I spoke with the curators of Tribeca Immersive 2025 Jazia Hammoudi and Casey Baltes to unpack the 11 impact project that are being feature in this year’s selection. We also talk about Tribeca’s new collaboration with Onassis ONX and Agog, how the selection process has changed over the years.
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.458] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast. Hello, my name is Kent Bye, and welcome to the Voices of VR Podcast. It's a podcast that looks at the structures and forms of immersive storytelling and the future of spatial computing. You can support the podcast at patreon.com slash voicesofvr. So this year's Tribeca Immersive is a little bit different in the sense that there was a little bit more private as to how they were taking in submissions. They did take in submissions, but... It's going to be Onassis Onyx as well as Agog are co-curating this year's edition in collaboration with Tribeca Immersive. And so I had a chance to talk to both Jazzy Ahmoudi from Onassis Onyx as well as Casey Baltus from Tribeca to talk about not only the new changes of Tribeca Immersive and what they're really going forward with, showcasing a lot of these impact projects but also Jazia actually has a background in art history and museum studies and so just the way that she describes the program is just a real master class in trying to find ways to contextualize these pieces within the lineage of art history but also try and really describe both the context quality and character of the experiences in a way that is really succinct and powerful to draw a lot of the deeper themes of this year's selection so I'm all hyped up to be on my way out to Tribeca. I'll be on a plane by the time you're listening to this or already at Tribeca. And so, yeah, really looking forward to checking out this year's crop of immersive projects and impact immersive art pieces here at Tribeca Immersive. So we're covering all that and more on today's episode of Wastes of Era podcast. So this interview with Jazia and Casey happened on Wednesday, May 28th, 2025. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:01:44.301] Jazia Hammoudi: My name is Jezia Hamoudi. I'm the program director of Onassis Onyx in New York. Onassis Onyx is a platform for artists working in XR and new media. And we support artists in the development of projects from incubation to distribution. And this year we've had this very exciting opportunity to partner with Tribeca and Agog to support this new evolution of Tribeca Immersive. at WSA.
[00:02:16.442] Casey Baltes: And I am Casey Baltus. I'm vice president of Tribeca Immersive and Games here at the company and most importantly for this conversation, the festival. You know, Tribeca Immersive has a long history in the space and we really champion artists who are exploring emerging technologies, new media to tell stories. And most fundamentally, many of those artists live in the realm of virtual reality.
[00:02:43.322] Kent Bye: Great. And maybe each of you could give a bit more context as to your background and your journey into the space.
[00:02:50.344] Jazia Hammoudi: Yeah. Okay. So my background is in art history and museum studies. And for a long time, I thought I would be a curator of West African painting and sculpture and of contemporary international art. And I started getting interested in art and technology specifically around 2016. 2016-2017, and I saw my first VR piece ever by Noni de la Pena. I believe it's called Crossing the Line, but it's about the experience of trying to get an abortion. And I was completely blown away by the technology, by the sensorial world that this created. And it led me to meeting the people who are currently my colleagues, Matthew Niederhauser and John Fitzgerald. They were doing this really cool project. with Tribeca, or at Tribeca rather, called Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear. We started working together. I became the studio manager for an artist named Jakob Steenson, who's actually in Tribeca Immersive this year. So it's kind of a full circle moment for me. And then I joined Onassis Onyx nearly three years ago now to really support building programming and partnership to uplift XR at large and bring it, you know, onto a global stage and to bigger audiences?
[00:04:15.420] Casey Baltes: From my perspective, I've had a 20 plus year history with Tribeca. And from the early onset, Tribeca has really championed new forms of storytelling in cross mediums. I've had many roles at the festival. The one probably most significant prior to this is as managing director. And during that time, that's when the Immersive program was born. So this idea of sort of helming a ship that supports not only filmmakers, but different types of artists. Strategically, I started that alongside curator Ingrid Kopp those days, and then have seen, you know, at a macro level, the sort of evolution of Immersive and additionally as well, games under the Tribeca umbrella.
