Exhibition Overview
Encounters is delighted to launch Virtual Encounters – an exhibition of creative multi-platform, documentary storytelling.
Curated by Ingrid Kopp, Virtual Encounters will feature award-winning Virtual Reality, Interactive and documentary video games. On offer also is a Master Class with Arnaud Colinart, producer the award-winning Notes on Blindness: Into Darkness, which screens at the Festival.
Curator’s Statement:
“When non-fiction storytelling and technology come together incredible things happen, from exploring painful personal experiences (That Dragon, Cancer) to being tracked on the web (Do Not Track), to immersion through sound and virtual reality of a man’s experience of going blind (Notes on Blindness: Into Darkness) These exciting projects show how elastic and expansive the world of non-fiction storytelling can be, an inspiration for artists to try something brave, new and different.”
— Ingrid Kopp Electric South, Senior Consultant, Tribeca Film Institute
Virtual Encounters 2 – 4 June 2016
Exhibition opening hours
2 June 1pm – 8pm
3 June 10am -6pm
4 June 10am – 4pm
Free Entry, first come first served
The American Corner, Cape Town Central Library, Cnr Darling & Parade Street Cape Town
Virtual Reality
The Ark Creators: Eline Jongsma and Kel O’Neill
The remaining three Northern White Rhinoceros are protected at all times by armed bodyguards. Viewers are put face to face with these animals and the scientists fighting to save the species from extinction.
Notes on Blindness: Into Darkness Creators: Arnaud Colinart, Amaury La Burthe, Peter Middleton & James Spinney
After losing his sight in 1983, John Hull began recording an audio-diary documenting his discovery of “a world beyond sight.” This piece uses those recordings and real time 3D, VR and binaural sound to explore the interior world of blindness.
6×9: An Immersive Experience of Solitary Confinement Creators: The Guardian’s Francesca Panetta and Lindsay Poulton
In the US 80,000-100,000 people are in solitary confinement. They spend 22-24 hours a day in their cells, with little or no human contact for days or even decades. This project explores the psychological effects of solitary confinement by putting you in a cell.
Lebron James Creators: Felix Lajeunesse and Paul Raphael
An unprecedented look into the NBA superstar’s intensive pre-season training.
Collisions Creator: Lynette Wallworth
This is a VR journey to the land of indigenous elder Nyarri Morgan and the Martu tribe in the remote Western Australian Pilbara desert. The Martu lived largely untouched by Western culture until the 1960’s when he witnessed an atomic test.
The Click Effect Creators: Sandy Smolan and James Nestor
Follow two marine researchers as they freedive deep below the ocean’s surface on a single breath to capture the “click” communication of dolphins and sperm whales, the world’s largest predator.
Assent Creator: Oscar Raby
In 1973 Raby’s soldier father witnessed the execution of a group of prisoners captured by the military regime in Chile. Assent puts the viewer in his father’s footsteps and becomes a moving meditation on violence, memory and family.
Clouds Over Sidra Creators: Gabo Arora and Chris Milk
The Zaatari Refugee Camp is home to Syrians fleeing violence and war, many of them children. This is the story of Sidra, a 12-year old girl in the camp.
Waves of Grace Creators: Gabo Arora and Chris Milk
Decontee Davis is an Ebola survivor in Liberia who uses her immunity to care for orphaned children in her village.
My Mother’s Wing Creator: Gabo Arora and Ari Palitz
A portrait of a mother in Gaza, coping with the death of her two children in the 2014 war.
Interactive Web Docs
Network Effect Creators: Jonathan Harris and Gregor Hochmuth
Network Effect explores the psychological effect of Internet use on humanity by creating an overwhelming experience that reflects our over-stimulated lives. The length of time you can watch it for correlates to life expectancy in your location.
Walden, a Game Creator: Tracy Fullerton
Explore philosopher Henry David Thoreau’s experiment in living at Walden Pond from 1845 to 1847 by walking in his virtual footsteps.
That Dragon, Cancer Creators: Ryan Green, Josh Larson
An immersive narrative videogame that retells Joel Green’s 4-year fight against cancer through poetic, imaginative gameplay that explores faith, hope and love.
Whiteness Project: Intersection of I Creator: Whitney Dow
Intersection of I is part of Dow’s ongoing Whiteness Project. It combines video, data visualisation, and interactivity to explore how millennials who identify as white, or partially white, process their racial identity in the United States.
Do Not Track Creator: Brett Gaylor
From mobile phones to social networks, and personalized advertising to big data, this project shows how the modern web is increasingly a space where our movements, speech, and identities are being recorded.
Lahore Landing Creator: Jeremy Ho
In Lahore, the cultural heart of Pakistan, a new generation of citizen activists is working to enact change in their embattled country. Four media students from Singapore visit Lahore, where they encounter a Pakistan beyond the violence and terrorism portrayed in the media.
Virtual Reality Master Class
Arnaud Colinart is Producer and creative director at AGAT Films & Cie / EX NIHILO. He is particularly interested in applying new technologies and interactive mechanisms in the conception of narrative works, whether documentary or fiction.
Virtual Reality Master Class
“A World beyond sight: in the making of the VR experience Notes On Blindness – Into Darkness”
Having just won the prestigious Tribeca Storyscape Award for interactive works in New York in April, join Arnaud Colinart as he discusses the making of this award-winning virtual reality piece, Notes On Blindness – Into Darkness. The talk will be followed by a demonstration of the piece.
R50/ticket 4 June 11.30am – 12.45pm Workshop 17 V&A Waterfront, 17 Dock Road
