Today’s announcement of the Venice Immersive 2024 line-up opens the door to our (frenzied) anticipation for this festival, which every year exceeds our expectations bringing something new and exciting to the audience and all those involved in the field.
Between mixed reality, great installations, artists we have come to love, and, of course, spritz moments and exciting events, the Venice Immersive section of the 81. Venice Film Festival will be held with the support of VRChat and open on August 28 with 63 projects from 25 countries.
XRMust spoke to Liz Rosenthal who, with Michel Reilhac, has once again curated the eclectic selection for this event. Here is what she told us about the works we will see and the new distribution directions our industry is looking at.
Cover: FREE UR HEAD by TUNG-YEN CHOU, Taipei, 📸 by Lin Chun-Yung, provided by Very Theatre
Enhancing new forms of distribution by creating new narrative formats
LIZ ROSENTHAL – This year’s lineup – 63 works in total – offers an extremely varied selection, in terms of formats and storytelling, in line with what has always been our primary objective: to show creative excellence in all the different forms of immersion, which are many and are constantly evolving.
In this year’s selection the market, of course, remains a relevant focus, but other key elements have certainly emerged. Today creators are really opening up to a completely different range of new hybrid formats, to be enjoyed mostly through headsets, which remain absolutely at the heart of our sector today. Many are trying to invent new ways to look at distribution.
One of the key findings from last year’s Think Tank, dedicated to the challenges of immersive distribution, was that in the field of narrative and artistic immersive experiences, one of the priorities is venue-based work, as distribution on online stores has a whole series of limitations for these types of works.
So, at this year’s Venice Immersive, we have several artists trying different directions to create experiences that can scale and that many people can experience at the same time.
They are exploring multiplayer formats, sure, but what they are really trying to do is to define new formats that go beyond projections, beyond the large-scale experiences that have become so fashionable. They are trying to discover how to use the medium in really inventive and viable ways, and that is exciting to witness.
Discovering Venezia81 immersive selection
L. R. – Among the different formats, we have selected several mixed reality experiences in the lineup , demonstrating the power of this evolving new narrative form. With mixed reality being the key focus of hardware companies’ new product launches, Michel and I see how creators are rising to the challenge of blending IRL with virtual environments skillfully through several examples in the line-up.
One of them is Fragile Home, a Czech Republic project by Ondřej Moravec, who presented Darkening at the 2023 Venice Immersive. It is a really powerful work that uses mixed reality to convey the fragility of the spaces we live in and the concept of home in the face of the Ukrainian war.
The Japanese director Keisuke Itoh is also back- he and his team present us with incredible new projects that explore a new immersive format every year. Whereas last year’s work Sen was multiplayer and multi-sensory, this latest one, Pudica is a beautiful animated mixed reality piece.
Another powerful work is Impulse, the second instalment of May Abdallah’s and Barry Gene Murphy’s Playing with Reality series, the first being Goliath: Playing With Reality, which won our Grand Jury Prize in 2021. Impulse will launch on the Meta Quest store after Venice, but has a bigger goal: to bring awareness about mental health conditions to general audiences, to help people working in social and health care or in law enforcement to better understand and empathise with them, and share with us what it means to have a perception of reality that differs from the majority or what is deemed ‘normal’ by society.
We are also presenting many interesting multi-layered installations this year. Two projects for example use haptic costumes, one which is a beautiful work from Luxembourg, Ceci est mon cœur by Stéphane Hueber-Blies and Nicolas Blies, in which a blend of haptic costumes, projections and sound accompany a reflection on the traumas that our bodies experience since childhood.
Another project from the UK and Ireland, Mammory Mountain by Tara Baoth Mooney, Camille C. Baker and Maf’j Alvarez, shows again a multisensory approach to immersivity, working on the empathic link created with embodied stories, that enable the viewer to reflect on mind and body conditions. It’s an intimate virtual reality piece incorporating a specially designed haptic garment, exploring disease within the body during breast cancer and the body’s relationship to the broader context of the land through the stories of patients’ and survivors’ healthcare struggles.
This theme is somewhat at the heart of our lineup: where the particular nature of spatial storytelling can give visibility to what is often invisible, enabling audiences to see, hear, feel and empathise with a reality that is not one’s own that live in the mind or hide in the body, exploring concepts of reality and mental health we experience.
