Speakers 2021
We have been able to win renowned artists and VR experts from all over the world as speakers for our panels,
VRHAM! FORWARD Talks and for the REAL-IN Convention:
Alexandra Antwi-Boasiako is a creative industries enthusiast from Hamburg. With a degree in Communication & Cultural Management and an MA in Creative & Media Enterprises she has set a strong foundation to explore the world of creativity. Alexandra is a passionate & curious communicator that builds bridges between artistic visions and the audience.
Christopher Bauder is the creative director of the design studio Whitevoid, which he founded immediately after finishing his studies at Berlin University of the Arts. He works worldwide as a light and media artist and is also the founder and managing director of the innovative lighting technology manufacturer Kinetic Lights. Bauder is best known for his large scale spacial light art installations.
Kiira Benzing is a multimedia director, founder of Double Eye Studios based in New York. She is a director crossing the mediums of theater, hybrid cinema and virtual reality and currently working with live actors performing in social VR with the open software platform High Fidelity and she writes for the Medium blog “Alive in Plasticland”. Her most recent project Runnin, is an official selection of the Sundance Film Festival 2019.
Serial entrepreneur and innovation Guru, Antoine Cardon has served in many industries: advertising & communication, digital, television & cinema and architecture & simulation. He started working with virtual reality 20 years ago as a simulation expert and founding member of the VRML community.
Toby Coffey established the National Theatre’s Immersive Storytelling Studio in 2016. The Studio has had its portfolio of projects shown at the Venice, Sundance and Tribeca Film Festivals, National Theatre, The Young Vic, MoMA and TATE Modern. The Studio’s work ranges from VR music videos, immersive exhibtions and VR performances with interactions between the audience and live performer. At VRHAM!, Toby has been mentor for the VR project Inhibition by Zoe Diakaki and Marina Mersiadou.
Mat Collishaw is a key figure in the generation of British artists who emerged from Goldsmiths’ College in the late 1980s. His visual language embraces diverse media. The beauty of Collishaw’s work is compelling – seductive, captivating, hypnotic – yet repelling as we perceive the darker fantasies within. Something between beautiful and abject. At VRHAM! 2021 he will present his latest project Bedlam in a keynote.
Zoe Diakaki is an interactive designer and architect based in London. Her main interests rely on the relationship between immersive experiences and technology in performing arts. Zoe, together with Marina Mersiadou, will present their joint project Inhibition, which they developed together with their mentor Tobey Coffey as part of the VRHAM! FORWARD residencies.
Gustav Gomes is a brazilian artist, dancer and choreographer based in Cologne, Germany. As a visual artist he is exposing photographic work, installation and video art in a number of galleries. At VRHAM! Gustavo will present his current project Votary, which he has continued developing at Institut für theatrale Zukunfstforschung (ITZ) at Tübingen together with his mentor Richard Siegal as part of the VRHAM! FORWARD residencies.
Ali Hossaini’s expertise spans art, science and engineering. A commitment to preserving life, and to celebrating life’s diversity, motivates his interdisciplinary work. He is a Visiting Senior Research Fellow in Engineering at King’s College London. He is also a Fellow of the National Gallery, co-director of National Gallery X and a trustee of the Young Vic theatre. Since 2018 he has been working with security think tank RUSI on the safety of AI.
Carole Kremer is the Head of Office at the Creative Europe MEDIA Desk Luxembourg. She holds a BA in English Literature and Linguistics and an MA in Conference Interpreting. She joined the Luxembourg Creative Europe Desk in 2014, and has since been the contact person for the programme’s MEDIA strand in Luxembourg. She also works at Film Fund Luxembourg, where she manages the public body’s various XR events and initiatives.
Tupac Martir is an Artist and Founder of Satore Studio in London. He’s a multimedia artist whose work spans the fields of technology, lighting, projection and video, sound design, music, and composition, as well as choreography and costumes. Vogue has described him as “the visual designer and creative director behind some of the most important events in the world”.
Robin McNicholas is Co-founder and Director of the award-winning creative studio Marshmallow Laser Feast (MLF) in London and has directed a myriad of immersive experiences, large-scale installations and live performances. Exploring new sensory perspectives that challenge our relationship to the world around us plays a key role in Robin and the team at MLF’s work.