[00:05:03.120] Kent Bye: Okay, well, this year's edition of Tribeca Immersive is a little bit different in the sense that there weren't open applications or submissions that were being taken. And it was a process that was in collaboration with ONIX as well as with the GOG in terms of curating this year's program. So Casey, I'd love if you could maybe provide a bit of context, you know, from the beginnings of you being involved with Tribeca Immersive that there was like submission processes. And then like last year there was a decision to refund all the submissions. And then there was a venue change. And then this year to have another edition that was more of a private invite only process. So yeah, I'd love to, if you could just give a bit more context for the evolution of Tribeca Immersive over the last number of years.
[00:05:46.701] Casey Baltes: Yeah, I mean, I think immersive section is fairly singular, I think, within the festival in that we really have to start strategizing almost wholly new every year. There's sort of nothing taken for granted that we can and will do the same thing because of the nature of the space and how it's evolving pretty rapidly. Also, the sort of sheer nuts and bolts of the physicality of seeing how much and if we can support different formats and whatnot. So That timeline is actually very short for me. We do think about this year round and we do plan ahead as much as possible. But to be responsive, as responsive to either the industry or the field or the artists or Tribeca at that moment, we usually begin towards end of summer, early fall. And every year, the process for submissions can change based on what the strategy and what the plan is. We love an open call for submissions, but this year we had the partnership timeline didn't sort of allow us to proceed that way. That being said, submissions this year, while invite to submit, we're free. That's, I wouldn't say a first for us, but definitely something that in consideration, whereas the open call for submissions did have a submissions charge. So we want to understand and respect anyone who submits and respect their time and effort. So we try not to just sort of generally open a call for submissions. just to open a call for submissions.
[00:07:12.744] Kent Bye: Okay. And what was the process? Yeah. Oh, go ahead, Jazia. I was going to ask for you coming on board, but you may have already been going there. So.
[00:07:20.111] Jazia Hammoudi: Sure. I was actually just going to add a note about the submission process and about this current evolution responding to the field. We were really feeling that such a major preoccupation in the present and future of distribution and how we can serve artists and consumers. you know, artists and projects even better. So this invite to submit was both an evolution that happened in terms of time and capacity, but also really from careful thinking about how do we select projects that we confidently feel will be ready to distribute, you know, spend maybe less time going through submissions of projects that don't exist yet, and then spend more time supporting the artists and building out full-scale installations that programmers, curators, and audiences can imagine in all kinds of institutional and cultural settings. So we put out this invite to submit, you know, basically inviting people to recommend projects to us. Those recommended projects received an application. We had... 250 submissions, which felt really good and felt like a great survey of what's happening in the field globally.
[00:08:39.569] Kent Bye: Okay. Okay. And Casey, maybe you could elaborate a little bit on how Onassis Onyx and Agog came onto the radar to be able to be collaborators on this year's selection.
[00:08:50.560] Casey Baltes: Yeah, I think part of the thinking going out of the summer, definitely into the fall, was that it can and might take a village to really properly produce this year's immersive edition alongside properly support the artists. And then part of that is also recognizing what skills Tribeca brings to the table and what skills Tribeca may not have or may not just be prioritizing within the umbrella of the organization and acknowledging that there are other entities that could make this better, could make this different and could actually take a nod to what I feel is happening within the immersive space is sort of a widening definition of what is immersive and an inclusion of different artists haven't historically existed in Tribeca's world. And that first instinct definitely led me to Onyx and Onassis because I think there is just a broader scope related to some of the work that is being incubated under Jazia and Team's realm than we have previously acknowledged or known. And then additionally, going back to sort of the fundamental extended reality aspects of immersive, I think that a GOG was a natural partner to sort of complete the circle. So I think, you know, really, again, looking at relationships that Tribeca had, who might be the right partner, and then engaging in those conversations. And lo and behold, the three triumvirate group of people that we we are really, I feel like, creates a different DNA for this year.
[00:10:30.012] Kent Bye: Jason, I'd love to hear from your side, Jazia, coming on board to help curate and put together this year's program and what you were really excited about to be able to explore.
