If tech leads to anxiety more often than serenity, the VR Live Mandala Experience may alter your state of mind. But you’ll need to dash to Allapattah Tuesday to partake.
Hands in the controls, VR headset strapped on, you’re ready to climb the Himalayas and enter the Temple of the Tilting Buddha.
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FilmGate Interactive
Media Festival #09
ARTISTS
Édith Jorisch
A film and television director based in Montreal, Édith Jorisch writes and directs documentary and fiction that challenge contemporary notions of identity and migration. Her work centers on social vices through a bittersweet and human lens. In 2017, her documentary L’héritier was selected for the FIFA and won the Gémeaux prizes for both best director and best documentary show. Her work has been broadcast on Télé-Québec, Radio-Canada, RDI, TV5, TF1 and Histoire. Édith turned to fiction with the short film Tibbits Hill, an allegorical fable on music as an anti-militarist weapon, which earned her a selection at the FNC in 2021. AWE, her most recent short film which premiered online on the site NOWNESS, offered her an opportunity to mix fiction and documentary. She is presently working on writing her first feature film, which was selected in 2020 at Forge Québec Cinéma, presented by Netflix.
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Miri Chekhanovich
A multidisciplinary visual artist, Miri Chekhanovich combines research in biomaterials, video, and installation. Born in Armenia, Miri grew up in Jerusalem and immigrated to Canada in 2013. She currently lives and works in Tiohtià:ke (Montreal), where she obtained her MFA at Concordia University, within the Department of Fibers and Material Practices. Her creation emerges from a gentle state of urgency, which leads her to sharing and intervening in the public space. She is interested in neglected materials, geological history, traumatic wounds and the illusion of time. Her work is an invitation to slowness and the development of a strong sense of care. Her video installation Being with was presented by the Phi center in Montreal, as well as part of the Venice Biennale in 2019. Miri Chekhanovich’s work is supported by the CAC, the CALQ, the NFB and the research grant from the FRQSC.
Frances Adair Mckenzie
Frances Adair Mckenzie is an interdisciplinary artist who has exhibited in Canada and Europe. Her work negotiates speculative investigations into concepts of materiality, staging and form, always in deference to process as the hands-on manipulation of real materials and objects, most often through the interface of digital technology and sculpture. Frances’s augmented reality book, Glossed Over & Tucked Up, was published in 2016 by Montreal’s Anteism Press. Her association with the Nation Film Board of Canada began with the 10th edition of Hothouse, when she created the surrealist animated short A Little Craving. Her most recent NFB project, The Orchid and the Bee, is a VR stop-motion animation that speaks to the interconnectedness of all living things. Frances lives and works in Montreal.
Filmmaker Ahnahktsipiitaa is Blackfoot and Dutch, originally hailing from The Piikani Nation. During his upbringing he resided alongside his mother in Lethbridge and many other dusty Southern Alberta towns. Currently, Ahnahktsipiitaa is the Operations Manager for the Indigenous Matriarchs 4 AR/VR media lab (IM4-Lab). Ahnahktsipiitaa sits on Telefilm Indigenous Working Group, among others. Community centred, he aims to elevate the voices and stories of Indigenous peoples, whether creating spaces for youth works in the Talking Stick’s Festivals REEL Reservation: Indigenous Cinematic Indigenous Sovereignty Series or through his company Blackfoot Nation Films.
Sam Butin
Sam Butin is a writer and narrative designer. His previous credits include the historical video game 1979 Revolution: Black Friday (BAFTA, SXSW, The Game Awards Nominee, Facebook Game of the Year), HERO (Sundance Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival Storyscapes Winner) and Fire Escape: An Interactive VR Series (NYFF, Tribeca, VIFF). He has developed original stories for partners including Google, Verizon, Eko & The Brown Institute.
Thomas James Tucker
Thomas Tucker received his BFA from Kansas City Art Institute and his MFA from School of the Art Institute of Chicago where he was a Joan Mitchell MFA grant recipient. He has been evolving complex drawings into animation/kinetic sculptural pieces using 3D software and sound design for over a decade.
Prof. Tucker maintains an international profile through his exhibition record and his collaborative research, which often takes him to Japan and the Middle East. Some of these projects include: dealing with body mechanics using motion capture, using technology to create a responsive virtual heritage environment in collaboration with art historians, using animation to describe internal organ movements in collaboration with bimolecular imaging specialists, helping city councilmen visualize new traffic simulations and designing serious games.
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Malia Bruker
Malia Bruker is a filmmaker and Associate Professor of Digital Media Production at Florida State University. Bruker works primarily in documentary but has produced genre-bending work in the realms of dance film, artists’ moving image, and other experimental disciplines. Her films have screened at International Film Festival Rotterdam, Athens International Film and Video Festival, Philadelphia Film Festival, Chicago Underground Film Festival, and many more. Her dance films have screened at Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema, Choreoscope Barcelona Dance Film Festival, Antimatter Video Art, Sarasota Film Festival, and American Dance Festival’s Movies by Movers, winning awards at Third Coast Dance Film Festival, ScreenDance Miami, and ADF’s Dance for Camera Festival.
