Still from
Joe Hunting’s footage of the Immerse x Venice VR Expanded world hop, within World.Execute
(Me) by Skuld. This virtual world is a visual interpretation of the song
“World.execute(me)” by Mili.To kick off Making the Metaverse, our current series — and Immerse’s 5th year anniversary — we commissioned this videographic essay from trailblazing VRChat documentarian Joe Hunting. In this 5 minute piece, Immerse x Venice, Hunting documents a whirlwind meet-up experienced and filmed entirely in the virtual platform VRChat, as Liz Rosenthal and Michel Reilhac, curators of the Venice Film Festival’s VR Expanded program, take us on a world-hop through several Venice VR Expanded worlds. We first pick up bespoke avatars in Venice VR’s avatar gallery, then fly through a music video landscape, jump through portals, and get lost in a mystical mountainous panorama encountering bears, birds, and mythical creatures. Along the way, Rosenthal and Reilhac provide insight (from an audio recording of an interview with Immerse Editor Abby Sun) on the exploding creativity they have discovered in this new frontier of artistic virtual terraforming, world-building, and identity shapeshifting.
— Katerina Cizek, commissioning editor
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Immerse is an initiative of the MIT Open DocLab and Dot Connector Studio, and receives funding from Just Films | Ford Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation. The Gotham Film & Media Institute is our fiscal sponsor. Learn more here. We are committed to exploring and showcasing emerging nonfiction projects that push the boundaries of media and tackle issues of social justice — and rely on friends like you to sustain ourselves and grow. Join us by making a gift today.