Virtual Reality Experiences at Immersion
Here, we present films, keynotes and essays from our Immersion programme series that deal with virtual reality.

Brigitte und Jonathan Meese
© René Päpke
Brigitte & Jonathan Meese: Mutter und Sohn = Realität trifft Kunst (Z.U.K.U.N.F.T. der Unendlichkeit)
The first virtual reality production by Jonathan Meese and his mother Brigitte Meese is a journey into the heart of the dictatorship of art. In the artist’s virtual studio, the spectators witness the emergence of a 360°-Gesamtkunstwerk of the future.
To the film at arte.tv
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

RHIZOMAT VR
© Torben Otten
Mona el Gammal: RHIZOMAT VR
The 360° movie “RHIZOMAT VR” extends the Narrative Space “RHIZOMAT”, built by the artist Mona el Gammal, from physical into digital space.
Zum Film auf arte.tv
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
“The viewer never forgets that he is wearing those glasses.“
Mona el Gammal, Kay Meseberg and Thomas Oberender talk about “RHIZOMAT VR”.
Read the article at Berliner Festspiele Blog (scroll down for English)
David OReilly: Everything
“’Everything‘ is trying to describe to the best of my ability the situation we find ourselves in as human beings. Rather than being written like a story, it was created more like a giant organism. A description of the world through patterns I feel are true.” At our 2018 conference INTO WORLDS. The Craft of Blurring Boundaries, artist and game developer David OReilly spoke about 3D software as a new artistic medium, his conception of art in general, the generation of meaning, and his latest project “Everything”.
“Everything” is his second video game, released in 2017, which he describes as a “simulator of everything”, since the player is able to change their perspective constantly and take control over the most various of things: flowers, bacteria or galaxies. Exploring the borderline between video game and artwork, “Everything” was awarded the jury prize at the Vienna Shorts Film Festival and the Golden Nica at Ars Electronica, among others.