“Kowloon
Forest”26 creators, curators, and researchers recommend immersive projects from last year
This list highlights the creative projects that producers published last year despite the limitations of the pandemic. That includes augmented reality projects designed for people to use on their smartphones and works that were shared at film festivals that quickly pivoted to an online format. We hope you’re inspired by the range of aesthetics, technologies, and subject matter in these works.
We asked 26 immersive creators, curators and researchers to share what works they were excited about and what work they were involved in.
This list was gathered in collaboration with Journalism 360. Thanks to Robert Hernandez and Jennifer Mizgata.
360HIV:Choice
An immersive VR piece that addresses the stigma towards those living with HIV.
Selected by: Rowan Pybus, Filmmaker, Makhulu. What immersive work did you create this year? For World AIDS Day 2019, Makhulu released our new series of virtual reality films (VR) focusing on HIV education. Using the latest technology, the films highlight stigma free life saving information regarding disclosure, treatment & adherence and prevention methods. You can “choose your own adventure” in this immersive media film.
Air Pollution AR Instagram Filter
An augmented reality visualization of air pollution levels around the world. This piece by NYT from the end of 2019 was then adapted to an Instagram filter. “Readers can interact with the effects on the @NYTimes Instagram account profile page, under the effects tab, and throughout The Times’s digital and print products.”
Selected by: Ziv Schneider, Associate Research Scholar and Creative Technologist, Brown Institute. What immersive work did you create this year? Sylvia. Sylvia is a storytelling experiment–co-written with AI–about a virtual influencer designed to age rapidly.
Also selected by: Geri Migielicz, Professional of Journalism Practice, Stanford University Graduate Program in Journalism. What immersive work did you create this year? Student projects — an immersive video with spatial audio of kelp forest and an unpublished guide to a sexual assault exam.
“Altamira” Spain AR camera effects for UNESCO
A dual Instagram and Facebook filter that brings the bison, horses, deer, hands and mysterious signs that were painted or engraved at the UNESCO World Heritage listed Altamira cave to life.
Selected by: Paul Gailey, Founder, Everywoah
BER (Berlin Brandenburg Airport) in 3D
3D “Scrollmersive” project with a Berlin-based newspaper called Tagesspiegel. This year, Berlin was finally able to open its new airport. It took them over a decade to build and millions of tax payers’ money and with our project, the visitors can see what challenges they faced while building it and why it took so long.
Selected by: Linda Rath, CEO, Vragments
Book of Distance
Randall Okita leads an interactive pilgrimage through the emotional geography of immigration and family in the story of his grandfather, who left his home in Hiroshima, Japan for Canada in 1935.
Selected by: Sam Wolson, Immersive Film Director. What immersive work did you create this year? After The Fallout. After the Fallout is an immersive mosaic that takes viewers through surreal environments in Fukushima, ten years after the 2011 nuclear disaster, relives the struggle of the heroes who worked to prevent the meltdown, and explores the lives of families as they navigate a new world which they have had to adapt to.
Camp Century
Camp Century is a VR podcast, which tells the true story of ‘the city under the ice’, a scientific US army experiment to build a nuclear-powered military base under the polar icecap. And which explores the larger geopolitical implication of climate change in the arctic.
Selected by: Anrick Bregman, Director and Founder, Studio ANRK
The Encounter
“I missed the 2016 theatrical run of Simon McBurney’s one-man show about photographer Loren McIntyre’s 1969 encounter with the Mayorana people of the Amazon. But when Complicite decided to stream the piece during May’s lockdown, I was one of 70,000 people around the world who got the chance to experience it at home. Ensconced in headphones, with my laptop on my knee, I was transported by McBurney’s theatrical tour de force, as he deploys a microphone, binaural sound and minimal props to enact McIntyre’s journey, not across distance, but into an alternative perception of time in which the past is “alive and available” as “an alternative to a menacing present…of violent encroachment by white settlers” (Simon McBurney).” http://www.complicite.org/encounterresource/
Selected by: Mandy Rose, Professor of Documentary & Digital Cultures, UWE Bristol
Finding Pandora X
Finding Pandora X is an immersive theatrical VR experience where the audience plays the role of the Greek Chorus, interacting with live Broadway caliber actors as the play unfolds.
Selected by: António Baía Reis, Researcher, The Digital and Intelligent Industry Lab, Research Center Systems and Technologies (SYSTEC), University of Porto
Flatten the Curve
A full interactive story on social distancing — found within the Augmented Reality section of the USA TODAY app — to help you evaluate the decisions you are making every day and how you are doing at practicing social distancing.
Selected by: Raymond Soto, Director of Emerging Tech, USA TODAY Network. What immersive work did you create this year? From a social distancing AR mini-game to an animated graphic novel celebrating three women that contributed to the Suffrage movement, USA TODAY published 8 augmented reality interactives in 2020.
Home
Utilizing the language of VR, Hsu brings the audience back to his grandmother’s home to experience the lively atmosphere of the family reunion during a festive holiday, and the melancholy while the grandchildren part ways with their grandmother.
