On the occasion of XR4Europe’s new report on European ecosystems, this time dedicated to Italy, we take a look back at the current state of the immersive industry in a country with several dynamics. Between creative and passionate studios, an event fabric driven by a Venetian engine with the Biennale (Venice Immersive) and curious cultural venues, Italy is gradually building itself up and is keen to catch up with its continental neighbors.
Cover: MEET CENTER, Immersive Room
Italy: a country known worldwide for its food, its art and monuments, spaghetti westerns and neorealism, opera, bolognesi dogs and countless other things. Certainly not a country known in relation to its immersive production.
Paradoxically, we might say, since one of the most famous festivals for XR internationally takes place on Italian soil, and specifically on Lazzaretto Island, near the famous Lido di Venezia. We‘re obviously talking about the incoming Venice Film Festival, which will again host a beautiful immersive programme in the Venice Immersive section, featuring some of the most exciting international names and many new faces.
XR4Europe and XRMust decided to do an in-depth study of the Italian immersive situation, and we moved in two directions: on the one hand, XR4Europe compiled a “comprehensive list of all variegated XR entities and notable individuals in Italy“.
At XRMust, instead, we started precisely from the Venice Immersive, which we have been following passionately for several years, to verify how many Italian works have landed at Lazzaretto Vecchio since its opening in 2017. You will not be surprised to know that, considering productions and co-productions (and excluding virtual worlds, VRChat special events and the Venice Production Bridge), we find a total of 15 Italian immersive pieces, 9 of which were part of the Biennale College Cinema VR, i.e. less than 5% of the immersive works that have been presented at the festival in these eight years (2024 included).
The situation at the Venice Film Festival reflects what is a trend at international level, where Italian names, if present, are mainly there as collaborators of companies with very different provenence: companies from France, Canada, England, the United States, and so on.
In a country with such a flourishing artistic and intellectual vein, and with famous names in every cultural sector, it is surprising (at least from the outside) to be faced with such low participation, even considering some of its excellent structures such as MEET, with its visionary director Maria Grazia Mattei.
XRMust contacted three immersive experts in Italy to reflect, starting from the data gathered from the excellent work of Federico Anselmi, Project and Community Manager at XR4Europe, and collaborators, on Italian immersive production and its current needs. Joining us for this focus group were creative technologist Antonio Giacomin, artist and filmmaker Sara Tirelli and Valentina Temporin, co-founder, together with John Volpato, and president of the Milan-based Ultra. Let’s discover together the main points that emerged from this discussion.
An overview of the list
VALENTINA TEMPORIN – I must say that the graphs very much reflect the mental map I’ve created for myself of the immersive scenario in Italy. You immediately notice the large presence of companies in the Milan area, which I find absolutely understandable considering the entrepreneurial and job opportunities available there. Then, looking at the single tags, I realise that indeed a large slice is represented by creative agencies: they are agencies linked in general to the field of communication, and therefore mainly involved in marketing and advertising campaigns. In some cases they have developed some immersive experience on commission. Clearly these are realities where the level of immersive productions is simpler, because they do not have a team dedicated solely to XR.
SARA TIRELLI – The production goals of the individual realities mentioned in the list must also be taken into consideration, in my opinion. There is a huge difference between working on a commissioned work or with a commercial purpose and dedicating yourself to a more classic immersive production or to experimenting with new aesthetic and language ambitions, which work mainly for the festivals. This type of production is much more complex to realise because it requires a strong knowledge of the language, and also because, at the end of the day, what we have here is an emerging media that is still scarcely recognised in our territory.
Years ago I was asked to give a lecture with a rather interesting theme: “The Artist as a producer”. This topic reflects the current Italian situation too. You can see it represented in XR4Europe’s map: few specialised companies and almost three quarters of them offer multiple services or “Comprehensive XR Services”. The point is: as an immersive artist, in Italy, you cannot not be a producer as well. You need to think about the whole supply chain. You have to be creative in production and adopt multiple roles yourself.
V. T. – Immersivity is indeed an emerging media. Which means, among other things, that all of us who operate in it come from something else. We have a different background and we bring that background with us into this world. This in itself is beautiful as it has created a very diverse landscape, which I see reflected in the areas identified in these graphs.
My experience leads me to say that now, in Italy, there is an industry, or at least an industry is emerging on the agency part. What is missing are original experience and original production.
Maybe in time we will be able to have a real distinction between XR Agency and XR Production. Not now, though. It is definitely too early.
