Tribeca Film Festival 2016 is having an amazing line up of Virtual Reality Experiences and events this April. Mark your calendar for Storyscapes, April 14 – 17, IMAGINATION Talks on April 19 and Virtual Reality Arcade April 19 – April 23. April is officially VR month in New York.

Tribeca IMAGINATION talks, powered by the Hatchery, is a one-day summit on April 19. This event will feature a series of provocative talks on innovation and a groundbreaking VR talk delivered in Virtual Reality.

STORYSCAPES runs  April 14 – 17 featuring VR projects and  installations.

Virtual Reality Experiences Lineup at Tribeca 2016

 

A 2016 TFI New Media Fund grantee, The Argus Project is a trans-media project that directly intersects the public debate over police accountability. At the center stands a suit of tactical counter-surveillance armor embedded with body cameras that offers a simple question: “If the police wear body armor to protect themselves while in public, what must “The Public” wear to protect themselves from the police?” Video projections surround the suit featuring former officers, activists, and family members directly impacted by police violence, creating a space for a real conversation on police violence—one that our country desperately needs.

The northern white rhinoceros is the most endangered animal on the planet. Only three remain, and they are protected at all times by armed bodyguards. The Ark is a virtual reality documentary that puts viewers face-to-face with the last northern white rhinos, and tells the story of the global coalition scientists who are fighting to rescue the species from extinction.

DEEP VR is a meditative and psychoactive VR experience, controlled by the player’s breathing. Discover a beautiful underwater seascape where the world challenges, surprises, and comforts. Explore the ways in which VR can change our relationship with both body and mind.

Intersection of I is an immersive video installation, part of Whitney Dow’s ongoing Whiteness Project, which is a 2015 TFI New Media Fund grantee. It combines video, data visualization, and interactivity to explore how millennials who identify as white, or partially white, process their racial identity.

Network Effect explores the psychological effect of Internet use on humanity. Like the Internet itself, the project is effectively endless, containing video clips, spoken sentences, news, tweets, charts, graphs, lists, and millions of individual data points. The result is a voyeuristic and unnerving experience about our over-stimulated digital lives.

After losing his sight in 1983, John Hull began recording an audio-diary documenting his discovery of “a world beyond sight.” John’s original recordings form the basis of this interactive experience, which uses real time 3D, virtual reality, and binaural sound to explore the interior world of blindness. (This project is a 2015 Tribeca Film Institute New Media Fund grantee.)

Seances, co-created with the National Film Board of Canada, presents a wholly new way of experiencing film narrative. By dynamically generating a series of film sequences in unique configurations, potentially hundreds of thousands of new stories will be conjured by code. Each will exist only in the moment—no pausing, scrubbing or sharing—offering the audience one chance to see this film.

SENS is the first project to adapt a graphic novel into a virtual reality. It is also a beautifully universal experience that works without words. The game invites you to a trip through a graphic maze: all around you are arrows in ever-changing shapes, showing you the way. Where will it lead you? (Ayats served as the designer of Climate Anxiety at Tribeca Hacks in 2015.)

In a land that never was and a time that could never be, a boy stared into the eyes of a fantastical creature. Around them, a magical forest; in front of them, a magical journey. The Turning Forest is a real-time CG VR experience for people young and old–inviting audiences into a magical space of imagination, where rustling leaves are also the footsteps of something familiar, yet strange. In this place, things are not quite what they seem.

Virtual Reality Arcade

Virtual Reality  Arcade is running from April 19 – April 23 on the 5th floor of the Tribeca Hub located at 50 Varick Street . You can purchase a ticket for $43 for any of the dates and gain access to all of the Virtual Arcade program experiences listed below. It is impressive that 15 of the VR exhibits are making their debut at Tribeca. Get tickets here.

An orphan girl, living in a fantastical city in clouds, endures tragedy. Lighting enchanted matches, she relives her past and grasps at future hope. The story is a meditation on the sacrifices people make for the greater good. Crafted by Penrose Studios, ALLUMETTE is set in a fully immersive, virtual reality world.

 

THE ARTISTS OF SKID ROW

Ramiro Puentes is an outstanding artist—photographs, paintings, sculpture, poetry. But more than that, he’s risen from crippling poverty and used art to reimagine the streets of Skid Row.

Playing with movement, space and time, ASHES shares the tragic story of two lovers, told specifically for 360-headset environment. Director/Producer Jessica Kantor draws upon her classical ballet training to bring us this unique piece inspired by choreographer Pina Bausch, known for telling stories through dance.

Free-dive one hundred feet below the ocean’s surface to discover the “click” communication of dolphins and sperm whales. The Click Effect is a live-action VR experience from Annapurna Pictures, Vrse.works, Sandy Smolan, and James Nestor; the first in a series of immersive journalism experiments commissioned by New Frontier at Sundance Institute, published by The New York Times Op-Docs.

From acclaimed Australian artist/filmmaker Lynette Wallworth, Collisions is a virtual reality journey to the homeland of indigenous elder Nyarri Morgan and the Martu tribe in the Western Australian desert. It explores the dramatic collision between Nyarri’s traditional world view and the cutting edge of Western science and technology, when he witnessed firsthand and with no context, an atomic test.

 

THE CRYSTAL REEF

• Section: Virtual Arcade
• Release Year: 2016
• Directed By: Cody Karutz, Jeremy Bailenson, and Lauren Knapp
• Country: USA

A rocky reef off the coast of Italy demonstrates the future of climate change. Meet Dr. Fio Micheli, the marine scientist who studies this reef, and dive underwater with her to learn about ocean acidification and how human-produced carbon dioxide will turn all the world’s oceans into what scientists are calling “the ocean moonscape.”

