MASTERCLASS 1
Thursday 24th October 2024
1230-2pm (GMT+1)
AUGMENTED REALITY THEATRE
Pierre-Alain Giraud is a French director & producer, winner of 2024 best immersive experience at the Cannes Festivalwith Noire / Colored, co-directed with Stéphane Foenkinos. He collaborated with artists like Björk (directing the Victimhood music video) or Sigur Rós, and also works for theatre, directing films projected on stage, collaborating with world class stage directors. He co-founded Novaya, company creating immersive experiences along with the technologies supporting them. His works (documentaries, short fictions, immersive experiences) were selected in the Sundance Film Festival, Tribeca Festival and other film festivals (BFI London, CPH:DOX, Lux film fest, etc.). He holds both a master in engineering (ENSAM) and filmmaking (London Film School).
Stéphane Foenkinos started in the film world in the 1990’s, first as a casting director (Harry Potter’s The Goblet of Fire) and later as a screenwriter and director, (Jealous and Delicacy with Audrey Tautou). His work has twice been nominated for the César Awards. His first foray into the world of AR was working with Pierre-Alain Giraud on Noire /Colored, an immersive exhibition based on Noire by Tania de Montaigne which he previously adapted for the stage. This co-production had its world premiere at the Centre Pompidou in April 2023 before an international tour (Milan, Montreal, Taipei, Brussels, etc.). The work was presented at the inaugural immersive segment of the 77th Cannes International Film Festival, taking home the Grand Prize for best XR.Grand Prize for best XR.to become part of the story.
MAKER'S WORK IN FOCUS
NOIRE / COLOURED (2024) is a journey into segregationist America, in augmented reality. Alabama, 1955. Claudette Colvin, 15 years old, refuses to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger… However, the official narrative would not retain her gesture. "Noire. La vie méconnue de Claudette Colvin", an installation at the intersection of digital arts and live performance, uses augmented reality to recount her story. Designed by Stéphane Foenkinos and Pierre-Alain Giraud,* this journey into the history of the civil rights movement in the United States is a gripping experience. "Noire" won the award for Best Film in the first-ever Immersive Competition in Cannes 2024. An encounter with Tania de Montaigne, author of the eponymous book that started it all.
MASTERCLASS 2
Thursday 14th November 2024
1230-2pm (GMT+1)
CINEMATIC VIRTUAL REALITY
Craig Quintero has written and directed over fifty original image-based performances for theatre, including productions in Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Singapore, China, France, Germany, and the United States. His VR experience, All That Remains, premiered at the 79th Venice Film Festival (2022) and won the prize for Best Immersive Experience at the 2023 Luxembourg Film Festival and Best 360VR Film at the Kaohsiung Film Festival. His second VR experience, Over the Rainbow, premiered at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival and was selected for the "Best of" section for the 80th Venice Film Festival (2023). The project won the Panorama Prize at the Festival du Noveau Cinema. His most recent project, A Simple Silence, premiered at the 2024 Venice Film Festival. A former Fulbright Senior Scholar and Mellon Foundation Humanities Unbounded Fellow, Craig received his Ph.D. in Performance Studies and is a Professor in the Department of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies at Grinnell College, USA.
Leo, Cheng Shang Li is the CEO of FUNIQUE, an award-winning VR Studio in Taiwan. FUNIQUE is committed to XR Solutions, providing 8K XR Stereoscopic Content production and 8K XR Live Streaming services, creating high-quality, highly immersive interactive content in 5G generation. FUNIQUE was the production house for all of the above named projects.to become part of the story.
MAKER'S WORK IN FOCUS
A Simple Silence (2024) This new 360VR experience continues the series’ exploration of our connectedness to the world around us, imbuing the environment with an animistic quality while also blurring the boundary between seeing and being seen. The audience is not a witness to the experience; they are the experience. A Simple Silence confronts us with the uneasiness of our inevitable truths, that every beginning implies an ending, that we are shadows passing through the darkness. All That Remains (2023) is a 12 minute cinematic VR film that is a meditation on the fluid boundary between dream and reality, fear and desire. It is an invitation to see and be seen. Over the Rainbow (2022) immerses the audience in a surreal landscape. The experience, like life, does not have a singular plot or meaning. Instead of providing a clear-cut moral message, Over the Rainbow encourages the audience to engage the sensations of the moment and embrace the uncertainty of the unknown.
MASTERCLASS 3
Thursday 12th December 2024
1230-2pm (GMT+1)
POETIC INTERRACTIVE VR
Celine Daemen is a director of transdisciplinary art. Her work develops at the interface of theatre, music, the visual arts and technology. Celine aims to create sensory experiences that invite the individuals of the audience to introspection. This journey into their inner world takes them to a place where personal associations arise in response to universal philosophical questions. For Songs for a Passerby, she was awarded the Venice Immersive Grand Prize for best immersive experience at the 2023 Venice Biennale. In September 2024, she was President of the Jury at Venice Immersive.