Identity of XR in Italy
S. T. – Right now, in Italy, you cannot think of operating exclusively in the XR sector, at least as an artist. It is just not feasible economically. If there are such figures abroad, in Italy there certainly aren’t. XR in our country is almost always a derivative.
V. T. – On a corporate level, there are some exceptions. Our company, Ultra, deals exclusively with XR… or rather, with virtual worlds. But then the virtual world in itself can be used in various ways and for various purposes: for training, to present the new collection of a fashion brand, to tell a story that will go to a festival. The common element is the communication tool, which is the immersive one. Our ultimate goal would be to work exclusively in creating cultural experiences in XR. This is not possible at the moment, but we have chosen to only focus on products where our own authorial component can be applied.
S. T. – Storytelling in realities such as yours remains the fundamental element, Valentina, the basis of what we call “creative agency”. But there are few companies, in Italy, that follow this direction.
V. T. – Abroad we have some very good examples, instead. I’m thinking of Emissive: when they first started they were pretty much doing what we are doing now. They were a creative agency, but a part of their operations was linked to what they call “Immersive Expeditions“. With time and the success of their extraordinary experiences, they have moved more and more into this second area – or at least it is the one they publicise the most – and I think they are a very good model to find inspiration in.
S. T. – Of course they also face a different market from ours. In Italy there are creative people, there are authors, there are developers and maybe even ideas. What is missing is the ecosystem that allows them to survive, and there is certainly a lack of institutional understanding of the relevance of this field (and of how it works!). In addition,there is a lack of financial support.
In fact, if you go and look at the list of eligible countries in International calls, you will see that Italy is considered one of the Mediterranean countries “not advanced” in terms of immersive production, on a par with Greece and the Balkans. This is precisely because it lacks this virtuous system that we instead find in countries such as France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium.
Funding and knowledge: XR as an extension of other media
S. T. – In Italy there is virtually nothing in the way of funding. The only regional call for proposals to date is that of the Veneto Film Commission, which unfortunately has a fundamental limitation: it is a call conceived as a film production fund, which considers eligible expenses those made in the territory. The problem is that in our territory there is a de facto lack of players who can serve as recipients of the request and who have the required expertise.
The situation is currently changing, because the Ministry has recently started to take into consideration interactive languages (videogames and immersive) (a/n see the reference to digital creators in the Cinema Law).
However, a fundamental problem remains: potential audiences and decision-makers in Italy are not simply familiar with the immersive sector. Often, immersive tools are only seen as a tool into which to pour the contents of past media. It is advertised as a new technology, but in the same way as we have advertised digital TV. Or it is seen simply in connection with a cross-media production concept and never as a product with its own identity.
V. T. – The knowledge of the medium, and consequently what we have in terms of production and distribution, is very low. Very often as artists or as a company we have to take care of all the various stages of the work, and this can also be an advantage because it allows us to completely manage the work and take care of every aspect in detail.
But actually there are very few technical experts to work with. Many don’t necessarily believe in this technology or they think that what you want to do has no value for an audience.
S. T. – In my experience, this is one of the things that most distinguishes us from other countries such as France. From a business or advertising point of view, in Italy we are growing, there is undoubtedly an industry forming, as Valentina said. But we cannot compare our ecosystem to the ecosystem existing in France, where there are facilities, infrastructures, hubs for development, original content. In Italy we are really bad in terms of XR culture. People who work in it are like a small niche that moves, goes to festivals, gets information, but lacks a circuit in which to operate.
ANTONIO GIACOMIN – There is a pervasive ignorance on the part of the institutions, and unfortunately many large companies often lack foresight. Over the years I proposed various projects to major players, but the only ones that have been giving consistent feedback lately are smaller institutions such as the Museo dell’arte contemporanea in the town of 13.000 inhabitants where I live – a small enlightened reality! They have shown an interest in these technologies, and some of the big Italian players – industry, big companies – who would perhaps most easily support the sector and help its development, did not. Therein lies one of our greatest difficulties in finding the right venues: there is a lack of understanding of what it means to produce and distribute an immersive experience. I cannot reason in “cinema” mode, I have to reason in “experience” mode and this implies a different approach that many are not ready to take.
Is there an Italian audience?
V. T. – In order to create a functioning ecosystem, with players who believe in this technology, we need to start by creating demand. We must think about the audience. The audience is literally everywhere: in shops, in museums, in the town square. If the average user understands that you can do interesting things with a headset, they will always want more. And I think we need to move from that.
A. G. – There is a public here, but it’s one who’s addicted to the wow effect, in a certain sense: people who are curious about a technology in development and want to try it out. If I offered them fridges that make hamburgers I would get the same interest! When I imagine the kind of audience Italy needs, I imagine one that goes to that venue precisely because there is that specific VR experience.
