lovecraft will be a famous author, known for his terrifying books about cosmic monstrosities. Miskatonic is a follow-up to the very successful Howard Lovecraft trilogy. This time, Howard is in university, and you can join him on these magical, spooky adventures in the virtual reality world. You must help him complete a set of magical tasks in class and more!

Continuum VR

Continuum is a space to socialize, to reflect, and to understand the violence taken out upon the trans population or upon people of marginalized sexual orientations and gender identities, brought on by social structures and the armed conflict in Colombia. Continuum provides a space to understand all the ingredients that comprise the violence towards these communities. Continuum uses food, eating, and cooking as a strategy to socialize the conflict in order to understand the pain of the other person.

Broken Spectre

You play as Casey, searching for redemption and her missing father who disappeared in his obsessive hunt for Bigfoot. What Casey discovers is multi-layered: her father may have unearthed more than a monster with a family curse connecting them to this mountain for generations.

Abstrakt

“Abstrakt” will bring the experience of Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial to teenagers across North America via the compelling medium of virtual reality. Immersion in and exploration of this the chilling European site creates an experience that is nightmarish but all too real. By showcasing the stories of those who survived the Holocaust, “Abstrakt” hopes to build empathy, curiosity and compassion among the youth of today. The recent rise of neo-nazism makes this mission all the more important. With very few American teens receiving any education about the Holocaust, the timing for this work has never been better.

Memory Place

Memory Place is a mixed reality experience of three memories of my home, Istanbul. The visualizations are produced with point cloud data using photogrammetry to portray and preserve private and public recollections. A series of mobile or headset-based AR installations invite the viewer to walk inside these memories, creating an immersive experience of a fading past. The piece explores the alienation that arises from a socio-political climate that has changed the Turkey I grew up in forever.

Lunatic VR

“Lunatic connects two worlds: the world of dreams, fantasies, fears, and guesses, and the world of receivers and users. She invites you to make your childhood dream come true: to hide in the cinema after closing, to start exploring the space in your own way, to listen lovingly to sounds that the movie hall brings out while breathing. What's dreaming about us in these walls? Does the space that has been touched, photographed, dirtied, and cleaned for so many years start to live its own life when humans leave?

Alternates

In the city of Gianyar Jaya, a couple of dancers and a gamelan musician clandestinely practice Wayang Topeng, an ancient form of art that has almost disappeared in Indonesia after 77 years of Islamic rule. This piece, a modified version of the legend of Panji, is gaining visibility on social media. Alternates depicts these two artists practicing their art despite severe repression and censorship from the religious authorities.

Astropark

Discover the basic concepts of the universe in a beautiful and fun way. By playing, interacting and experiencing science in a friendly environment. Astronomy is cool and fun!

1991

After the collapse in 1991, the people of the 15 countries that fell out of the USSR were nowhere ready to experience the calamities that were in the years to come. 30 years later, the people of the former Soviet Union haven’t had the chance to process and recover from the traumas of the transitional times buried deep inside them. In this room-scale VR documentary, the director delves into his father’s experiences as a composer after the collapse. This unique perspective recounts a personal story from Turkmenistan, yet a very commonly shared history of the people’s strain of Post-Soviet countries.

The World Beyond

The film is a live-action cinematic VR experience. It tells a story of love and imagination that transcend the real world.



Featured Projects: VIFF MAIN COMPETITION

Beat

Beat is a story elaborated from your heart. Viewers encounter a rusted robot, absolutely static. He doesn't have a heart, so he can't move. Viewers can grant him a new heart by putting theirs on the robot. He then stands up and starts to move, expressing his joy to live. However, when he meets with new robots, he doesn't know how to communicate properly. The heart becomes the key to move the story forward. *This experience uses a special haptics device to connect the viewer's heartbeat and VR animation.

The Passengers

The Passengers is the story of four passengers who do not know each other, traveling together in a train, all facing a pivotal moment in their lives. Enter the thoughts of one character at a time to hear their inner voice, to see their memories, and live their emotions. The viewer can change the course and outcome of the story with a gaze, by speaking out loud, or by making gestures to help the passenger on their quest.

Red Eyes

A secret military chemical weapons leak turns people into mutants called "Red Eyes". Before the annihilation of the city, two special forces agents volunteer for a suicide mission to destroy the tank with an antidote. Captain Ha, has one more mission to handle- confessing her feelings to her partner, Sargent Park, before it's too late…

Uku Pacha - Modular VR

In an old van crossing the Andes, three unknown passengers share a secret. A person has committed suicide, the victim of false news spread on social media, and someone blames them for it. You are the fourth passenger and witness of their journey through the Uku Pacha seeking to return the natural order, the order of the Andean worldview. Each trip is a different story, a recurring dream where events never happen in the same way or in the same order: an opportunity for salvation or condemnation.

Hydrocosmos

Hydrocosmos is an immersive experience which recounts the arrival of water and the emergence of conscious life on a remote corner of the universe. It's an abstract tale, unfolding through a symphony of performative bodies, images, sounds, lights and shadows.

Symphony

Symphony is an immersive audiovisual experience that takes spectators on a journey through emotions and music. Spectators are able to experience and truly understand classical music as never before, entering the interior of an instrument or feeling like musicians in an orchestra. They enjoy compositions by Beethoven, Mahler and Bernstein performed by the great conductor Gustavo Dudamel and the prestigious Mahler Chamber Orchestra.

Inside COVID19

Inside COVID19 follows Dr. Josiah Child as he readies his hospital staff for the impending pandemic. In the midst of his preparations, he is infected with COVID at home. Despite all of his measures to ensure the safety of hundreds of healthcare workers, Josiah wasn't prepared for how sick he and his family were about to become. By weaving the scientific and personal stories together, this immersive journey aims to guide the audience through the embodied experience of a frontline physician-turned-patient.

Don't Forget Me

At the height of the deportation of Hungarian Jews in 1944, 14 year-old George Brent and his family arrived at the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing centre. The last words his father spoke to him were, "Don't forget me." Stand with George as he takes you back to his hometown, to the arrival ramp, crematorium, and barracks of Auschwitz, the slave quarry of Mauthausen, and the tunnels of Ebensee concentration camp. This compelling journey reveals the intensely human aspects of survival in the face of Nazi tyranny.

Chord VR

Chord VR is a journey into the VFX heavy, Virtual reality world of Chord, our titular character. She has travelled back in time and is on the run from an assassin that wants to prevent her from changing the future. Unaware of who she is or how she got there, she is guided by a hologram that awakens her to her powers over sound. This is the first episode of a VR series being currently developed.