After Éternelle Notre-Dame, presented at our festival in 2022, Emissive is back with Tonight with the Impressionists, Paris 1874, an exhibition currently at the Musée D’Orsay in Paris, directed by Pierre Gable and a co-production with the Musée D’Orsay and Gédeon Experiences. This is a huge free-roam multiplayer exhibition, available at the museum accompanying the blockbuster Impressionists exhibition. At Venice it will be a different experience due to the need for substantial installation space to run the free roam experience, but the format is a great example of the excellent immersive expedition format and business model Emissive has created across several titles that are being successfully distributed across the world.
Another multi-layered installationis is Symbiosis/\Dysbiosis: Sentience, by Canadian artist Tosca Terån (aka Nanotopia), who is an interdisciplinary artist working at the intersections of ecology, bioart, mycology, and sound who presented her virtual world performance Mycelia, in Venice in 2021. This artist creates soundscapes and music performance working with living mushrooms through fungal biosonification. At Venice this year we will host this new work, an expanded reality experience melding virtual worlds and real world live performance where Nanotopia performs with living mushrooms in the installation, exploring the intelligence of the multi-species entanglements that form the living webs around us. To see, hear and feel the invisible. The project brings guests within a microbial old-growth forest, sharing concepts of forest sentience, mycelial communications and how humans are connected to each other through the shared terrestrial environment, the organism referred to as Earth.
An alternative approach to multiplayer is a brand new format, Free Ur Head by Tung-Yen Chou, the director of In the Mist, presented in 2021. It’s a public participatory choreography project where physical reality blends with virtual reality in an unprecedented audience experience for up to 100 participants simultaneously while at the same time being watched by a second-tier audience of viewers. By playing around with individuality and collectivity, it questions and reimagines the definition of audience and explores the boundaries of choreography using the audience in headset as performers in a collective work.
All these different projects are incredibly inventive about how to work with the multiplayer formats to expand the audience for immersive works, while still maintaining a connection with the headset. They are even looking at the members of the audience that are outside the headset at that moment and often offer them an experience too. In this regard, I have to mention another project in the lineup.
In the realm of Ripley is created by Chuck Chae, who won an award in 2018 at Venice VR for Buddy VR. It’s a sci-fi murder mystery project that blends cinema, VR and virtual actors driven by Artificial Intelligence in an inventive complex new real-time transmedia format where there will be a cinema audience and a VR audience experiencing and affecting the narrative of the story and interacting collaboratively with AI driven actors. This is an extraordinary cross-pollination of media, difficult to describe but absolutely unique, that goes beyond the classical concept of transmedia which sees different elements existing at different times on different platforms that may be interconnected. In Chuck Chae’s work, this reciprocal influence happens in real time. Everything is completely integrated the moment it happens.
Michel and I are also excited about the strength of 360 videos in our programme that year-on-year demonstrates that this is still a powerful and viable format. For 2024 we have selected several works including A Simple Silence, the third part of Craig Quintero’s surrealistic trilogy, the two previous works having showcased at Venice in the last two editions.
Champ de Bataille, directed by Francois Vautier, is an outstanding, visceral live action 360 work set in Verdun 1916, in the trenches during the First World War. Then there is a beautiful work from Lithuania, a new discovery for us: Play Life. It features and reinterprets paintings by popular Lithuanian modern artist Algis Krisčiūnas and has been created in a complete virtual environment where you can also listen to stories written by him. It is a truly moving piece that opens a window into the world of an artist that we were not familiar with.
Then, the audience will discover some new compelling narrative games. One of the most anticipated titles in the competition will be the World Premiere of Mobile Suit Gundam: Silver Phantom, a Japanese/French co-production by Atlas V directed by Kenichi Suzuki. It is an important title because it is based on the anime and is part of the iconic Gundam franchise.
We have also included three Virtual Worlds in Competition this year. The first is by superstar VRChat worldbuilder Fins, called Lost Worlds, I believe his most spectacular to date. An extensive sci-fi world that allows you to travel through space in 2107 in an era of space tourism, a star system just two light years away, where extraterrestrial life was first discovered. For one traveller, this journey fulfils a childhood dream to explore the cosmos. Their magical voyage to these Lost Worlds reveals the universe’s beauty and mystery, redefining humanity’s place among the stars.
