Immerse\Interact (XL) – 16 projects selected

6 December 2023

Immerse\Interact and Immerse\Interact XL are two collaborative grant schemes organized by the Netherlands Film Fund and the Creative Industries Fund NL, which contribute to interdisciplinary media projects. Artistic research and experiment in the field of digital storytelling and the use of interactive or immersive media play a central role here.

During this second round of 2023, the following eight projects were selected for a development contribution:

A Day – Paul Boerenboom
A shared experience as a plea for empathy. Based on something that connects us all. Something we all have in common and share. Time.

Being Robot Beings – Sander Veenhof
Being Robot Beings is an immersive AR experience for two people. You direct the other person with your gaze, and you yourself are directed. The interaction feels playful, but in the narrative you experience first-hand with an AR headset what it is like to go through life in the future as a robot.

Hellfighter - A Modern Odyssey – Wosu B.V. and Suze Gil, Yvonne van Ulden
A proud but cynical African-American jazz trumpeter, who fought in the trenches of WWI, travels with his friends through Europe in the period between the two world wars. At odds with ever-meddlesome gods and mythical creatures, he sets out to find his own destiny.

Onverschillig en onhandelbaar – Demian Albers and Micha Hamel
Throughout the 20th century, girls who behaved freely were qualified as delinquents and subjected to sexist and stigmatizing treatment in re-education institutions. In this VR experience, using unique historical material, their harrowing histories are made experienceable and palpable.

Powers of Being 1/0 – Paula Strunden
Inspired by Kees Boeke’s Cosmic Vision and the Eames Office’s film Powers of Ten, this immersive installation explores scale transitions and outdoor/indoor spaces. The aim is to deepen participants’ emotional understanding of environmental issues and our connection to the world by means of sensory first-person experiences.

Tasman – Anne Fehres and Luke Conroy
Tasman is a VR journey with AI that explores the historical journey of Abel Tasman and combines his original diaries with contemporary insights. The audience is co-creator, navigating between stories from the past and the present. Through this immersive experience, the project challenges perceptions of colonialism, identity and digital truth.

Terror Element – Framer Framed, Anna Engelhardt and Mark Cinkevic
In a 360-degree video installation, Russian-born journalist Tamara navigates the murky waters of political manipulation and personal memories. She searches for the origins of her identity in the lasting impact of the mysterious bombings of Russian flats in 1999, revealing how past deceptions laid the groundwork for the war in Ukraine.

The Oracle – Victorine van Alphen
The Oracle is a futuristic ritual for big questions and small desires. It is media art at the interface of theatre, AI and immersive media: an interactive performance that gives immersants a taste of their own sensuality in a dance with AI visuals and robotic figures. The Oracle explores the subconscious through hyper-new media.

The following projects have been selected for a realization contribution:

Ancestors – Stichting Wild Vreemd and Steye Hallema
Stichting Wild Vreemd is developing Ancestors, an interactive group experience based on the Seven Generations Thinking, to encourage people to look further ahead and take responsibility for future generations. With the help of face-merging technology, participants become the virtual ancestors of future generations.

Beautify – K.O. Productions and Isaura Sanwirjatmo
Welcome to Beautify. Wander around in the live feed of a fictional social media platform where documentary, digital culture and live performance converge and online and offline life increasingly intertwine. A dystopian Instagram museum where you are surrounded by the contemporary online world of filters, TikTok beauty trends, intelligent algorithms and influencers, which together influence beauty standards.

De dyslectische schrijver – Cassandra de Klerck
In this work, the viewer goes on an intimate and personal journey through the mind of ‘the dyslexic writer’. By means of VR, a new world is created where dyslexia is made palpable and audiovisually understandable in a poetic and interactive way.

Underground Shelter – Scopic BV and Sjors Swierstra
During an air raid warning in Ukraine, people take shelter in underground spaces while life goes on. The VR project Underground Shelter brings these shelters to the outside world. This allows outsiders to experience the everyday reality of Ukrainians during the conflict.

Waiting for Cows – K.O. Productions, affect lab (Klasien van de Zandschulp en Natalie Dixon)
Waiting for Cows is an immersive storytelling project that explores the complex relationship between humans, animals and technology. The project offers a rare glimpse into the rhythms of the Dutch dairy cow, using the data feeds of cows to reveal larger power structures.

The following three projects have been selected in the latest round of Immerse\Interact XL. The aim of the Immerse\Interact XL grant scheme is to give makers of immersive and interactive works an extra impulse and to provide their projects with support (or additional support) in order to achieve high international ambitions and to create space for groundbreaking media research in an international context.

40 Acres – Stichting Ado Ato Interactive and Tamara Shogaolu
An installation documenting and celebrating the legacy of black land managers. It brings together their past, present and future and immerses the audience in an interactive experience using audio, projections and AI-enabled digital textiles. It is a space for reflection on the historical role of the Netherlands in the slave trade.

From Dust – Stichting DoubleA and Michel van der Aa (photo above)
Explore the boundaries of reality and identity in From Dust, a groundbreaking VR opera customized by you and for you using AI. You take an immersive journey through dreamlike spaces with interactive holograms and mesmerizing music where you are the co-author the scene.

The Evacuated – Stichting Sonic Acts and Femke Herregraven
The Evacuated is an audiovisual installation that explores how we deal with risk and uncertainty. It employs a game environment in which interactive storylines generate a sense of shared responsibility. In this way, it creates an experience of risk (including climate risk) that goes beyond risk calculation by computer models.