THE CRYSTAL REEF: INTERACTIVE

• Section: Virtual Arcade
• Release Year: N/A
• Directed By: Jeremy Bailenson

Experience climate change firsthand in this fully immersive virtual reality experience. Use your hands to swim and examine marine life as you become a scientist and discover “ocean acidification.” Dive through a digital replica of the reefs of Ischia, Italy and learn about how these reefs are a “crystal ball” that show the future of all the world’s oceans.

DRAGONFLIGHT

• Section: Virtual Arcade
• Release Year: 2016
• Directed By: Michael Conelly, Lyndon Barrois, Will Telford, and Keith Goldfarb
• Country: USA

A spectacular dragon embarks on a hero’s journey to do battle against a duplicitous sorcerer and protect the world from the second coming of his ancient and powerful progenitor. DRAGONFLIGHT is the debut project of VR studio Blackthorn Media, an Academy and Emmy Award-winning team of story-tellers, visual effects veterans, programmers and artists.

GRATEFUL DEAD: TRUCKIN’

• Section: Virtual Arcade
• Release Year: 2016
• Country: USA

A sneak peek VR experience of the Grateful Dead’s historic “Fare Thee Well” final tour. Mixed in Dolby Atmos, the audience is given unprecedented access to the bands performance of the hit song “Truckin”, from a vantage that is otherwise impossible to experience.

HARD WORLD FOR SMALL THINGS

• Section: Virtual Arcade
• Release Year: 2016
• Directed By: Janicza Bravo
• Country: USA

Award-winning film and theater director Janicza Bravo ventures into the world of VR with an exploration of the circumstances and lives affected by a single tragedy in Los Angeles. Drawing from a real-life experience, Bravo and studio collaborators WEVR craft a remarkably powerful narrative that culminates in a devastating conclusion.

HOLIDAYS: CHRISTMAS VR

• Section: Virtual Arcade
• Release Year: 2016
• Directed By: Scott Stewart, John Hegeman, Amanda Mortimer, Gabriela Revilla Lugo, and Distant Corners
• Country: USA

When a man stoops to dangerous new lows to get his son the ultimate VR headset for Christmas, he finds out more about himself and his family than he ever wanted to know. From writer/director Scott Stewart (Legion, Priest) and starring Emmy Award-winning actor Seth Green and Clare Grant, CHRISTMAS is part of Distant Corners’ HOLIDAYS anthology feature created by John Hegeman and produced in association with XYZ Films.

INVASION!

• Section: Virtual Arcade
• Release Year: 2016
• Directed By: Maureen Fan, Eric Darnell, and Michael Hutchinson
• Country: USA

Directed by Eric Darnell (Antz, Madagascar), this interactive and animated film follows menacing aliens with vastly superior technology who come to claim the Earth and destroy anyone in their way. Despite incredible odds, Earth’s citizens rise up and defeat the evil aliens. Surprisingly, these Earthly citizens are not humans but a pair of the cutest, meekest and cuddliest creatures of our planet: two fluffy white bunnies.

KANJU

• Section: Virtual Arcade
• Release Year: 2016
• Directed By: Stephanie Riggs
• Country: USA, Rwanda, Nigeria

Journey across Africa in search of Kanju, “creativity born of struggle.” Visit a floating school rising from the slums of Makoko. Witness President Obama’s historic speech in Nairobi from the press pit. This uplifting, immersive documentary seamlessly layers traditional narrative techniques and 360° live action. Feel the power of storytelling merged with technology and rediscover Africa as the bright continent.

KILLER DEAL

• Section: Virtual Arcade
• Release Year: 2016
• Directed By: Aaron Rothman, Irad Eyal, and Anthony C. Ferrante
• Country: USA

Directed by Anthony C. Ferrante (Sharknado 1, 2 & 3), Killer Deal follows a struggling machete salesman who runs into trouble when his discount hotel room comes with an unwelcome guest. A very unwelcome guest. The experience takes all the things we love about over-the-top horror and puts the viewer right in the middle of the “splash zone.”

MY MOTHER’S WING

• Section: Virtual Arcade
• Release Year: 2016
• Directed By: Gabo Arora and Ari Palitz
• Country: USA

In Gaza, foundations are built, destroyed, and built again. This virtual reality experience follows the struggle and strength of a mother coping with the death of her two children in the 2014 war.

OLD FRIEND

• Section: Virtual Arcade
• Release Year: 2016
• Directed By: Tyler Hurd
• Country: USA

Lose yourself in a vibrant psychedelic dance party brimming with joyful insanity. VR filmmaker Tyler Hurd and WEVR present a fun animated VR music video experience for Old Friend by Future Islands. Gaze upon the elegant dance routines and enjoy the blissful absurdity. Unhinge yourself, feel the ridiculousness and dance like everyone is watching.

SEEKING PLUTO’S FRIGID HEART

• Section: Virtual Arcade
• Release Year: 2016
• Directed By: The New York Times
• Country: USA

And finally, the last of the Virtual Reality experiences at the Tribeca Film Festival is   Seeking Pluto’s Frigid Heart from The New York Times. It’s a stereoscopic VR experience that brings you as close as you are going to get to Pluto. You can watch the New Horizons spacecraft zoom through space, soar over rugged mountains and bright plains, and stand on Pluto’s unique surface as its largest moon hovers over the horizon.