The birth of our universe, from 13 billion years ago until today : assist to the birth of stars, galaxies, black holes and other wonders. Let yourself be guided in a spiritual and philosophical tour where you will lose all your senses of scale, discover the immensity of the universe and realise how insignificant we are in space.

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Director: Nico Chibac

Germany, 2019

AQUAPHOBIA uses VR to connect inner psychological landscapes with exterior eco-systems. The work is inspired by psychological studies of the treatment of aquaphobia – fear of water- as an entry point to transform perceptions of our relationship to future water levels and climates.

AQUAPHOBIA is a full-scale replica of Louis Valentino Jr. Park and Pier in Redhook, Brooklyn, an area greatly compromised by climate change with hurricanes and rising sea levels. The virtual landscape combines red-clay materials with pre-urban plant species in Brooklyn and futuristic settings. While journeying through the landscape, mud, water, subterranean infrastructures, roots and plants intertwine with one another to form a symbiotic landscape the person visiting the virtual simulation of AQUAPHOBIA experiences.

While travelling through the landscape, an alien morphing aquatic entity follows you around and emit scuba diving sounds and recites a poem, which tell a breakup story between the landscape and its virtual visitor. Ultimately, AQUAPHOBIA uses VR to mixes past and future geological periods, and the work personifies a landscape through a break-up story.

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Direction, production, art and sound: Jakob Kudsk Steensen
Text: Jakob Kudsk Steensen
Narration: Rindon Johnson

RE-ANIMATED explores the intersections of extinction, preservation of immortality. It is a re-imagining of ornithologist Douglas H. Pratt’s memories of the now extinct “Kaua’i ʻōʻō” bird, as told to director Jakob Kudsk Steensen. In the work, a vast virtual landscape based on Kaua’i unfolds and transforms into a photorealistic new world for people to explore. 3D-scanned organic material sourced from both field work and the American Museum of Natural History, as well as real archival audio are all remixed together, alongside algorithmic music composed by Michael Riesman, Musical Director for the Philip Glass Ensemble. Plants, moss, and insects respond to the pulse of music generated in real-time, and the audience’s breath and voice organically impact the virtual atmosphere through the VR headset. As a slow-moving, poetic virtual environment, RE-ANIMATED ultimately investigates how we relate to nature irrevocably altered by human activity. It provokes fresh perspectives on our ecological future, which may become unbound by the physical conditions governing our present reality.

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Creator, producer and main developer: Jakob Kudsk Steensen
Composer and Music Director: Michael Riesman
Co-producer: Toke Lykkeberg Nielsen and Tranen Contemporary Art Center
Music technical director and audio programmer: Jerry Smith
Character optimization: Jeremy Thompson, 2Nstudio
Programming assistance and audio interactivity: Todd Bryant
Bird song visualization: Andy Thomas
Research assistance: The American Museum of Natural History, NYC
Studio Manager: Jazia Hammoudi

Made with support from The Danish Arts Council, Bikuben Foundation, Harvestworks, Mana Contemporary and
Artist Alliance.

In cooperation with CPH:DOX festival (Copenhagen)

Kindly supported by Behörde für Kultur und Medien

Denmark/USA, 2018

On 7 January 2015, two terrorists attacked the magazine Charlie Hebdo. Shortly afterwards, a third terrorist attacked the kosher supermarket Hyper Cacher, killing four Jews – store employee Yohan Cohen (20), Yoav Hattab (21), François-Michel Saada (63) and Philippe Braham (45) – and taking numerous hostages. A few of them managed to hide in a cold room in the basement, taking a baby with them. In this virtual documentary, we use sketch-style animation to bring to life the recollections of three hostages.

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Director: Ricarda Saleh
Animation team: Sofiia Melnyk (Lead-Artist), Mareike Graf, David Jansen, Alice Reily de Souza, Maité Schmitt, Sophia Schönborn
3D Compositing: Martin Backhaus
360 degree filming: Ricarda Saleh, Stefanie Vollmann, Henriette Drüke
Editing/Stitching: Julius Krenz, Julia Heimbach
Sound design: Marcus Fass
Redaktion: Sophie Schulenburg
A WDR production as part of the project BERLIN PARIS TERROR

Germany, 2018

Our reality is that of a medial and informative overdose. Data needs to be filtered, prioritized and organized. We interpolate connections from information islands. But what if these interpolations are used for an extrapolated reinterpretation?

Tobias Wüstefeld presents images of Hamburg sculptures, broken up into pieces, supplemented by worlds whose structure can be an echo of the environment or the object itself.

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Director: Tobias Wüstefeld
3D Scan: Uwe Zahn
Programming: Tobias Stärk
Music/Sound: Nikolai von Sallwitz

Germany, 2019

Five characters: illusionnist, psychic, hypnotist, journalist, pickpocket, are invited in the manor of the prodigious magician of all time, Maestro Mephisto. They don’t know that they have been chosen to be in the first representation of the fantastic manor, Mephisto’s greatest show.

