Tag Archives: XR

Is getting stood up in the virtual world better or worse than in real life?

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Is getting stood up in the virtual world better or worse than in real life?

Or if your date or encounter just doesn’t deliver what you had hoped from the other person? Could you still enjoy the experience even if it wasn’t magical?

As the XR pendulum swings back from cold technology to the infiltration of the human connection, it grapples with the difficulty of the user experience no longer just dependent on the maker’s talent, but also – gasp – on the investment of other people. At this year’s Venice Immersive, the programme is ripe with pieces that call for connection, whether verbally or physically, and as people chatted in the courtyard about what they’d seen and what they’d liked, it was common to hear “it depends on who you’re with…”.

I experienced this firsthand for Fanny Fortage’s HEARTBEAT, a potentially very intimate piece where two people exchange heartbeats and stare at each other. I had a feeling about my 20:20 time slot, that the other ticket holder would be a few spritz’ in and forget to come, cancel or share their ticket. (Because I seem to have that luck. The same thing happened to me for ROAMance at IDFA’s DocLab, when my partner – utterly necessary for the piece – was a no show. Getting stood up in XR still feels pretty crappy, even though it’s likely not personal.)

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originally published on XR Must

One big family: Onassis and the intersection of culture, technology and art

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The Onassis Foundation has a big mission: to be a catalyst and embrace constant innovation and creative disruptions that will lead to a better society. And while this is a tall mission for any cultural organization, for the past 50 years, Onassis has formed a constellation of programmes and initiatives to nurture, inspire and challenge thinkers and makers to work and experiment in every art sector. And this investment in people and artists has also paid off in the new media industry – nearly every immersive festival or programme these days has at least one piece emerging from Onassis’ orbit.

Alongside Onassis Stegi, the dynamic space for cultural creativity, the foundation’s stream dedicated towards technology began in 2017 with the opening of the Digital Innovation department. To map the work of Onassis is less like a family tree and more like a bush, with one branch growing into or around another. But several things unite all the strands – the desire to experiment at the intersection of art and technology, and the priority of feeding into and building an ecosystem that serves the artist from idea to exhibition; an integrated space to learn, make and grow.

Within the cosmos of the digital and innovation work are several programmes and spaces based in Athens, Greece and New York, USA, serving both Greek and international artists. “We are interested in artists’ ideas, not their ID,” explains Panagiotakou. The ONX summer school, which just wrapped, brings together creative professionals, students and businesses to explore technology, culture and worldbuilding. Onassis Ready art space, which plans to open in Fall 2025, will serve as a factory of ideas, the home of Onassis ONX and AIR, as well as a performance and exhibition space.

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originally published on XR Must

“You Can Cheat on Reality”: Emeline Courcier on Her Immersive Artwork ‘Burn From Absence’

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For her immersive artwork Burn From Absence, artist Emeline Courcier creates an archive where there was none. Using artificial intelligence, she recreates a family album, visualizing and verifying a history that has been hidden, documenting it from her perspective. In the four-channel installation, digitally created images illustrate an audio track layering her family members’ memories of life in Laos, the ‘Vietnam’ war, and new beginnings in France. She produced it during an immersive residency at the Phi Centre in Montreal, which is also serving as the work’s distributor.

While AI usually mines and perpetuates the dominant narrative, Courcier completely upends that, building an archive that is a reckoning and a reclaiming and, despite its AI-creation, very real. After its premiere at IDFA last November, where it won the DocLab Special Mention for Digital Storytelling, Documentary spoke to Courcier about truth, archives, and working with deeply personal material.

Did you always intend to use AI to recreate these memories?

 I think using AI is really the core of the project, but how I treated it really evolved during the process.

In 2023, I had heard about AI, but never used it before. I was opposed to it at first, as a lot of artists were—but I was kind of curious at the same time, because what I like is the fact that you can cheat on reality. 

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originally published on Documentary

“I Will Become My Own Institution”: Alaa Minawi Discusses His Immersive Installation ‘The Liminal’

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Alaa Minawi’s The Liminal gives an alternative definition of “immersive” from the typical technological, digital one. In his practice, the Palestinian-Lebanese-Dutch interdisciplinary artist explores the possibilities of merging installation and performance art. The Liminal—the first part of his speculative series about Arabfuturism—is a 3.5-meter wall with 24 speakers placed inside, programmed to take the audience on a listening journey.