Aron Fels is a VR Art Director and futurist. He was the creative technologist on Songs for a Passerby. His interests / artistic pursuits include VR and AR Storytelling, CGI, Unity3d, Unreal Engine5 and Realtime Technologies.to become part of the story.
MAKER'S WORK IN FOCUS
In SONGS FOR A PASSERBY (2023) you will autonomously walk through a musical dreamscape shown in a VR headset. You are following your own 3D mirror image and on the way you will pass by various scenes: a dying horse, a choir of murmuring people, two playing dogs.
Songs for a Passerby is a meditative quest that allows you to step outside reality for a moment and look at yourself. As a puppeteer of your own body you will be entering a poetic space where the melancholy question arises: is this me passing by moments, or is it rather the moments passing by me?
TOPICS IN FOCUS
TRANSMEDIA PRODUCTION | THE THEATRICAL EXPERIENCE IN VR | 6 DEGREES OF FREEDOM VR | TRANSLATING THE ETHEREAL | TRANSFERABLE SKILLS FOR THE XR WORLD | THE MAKING PROCESS | CREATIVE TEAMS FOR VR PROJECTS | THE DUTCH XR ECOSYSTEM | FUNDING AND DISTRIBUTION MODELS | TOOLS FOR LEARNING
MASTERCLASS 4
Thursday 16th January 2025
1230-2pm (GMT+1)
SOCIALLY ENGAGED VR
Tara Boath Mooney is an interdisciplinary Irish artist whose work responds to events past and present that explore lived experience and the inter-relationship of people with daily ritual, plants, nonhuman life forms and objects within their respective ecologies and practice. Her work encompasses sound, performance, drawing, and video and XR and is often site-specific.
Maf’J Alvarez is a digital media artist and creative technologist. Her work focuses on ecology, cultural and gender diversity in relation to open access to technology. She also works as a user experience designer on large-scale digital transformation projects for government services. She holds a BA in Interactive Arts and an MA in Digital Media Arts . She has helped other women learn VR through hack days, mentoring, talks, and collaborations.to become part of the story.
Camille Baker is an artist-performer / researcher / curator within various art forms. These include immersive experiences, participatory performance, interactive art, tech fashion / soft circuits / DIY electronics, responsive interfaces and environments, and emerging media curating. A maker of participatory performance and immersive artwork, Camille develops methods to explore expressive non-verbal modes of communication, extended embodiment and presence in the real, in mixed reality and interactive art contexts, using XR, haptics, e-textiles, wearable devices and mobile media. Camille is a Senior Tutor for the Digital Direction Masters Programme at the Royal College of Art, and a Professor of Interactive & Immersive Arts.
MAKER'S WORK IN FOCUS
MAMMARY MOUNTAIN (2024) is an intimate, immersive virtual reality (VR) and embodied haptic experience that explores disease within the body and its relationship to the broader context of the land. These pressing themes and social realities are explored through the prism of one of the artists, Tara Baoth Mooney’s, experience of breast cancer, interwoven with other patients’ and survivors’ stories of their cancer treatment, trauma, and recovery. “Patients” are slowly dressed in a mammography gown, over which a specially designed haptic garment is wrapped. Each participant also wears a VR headset while sitting in a bespoke chair. The narrative is then embodied through the haptic garment, which vibrates in areas of the body often affected by pain or discomfort mapped to the breast lymph nodes of the chest, underarm, and back.
MASTERCLASS 5
DATE TBC
1230-2pm (GMT+1)
INTERACTIVE XR FOR GOOD
Barry Gene Murphy is a Multi Award winning, Emmy Nominated Writer Director, coming from Art, Documentary & Animation. Possessing a technical filmmaking background in animation, acquired through his studies at IADT and the RCA, London. Having worked throughout the spectrum of moving image for the past 18 years, he stepped into XR in 2015.
May Abdalla is an award-winning XR creator, speaker and consultant. She has made documentaries around the world for BBC, Channel 4 and Al Jazeera about housing, revolution and punk music. She is interested in using technology to allow audiences
to become part of the story.
MAKER'S WORK IN FOCUS
IMPULSE: PLAYING WITH REALITY is a 40 minute interactive mixed reality documentary about how you make sense of the world around you, told through the stories of four people who are coming to terms with the decisions which have chartered their lives. Exploring the extreme side of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Impulse brings together sharp-witted gameplay and dramatic first-hand accounts of people whose intense emotions lead them to a life at the edge. Immersive Achievement Prize @Venice International Film Festival 2024
GOLIATH: PLAYING WITH REALITY is a 25-minute animated VR experience about schizophrenia, gaming and connection. Through mind-bending animation, GOLIATH explores the limits of reality in this true story of so-called ‘schizophrenia’ and the power of gaming communities. Echo guides you through the many realities of Goliath, a man who spent years isolated in psychiatric institutions but finds connection in multiplayer games. Combining heart-felt dialogue, mesmerising visuals and symbolic interactions, weave through multiple worlds to uncover Goliath’s poignant story. Grand Jury Prize @ Venice International Film Festival 2021