[00:10:40.057] Jazia Hammoudi: Yeah, I mean, it's been an incredibly rewarding and special, you know, special privilege that, you know, me, I and Onyx definitely doesn't take lightly. I mean, I think You know, ONIX as a platform is hugely experimental and focused on field building. So, you know, one of our benefits is this ability to operate with degrees of flexibility and enter into new kinds of engagements and partnerships. I mean, collaboration is really the forefront of everything we do. And I don't really think that good culture work in the 21st century can happen without institutional collaborations. Also, it felt really special and important to us to be able to work with Tribeca Immersive as this legacy institution and anchor for the XR world and anchor in New York City. And then, you know, being able to work with Agog, too, felt so special. important and necessary for the current moment, you know, thinking about this impact orientation. And impact and social good really has led a lot of our thinking and curation of the show itself because we're really in a moment where uplifting artists' voices, thinking about community, thinking about global issues are paramount. We all know the situation in the United States. So this has been really kind of a beautiful marriage of institutions that each bring different strengths to build something that I hope really stays with people and is a great time and gives lots of food for thought and supports these artists to fly.
[00:12:22.176] Kent Bye: Nice. Well, I think it's probably worth to start going through the different program. Where do you want to start in terms of talking around these different projects that you're featuring this year?
[00:12:30.901] Jazia Hammoudi: We can start. We have a bit of a pathway. Casey, what do you think about kind of moving counterclockwise?
[00:12:39.525] Casey Baltes: Yes, I think so. Josie, I think you are really an expert in taking people through a audio virtual tour of what's to come within the space. So I'll let you take it away.
[00:12:50.828] Jazia Hammoudi: Okay, wonderful. I do just want to say, you know, there is a kind of physical logic to the movement around the exhibition, but this is not prescriptive. Kent, you can walk in any direction you want, but this is just how we thought about it. So when you enter the exhibition space, the main wall, the opening wall is framed by two really compelling works. On the left, you have this piece called Boreal Dreams by Jakob Steenson that is this massive double-sided LED wall on which is this really meditative generative world taken from real-life scans and data of boreal forests and experimental forests. It's accompanied by a really poetic spatial score. And the experience is about bringing you into these environments and climate zones that are at risk of disappearing because of climate change and offering this moment to commune with nature. But you're not quite sure. sure what of this environment is real, what of it is synthetic. And that's part of the idea as you become immersed in this beautiful, you know, on this beautiful double-sided LEDs. Alongside Boreal Dreams is the Scientific Project, which is a web experience that takes you through the boreal forest environment in different climate zones. So it's looking very tangibly at what happens to this ecosystem at different climates. At the very heart of this work is thinking about the connections between climate and the unconscious. When the temperature of the Earth changes, so do our dreams, so does the unconscious and the subconscious. So this is a work about climate, but also very much about human interiority. And it's putting a different angle on the urgency of climate change. You know, let's think about, yes, the disappearance of ecosystems, but also the changes that these disappearances will rot inside of us. So I think it's a very, a very powerful work that we're thrilled to have. On the other side of the main wall, so kind of Boreal Dreams' partner up front, is this piece called The Power Loom by Lasiba Mabitzela, Meghna Singh, and Simon Wood. This piece is two parts. There's an AR component that takes you to Wall Street, where on the pillars of the New York Stock Exchange via an AR experience called the Founders Pillars, you can see African textiles taking over the columns of the New York Stock Exchange. And this is an homage to the populations lost to slavery and to the foundations of America are so much on African labor and cultural traditions as well. So it's a really interesting intervention in public space and otherwise this kind of bastion of capital. Inside the exhibition, as its companion, is this piece called the Power Loom, which is a generative film about African textiles that will be projected onto a floor loom called a single-headed loom that's used all over the African continent, particularly in West Africa. I'm really excited by this piece. It does have a sonic element. You'll hear the sound of loom sounds, you know, of weaving sounds, essentially. So it's a wonderful kind of sonic environment there. And I'm very excited about... The loom as a projection surface, you know, it's made out of cotton fiber and wood. And I really love thinking about alternative surfaces for projection. So often when we think of XR, we think about new media. We think about hyper sleek space age aesthetics, you know, the perfect gray Pantone color for color fidelity of the projection, etc., I'm really excited about the idea of using a different kind of surface and what that does for immersion and for aesthetic experience and also for what that says about what is the future. You know, the future doesn't have to look sleek. It doesn't have to look grayscale and smooth. It can also look like a loom that's been used on the African continent to build textiles forever. And I find them quite interesting counterpoints, the Power Loom and Boreal Dreams. Are you following me so far? Should I keep going?
[00:17:47.098] Kent Bye: Yeah. Yeah, that all sounds great. Go ahead. Keep going.