What seems like a simple white wall is actually a repository of stories of people excluded from traditional power structures, who in turn claim their own spaces and communities “inside the wall.” The piece calls guests to actively listen and bear witness as they move along the wall following the voices, drawing their own physical performance. 

The piece premiered as a work-in-progress at IDFA’s DocLab last year, where it won a Special Jury Award for Immersive Non-Fiction. In an expanded version, which premiered at Spring Performing Arts Festival Utrecht in May 2025, Manawi shifted the documentary stories to fictionalized expressions of reality. Those four stories are written by him and Lebanese writer Raafat Majzoub, three of which are inspired by the original interviews. The last expands on a text previously written by Ibrahim Ibrahim Nehm. Of this exhibit, Minawi said, “I wanted to talk about what has happened, directly, about the genocide and our Arab reality. It was very difficult to find the language, until eventually, I felt that poetic, philosophical language is the best way to deal with what is happening.”

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originally published on Documentary

A look back at IDFA DocLab R&D Summit 2024

There was an irony at the core of IDFA’s DocLab programme this year. Distribution, which has long been a topic of conversation in the community, was front and center at its day-long DocLab R&D Summit. A difficult discussion for any art form, but as technologies are rapidly changing – both in the software used to create and produce, and the hardware to watch an exhibit – the issue at hand for XR is even more challenging.

DocLab is always experimenting with form (and function) – pushing the boundaries of new media, XR and live performance – so it’s not surprising that the work exhibited reflects creativity and experimentation and ranged from singular to collective experiences. While there was a lot of AI – and technology-influenced work, there were also in-person encounters, architectural installations and many multi-formed pieces. There were less VR-headset based works in the curatorial programme, or being pitched in the DocLab Forum. Which was ironic to me in reflection of the distribution challenges the industry faces. 

But DocLab’s curation gave us opportunities to embrace and ponder those questions.

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originally published on XR Must

Audio is no longer an afterthought

Spatial Sound panel, moderated by Dr. Markus Zaunschirm, with Anan Fries, Shervin Saremi and Oliver Kadel, Photo: Susann Bargas Gomez

In 1989, speaking of virtual reality, Jonathan Carey wrote that “spectacular power cannot be reduced to an optical model but is inseparable from a larger organization of perceptual consumption…The full coincidence of sound with image, of voice with figure, not only was a crucial new way of organizing space, time and narrative, but it instituted a more commanding authority over the observer, enforcing a new kind of attention.”

In the last decades, the visual often dominates the conversations around virtual reality, but other senses play a big role in emplacing the experiencer. John Berger might have pushed the ways of seeing, but unconsciously we also we see with our ears.

In XR experiences, we are trying to get as close to putting people in a specific place or situation as possible. This means either directly recording a scenario/location, or layers the recordings to rebuild a soundscape that reflects “what we hear”. With the emergence of spatial sound recording and other technologies, we now have the ability to capture reality’s sound more closely and to compose soundscapes that are richer, deeper and more complex. In virtual reality and immersive installations, this more advanced audio experience is what can truly make someone feel connected.

Audio is no longer an afterthought, but something to be built into all stages of development and production, and this year’s DOK Exchange XR conference put spatial audio front and center. Here’s a chat with coordinator Weronika Lewandowska about the inspiration, and a reflection on some of the discussions.

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originally published on XR Must

Reality is not a simulation – IDFA DocLab 2024

The DocLab section of the IDFA is a key event for digital creation, in the broadest sense of the term, and returns this year with a new program of excellence, and a professional Forum showcasing future projects in the sector. Caspar Sonnen, programmer since 2007, talks to us about this essential event.

Karen Cirillo – So let’s start with the theme: This Is Not a Simulation.

Caspar Sonnen – DocLab is turning 18 this year, which is a reality check and a great provocation to look around and explore the relationship between art and technology. Technology has allowed us to create unbelievable and truly personalized versions of reality. But having digital access to everything everywhere at once has taken reality out of context, obscuring our perceptions and making it harder to connect with things that we don’t want to see.

Over the years new media, AI and VR have enabled us to step into astonishing new worlds, so much so that some people seriously believe reality might actually be a simulation itself. Something to play with, disrupt and walk away from if we don’t like it anymore.  

But for everyone else, reality is not a game, It is not something we can walk away from. Reality is a shared experience, and in many ways, it is that collective experience of reality that feels increasingly broken.

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originally published on XR Must