Virtual Reality Experiences at Immersion

The sleeping artist is visited by wonderful, inspiring dreams. His mother enters, brings him coffee and urges him to paint. Another Mother Meese comes in, and another, and another… and the artist paints in a frenzy of creation, because “art is just to get started, and right away it’s more awesome than Picasso” (Jonathan Meese). While Clouzot’s famous film “Le mystère Picasso” (1956) showed the creative act on a two-dimensional plane, here the spectators are right inside the events, entering into their mysteries. The white studio space becomes a multidimensional screen. Several mothers enter, commenting, evaluating and provoking a work that is a reflection on Alfred Hitchcock, Anthony Perkins, Richard Wagner and Joseph Beuys. It leads to a compelling insight: Everybody is an artist, at least beneath these VR-googles.

In a cooperation project with ARTE spanning several years, Berliner Festspiele/Immersion and invited artists are exploring the potentials and limits of Virtual Reality Experience and 360°-film. This technology has been inspiring game developers for years, and artists are also beginning to experiment with VR to open up and explore new spaces for art.

Credits:
KOBALT Kreation, Berliner Festspiele/Immersion, ZDF/ARTE
Concept/Idea Jonathan Meese
Production Julia Schmejkal
Editors Simon Ofenloch (ZDF/ARTE), Kay Meseberg (ARTE360/ARTE G.E.I.E.), Caroline Mutz (ARTE G.E.I.E.), Annina Zwettler (ARTE Deutschland), Jochen Werner (Berliner Festspiele)
Direction René Päpke, Robin von Hardenberg
Dramaturgy Henning Nass
Dramaturgical consultation Thomas Oberender, Jutta Wangemann
Compositing/3D Paul Schunack, Alexander Court, Lukas Scholz, Dennis Röscheisen
Prop Caroline Rössle-Harper
Music Bernhard Lang
Photography Direction Philipp Wenning
Technical Direction KOBALT Martin Michaels
Lighting Andreas Schwab, Julian Lück
Cutter René Päpke
Sound Sven Mühlender

In the world of “RHIZOMAT VR”, the Institut für Methode (IFM), a global private company, has replaced the state and suppresses and monitors people with the promise of security and stability, down to the minutest areas of their life. The underground group Rhizomat, whose members push ahead in research into an alternative social order in individual cells, as well as organising practical resistance, rebels against the totalitarian IFM. Rhizomat has set itself the task of snatching those whose free will has not been completely extinguished from the dictatorial system. The regular mind control tests by the IFM are used by Rhizomat to set up alliances. Between dystopia and utopia, obedience and freedom, a struggle develops for each individual.

Mona el Gammal’s work is an unusual form of political theatre: without actors, and with a stage that extends into the Internet and virtual space. In winter 2016, visitors were able to explore a dystopian yet very real-looking installation in a former telecommunications office in Palisadenstraße in Berlin that took up several floors. There, in a very individual way, they could discover the traces and evidence of these stories that took place in these rooms and link them. The installation ran for three months 12 hours a day. With the 360° movie “RHIZOMAT VR”, this now-defunct space can be entered and seen anywhere.

“RHIZOMAT VR” is the pilot project of a cooperation between ARTE and Berliner Festspiele / Immersion. The film, which was co-produced with INVR.SPACE, explores the artistic potential of connecting theatrical forms with new technological possibilities. At the same time, the film reviews the new medium with criticism and reflection, thereby leading the way to the development of virtual reality as a medium of art. Welcome to the Institut für Methode.

Credits:
Berliner Festspiele/Immersion, ZDF/ARTE, INVR.space GmbH
Executive & Creative Producer Sönke Kirchhof
Director, Scenography, Script & Concept Mona el Gammal
Technical Director and Creative Technologist Philipp Wenning
Director of Photography Christian Möller
Postproduction Supervisor and Cutter Philipp Wenning
Editors Simon Ofenloch (ZDF/ARTE), Kay Meseberg (ARTE360/ARTE G.E.I.E.), Annina Zwettler (ARTE Deutschland), Jochen Werner (Berliner Festspiele)

With Rike Will (Ivo Solar), Sascha Sommer (Shevek Puts)
Original voices Gil Webster, Peter Feltham, Julia Whitham, Richard Doust, Ella Perrin, Amina Nouns