[00:17:51.033] Jazia Hammoudi: Okay, great. So if you see the boreal dreams to your left, so you're moving counterclockwise. And when you round the corner, you hit the fabulous double header that is two projects of AI and me. So under these great creators moths. You've probably and people have probably seen one or both of these works in some of the European festivals. But we were really excited to bring this dynamic and challenging AI work to New York City. So you have the confessional, which really is a facsimile of a confessional, like in church, except made in steel. And you go and sit inside of it and the AI judges you. The AI can be reticent, it can be provocative, it can be rude, it can be encouraging, but the idea here is that you sit in judgment. There are spectators, so people can watch you being judged and you wait for what the AI delivers in real time. So this is really making extremely present the way that algorithmic systems are already judging us every day. You know, certainly advertising, we all see the kinds of ads that pop up on our Instagram. Mine, I think because I'm a 35-year-old woman, are all about makeup and babies, which I'm very resentful of. But this work really brings that to the forefront and really asks you, How comfortable are you with being judged, with being categorized like this? How do you feel being judged in the public sphere? What do you take away from this judgment? So that's the confessional. The second part of the installation is called AI Ego, in which some of the images and footage and judgments that are happening in the confessional then will be displayed on CRT monitors. So that is not a one to one. For example, if you're sitting in the confessional, your face is not out there on the CRT monitors. Rather, the CRTs show images from throughout the day. But it becomes this kind of comment on portraiture and also the gaze. You know, CRTs can have relationships with surveillance, certainly sitting in the confessional. You know, you can think about what do you call the place where like the police question you? What do you call that?
[00:20:21.727] Kent Bye: Interrogation rooms?
[00:20:23.128] Jazia Hammoudi: Interrogation rooms, exactly. So it has a lot of negative, but also positive associations. So there is this kind of back and forth between the space of judgment and this projection of your two-dimensional image. And do these things make up who you are? Or in fact, is AI reading us in a way that we don't want to? Yeah. I think this work has toured in Europe, but I'm very curious to see how a New York and a U.S. audience responds to this. We're in a moment that's, of course, very identitarian, very inflamed politically. So I think this one will cause a lot of conversation, which I'm looking forward to having with the New York audience.
[00:21:10.677] Kent Bye: Yeah, just a quick note, because I did have a chance to see this at IFA Doc Lab and talk to the creators of MOTS, Daniela and Octavian. And it was kind of a funny conversation because Octavian was like, you know, I don't actually recommend that people see this. And so it was just kind of like, you could sense this wanting to explore these ideas, but at the same time, there's certain aspects of the actual visceral experience of the AI that could be harsh for people in a way that he has some struggles with in terms of like, you know, just how AI is going to have this direct confrontation with people and this being judged. But at the same time, despite him saying that, people still actually do want to get judged by this experience as well. So it's kind of like a paradoxical thing where We all want to see the hot takes and kind of get roasted by AI and then create this whole group experience with your friends to see what the AI thinks about each person. So it's kind of an interesting piece that is kind of exploring lots of things, like you said, like these hackers are already like judging us. So anyway, I just want to kind of throw that in because it's a provocative piece, but also one that even the creators have this contradictory feelings over.
[00:22:21.022] Jazia Hammoudi: Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, we are a social species, right? We do like to gather in the town square and judge and be judged. So it's playing with really interesting human impulses. But now we have this kind of other category of judgment. Right. This other category of information that is adding a new dimension to our public square. So I'm really ready for some challenging conversations during the show. So. If we keep moving, we have a moment of communion and pleasure through music. We thought after AI and Me, let's take people to a different kind of place and activate a soul space, maybe a less heady space in New Makham City. This is from a really great group of artists called Mipsters. They're Muslim futurists. And they have made most reductively a DJ experience, but really a musical experience that allows you to remix and manipulate music from across the Muslim diaspora, whether it's classical, you know, Egyptian classical music to now guitars from Mali to 808 drum patterns that you would hear in a club in London. to Makru and Sufi mystical singing, you get it all and you get to create your own soundscape. This work is playful on the surface, but has deep, deep connections in Sufi mysticism and religious philosophy in music as the avenue to transcendence. What I think is really powerful here is while their perspective is a Sufi one, music is almost a universal tool for communion and transcendence. You know, from the rave to the church, this is a medium that humans have always been using. to forge these connections and find these internal spaces. So I think that while the inputs, you know, some of these musical styles from across the Muslim and Arab diaspora, from North Africa through Central Asia, will be new for some of the audience that is coming into Tribeca, the outputs will be wholly unique and tied to your intervention. That piece, that space really comes alive visually with these immersive projection visuals that are generative and based on kind of visuals and architectural building blocks of Arab architecture. So you get these beautiful tessellations in these neon colors surrounding and flooding you as you DJ these, you know, incredible gnawa beats and synth pop and other things. I think, you know, this is going to be a powerful moment in the show. And it was also, you know, it felt important to bring in elements of Arab culture that were really about connecting when, you know, sometimes Arab cultures can feel remote in the United States. But this one, you immediately feel it, you see it, and you are the driver of it.