COCOTTE-MINUTE is a VR real time narrative. The story takes place in 6 areas of the magician manor. It’s an immersive and interactive experiment, the user can go anytime through different areas. He/she will follow one main story, but lots of other stories can be discover in the manor. However the user can’t be aware of everything. Indeed he/she can’t be everywhere, his/her choices will bring him/her to a personal vision of COCOTTE-MINUTE through a unique and personal course.

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Regie: Gabrielle Roque
Artistic Director: Louis Wade
Producer and Immersive Designer: Teddy Aymard

France, 2019

In 1883 painter Claude Monet first rented a house in the French town of Giverny. After purchasing the property and adjoining land, the artist transformed an existing small pond into a water garden with water lilies and a Japanese-style bridge from which he could observe the water and the flowers. From 1899 to 1926, Monet painted more than 250 scenes devoted to the water lily theme, which became what he himself called “an obsession.”

Through a dialogue between Claude Monet and his old friend, stateman Georges Clemenceau, this contemplative VR experience invites the user on a sensory journey starting off in Claude Monet’s garden, stopping along the way at the workshop of the artist and ending in the exhibition rooms of the Orangerie Museum. The user is given the opportunity to relive a perpetual renewal of nature, to explore time and space while immersed in the Water lilies paintings.

This experience is the first episode of the Arte Trips collection, an immersive series in major works of art, co-produced by ARTE.

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Regie: Nicolas Thepot
Original music: George Lepauw (International Beethoven project)
French actors: Georges Claisse (Claude Monet), Didier Bénureau (Georges Clémenceau)
English actors: Geoffrey Bateman (Claude Monet), Peter Hudson (Georges Clémenceau)
Executive producer: Chloé Jarry
Graphic creation & development: Hugo Arcier, Studio N°130
Sound design: Thomas Couchard, NOVELAB
Coproducers: ARTE France, Lucid Realities, Camera lucida productions, Musées d’Orsay et de L’Orangerie, Gebrueder Beetz Filmproduktion
With the support of CNC – Fonds Nouveaux Médias, Fonds Transmédia de la Ville de Paris
Distribution: Lucid Realities

France, 2018

BE B:E:R:N:D is a hyperlocal game for four players or team of players, that includes Augmented Reality, Virtuality, a retro text adventure and a audio discovery experience, that is intertwined with a physical control station.The game field contains an xy-plotter, that moves a game figure through a model of the city, the players are in, which is represented by four landmarks. Those landmarks are also the places, the players can interact within their playing experience. The setting is a cli-fi scenario, in which the players have to save Berlin from rising sea levels and starvation.

First of all, the players have to discover the possibilities of the world they play in. The landmarks each have different functions and opportunities, that influence the game’s story. In order to do make decisions, the players have superpowers over the landmarks: The Fernsehturm, e.g. can be used as dam to stop water from flooding the city or as an antenna for outside communication. To decide between those options, the players have to fulfill certain tasks, with each player having different information.

These tasks contain minigames on the computer, discoveries in the VR-surrounding, pushing buttons on the control field of the audio controller board and gather informations of the outcome on certain decisions via AR. Those informations and possibilities need to be gathered and exchanged to experience the game’s story. Hence, in order to progress in the story, the players constantly need to discuss their discoveries and they will see a direct outcome of their actions on their devices, their city and the game field.

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A project by Maso

Germany, 2018

In this musical VR experience, you will embark on an immersive journey – to ‘listen differently’ to your daily lives, the world around you and find the music within. Immerse yourself in the world of exploration of sonic landscapes in high-end spatial sound design where you can hear, see and feel sound in a way not possible before and compose your own score thanks to interactive music algorithmic systems. Listen intently. Can you already hear how ordinary sounds become music in your ears?

The installation at VRHam! is a Try-Out of the beta prototype and will thus run in the selection as a Work in Progress. It will be tested by the public for its first time.

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Author and Creative Director: Michaela Pnacekova
Author and Co-Creative Director: Jamie Balliu
Producers: Michaela Pnacekova, Stefan Kloos
Co-Producer: Jamie Balliu
Visual and Technical Lead Unity: Paul Kirsten (prefrontal cortex)
Composer, Sound Designer and Developer: Phivos-Angelos Kollias
Produced by: Kloos & Co Medien
Co-Produced by: UPCreatives, Reeperbahn Festival, VRHAM!

Germany/United Kingdom, 2019

Funded by: Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung, Creative Europe MEDIA, Creative XR and Digital Catapult

We are gifted every moment with life’s most precious achievement: A conscious mind, enabling us to sense and hold within, the universe’s boundless beauty – a source of infinite inspiration that fuels our inner space. Being aware of and grateful for the invaluable fortune of a conscious existence is vital for a life in harmony and enables us to use our precious gift within to sense that beauty in every little thing.

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Idea, director, visuals, sound design, music: Marc Zimmermann
Voice over: Helen Borkert
Producer: Felix Fahle
Spatial sound mix: Daniel Deboy
Voice over coordinator: Ana Monte

Germany, 2018