V. T. – A paying audience, basically. There’s a huge difference between an audience that goes to an immersive experience because it’s free and one that is willing to pay to see it.
A. G. – You don’t even need to look at France to see the differences. You just need to take a look at our other neighbouring countries less specialised in XR, such as Slovenia: things work much more dynamically in terms of distribution there. They have companies that went from being small local realities to having offices all over the world. I’m thinking of DeoVR, one of the most popular platforms today for enjoying video content in VR, with a selection of relatively high quality. Platforms of this kind could be fundamental if used, for instance, to support for those small Italian festivals that have an immersive section and for the most part do not receive funding from institutions. Works could be viewed via platforms of this kind, guaranteeing some revenue and allowing artists to distribute their pieces in a much more effective and at least partly profitable way in our territory too.
V. T. – On the subject of distribution, there are foreign realities that have extremely interesting business models that we Italians should also be inspired by, at this historic moment in time, to attract audiences. They are business-oriented structures, which consequently look much more towards mainstream production and create products tailor-made to hit the box office. A bit like the Avengers for the cinema, in short.
Certainly this approach sometimes forces you to sacrifice a bit the more artistic, more performance-oriented, more complex part in general. But I also believe that the moment you pursue works of this kind, which are significantly profitable, you also open up the possibility of producing something else, collaterally, both because of the revenue you are now getting, and because people will begin to know this technology, and open their eyes to new ideas and perspectives. But in Italy, in my opinion – and I include my own company – we tend to think a little less about the concept of business and concentrate on the deep creative aspect… and sometimes creativity can negatively impact the success of the business side of things. We are still one step behind in this respect. One of our priorities should also be to create a clear and solid business model.
S. T. – Our Italian situation is somewhat reminiscent of the early days of cinema, I think: at the time it was necessary to translate familiar content to find an audience, things that the public already knew, like theatrical plays. You do that and the audience knows what to expect, so even if they’re facing a new experience they do it in a more reassured way.
Press management…
A. G. – In this regard, there is also a press problem. Unfortunately, media channels, including technology channels, in Italy exploit the wave, the technology, the novelty or the hype of the moment without even understanding what they are talking about. Then, as soon as the hype wears off, they come out with negative articles. We are full of examples, from improbable articles about the metaverse-or worse-to the classic headline “VR is dead”. I think VR has died at least a hundred times in the last decades!
S. T. – The problem is always to find a resonating space. What you are doing, Antonio, with your blog (a/n Linea di stitching, the first Italian podcast that in 2017 started talking about virtual reality and immersivity) allows you to leave a very interesting trail, a bit like Digicult | Digital Art, Design and Culture did at first – and now it is a pillar of the new media and art sector.
A. G. – What is most missing is precisely the user base. In Italy we certainly talk about gaming, but still very little about purely creative content. My blog was born from the experience I had with the Biennale College Cinema VR for IN THE CAVE: it’s certainly not a blog that makes big numbers, but I see that results are coming: at the school level, for example, with schools contacting me to teach classes on immersive technologies. Or even with people writing dissertations who have asked me to use the podcast as a source. So, there are people who are interested, there is also the whole first generation of the “metaverse”, Second Life etc., early 2000s… a very hard core community that continues to be interested in these topics and they are active in the virtual worlds.
It would be good if, in discussing this great sector, we did a little bit of what is being done internationally: keep the focus on what is being produced, but also anticipate things a little, talk about them before they happen, and discuss the ones that are in progress.
S. T. – Something that is extremely complicated to do in Italy, where you get paid very little for your work as a journalist (if you get paid at all), particularly when we look at the cultural sphere.
Organising festivals… or visiting them? In search of a direction
A. G. – Looking at the graphs, we also find a limited number of festivals. Certainly a critical note on the management of things concerns the fact that XR in Italy almost exclusively means “Venice”. There is the MEET in Milan, but we are still only talking about two specific cities.
V. T. – Venice is at the heart of everything, but it is a place for showing. For me, the ideal meeting place is different… it’s events like NewImages or the Immersive Tech Week, which have the ability to catalyse a lot of people, have them talk to each other, maybe even start about business. We don’t have events like that in Italy, nor other effective networking moments. So certainly on the one hand we have to go further out of our borders. On the other hand, however, we must also be able to build co-productions, and unite with other realities.
Indeed, something I noticed is that not only, as Italians, we do not produce. We also do not co-produce! So it is important – and I say this first of all to myself and my company – to develop the ability to travel and visit international events.