[00:25:47.003] Kent Bye: It sounds like this is a piece that is for one person, but others can watch that 20-minute performance that someone's doing. So there's a way for people to participate without actually being the driver.
[00:25:59.032] Jazia Hammoudi: Exactly. So, you know, something that I hadn't thought of is that with AI and Me's confessional and New Makam City kind of occupying the same hallway, we have two really different, you know, juxtapositions of what spectatorship is. The confessional is about that spectatorship of judgment that's relatively passive. New Markham City, it's you're on the dance floor, like vibing to the DJ. You know, that identity of the DJ is not so important, but you're going with them potentially into this trance space or this space of communion through music. So yeah, we have really kind of these two different public square moments that I want to think about a little bit more.
[00:26:44.565] Kent Bye: Nice. Okay, so we're going through the hallway, then I'm imagining you're going into another room, and then what?
[00:26:51.971] Jazia Hammoudi: So yes, so you go around the corner and you encounter the big black room installation, so to speak, of the exhibition. It's kind of this anchor turning point around which the show curves around it. It's at the southernmost point. of the exhibition, so I'm quite interested, actually, in what population behavior will be through it. But this piece is called A Father's Lullaby, and it's by an artist named Rasheen Fandej, who works a lot of MIT, is both an artist, a community leader, and a professor. For this work, A Father's Lullaby, Rasheen has been collecting stories and songs of formerly incarcerated fathers, as well as their families and communities, to build a work, really building an environment about collective memory, care, and transformative change through community and through art. So within this dark room, you will see projections of these fathers telling their stories and singing their songs, as well as some abstracted visuals that bring you into this transformative and collective space. This installation has several different components. So you have this collective experience in the projection space. Then you also have these illuminated touch panels where you sit down, put on headphones, put your hand on these touch panels and hear these stories and lullabies in your ear. So you have this more intimate experience But what I find really interesting about these touch panels as the triggers for what you hear is that there is this invitation to touch and invitation to warmth. So while these touch panels, you know, you're not touching a biological being, By virtue of having this illumination and keeping your hand on them in order to hear the whole lullaby or hear the whole story, you have this very physical feeling of connection and communion through the palm of your hand. And imagine your hand on this panel illuminated in the soft light. Of course, your hand gets warmer as it's standing there, a lullaby singing in your ear. It's a very powerful experience.
[00:29:22.574] Kent Bye: Nice. And it sounds like there's also an AR component to that that's out in New York City.
[00:29:27.057] Jazia Hammoudi: There is an AR component. So there are two other little components to this. On the outside of the exhibition space, there will be iPads where you can engage with the web experience for A Father's Lullaby, where you are invited to listen to audio. stories and lullabies submitted by the community and contribute your own, if you'd like, how you've been affected by incarceration or simply how you feel about it. So you're invited to become part anonymously of this database, this community database. Then there's the AR experience called Lullabies Through Time that takes you on a journey through lower Manhattan to these key sites to hear other community stories and lullabies and think about them really rooted in the history of New York City and really rooted in the hidden histories of communities that have been ignored or oppressed, especially the Lenape community on whose land we are all standing in New York City. And of course, the legacies of chattel slavery, former slaves and the formerly incarcerated. So this is a project that brings you into this big poetic world within the exhibition space and then invites you to look at lower Manhattan through the light of these stories.
[00:30:48.973] Kent Bye: Nice. So Casey, with these so far, I don't know if there's any of these that you want to make a comment on or if you want to wait till the end to make other trends.