Alec Jerome Kreisberg
Multimedia artist, animator, and musician Alec Jerome Kreisberg is a Miami native who prefers to take the roads less traveled. As someone who has always had a desire to create cartoons from an early age, it's taken him a lifetime of exploring film-making, visual arts, and music in conjunction with a love for emerging technology to begin and sustain his career as a virtual film-maker in South Florida.
Damian Thorn-Hauswirth
Damian Thorn-Hauswirth is a Florida-based digital artist specializing in 3D content creation. Damian attended the University of Central Florida for his undergraduate degree in Digital Media - Visual Language. He returned to UCF and received his MFA in Animation and Visual Effects completing his virtual reality thesis film, Castle of Unknowing. With an initial love for video games, he has created motion graphics for the art auction house Phillips to 3D visual effects and simulation for Lockheed Martin. Damian has three chickens, two cats, one bunny, and a small garden which he tends to while not working on the computer.
Eddie Lou
Founder of Sandman Studios & Sandbox Immersive Festival (SIF). Eddie was graduated from Imperial College London, University of the Arts London, and London Business School. As an VR expert, Eddie is focusing on pushing the development of narrative VR content industry in China and has been invited to speak at major film festivals, such as Venice, SXSW, Berlinale, Cannes, etc.
Sandman Studios is the leading company of AR/VR in China as Free Whale, Fresh Out, and Mandala were premiered and selected by Venice VR competition from 2017 to 2022, which Mandala is also a co-production project with Digital Rise in France. Eddie and his team are developing a new metaverse virtual platform that can provide interactive, immersive, and entertainment for creators, event companies, curators, and brands.
Jimmy Cheng
Director of International Partnership at Sandman Studios / Sandbox Immersive Festival. Jimmy is focusing on XR distribution, representing contents from over 170 XR studios (Atlas V / Floreal Films / City Lights /etc.), and servicing different Chinese platforms or hardware companies to find suitable distribution opportunities. Meanwhile, Jimmy is leading the conversation / partnership between Sandman Studios and different international film festivals / XR studios.
The distribution / licensing model of XR content was immature even until today, which is why Jimmy saw the opportunity to form a solid business model for supporting the creators / studios to distribute their projects and generate reasonable revenue. From November 2018 till today, Jimmy has signed over US$ 9M as licensing fee to support the XR ecosystem / licensing model growing more mature.
Mirko Vogel
Mirko Vogel (Lead Sound Designer and Managing Partner at Vaudeville Sound ) is an experienced and internationally recognized sound designer, composer, engineer and software developer.
Mirko’s projects have taken him to over 60 countries with a broad spectrum of collaborations from indie rock bands to Grammy-winning artists, brands, filmmakers, TV producers and Video Game publishers. Mirko's work has featured in countless projects and collaborations with festivals, brands, artists video games and film productions for Netflix, Shutterstock, Universal, HBO, Selfridges London, BBC, iTV, MTV, Comedy Central, AMC Networks, CBS, Viacom, and Nintendo, Cut Copy, Flume, Sofi Tucker among many others
Victoria Bousis
Victoria started as a career prosecutor for the Attorney General of Illinois to bring justice to the disenfranchised. As a producer, she transcended social, political, and geographical barriers to bring powerful messages to global audiences with notable films showcased at Venice, TIFF, and Sundance.
In 2018, Victoria earned a Master’s in Media, Technology, and Innovation from MIT, converging cinema, gaming and neuroscience to deliver character-driven stories to be experienced by audiences with agency. Stay Alive My Son is her directorial debut, officially selected in Cannes’ development showcase in 2020, Venice in 2022, and won “Best Experience” and “Revolutionary Director,” “Best Debut Director” in Sweden, Hong Kong, and Singapore in 2022.
Abel Kohen
Abel Kohen is a Paris based French writer-director with an extensive track record in animation and visual effects. Even in early childhood, his mind was dead-set on becoming a director, an ambition fuelled by a healthy obsession with film and video games.
He has contributed to prestigious projects like compositing on Cartoon Network’s multi-Bafta winning show The Amazing World of Gumball and on Netflix’s Black Mirror, as well as directing product films for Nokia which created an instant buzz upon release. He’s also crafted short films which have been screened in festivals around the globe, and keeps a steady backlog of projects in development.