Annette Mees is an award-winning artist and immersive theatre director and currently the Head of The Audience Labs at the Royal Opera House. She is working on the cross-over of live and digital and interested in the artistic possibilities of immersive technologies. Annette explores the future of culture, artistic innovation, creative R&D and models of art that allow dialogue with new audiences.
Marina Mesiadou studied Architecture at the National Technical University of Athens and also worked as an architect in an Athens based architectural practice. Marina is interested in exploring ways of integrating new technologies into performance and theatrical space. Marina, together with Zoe Diakaki, will present their joint project Inhibition, which they developed together with their mentor Tobey Coffey as part of the VRHAM! FORWARD residencies.
Ilja Mirsky is dramaturg at the Institut für theatrale Zukunftsforschung (ITZ) in Tübingen and PhD candidate at the University of Tuebingen and Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK). Ilja is lecturer on artificial intelligence, theater and digital dramaturgy with a strong focus on VR/AR, AI and performance Art.
Christiane Paul is Chief Curator and Director of the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center and Professor in the School of Media Studies at The New School, as well as Adjunct Curator of Digital Art at the Whitney Museum of American Art. At the Whitney Museum she is also responsible for artport, the museum’s portal to Internet art. She is the recipient of the Thoma Foundation’s 2016 Arts Writing Award in Digital Art and has authored several books on Media Art and New Media.
Co-director at Minky Productions, Julien Planté is an experienced Producer and high caliber Head of Programmes, with a strong track record in commissioning, producing and curating Live Events, TV and online content. Currently working on Bedlam, an Extended Reality theatre experience by Mat Collishaw, that he will introduce in a Keynote.
Based in Marseille, Mathieu Pradat inscribes his practice within the growing interaction between real and virtual worlds, seen as new territories for stories bearing knowledge, sensations and emotions. He explores cinema and various immersive interactive narrative forms. His works (The Roaming, Proxima, The Dog) have been selected and awarded throughout the world. Mathieu Pradat is CEO of La prairie productions. He teaches immersive narrative in various universities.
Tina Sauerlaender is an art historian, curator, speaker and writer about VR in visual arts. She is artistic director of the VR ART PRIZE by DKB in cooperation with CAA Berlin. She is co-founder and director of the independent exhibition platform peer to space, that was founded in 2010. She is co-founder and CEO of Radiance VR, an international online platform for VR experiences in visual arts. She focuses primarily on the impact of the digital and the internet on individual environments and society.
András Siebold was hired as a dramaturge at Theater Basel and subsequently for four years at the State Opera Unter den Linden Berlin. In 2007 he was appointed as head of programming at Kampnagel Hamburg by Artistic Director Amelie Deuflhard. Since 2013 he is Artistic Director of the International Summer Festival Kampnagel, Hamburg.
Richard Siegal is an American dancer and choreographer. For his pieces, Siegal has cooperated with people from different fields such as architecture, design and composing. In 2016, Siegal founded the touring company Ballet of Difference] together with ecotopia dance productions, missioned with creating new pertinence to ballet in the 21st century.
Fabien Siouffi is Founder of Fabbula, a cultural practice dedicated to the idea of worlding with digital media such as virtual reality, open worlds and livestreams. Fabbula curates groundbreaking exhibitions such as Palais Augmenté (2021, Grand Palais), Les Ailleurs (2021, Gaîté Lyrique) and VR Arles Festival (2018, 2019, Rencontres d’Arles).
Chiaki Soma has produced or curated global projects that transect categories of theater, contemporary art, and community-engaged art. She has been the General Producer of Toyooka Theater Festival 2021, the Curator of Aichi Triennale 2022 and Artistic Director of Theatre Commons Festival.
Melanie Stein is a journalist, psychologist, producer and presenter covering politics, innovation and science. She is an editor and presenter of the YouTube show Diskuthek, a political talk show addressing young adults. After finishing her “Volontariat” at NDR, she worked for the media magazine Zapp as well as for the public broadcasters ARD and ZDF. Melanie is the founder and CEO of Wir sind der Osten, an initiative giving visibility to progressives citizens from Eastern Germany.
Ulrich Schrauth is an international curator, creative director and artist working in the field of immersive media. His posts include artistic director for VRHAM! Festival Virtual Reality & Arts Hamburg as well as XR and immersive programmer for the BFI London Film Festival. In addition to that, he oversees many international projects with virtual, augmented and mixed reality, and acts as a speaker, moderator and jury member in this field.