[00:30:57.478] Casey Baltes: No, I will definitely chime in as Jezzy is chatting through, but really Jezzy is so good at explaining and walking people through the intent of the works as well as the work itself. Honestly, every time I hear her talk about it, I get excited to see the show as well. But by and large, I think what I'll just do is take a step back and Just talk about actually how we even approached putting the show together. The idea and the sort of matrix of decision-making for curation that Josie and I collaborated on so well together is really finding pieces, as you know, that are highly impactful, which I think can be demonstrated here. Multitude of formats, trying to tell stories from varying points of view, perspectives, as well as formats. And then as... Jeziah mentioned the readiness and the real tangibility of hopefulness that these works, this will be the first stop for these works and not the last stop. And that we're hopeful that these will live and breathe in other physical spaces in the US as well as globally after the show. I'll turn it back to Jeziah to keep us going on the tour.
[00:32:04.941] Jazia Hammoudi: Thanks, Casey. Okay, now we have left A Father's Lullaby and we enter into Uncharted by an artist named Quddus Haile Selassie. This work comes out of Quddus' long-term research into African language studies. systems and writing. So he's collected over 6,500 characters from African language and linguistic systems and built this kind of cosmology of language as a vessel for them and as opposed to or different from the kind of taxonomies of the Western archive. You know, his research is really about how this Western archive does not you know, doesn't work quite simply for African languages that are living and evolving, you know, pictorial and didactic, you know, very ancient and contemporary. So he's really thinking about ways that African language can be encapsulated and activated. In activating this archive of 6,500 characters, Quddus has worked very closely with a Ghanaian dancer who interpolates language by dancing through them. So what we have here is the oldest technology, the human body moving through these African languages, activating these ancestral knowledge systems, bringing them towards the body and the biological all in VR. So this is an archiving project. It's also a very powerful dance and movement project. And it's also a statement about the place of African languages and the ways that they are extremely contemporary. And we should be looking towards these knowledge systems as we build the future. So this project will be both a projection and in VR. So, yeah, continuing from this very powerful corner, we have the premiere of a project called The Innocence of Unknowing, which is also partially an archival project. It's also an essay film with live performance elements that examines news media footage of mass shootings in the U.S. since the 60s. So the artists, Riot Yesbeck and Milo Tleilani, have created the first ever AI system to first collect and archive news media footage of mass shootings since the 60s, and then to analyze it with an AI that they are framing as a scholar named Aurora, incidentally. So they look through this coverage and the AI Aurora pulls together patterns and analyses that we may not be able to see or may just be too painful for us to analyze. So they're really thinking about the scholar as an authorial voice and as an assistive tool to look at maybe truths about humanity or truths about the US that are hard for us to bear. I think something that's really powerful and thoughtful about what they've done is they've also used the AI in building this archive of footage. They've also used the AI to remove the shooter from every piece of footage. You know, this project is kind of anti-sensationalist, and it's not about locating perpetrator, placing blame, finding the bad guy, something like that. It's really about looking at the choreographies of public violence in the United States, looking at their patterns, and then having this live discussion between the artist and the AI professor, Aurora, about what they both see there. This AI humanities scholar, excuse me. So I'm very excited about this piece. I think it'll be hard in a different way. You know, many of us ask ourselves often about the legacy and ongoing realities of mass shootings in the United States. So this project is really looking very, very empathetically at how we can analyze and draw conclusions from this massive information that that is very hard for us to process. So that's where Aurora comes in. The artist will be doing several live performances throughout the exhibition, but you can always watch the essay film. But I think the live performance moments will be an interesting opportunity to come and contend with the live three-dimensional reality of the artist and the virtual being of this AI scholar as they move through the footage together. Then we have Fragile Home, which I think many people in Europe are familiar with by Andrzej Morawieck and Victoria Lapukina. But I think it's a critical moment to bring this piece to the United States. Andrzej and Victoria have created a new 12-minute cut, so it'll be worth seeing even if you've seen it before. And this is a mixed reality experience about... what home means and what it means to lose home and thinking about the possibilities of rebuilding home in headset you find your world transformed into a ukrainian home filled with domestic objects and your ears are