Then we have the return of Rick Treweek with the expansion of Uncanny Alley, titled Uncanny Alley New Day. This is an immersive theatre piece created in collaboration with Stephen Butchko of The Ferryman Collective (Gumball Dreams, Venice 2022) is a dark comedy about big tech in the metaverse: a hilarious, brilliantly, well-acted work with incredible settings. Definitely one to look out for if you need a dose of surreal live immersive theatre comedy performance in a spectacular journey through a metaverse beyond your imagination.
The best of: a selection of works that have enhanced the immersive medium in the past year
L. R. – The world of social VR in VRChat is still an environment of creative innovation. Michel and I continue to see this as an area from which some of the most inventive work is emerging, so we are really keen to position it strongly within the programme.
That’s why we decided to include the Worlds Gallery in the Best Of section, for this edition, which this year contains 10 Best of immersive experiences and 20 Best of Worlds.
To enhance the virtual worlds, we also decided to go beyond the idea of World Hop 1, 2, 3, etc. and use the titles of the pieces directly in the booking system so audiences can clearly identify the different worlds and choose the ones they’d like to experience more easily. We know that this is an important segment of immersive production and creativity, and although the economic model has yet to take off, the works we are seeing are a compelling art and entertainment form in their own right, and are incredibly strong.
(📸 Bernard Kalu – IDFA DocLab)
In the Best Of section we like to show works that represent the best of what has been released online at festivals and in venues over the past year since the last edition of Venice Immersive. For instance, we like to feature games capable of pushing the boundaries of storytelling and interaction within an embodied space.
We will showcase the long anticipated Riven, the sequel to the cult game Myst by Cyan, which has very recently launched on storefronts. Alongside this is The 7th Guest, the VR game based on the classic 90s game title. Both projects demonstrate exceptional cinematic visual quality and captivating gameplay.
The project in our Best Of section that fits the most into the general thematic trend of this edition – the theme of mind/body and what it means to experience the different conditions that affect us and lead us to empathise – is Turbulence: Jamais Vu, by Ben Joseph Andres and Emma Roberts, which won the top award at IDFA DocLab.
In the section we also have some extraordinarily beautiful, exceptional and quirky animated pieces created with Quill. We will host the third episode of NightMara, a series available on MetaTV about a superhero girl, Mara, who enters the dreams of people in a nightmare-induced coma and helps them wake up. A very inventive, well-done project, fully realised in Quill by one creator Gianpaolo Gonzalez. There is another beautiful work we discovered called 40 Days Without the Sun, which comes from Brazil and is by João Carlos Furia, a character and environment design artist, directing an immersive project for the first time.
Regarding the Best Of section, our public will also find three projects created for the Apple Vision Pro headset. Michel and I don’t like to include works on the basis of the technology they use, because what we care about, above all, is to select truly meaningful works. But these three pieces are very meaningful in this regard too, because they show the possibilities offered by this new platform: live action video, documentaries with spatial environments, and sophisticated interactive storytelling.
What If…? is produced by Marvel and Industrial Light & Magic, directed by Dave Bushore. Part of the iconic comic book and TV Series Franchise it is incredibly sophisticated in terms of storytelling and interactivity.
The other two pieces are from Atlantic Productions. The first is Museum Alive Immersive with David Attenborough; Museum Alive is a spatial project directed by Bhaumik Patel, guided by David Attenborough, where you select scientifically accurate exhibits from the museum and watch them come back to life in your own space. The second is Adventure, where we are showing the first two episodes Highlining and Parcours, a new series taking users to the most remote places on earth to stand beside extreme athletes as they take on awe-inspiring challenges.
A glimpse into the future: venue distribution and the challenges ahead
L. R. – New venues aimed at showing immersive works are appearing all over the world. Since Covid, city centres have changed a lot. We now have so many unused spaces because many businesses are moving to the suburbs where the rent is cheaper and the need for office space has diminished with remote work from home. There is all this space available, but it is terribly complicated for producers to figure out how to make the most of it, because ours is an ever-changing sector, where new formats are constantly emerging and where stable financial and business models are still lacking.
So, despite all of the experimentation, distribution in venues remains a complex task, as skills development, and collaborative work, and – fundamental to all – investment is required to make this a viable reality. Another fundamental step is building networks, and Venice Immersive is trying to meet this need. This year we are bringing together several representatives from key venues in Venice, to brainstorm and find new solutions and directions together for commissioning and touring of works in venues.
