In addition to the 120 feature-length films showcased at this year's Sundance Film Festival, the ground-breaking New Frontier program is presenting its largest showing ever. A decade old, New Frontier focuses on artworks located at the intersection of art, gaming, technology and filmmaking. An early adopter of virtual reality, Frontier is now presenting 30 VR experiences, 11 installations, three feature films, and one performance. Curated by Shari Frilot, New Frontier features, among others, Tracy Fullerton's Walden game, Jonathan Monaghan's digital video art, Francesca Panetta and Lindsay Poulton's claustrophobic simulation of solitary confinment and much more.
Below are some highlights (click on the images for additional information):
Jonathan Monaghan, Escape Pod, 2015
"This seamlessly looped 20-minute computer-animated film invites you to join a golden deer as it traverses glossy, surreal environments of wealth, power, and authority. Composed of one continuous tracking shot, this visually fantastic journey imagines a new reality devoid of human bodies, left only with material desires and ambitions of power." (Sundance New Frontier)
Tracy Fullerton, Walden, A Game, 2016
"This poetic, atmospheric game simulation of Henry David Thoreau’s experiment in living at Walden Pond, invites players to walk in his virtual footsteps, attend to the tasks of living a self-reliant existence, and discover in the tranquil beauty of a virtual landscape, the ideas and writings of this unique philosopher." (Sundance New Frontier)
Nonny de la Peña, Brad Lichtenstein, Jeff Fitzsimmons, Across the Line, 2015
"This penetrating, immersive documentary uses a combination of live footage, volumetric capture, and a montage of real audio, to give the viewer an on-the-ground experience of what it is like to directly confront anti-abortion extremists trying to intimidate patients seeking sexual and reproductive health care at Planned Parenthood." (Sundance New Frontier)
Francesca Panetta, Lindsay Poulton, 6x9: An Immersive Experience of Solitary Confinment, 2016
"Right now, more than 80,000 people are locked in tiny concrete boxes where every element of their environment is controlled. They are confined to spaces with no human contact, and the sensory deprivation they endure causes severe psychological damage. These people are invisible to us—and eventually to themselves. This powerful, animated VR lets you experience firsthand what life is like in solitary confinement." (Sundance New Frontier)
Vincent McCurley, Loc Dao, NFB Digital Studio, Cardboard Crash, 2015
"In this cleverly animated virtual reality experiment, the ethics of artificial intelligence algorithms in self-driving cars are questioned on the occasion of an unavoidable crash. This experience puts you in the passenger’s seat of an automated car just moments before a fatal crash, forcing the algorithm to make incredibly difficult decisions. Given varied cultural and individual ethics, who should be designing these algorithms, and how should they be chosen?" (Sundance New Frontier)
Nonny de la Peña, Kiya, 2015
"This harrowing, animated reenactment tells the story of a real-life domestic violence homicide in which two sisters engage in a doomed struggle to save the third from being shot and killed by her ex-boyfriend. With audio from the 911 calls, and utilizing imagery captured at the real event, Kiya puts you at the scene of the crime, thereby transforming the audiences from viewers to active witnesses." (Sundance New Frontier)
Alex Schwartz, Devin Reimer, Job Simulator, 2015
"This delightful experience ignores established gaming systems as it places the viewer in an office cubicle from the future. Job Simulator is a unique blend of storytelling, comedy, and intuitive game mechanics that focuses on micro-interactions—pick up a tomato, smash a glass, eat too many donuts, and explore a sandbox world with childlike wonder." (Sundance New Frontier)
Alex McDowell, Bradley Newman, The Leviathan Project, 2016
"The year is 1895, and you're in a scientific lab underneath a massive flying whale. This augmented-reality-to-VR setting, developed by the 5D World Building Media Lab, is based on Scott Westerfield's best-selling trilogy,Leviathan. Participants are invited to embody flying jellyfish (called Huxleys), move freely inside the trilogy's narrative world to engage physically and emotionally with its human and animal characters, and witness a massive whale fly off the screen and into the air, above audiences at New Frontier." (Sundance New Frontier)
Andrew Goldstein, Robyn Gray, Michael Murdock, Sisters: A Mobile VR Ghost Story, 2014
"Be careful where you look because someone—or something—doesn't want you here! Otherworld Interactive presents their popular horror franchise that transports the viewer inside a chilling animated haunted house where sisterly ghosts will scare your pants off." (Sundance New Frontier)
LINK: Next Frontier
