The curator of the VR Zone is Tom Millen, a director at Crossover Labs. He is a curator of immersive storytelling who has programmed exhibitions for a wide range of festivals internationally including CPH:DOX, Bergen International Film Festival, Silbersalz Festival, Electric Dreams Adelaide. Tom also works as a producer of digital content and as a mentor on Crossover’s various labs and training programs.
Darkening
Darkening uses virtual reality to portray the authentic experiences of a young person with depression. It brings not only a deep insight into the ‘dark night of the soul’, but also hope and a way to cope with the illness.
The main character Ondřej guides the viewer on this journey through an animated autobiographical work. The film allows us to experience and understand for a moment what it is like to live with this illness, and what mechanisms people with depression can use to feel better. Ondřej discovers that his way to fight depression is through his own voice.
Cosmogonic
Cosmogonic is a 10-minute interactive science fiction animated short. The famous Polish science fiction writer and futurist Stanisław Lem inspired the first VR experience.
Lem was well acquainted with how fictional worlds can often encroach upon reality. This adaptation of a 1964 novel speaks perfectly to today’s world, where populism and disinformation threaten democracy. This experience is a testament to the importance of knowledge and community in the universal drive to freedom.
NORN, Volume One: The 9 Daughters of RAN
The 9 Daughters of RAN is the first episode of the multi-platform interactive XR series ‘NORN & The Little Grey That Matters’, which offers a fairytale about the inner conflict between Love & Fear playing out inside our minds.
It is an allegorical fairytale set inside the Brain, where anatomy is mixed with Norse Mythology and the Characters are personified neurons, hormones, and cognitive thoughts.
Entanglement XR
Entanglement distils quantum physics theories into a swooping sensorial experience. It illustrates the concept of entanglement, an uncanny scientific phenomenon that defies explanations.
The piece oscillates between four theories: the fluidity of time, multiverse, the Copenhagen interpretation, and decoherence. These complex notions are filtered into audiovisually radiant tableaus guided by science, technology, and the sensitivity needed to illustrate what cannot be visualised.
