INVR.SPACE has been awarded the Halo Award in the category “Special New Horizons” at VRDays Europe for the social platform “LFF – THE EXPANSE”, a variation of the META SPACE VR Platform developed together with Ulrich Schrauth and Anja Cambria for the BFI London Film Festival 2020.

The Virtual Reality Full Service Studio, based in Berlin and Munich, had already been a Virtual Venue Partner for VRHAM! VIRTUAL had already virtually recreated the Gleishalle in Hamburg’s Oberhafen as a festival venue.

The Halo Awards are presented for AR and VR projects. The organisers want to use the prize to highlight European works, performances, projects and to honour the creative people who produced them.

The VRHAMMY AWARD 2020 of this year’s digital edition of VRAHM! Virtual Reality & Arts Festival goes to the VR work The Key by Celine Tricart. 360° film Daughters of Chibok received a special mention.

During the virtual opening ceremony at the Museum of Other Realities, the VRHAMMY Award for the best VR work in the artistic program, endowed with 5,000 euros, was presented to Celine Tricart for her Experience The Key, with the kind support of the ZEIT-Stiftung. The international jury of experts (Liz Rosenthal, Jesse Damiani, Kay Watson) agreed that the work represented a perfect combination of art, narrative elements and poetry, with a special focus on the current crises of the time. The Key takes viewers on a journey through dreams, challenges and difficult choices, leading them to a shocking revelation. Celine Tricart and producer Gloria Bradbury decided to donate the prize money to a support fund for diversity in XR art.

The jury also gave a special mention to the 360° film Daughters of Chibok. Through the medium of VR, director Joel ‘Kachi Benson succeeded in drawing attention to an event that has long since been forgotten: the abduction of 274 girls by the terrorist group Boko Haram in 2014. Both experiences are shown in the VRHAM! section VREXHIBITION and can be seen at the Museum of Other Realities until 4 August 2020. Daughters of Chibok is also accessible via the Magenta VR app.

“We all know an experiment can succeed or fail. But if we succeed, this experiment might have a huge impact on how people can experience art in the future and how they think about festivals and social interaction in an artistic context,” said Ulrich Schrauth, Artistic Director of VRHAM!, in his opening speech. “And it is also a step towards democratization of art: it makes our program accessible from almost anywhere in the world.”

In addition to the VRHAMMY Award, the festival also presents the People’s Choice Award, for which online voting is now possible. All 18 works of the artistic programme compete. The award ceremony will take place on 7 June as part of the virtual closing event.

VRHAM! Virtual Reality & Arts Festival Hamburg is the first international artistic Virtual Reality festival, which has been held annually in Hamburg since 2018. After two successful festival editions in Hamburg’s creative centre Oberhafen, VRHAM! has firmly established itself as an important date in the international VR art scene. Due to the effects of the Corona pandemic, the third festival edition VRAHM! VIRTUAL takes place from June 4 to 7, 2020 as a predominantly digital festival.

Opening with award ceremony, 18 international works from 12 countries in the artistic program, and festival closing with a virtual live concert in cooperation with the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival: VRHAM! VIRTUAL announces the program for this year’s digital festival edition from June 4 to 7, 2020.

This year’s venue is the virtual Museum of Other Realities. There, in the digitized version of Hamburg’s Oberhafenquartier, the well-known physical festival centre of 2018 and 2019, digitally reconstructed by INVR.Space, all selected artworks will be exhibited and made accessible in virtual space.

»Our festival has always been a place to perceive art differently. After having established the first artistic Virtual Reality Festival worldwide, we are now the first in trying to establish a complete art festival with interactive exhibitions, a completely virtual venue, social interaction between the visitors, live events, residencies, award shows etc. into the virtual realm. This is a total experiment and we couldn’t be more excited to find out together with our audience and our incredible partners what a virtual extension of a physical art festival can contribute, not only as a short-term emergency plan, but as an important addition to our location-based festival«, says Ulrich Schrauth, Artistic Director of VRHAM!