Daniel Strutt is a lecturer in the department of Media, Communications and Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London, He and his team have developed a framework for the streaming of motion capture data, permitting dancers to dance together but remotely, and within virtual spaces.
Susanne Thurow is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the University of New South Wales’ iCinema Centre, one of Australia’s foremost hubs for applied interactive immersive visualization, and a Chief Investigator on the iDesign research project. Since 2014, she has been co-developing immersive visualisation projects with key collaboration partners.
Julian Weiss is Co-Founder and CEO of the agency headraft, specialist in the conception and production of interactive experiences in virtual and augmented reality. With their know-how and enthusiasm about immersive media he and his team support clients to understand the potentials of extended realities and fully exploit them in campaigns and communication activities. headraft was awarded Rookie Agency of the year 2019 by the Art Directors Club Germany.
From October 2002 to September 2009, Brigitte Zypries was Federal Minister of Justice. From January 2017 to March 2018 she was Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy, where, from December 2013 to January 2017, she was also Parliamentary State Secretary, responsible for information technology (IT) and foreign trade. She was the Federal Government Coordinator for Aerospace from January 2014 to March 2018.
Alexander Whitley
Taking inspiration from chaos theory, the dynamic processes it describes and the associated geometric patterns found in nature, Chaotic Body 2: Liminal Phase is a motion-capture-based digital dance film for screen and augmented reality. A short work for two dancers, it places emphasis on the human breath to dissolve the boundaries between the form of their bodies and the environment in which they are situated.
This artwork can be seen exclusively on site at Hamburg’s Oberhafen
Credits
Running time 6 minutes
Lead Artist / Director Alexander Whitley
Choreographer Alexander Whitley
Composer Missy Mazzoli
Digital Artists (film) Uncharted Limbo Collective
Digital Artists (AR) Fenyce
Dancers Hannah Ekholm, David Ledger
Producer Donna Meierdiercks
Project Coordinator Emi Del Bene
United Kingdom, 2021
REAL-IN Residency
The VR project Dazzle by artist duo Gibson/Martelli in collaboration with design collective Peut-Porter has been selected for the first VRHAM! open call as part of the EU project REAL-IN. In a one-week residency in Marseille, the team from UK will continue their project work under the mentorship of the multi-award winning production company Dark Euphoria.
The VR experience Dazzle combines dance with dazzling optical illusions: Recreating the optimistic, rebellious spirit of the 1919 Chelsea Arts Club Dazzle Ball at the Royal Albert Hall. The VR experience encourages the audience to dance with the artists, who alternate between virtual and live choreography. In the worlds of the dazzling ball, dancing avatars meet in front of striking black and white backdrops. The British team would like to develop this project during the one-week residency in Marseille. The focus will be on how new forms of expression can enhance the audience experience and increase the audience’s active role in inluencing the interactive storytelling.
VRHAM! invited creative professionals and artists working in the field of interactive art to apply for the first open call within the framework of the EU project REAL-IN to further develop their existing artistic project through the use of 3D scanning technology during a one-week residency in Marseille. The creative team selected by an international jury (Judith Guez/Founder and Curator, Rector VRso Festival; Lilli Paasikivi-Ilves/Artistic Director, Finnish National Opera; Tomás Saraceno/Performance and Installation Artist; and Ulrich Schrauth/Artistic Director, VRHAM!) will present the results of their residency at tthe REAL-IN Convention on 11 June in Hamburg, which will take place parallel to this year’s VRHAM! Festival and will be dedicated to interactive art.
The REAL IN Convention on 11 June with inspiring workshops, talks and best practice examples provided the latest insights from the industry. The conference aimed to bring together artists, producers, cultural institutions, policy makers, industry experts and researchers to explore the potential of 3D scanning and volumetric capture technologies for interactive and digital arts. With the growing accessibility of XR technologies, how can creatives produce bold and inventive artistic content? How can technological tools and immersive storytelling be used to develop innovative participatory and social experiences? And how can an ecosystem be created that inspires new ideas and drives creative progress?
In addition to a lightning talk in which industry experts gave insights into the latest developments in interactive art and immersive technologies, Dark Euphoria and Inlum.in shared their technological knowledge and showed current possibilities of 3D scanning technologies. In the Residency Showcase, Gibson/Martelli and Peut-Porter presented their project Dazzle as well as the results of their research on interactive art and immersive technology, which they have done as part of the REAL IN Residency Programme.