We have to use part of the budget, whether small or big, for that… and start using the same language other countries use. Even if this mingling is not so much in our nature as Italians, the festival is still a moment in which you can create connections. And if the festival leads you to that, then it becomes easier to do the rest of the work together. If we had Italian festivals that operated in these terms, it would be easier for everyone involved. In my opinion, the heart of the network we need to build is to be found in these moments… festivals and meetings.
A. G. – What should happen are moments in which we reflect on the sector and its issues, in the same way we did it during the “Women in VR” panel presented in 2020 at the Trieste Film Festival. In order to achieve this, however, we must break free from the connection with film festivals and make these moments more deeply about XR.
S. T. – In this too, XR is considered a derivation of something else.
A. G. – Exactly. We need more hybrid events, where you can find the business element, which can bring economic support to the whole field, a showcase of works, but also a space for networking, for production, meeting, pitching. A series of things connected to each other but exclusively related to the XR sphere, so that we are not always bound to the ways of the cinema.
Over the years, we have seen some events that were indicative of this approach (River College Virtual Reality by RIFF, VRE in Rome, the Metaverse Summit by Another Reality or Uqido‘s events in Mestre, to mention a few. This in my opinion is the right way to proceed. It would be good for bigger players to get involved. Probably, by creating events like this, we would also be able to create that ecosystem we were talking about: we would build the structure that can eventually be inhabited by content.
Brain drain, an all-Italian drama
S. T. – As Italians, we are often awarded abroad. It also happened to me in Sweden. This is because we arrive with a charge and talent that is very much our own. Although I am often very negative about Italy, I have great respect for Italian artists.
However, I see that the brain drain that characterises the immersive sector is also transversal to all fields in Italy. There is an almost total lack of recognition of talent here. We are very homologated, even in creative artistic expression. But in reality, we are full of talent and we have a not inconsiderable stylistic figure, and that is also why I am very sorry that we never get to be recognised at important festivals like Venice. We pay the price of an Italy that is not only behind in XR, it is behind in general. Perhaps a solution could be a more effective collaboration between different countries.
A. G. – Partly because of the area where I live and work, on the border between Italy and Slovenia, and partly because of my experiences, for example at the XR section of the Trieste Film Festival and ShorTS International Film Festival, I have always seen collaboration between countries as a very normal, everyday element. However, I never turn towards France or Germany, where there is already so much, but I always look towards the Balkans. The blue ocean was in that direction once. Both Sara and I collaborated a lot with Serbia, for example.
S. T. – There are some countries in Europe that certainly produce more, true. I don’t want to say that the industry is saturated there, but I agree with you, Antonio, about looking in other directions, where there is not yet a great development of the immersive industry.
A. G. – In my opinion this is a fundamental aspect of operating in our sector as creatives: to enter into synergy with other realities, where perhaps things work in very different ways. As Italians, each of us really has the chance to bring something of our own to these countries, where perhaps there is still not much in the way of immersivity.
Back to (a new) start
V. T. – Perhaps the time has come, in our country, to find someone within the immersive world who really thinks about the issues of production and distribution. Even looking at the graphs, I see that nobody is exclusively focusing on XR production or XR distribution and this is one of the main problems we have.
S. T. – As we were saying, the figure of the XR Producer is completely missing in Italy.
V. T. – And even if we were to personally produce the work of a promising young artist, we would still have to come up with a solution for distribution channels! Perhaps platforms are the most interesting prospect for us today. I am thinking for example of the Apple Vision Pro and what it could give us in terms of revenue. It is a channel that could work. Venues, however, are another matter altogether.
S. T. – If you look at certain international realities, you see that the same producer does not ask you for just one output, but rather encourages you to have more than one – platform, but also venue, exhibition, theatre show. Undoubtedly, the whole creative process is influenced by the output. This may perhaps appear unpalatable to the artist, and in particular to the Italian artist… but the dissemination process is absolutely crucial and we need to start thinking seriously about it.
At the end of this excursus, we would like to emphasise one thing: the conversation we just shared was necessarily meant to focus on the critical issues of the immersive sector in Italy.
But in reality, our experts, like many other Italian artists, immersivity specialists and companies, have not been sitting idly, waiting for someone to solve things for them. They have found and continue to find original solutions to give value and public attention to the immersive sector, even in a complex context such as the Italian one can sometimes be.
We do hope, then, that the list created by XR4Europe and contributors, but also this article, will make you a little curious about this territory and give you the opportunity to start discovering the very interesting realities that inhabit it.
To know more
ShorTS – International Short Films Festival – is making VR a collective experience (2019)
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