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A look into Alternate Realities: Sheffield Docfest 2024

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Perinatal Dreaming. Understanding Country, by Marianne Wobcke / Big Anxiety Research Centre, Volker Kuchelmeister, Lucia Barrera

The Alternate Realities programme at this year’s just-concluded Sheffield DocFest is pared back, featuring a VR competition, an exhibition and summit in collaboration with the International Documentary Association (IDA). I spoke with Artistic Director Raul Niño Zambrano and co-curators Abby Sun and Keisha Knight about the vision and thoughts behind this year’s immersive experience and its spirit of collaboration.

Raul Niño Zambrano – With Alternate Realities, it has always been a thing asking how do we define it and what do we want? For us, it’s important to see it as an extension. Just as we do for films, we are not looking for one specific type or style. Our responsibility is to show the whole spectrum. We pick up what we think is really worth highlighting. And I think that’s happening also in the XR field, their possibilities are endless. You see how an installation starts as virtual reality, but then becomes an installation, or the other way around. We’re looking at the intersection of art, technology and documentary, and trying to give a message – What are all these pieces saying all together?

For this year’s Alternate Realities programme, you are collaborating with IDA and the programme is co-curated by Keisha Knight and Abby Sun.

Raul – Yes, everything started because of Experimental Realities, a workshop they did in the USA asking a group of emerging artists about the future of immersive. When we talked, we thought it resonated a lot and was a good match.

One of the big questions was how do we see immersive media in the future? What does immersive really mean? Of course it has to do with technology and media, but what happened when we tried to distance a bit from that, we found that you come more to embodiment and to the senses and to haptic. I also felt that that was resonating with our film program; our tagline this year is Reflections on Realities.

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originally published on XR Must

Back from IDFA DocLab: 30 pieces of Phenomenal Friction

Phenomenal friction. When the New Media team at IDFA came up with this title, they knew it would reflect a recognition of tensions around the world, but the team had no idea that it would land in the midst of a war and public outcries that stirred up the festival, leading to several filmmakers – including immersive makers – pulling their work from showcase.

Phenomenal friction, as described by Caspar Sonnen, head of New Media, reflects a landscape where emerging technologies are changing how we see the world around us, but also one where we are still encountering and challenging each other’s identities and mindsets in the physical space.

This year’s DocLab and immersive exhibition brought together over 30 pieces from the most diverse set of artists and makers thus far, allowing the audience to encounter worlds not just different from their own, but also created by those living in the other worlds.

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originally published on XR Must

In the midst of advanced old-school technologies, old-school tech interactives can still pack a punch

An AI-generated trans drag show, a dystopian game about digital “security” and an almost pornographic immersive VR piece about gay saunas in Taiwan. These were some of the pieces at the recent CPH:DOX interactive program, where vulnerability and marginalized narratives emerged as a theme.

There were experiments with the latest technologies, like using Minecraft to catalog and release invisible archives from behind the walls of authoritative regimes. But three of the narrative pieces that had the most power to channel vulnerability and bring the viewer in a “dialogue” with other voices were actually the pieces leaning more old-school in their technologies.

HE FUCKED THE GIRL OUT OF ME, Blacktransarchive.com/WE ARE HERE BECAUSE OF THOSE THAT ARE NOT and AS MINE EXACTLY were three pieces that use older technologies and in-the-room interactivity to engage on one-on-one levels.

Old can be just as good…

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originally published on XR Must