( 📸 by Lin Chun-Yung, provided by Very Theatre )
How can we encourage an exhibition culture that helps new formats work? How can venues be prepared for exhibiting pieces like these? How can they get involved in commissioning new projects? How can this medium be supported financially? These are some of the questions we will focus on in this year’s Think Tank and which we consider absolutely fundamental to the success of the medium. Many of the producers and studios we are talking to are struggling to find a solution that can be applied across different venues. Right now the approach is mostly bespoke: each space has to be addressed separately for each new piece and exhibition.
Also, many of the possible venues still tend to focus either on the performing arts or the visual arts. When multidisciplinary, they have different curators curating different segments. So, it is quite difficult to transform in this area, considering that the medium we bring forward is often a mixture of many different things and does not necessarily fit the usual way in which exhibitions or performances or screenings are staged across the different venue sectors.
For this reason, we are trying to conceive tailor-made distribution paths for certain projects – but what we are missing is definitely a transversal way of approaching distribution, and also funding that covers the entire distribution ecosystem instead of individual works.
There are certainly useful references to draw on. For example Gaudí, the Atelier du Divin: a multi-player piece, but with a really clever format that makes it easy to set up rapidly in any space. There are several examples of works that can be easily taken on tour, too. Gilles Jobin’s VR_I and Blanca Li’s Le Bal de Paris are two great examples that have travelled the world and are really extraordinary pieces. Both Gilles and Blanca, as choreographers, are used to the concept of touring and create works that are scaled and viable to tour across different venues with the resources available.
Other models can be found for single player experiences, too that can be experienced simultaneously for multiple people. I think of what Diversion Cinema is doing with Babette Wijntjes: the Nu:Reality initiative consists of VR hubs in three leading arthouse cinemas in the Netherlands where 360 works, great for easy onboarding, can be easily shown in a cinema setting.
(📸 Lorenzo Carmellini – La Biennale di Venezia Foto ASAC)
There are definitely viable distribution routes, and audiences that are really excited to see immersive works. Despite what the press says every six months – that VR is dead – we know that’s not true. It’s very much alive, and me and Michel love to show in our programming how it is constantly evolving, too.
Venice Immersive, Venice Gap-Financing, Biennale College: creating an ecosystem for the immersive field
L. R. – The Venice Immersive Gap-Financing Market, Venice Immersive and the Biennale College Cinema Immersive are all under the same umbrella, the Biennale Cinema. They are totally interconnected.
This year we will present seven projects from the College in our selection. It is undoubtedly a very effective creative development programme, and it is exciting for us to see how projects that come out of our selection visit different festivals around the world and bring home awards. For example works like Lavrynthos by Fabito Rychter and Amir Admoni, or Vajont by Iolanda Di Bonaventura and Saverio Trapasso or Elele by Sjoerd van Acker. The latest project that won our grant this year is an Italian work, The Gossips’ Chronicles, by Venice-based artist Corinne Mazzoli.
As Michel and I also curate the Venice Gap Financing Immersive Market, there is a strong interconnection with the rest of our activities. We are always very attentive to whom we invite. The Biennale College Cinema projects from the current year automatically qualify for Venice Gap Financing: we know them well and we know what they are looking for, so we always try to invite the right people for their needs.
In short, the Biennale has a development programme, a funding programme and a huge exhibition, which is the most significant annual exhibition of immersive arts and entertainment in the world. All these elements contribute to our ultimate goal: to create a strong ecosystem around immersivity.
Visiting the 2024 Venice Immersive
L. R. – The structure of this year’s event will be the same as in previous years. For the third year, the Venice Immersive Gap Financing Market will take place on Lazzaretto Vecchio or what is known as Venice Immersive Island. It is always an amazing setting, the whole community is there: projects, talent and teams, financiers, supporters, distributors, exhibitors. It’s a really great place to meet the global community.
From an audience perspective, the success of the last few years has been growing. The immersive section was really booked out last year but for this edition with the multi-user works, we hope this will allow us to have more tickets available. The Venice Immersive pass will also be available, which makes our selection accessible to an even wider audience. There will also be several sessions and panels, sponsored by partner organisations, and every evening the unmissable Meet the Creators event in the garden where Michel and I hold Q & A sessions with the directors whose work are in selection.
It is exciting, however, to know that so many are travelling to Venice for the immersive section. People from a wide variety of fields: from the performing arts, visual arts, music, film, television, gaming worldbuilding. And they all find something in immersivity. It really is a privilege for me and Michel to curate this festival.
Find out more about the incoming edition of Venice Immersive on La Biennale di Venezia website.
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