Tribeca Immersive Brings XR Experiences With Important Messages

This summer, prepare for something exciting: Tribeca Festival, which is taking place in New York, June 8-19, brings Tribeca Immersive – a special section of the well-known festival showcasing XR experiences. The cutting-edge experiences, developed by emerging and established creators, will involve the use of augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality. Through immersive storytelling, the selected artworks will cover meaningful themes dealing with how we relate to nature and the society around us.

XR Experiences That Promote a More Harmonious Life

We can move forward in harmony only if we understand and accept our past. This is the underlying topic of the XR experiences from all over the world to be presented at Tribeca Immersive. From Ireland and Colombia to Canada and the US, content creators speak of the troubling relationships we had with each other and with our environment in the past.

“Each experience presented at Tribeca’s immersive exhibition encompasses a standalone reality, represents a cause, or serves as an embassy to a world where users have agency — a chance to act: bear witness, make a statement, reach out, or simply play,” said Tribeca Festival’s Immersive Curator, Ana Brzezińska, in a press release. “We invite everyone to visit the virtual worlds created by artists, who take us on a meaningful journey of their vision, and tell evocative stories that demand to be told, carried in silence, or inherited through generations.”

Three Festival Sections for Content Creators

Tribeca Immersive allows different content creators to compete in specific categories and showcase their XR experiences. There are three categories: Main Competition, New Voices Competition, and Best of Season.

Main Competition contains XR projects developed by leading XR creators, which are eligible for the Storyscapes Award. There are eight experiences in the Main Competition, including EVOLVER, Kubo Walks The City, Zanzibar: Trouble in Paradise, and Please, Believe Me, to name a few.

New Voices Competition features 2021/2022 premieres from first- and second-time XR directors and represents an opportunity for emerging artists to become known and gain an audience for their immersive experiences. The lineup includes experiences such as LGBTQ + VR Museum, Planet City VR, The Black Movement Library, and six other XR projects.

Best of Season is a collection of four best immersive experiences which premiered in 2021, including End of Night, and Glimpse.

The topics covered by the XR experiences featured at Tribeca Immersive touch on sensitive and painful moments in a not so distant past, such as:

• The internment of Japanese-American citizens during World War II;
• The life of Indigenous people in Canada;
• An outlook into the everyday life of the LGBTQ+ community;
• The experiences of people fleeing Nazi-occupied countries.

A secondary topic deals with the future of the planet from an environmental point of view. The extended reality experiences look at how our world may look if we fail to address the current climate crisis.

Attendees will have the chance to experience these sensitive topics in the most personal way. This is why so many directors, producers, and filmmakers turn to the latest technologies. They have the opportunities to tell their stories through immersive and interactive experiences that make the viewer a participant – present in the middle of the action.

How to Attend Tribeca Immersive

If you are interested in unique and meaningful extended reality experiences, which will be running this year from June 10-19, you can take a look at the full selection of XR experiences and select the ones you want to attend.

You can attend either in person or from home, by accessing a virtual exhibition through The Museum of Other Realities, available for Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Valve Index, and Windows Mixed Reality.

If you own an Oculus Quest headset, you can tune in to The Museum of Other Realities through Oculus Link or the Virtual Desktop application (requires a VR-ready PC).