Selected by: Sam Wolson, Immersive Film Director. What immersive work did you create this year? After The Fallout
Also Selected by: Clàudia Prat, Senior Producer, TIME. What immersive work did you create this year? Space Explorers: The ISS Experience. An unprecedented collaboration with NASA, The ISS Experience utilizes custom-built virtual reality cameras — engineered to operate in zero-gravity. Astronauts have filmed over 200 hours of footage capturing their life in space.
Honor Everywhere AR Portals
Honor Everywhere is an augmented and virtual reality alternative for terminally ill and aging veterans who aren’t able to physically travel to see their World War II, Vietnam, Korea, or Women’s Memorials in Washington, DC.
Selected by: Sarah Hill, CEO & Chief Storyteller, Healium. What immersive work did you create this year? Healium AR. The Healium AR app invites you to step inside a magic portal and “heal” virtual worlds in a mindfulness workout that incorporates biofeedback.
In Protest
From the frontlines of resistance, a constellation of Black voices challenges systemic American racism in a new four-volume immersive docuseries. Each Volume chronicles a different American city, profiling modern activists as they move beyond street protests to confront inequality and injustice in everyday life.
Selected by: Michaela Ternasky-Holland, Storyteller & Consultant. What immersive work did you create this year? Lutaw. A VR short that takes viewers into the world of Geramy — a scrappy, budding inventor, who is trying to find a better way to commute to school. Based in the Philippines, this story highlights the students that swim between the small islands in order to travel to the nearest elementary or high schools in their remote areas.
“In the Shadow it Waits,” “A Conversation,” Electric Dreams online
A festival all about connecting people through the power of art and the internet. Works included “In the Shadow It Waits” – a horror film performed live and edited in real time – and “A Conversation” – a dark journey into the etiquette of our colonial past.
Selected by: Fran Panetta, Director, Artist, Journalist. What immersive work did you create this year? Judgement Date and the digital launch of In Event of Moon Disaster. In Event of Moon Disaster illustrates the possibilities of deepfake technologies by reimagining this seminal event. What if the Apollo 11 mission had gone wrong and the astronauts had not been able to return home? A contingency speech for this possibility was prepared for, but never delivered by, President Nixon — until now. Alongside the film, moondisaster.org features an array of interactive and educational resources on deepfakes.
Kowloon Forest
A VR journey through the private lives of five strangers in Hong Kong.
Selected by: Ainslee Alem Robson, Director, Writer & Media Artist. What immersive work did you create this year? Ferenj: A Graphic Memoir in VR. This afrosurreal portrait of home created from the director’s childhood memories traverses crosswalks, continents and consciousness. Ferenj reclaims Ethiopian-American mixed-race identity, redefines boundaries between memory and digital imaginary, and challenges reductive narratives of Africa in a fragmented pointcloud dreamscape distorted by the filter of time and migration.
Leaked Recipes
In a series of intimate online events, author Demetria Glace invites the audience to prepare recipes from the massive leaks of emails that entered the public domain in recent years through organizations such as WikiLeaks.
Selected by: Fran Panetta, Director, Artist, Journalist.
Little Ethiopia
A live cinematic dialogue that uses personal videos, photographs, and repurposed films to explore what happens when two veteran editors invite you into their home as they confront their own relationship catharsis.
Selected by: Fran Panetta, Director, Artist, Journalist.
Messages to a Post Human Earth
“The latest piece from award-winning immersive media artists Anagram, available within IDFA Doc Lab’s 2020 festival line-up, invites you “to encounter the natural world and your place within it from a radically new perspective” (May Abdalla). The work was inspired by a 1980s Stanislav Lem essay which responded to a US Government appeal for a way to leave information behind for those who come after humans. The open-air experience offers a pair of participants divergent interactive audio pathways across time and into plant intelligence, inducing an alchemy through which a soundtrack can turn a bleak December park into a space of wonder.”
Selected by: Mandy Rose, Professor of Documentary & Digital Cultures, UWE Bristol
Also Selected by: Fran Panetta, Director, Artist, Journalist
Motto
An interactive novella for mobile devices where documentary becomes part of fiction.
Selected by: Fran Panetta, Director, Artist, Journalist
Mt. Resilience
Mt Resilience is an interactive webAR experience that reveals a detailed 3D model of a town designed to visualise climate and disaster preparedness.
Selected by: Laura Hertzfeld, Director XR Partner Program, Verizon Media. What immersive work did you create this year? RYOT/Verizon Media Group created immersive projects this year that explored topics ranging from harassment in the workplace to the COVID-19 pandemic to historical moments like the March on Washington. A few of my favorites — in the VR space: The Messy Truth, The March (with TIME). AR: Art is Revolution (with HuffPost), Then & Now (with Everyday Projects and HuffPost), and Racial Justice Murals (with the Los Angeles Times).
Museum of Other Realities
An immersive social art showcase in VR, the Museum of Other Realities (MOR) is a place to connect, share, and experience virtual reality art with others.