The conference was opened by Brigitte Zypries, former Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy. The opening, panel discussions and showcases are freely accessible via livestream. The day was moderated by Melanie Stein. You can watch the convention here:
Sabrina Ratté
Inspired by the writings of Donna J. Haraway, Ursula K. Le Guin and Greg Egan, this work plunges us into a speculative future where samples of an extinct plant species are preserved and displayed in a virtual archive room. Floralia is a simulation of ecosystems born from the fusion of technology and organic matter, where past and future coexist in the perpetual tension of the present.
The Canadian projects are part of the culture program related to Canada’s Guest of Honour presentation at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2021 and are supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada (Embassy of Canada to Germany) and the Government Office of Québec in Berlin
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Credits
Lead Artist / Director Sabrina Ratté
Soundtrack Andrea-Jane Cornell
Technical support Sporobole, 0/1
Canada, France, 2020
VOLNA
This installation is inspired by the relics of industrial power and their potential, which remained unclaimed for many years, following the demise of the industrial age. These factories, once great behemoths of the Industrial Age, gradually fell into disrepair. Some would find life housing small, semi-legal businesses, while many became little more than vandalized ruins. An audio reactive installation, Powerline is a short circuit caused by these circumstances. Driven by а generative beat structure, the visible lines create a throbbing 15-meter “voltaic arc”, filling a liminal space with electric buzz and light.
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Artists VOLNA
Russia, 2020
Matthew Biederman
Morphogerador is a reflection on the biological processes that create structural color as we see it in a variety of insects such as the Morpho butterfly, along with many species of beetles. These reaction-diffusion systems were first employed to describe biomorphological systems by Alan Turning in his seminal article “The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis”. Morphogerador uses similar algorithms to create an ever evolving yet stable system that continually brings the perspective both closer and wider without ever reaching the smallest or widest view, hinting at new areas of knowledge that exist on the very periphery of our perspective
The Canadian projects are part of the culture program related to Canada’s Guest of Honour presentation at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2021 and are supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada (Embassy of Canada to Germany) and the Québec Government Office in Berlin.
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Artist Matthew Biederman
Canada / Portugal, 2018
Studio Iregular
Employing software that computes probabilities every second, Forward is a generative video installation showcasing two digital tunnels that transform shape, pattern and direction through an infinite series of variables. Random audiovisual iterations that are never the same, the tunnels are also a reference to the future – so unstable and fragile that the very act of thinking about them can change their course. They exist in a state of constant evolution, redrawing themselves every instant, underpinning the futility of being too concerned or anxious about what’s to come.
The Canadian projects are part of the culture program related to Canada’s Guest of Honour presentation at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2021 and are supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada (Embassy of Canada to Germany) and the Québec Government Office in Berlin.
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Artistic realisation Studio Iregular
Canada, 2015
Mária Júdová
Intersecting contemporary dance, art and VR technology to offer glimpses of a hidden world through the eyes of a shaman, Kykeon is an immersive exploration of ancestral knowledge and ritual.
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Running time 7 minutes
Lead Artist / Director Mária Júdová
Choreographeer Taneli Törmä
Dancers Amber Pansters, Bojana Mitrović, Finn Lakeberg, Milena Wiese, Zachary Chant
Sound designer Alexandra Timpau
VFX support Florian Friedrich (Narranoid)
HW support Marko Júda
Project Title, Logo Design Constantine Nisidis
Producer Mara Nedelcu
Co-Producer Motion Bank / Hochschule Mainz, Sensorium Festival
Slovakia, Germany, Great Britain, 2020
François Vautier
A metallic tetrahedron floats through a milky abyss. All is calm. Suddenly, this geometric form dramatically deconstructs, atomizing into billions of fragments. What was once a negative space is now dense with chaos. All that was rational and understood has come undone. This is the beginning of a journey – one of creative destruction where everything solid melts into air, then condenses once more. It’s the hypnotic allegory of the eternal return, a spiritual journey where life and death are infinitely interchangeable. Through purely abstract forms and movement, Recoding Entropia questions the spectator’s place in the universe, offering an immersive journey into the mysteries of extinction and rebirth.
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Credits
Running time 8 minutes
Lead Artist / Director François Vautier
Screenplay François Vautier, Frank Richard
Director of photography François Vautier
Editing François Vautier
Sound & Music Pascal Bantz
Production Jeremy Sahel
France, 2020