Venice Immersive is the XR (Extended Reality) section of the Venice Film Festival, the part that is dedicated to immersive arts and media. It has been going for eight years already while it was only a few months ago that the Cannes Film Festival made a furtive attempt to introduce a space dedicated to virtual reality. Venice Immersive, with low visibility compared to the stars on the Lido, is actually a hotbed of talent for all next-generation media and entertainment. Now in its eighth edition, this year’s selection includes the most extensive and complex program in the industry landscape, with 63 projects from 25 countries, including 26 in competition, 30 out of competition and seven developed through the Biennale College Cinema — Immersive, an incubator for new talent. The exhibition, which can be visited by reservation with accreditation until Sept. 7 — although from the Foundation’s offices they report a sell-out within hours of its launch on the Biennale website — is being held on the island of Lazzaretto Vecchio, just a few meters from the shore of Corinth and the Palazzo del Cinema on the Venice Lido.
Selection curators Michel Reilhac and Liz Rosental talked with THR Roma about emerging trends of immersive experiences, and why the Lazaretto has become a favorite place for pioneers, experimenters and innovators in cutting-edge arts and media.
What makes Immersive Island such a special place?
LR: The immersive section of the Venice Film Festival is truly unique. It is the largest space in the world dedicated to art, entertainment and immersive media representation.
MR: We are extremely proud to kick off the immersive competition in Venice today. This is the venue for the best global immersive experiences.
The Venice Film Festival was the first to launch a dedicated immersive space. After eight years, how would you summarize the health of the industry?
L.R. Immersiveness is enjoying better health than ever before. This is evidenced by an exceptional range of immersive experiences, which highlight the wide variety of what this field has to offer. There are virtual experiences designed for a single user that offer extraordinary artistic possibilities. Then, there are multiplayer experiences that allow many people to explore a virtual world together. There are, in addition, experiences that include special costumes with sensory elements, connected to visual elements and environmental projections to intensify immersion.
M.R. With Liz each year we review hundreds of immersive experiences, with or without a headset [a virtual reality visor, or VR headset, is a mask that employs 3D displays and location tracking systems to create an immersive virtual reality environment for the user], to choose the 50 or 60 pieces that come here to Lazaretto. Every year we are astounded by the power, the imagination, the dreamlike quality of this language or, at times, the very engaging ways in which we empathize and understand other people’s conditions. Every year we see that the power of immersive art is growing, becoming exponentially more intense, both on the emotional and poetic level and on the documentary level. It is truly extraordinary to see the evolution and impact this field is having.
With your experience over the years, what are the future prospects for these new media?
M.R. One of the things we have noticed, especially this year, is the emergence of what is called “Mixed Reality.” It is a technology that allows us, with a headset, to see the world around as with a pair of glasses, mixing it with virtual elements so as to create a hybrid experience, in which we are in a physical world. But it is different, because it is altered by the addition of virtual elements.
L.Z. Another thing that is very important is the social and interactive aspect between multiple people. For many years, we have been excited with Michel about the possibilities of social interaction in Virtual Reality. We have shown amazing experiences where many people can enter a virtual world together remotely on the VRChat platform, but there are also experiences based in specific locations where many people at the same time can explore a space together. For example, we have in competition a big project called En soir avec les impressionnistes by Pierre Gable, currently running at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, where 200 people can move together in a virtual world.
M.R. This really represents a big change, because until recently it was common for those unfamiliar with virtual reality to accuse headsets of isolating users, confining them to the solitude of the virtual world. This is no longer true. What is happening instead is that if you are in Rome and some of your friends are in New York or Africa, you can share experiences together with them. VR is becoming a way to share experiences when you can’t do it physically. I think this is the future, the revolution that VR will bring to our lives.
Besides the creative, poetic and social aspect, what is the condition of the market for immersive productions?
L.R. Regarding the market, we note that it is moving toward multiplayer experiences, which translated means that sustainable commercial projects are beginning to circulate. While sometimes standalone with headsets [experiences by only one user at a time] can be challenging to distribute, creating formats, where many people interact at the same time in a unit of place, is more sustainable distributors. In addition, experiences that go beyond the use of headsets are emerging. These projects or combinations of projects involve large-scale screenings, allowing many people to participate in the experience simultaneously, in the same space on.
M.R. It should be added that today it has become more affordable to buy a good headset: with about 400 euros or $400 you can get a device and access all that the Metaverse, the virtual environment where you meet and interact with other people. This brings the arrival of a functional marketplace closer, where you can buy tickets to events, games, software and stories to share with friends. The marketplace is starting to pay off financially, allowing manufacturers to recoup their investments and start generating profits.