Demian Albers
Demian Albers is an animator and VR director. He started as a 2d animator and cartoonist and during his career he expanded these skills with 3d game development, large scale video mapping projects and augmented reality artworks. He has an insatiable curiosity into new technologies. He explores these technologies mostly with the purpose of telling stories. Since the resurgence of virtual reality in 2014 he has been creating a diverse range of experiences for this new virtual world. He loves to explore the boundaries and create new ways of experiencing a story.
Clement Deneux
Born in 1982 in Normandy. He began by studying applied arts in France and engraving techniques at the School of Fine Arts in Krakow (Poland). After a master's degree in visual communication, he began to design and direct opening titles sequences for tv series and feature films. He also directed numerous music videos and commercials, and then devoted himself to writing and directing fiction and documentaries in virtual reality and traditional techniques
Elise Morin
Elise Morin develops an interdisciplinary practice rooted in ecological thinking that questions our re-lationship to the visible and to types of coexistence. The design and production processes generate col-laborations with scientists, local communities, engi-neers, musicians and philosophers.
The choice of specific places and environments are intrinsic components of her work. They enable reflection on the relationship of creation to the common good, on the role of esthetics in understanding other perceptions of a damaged world.
Elise Morin has notably exhibited in France at the Centquatre, the Jeu de Paume, the Grand Palais, the Museum of Contemporary Art of the city of Bucharest, Moscow, and Tokyo.
Gilles Jobin
Gilles Jobin is a choreographer living and working in Geneva whose productions have been performed all over the world since 1995. Based in London from 1997 to 2004 he created the groundbreaking pieces A+B=X (1997), Braindance (1999), The Moebius Strip (2001) and Under Construction (2002), relying on choreographic language outside of established aesthetic frameworks that included forays into visual arts and live art. In 2003 he created TWO-THOUSAND-AND-THREE for the 22 dancers of the Ballet of the Grand Théâtre de Genève for a performance that “transcends both classical and contemporary dance” (Libération). His creations are being presented in major film festivals such as the Sundance Film Festival (2018 and 2020) and the Venice Film Biennial (2018 and 2020), leading dance festivals such as the Lyon Dance Biennial (2018) or BAM (2019) in New York or museums such as Haus For Electronishe Kunst / HEK in Basel.
Seo Kim
Seo Kim (Minkyung Kim) is a producer who has developed a number of TV series,
films, and screenplays. She is also known as the director of numerous experimental films, dance films, and FT Island’s music video.
Co-CEO of Studio ZinZa, a creative collective that thrives to produce daring yet popular videos by promoting collaborations among creators specialized in various visual contents such as films and music videos. Their major focus is on building a creative studio specialized in VR/MR storytelling and Art/Cinematic VR with great artistic sensibility.
Following the production of I Make Birds, they are currently working on the
second “I Make...” VR project called I Make Letters. By focusing on VR films, they
continue to experiment with the narrative and image structure of VR films and
explore the expandability of media that cross different boundaries.
Youngho Myung
Youngho Myung started his career as a TV producer specializing in educational and
entertainment shows and also worked as an assistant director of the film Public
Enemy. He has directed a number of film trailers, short films, and interactive films.
He is currently developing a feature-length VR film.
Co-CEO of Studio ZinZa, a creative collective that thrives to produce daring yet popular videos by promoting collaborations among creators specialized in various visual contents such as films and music videos. Their major focus is on building a creative studio specialized in VR/MR storytelling and Art/Cinematic VR with great artistic sensibility.
Following the production of I Make Birds, they are currently working on the
second “I Make...” VR project called I Make Letters. By focusing on VR films, they
continue to experiment with the narrative and image structure of VR films and
explore the expandability of media that cross different boundaries.
Jakob Kudsk Steensen
Jakob Kudsk Steensen (B. 1987, Denmark) is an artist working with environmental storytelling through 3d animation, sound and immersive installations. He creates poetic interpretations about overlooked natural phenomena through collaborations with field biologists, composers and writers. Projects are based on extensive fieldwork. Key collaborators include Musician ARCA, Composer and Musical Director for the Philip Glass Ensemble Michael Riesman, Ornithologist and author Dr. Douglas H. Pratt, Architect Sir David Adjaye OBE RA, BTS, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and the Natural History Museum Berlin, among others.
Nick Hardeman
Nick Hardeman is a visual artist and programmer born, raised and currently living in Miami, FL. He is a graduate of the MFA Design+Technology at Parsons The New School for Design. Nick’s work blends his love for making physical marks with dynamic, interactive digital landscapes that provoke curiosity and encourage play. Nick’s work ranges from immersive full body installations, physics based music visualizers to algorithmically controlled drawing machines. Nick is constantly looking for playful, unique methods to marry programming output with conventional techniques like water color painting. He contributes to open source coding toolkits such as OpenFrameworks that are designed to assist artists.
Professionally he is the Minister of Interactive Art at Design I/O, a small studio focused on creating immersive interactive installations.