The festival section VREXHIBITION presents ten state-of-the-art VR experiences, including the project Daughters of Chibok by Joel ‘Kachie Benson, which won the Golden Lion for the best VR story at the Venice Festival in 2019. From the perspective of mothers, the Nigerian director recounts the aftermath of the 276 young girls abducted in 2014 by the terrorist group Boko Haram and examines current global issues of gender justice. Rain Fruits by Youngyoon Song and Sngmoo Leeist, a story about future dreams and disappointments of a young man from Myanmar, will be shown at VRCINEMA with another 360° project under the thematic bracket DRIFT OF LIFE. Six more works are presented in the section under the topics FLOW OF TIME and CHANGE OF MIND. »Everything is in flow at the moment. Many people use this time as an opportunity to pause, to re-evaluate inner beliefs and the perception of the world surrounding them. Water is the perfect symbol for this fluidity of emotions which are expressed among all the creators contributing to this exhibition, so we also used it as a combining element in our set design,« says Ulrich Schrauth.

The digital opening ceremony on 4 June at 19.00 h with speeches, talks and live music is also an award show. The VRHAMMY Award, worth 5,000 Euros, goes to the best international VR production in this year’s exhibition program and is presented with the kind support of the ZEIT-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius in the presence of the artists and the international jury of experts. On the same evening, public guided tours through the digital exhibition will be offered, for which visitors can register at www.vrham.de already before the start of the festival. In one of the virtual artist talks on 5 June at 16.00 h Ulrich Schrauth will ask the artists Michelle-Marie Letelier (The Bone), Christian Lemmerz (La Apparizione) and Michel Lemieux (iCarus) what bridge VR art can build in times of physical distance. The projects Captured and The smallest of Worlds – a Social Landscape of collected Privacy were selected for this year’s residencies in cooperation with Filmförderung Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein. During the festival, both artistic teams will give an insight into the current state of their work, which will be realized in the context of a digital residency and accompanied by international mentors.

After the final panel discussion and the presentation of the People’s Choice Award to the most popular work of this year’s program, VRHAM VIRTUAL! will end musically on 7 June: In cooperation with the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival and with the support of the Nordakademie Foundation, the work Tessellatum by Donnacha Denney from the concert series »Moondog« will be broadcast live by viola da gamba-player Liam Byrne and four string players in the Museum of Other Realities and on YouTube.

The entire festival programme can be viewed live from the comfort of your own home with your laptop or PC, with mobile VR glasses or with high-end VR glasses. VRHAM!, in cooperation with Grover and with the kind support of the DKB-Bank, provides festival visitors with a limited number of VR glasses at a greatly reduced price for rent. The digital festival edition VRHAM! VIRTUAL can be accessed via the Museum of Other Realities. In addition, the majority of the artworks can be experienced via the MagentaVR App. Streamed museum tours, video material, 360° video films and interviews with the artists as well as all panels, workshops and live acts including the opening and closing will be broadcast on the VRHAM! YouTube channel from 4 to 7 June, 2020.

For this year’s predominantly digital edition of the festival, VRHAM! has been able to win three renowned experts for the international jury.

The winner of the international VRHAMMY AWARD 2020 will be selected by Liz Rosenthal, Curator of immersive content for Venice International Film Festival’s »Venice VR«, Founder & CEO of Power to the Pixel, Kay Watson, Digital Curator at Serpentine Galleries in London, and Jesse Damiani, Deputy Director of Emerging Technology at Southern New Hampshire University, Forbes Contributor, and Editor-at-Large of VRScout.
Read more

We, too, are facing a new challenge with this current situation. Nobody can foresee how the situation will develop in the coming weeks and months in Hamburg and all over the world. Currently we are in permanent exchange with the authorities and keep close contact with other VR and film festivals worldwide which have already been forced to adjust their programs as a result of the recent developments. The solidarity and inventiveness of the international VR community and the organizers has been very impressive and encouraging, leading to many creative solutions to deal with this crisis.

Read more