Do you think the time is ripe for immersiveness to be considered in award season?
M.R. I think immersiveness is still seen by the film community as something a little bit underground, marginal. For us who live and work in it, every day, we see it growing into something bigger and bigger. So for us, yes, we are part of the awards season and we hope to attract more and more big-name talent. Actresses like Tilda Swinton, for example, who has been a faithful and active participant in immersive experiences. We hope to attract more talent like her.
L.R. In the Venice Immersive section, from the very beginning, we award three prizes to our projects: the Grand Prize, the Jury Prize and the Achievement Prize, with a jury of experts in charge of evaluating the competing works. Outside of Venice Immersive, prestigious organizations such as the Emmy Awards have also recently introduced awards dedicated to immersive productions in several categories, which is a very positive sign. In addition, the Producers Guild of America and other major organizations are beginning to recognize and consider these new art forms. I do not doubt that in time more and more institutions will begin to pay attention to immersiveness.
M.R. In this regard I would like to mention Dave Bushore’s What If, An Immersive Story, one of the projects in this year’s line-up, made in collaboration with Marvel Studios, Disney and ILM, George Lucas’ studios. This experience is designed for the Apple Vision Pro, a state-of-the-art headset that is a cutting-edge device for accessing virtual environments. It is a sign that huge companies are entering the field to produce incredibly popular content under their umbrella.
What about Biennale College Cinema — Immersive, the Biennale’s talent incubator?
M.R. The strength of the immersive section of the Venice Biennale lies in the fact that we not only present the best immersive content, but also offer projects the opportunity to be funded through our marketplace. In addition, through the Venice Biennale College Immersive program, each year we select 12 projects that are still in the early stages of writing and development and provide them with support for implementation. From these, with the help of international experts, we choose one that receives a prize of 80,000 euros [$89,000] from the Biennale to be completed. The experience is then presented here. This year the prize was won by Corinne Mazzoli from Italy with The Gossip’s Cronicle, who is from Venice and lives here in Lido. So we are very happy with this conjunction.
L.R. We have six other projects in the selection. This year, the focus is mostly on installations that combine headsets with fully reconstructed sets.
Can you name three titles each worth mentioning?
M.R. Okay, we can try the three titles exercise, but it is difficult. We love them all, for different reasons, which is why we chose them, but perhaps we can point out three for special features. The first one that comes to mind comes from Taiwan, it’s called Free Your Head, and it’s an installation for the first time outside the island. It’s on the Marconi Promenade, on the opposite side of the Garden Hall, where you can see 32 people with headsets inside which a light signal indicates which movement the head should make, so from outside the spectators’ viewers will see a synchronized choreography.
L.R. I’ll go back to the Anagram team, which won the Grand Prix here in 2021 with Goliath: Playing with Reality, and is up this year with Impulse, also narrated by Tilda Swinton. It is interesting because it is the second in a series of projects, looking at the perception of reality of people with cognitive disorders, such as schizophrenia and ADHD. It is a really innovative use of Mixed Reality, combining the real world with virtual environments in an original way, and it also allows an empathic connection with the stories of the people involved.
M.R. Second I want to mention is a virtual world that competes with the title Uncanny Alley: A New Day by Stephen Butchko and Rick Treweek, and it is a live performance in which actors interact with six visitors who change the course of the story. Viewers must achieve goals and solve problems together with the performers to ensure the success of the story, so it is incredibly interactive and all live on VRChat, which is Virtual Reality’s main social platform.
L.R. I will instead mention Ceci est mon coeur by Stephane Hueber-Blies and Nicolas Blies. This is an innovative format because the story is told by six people who, at the same time, wear costumes that draw geometries in space with the help of LEDs, with sounds and environmental projections. These garments also exert sensory stimuli on the wearer’s body. It is the story of an adult’s reconciliation with his violated child body.
M.R. Lastly, I think it is necessary to talk about the Apple Vision Pro project called Museum Alive, which offers the first opportunity to test in public the Apple Vision Pro headset, which is not yet available in Italy, so it is a real premiere that will allow people to test the performance of this tool, currently the top one that the market offers. We are talking about an immersive experience, a museum-like installation narrated by David Attenborough, where archaeological artifacts come to life and can be studied from different aspects: stunning.
L.R. To conclude, however, my choice falls on another new and metanarrative transmedia format. In the Realm of Ripley, created by Koreans Soo Eung Chuck Chae and Eun Jung Chae, an AI-generated actor interacts directly with the audience. Meanwhile, a virtual reality viewer affects the events unfolding on the screen in real time, altering the visual experience for the audience present. So everything is interconnected in a live performance. Absolutely unmissable. We look forward to seeing you at Immersive Island.