Selected by: Halsey Burgund, Artist and technology. What immersive work did you create this year? In Event of Moon Disaster. In Event of Moon Disaster illustrates the possibilities of deepfake technologies by reimagining if the Apollo 11 mission had gone wrong and the astronauts had not been able to return home. A contingency speech for this possibility was prepared for, but never delivered by, President Nixon — until now.
“Virtual George Floyd
Protest”What work produced in 2020 were you excited about? “My students [at the New Media Innovation and Entrepreneurship Lab] did several nice projects, particularly the simulation of the George Floyd DC protest, one to show people how to recycle responsibly, one about the California wildfires, and one that reminds women how to put the workplace creep in check.” nmiel.itch.io/
Selected by: Retha Hill, Director of the New Media Innovation and Entrepreneurship Lab, Professor of Practice, Cronkite School of Journalism Arizona State University. What immersive work did you create this year? AncestoriesXR. A platform-in-development that will present stories of your ancestors in XR.
Rebuilding Notre Dame
A VR documentary that lets people step inside the walls of Notre Dame to witness it before and after the fire of April 15, 2019 that resulted in the destruction of its trademark spire.
Selected by: Victor Agulhon, CEO, TARGO.
Reconstructing Journalistic Scenes in 3D (NYTimes)
An interactive explainer piece on how the R&D team create immersive 3D environment using 2D photographs.
Selected by: Mint Boonyapanachoti, Creative Technologist, The New York Times R&D. What immersive work did you create this year? Reconstructing Journalistic Scenes in 3D, Jackson Heights, Global Town Square, FaZe Clan House, The New Corporate Campus, Chinatown: Time Travel Through a New York Gem
Still Here
An immersive multimedia project exploring incarceration and gentrification in New York City through the lens of a fictional character named Jasmine Smith who returns to Harlem after 15 years in prison.
Selected by: Roger Kenny, Innovation Tech Lead, Dow Jones. What immersive work did you create this year? I produced two live interactive sessions in VR for WSJ Tech Live 2020 held in October. One was a live workshop hosted by Joanna Stern in VR in the Spatial platform where she interviewed the founder of Spatial to an audience of about a dozen. The second was a 3D beach party I built on the platform Mozilla Hubs where we hosted a live reception over two days for about 30 people.
Also Selected by: Sarah Wolozin, Director, MIT Open Documentary Lab. What immersive work did you create this year? Our lab has a lot of new projects, talks, and resources docubase.mit.edu and opendoclab.mit.edu.
Sylvia
Sylvia is a storytelling experiment–co-written with AI–about a virtual influencer designed to age rapidly.
Selected by: Fran Panetta, Director, Artist, Journalist
Terrain
Terrain is a journey into the Bardo: an otherworldly space between lives where we find an array of souls from across the world.
Selected by: Kamal Sinclair, Executive Director, Guild of Future Architects. What immersive work did you create this year? Traveling the Interstitium. In this interactive WebXR experience, the interstitium is the liminal space where reality shifts, challenging us to harness the power of our radical imagination. Dip into this primordial pool and find innovative artists working at the intersection of art, film, science, music, and technology.
TIME : Space Explorers
An unprecedented collaboration with NASA, The ISS Experience utilizes custom-built virtual reality cameras — engineered to operate in zero-gravity. Astronauts have filmed over 200 hours of footage capturing their life in space.
Selected by: Henry Keyser, Director of XR Editorial, Yahoo News/Verizon Media
What immersive work did you create this year? 70+ XR productions for Verizon Media/Yahoo News/HuffPost including 55 projects produced and executed by graduates of our internal training program, who had no prior experience working in XR before 2020. My favorite achievements of ours: Corona Earth Web AR: AR Globe visualizing pandemic spread that was updated 120 times during the first 8 months of the pandemic. BLM in DC: XR visual of the June 5 street art — executed in 2 hours and published before the paint was dry. Covid Aerosol: AR visual of the water droplets that remain airborne when someone is breathing without a mask on. Election Night Map: XR data vis of 2020 general election turnout, updated 8 times on election night, and 8 more times over the following week.
Truth or Consequences
“Hannah Jayanti’s luminous feature documentary streamed by Sheffield DocFest in November paints vivid portraits of five residents of the eponymous New Mexico town. Their moving reflections on life, change and loss are framed in a near future in which tourist travel from the nearby Spaceport is everyday business. This speculative framing, an improvised soundtrack by guitar maestro Bill Frisell, and Alexander Porter’s evocative photogrammetry all contribute to a singular, beautiful and immersive nonfiction work.”
Selected by: Mandy Rose, Professor of Documentary & Digital Cultures, UWE Bristol
When We Stayed Home — April 2020
A compilation of 360° video, revealing the empty streets of a world on pause. Through the eyes of a city local, witness the calm, the beauty, and the emptiness of these cities, all testifying to the singularity of April 2020 as an unprecedented moment in time.
Selected by: Victor Agulhon, Cofounder and CEO, TARGO
Women’s Suffrage project
Listen to key passages speeches by Carrie Chapman Catt, Mary Church Terrell and Elizabeth Cady Stanton at the 1848 women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, brought to life in a graphic novel format in augmented reality.
Selected by: William Austin, Designer, USA Today Network
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