filled with voices and melodies that tell a story of displacement memory and resilience The piece goes through several chapters and you see and feel the disappearance of home. And it's really, you know, the Ukrainian setting is extraordinarily important. But I think part of the power of this piece is the way that it enables you and really encourages you to think about home on the most intimate level from your most prosaic objects that only you would care about, but hold preciousness in them. So I think it'll be an important moment of quietude. Also, again, I mean, the artists in the show are just so thoughtful. I'm really moved by all of them. But again, this is not sensationalist. This is not about shock and awe and fear. It's really thinking very carefully about the loss of home, which so many people on earth experience. So after you see Fragile Home, oh, excuse me, it's 15 minutes. I said 12 minutes, but I meant 15. But after you see Fragile Home, you round the corner of our great oval. Oh, by the way, Kent, the show is on two floors. And it's kind of an oval shape around the building. So here you are back at the top of the oval. You see the power loom. And you just pass it and go to the opposite side of the main wall. And you'll find a little surprise, which is scent. which is our only game work. And it was really exciting to curate a game piece with Casey, considering her deep, deep knowledge in games. I learned so much from this experience, thinking about what is a game as an artwork? How do we account for aesthetics? How do we account for gameplay? How do we account for impact? And I think we found the perfect one. Scent is a deceptively simple game. In it, you are a dog, so you're in a dog's kind of POV, and you roam a war-torn city. You witness mass atrocities, and you try to complete one task, which is collect human souls from bodies and lead them towards reincarnation. the city or the country, the conflict are not specific, but it is really a highly sensorial piece about the experience of being in a conflict zone and thinking about the good, the little good that you can do here. So this is a, you become a character who has the singular but essential task to complete. And you kind of focus on this while trying to stay out of the fray. It's kind of the opposite of a first-person shooter.
[00:41:00.279] Casey Baltes: I'll jump in here and say this piece is, I think it's, beauty is in its simplicity. Not only in the environment, it's completely, there's no dialogue in the game. Your path is chosen for you. So it's not necessarily that you have to wander and explore. It's really the act of witnessing and collecting those souls with no other agenda or goal or consequence. that make this game, rather, I think, separate from some of the other quote-unquote video games that we have in our other selection, and really illustrates the sort of space in between cinema, immersive work, and games, and the potential of that. And really, as a player, you should not feel like you have to have entered video games before. You have one opportunity. your one mechanic is just crouching and moving forward. And so it'll be a single button experience that I think just by the nature of trying to decide when to crouch will completely immerse you into the environment.
[00:42:01.525] Kent Bye: Nice. Okay, we're coming up in the home stretch now. We've got, I think, two or three minutes.
[00:42:06.172] Jazia Hammoudi: Home stretch. Two left. Okay, so you've completed the first oval, and then you go upstairs. The first piece that you'll see up there is called There Goes Nikki. It's an AR experience and site-specific sculpture from Tribeca alum Idris Brewster. He created this work with Michelle Stevenson and Joe Brewster. And this piece is really special in that it is an AR work of the late poet, Nikki Giovanni, reciting her poem, Quilting the Black Eyed Pea, We're Going to Mars. The artist volumetrically captured Nikki Giovanni just before her tragic passing. So this also has a lot of weight as a memorial to her. So in the AR, you're in this cosmic backdrop, and her voice guides you on this journey through the poem that's really about Black memory, imagination, and liberation together. So I think this piece is kind of a powerful counterpoint to a lot of the thinking and public discourse about space travel. Here in this poem, space travel is a metaphor for venturing into the unknown together. And this really felt like an important part of our overall curatorial concept, that it was really about community and building in the collective.
[00:43:42.503] Kent Bye: Yeah, and just a note on this also is that Michelle and Joe actually had a documentary that won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance back in 2023 called Going to Mars, the Nikki Giovanni Project. So I recommend folks check that out as well.
[00:43:56.081] Jazia Hammoudi: Yeah, it's an amazing documentary. And this is, it's kind of an AR sibling. And the artists have been really thoughtful about the setting. So they're building this kind of site-specific architecture slash sculpture that draws you in beyond the phone screen. And you end up in this more poetic space in which to immerse yourself in Nikki's cosmology. Finally, in the next bay over from There Goes Nikki, we have In the Current of Being by Cameron Costopoulos. This is a work that has been traveling a bit, but we thought it was really important to have it in New York City and exhibit it in the United States as much as possible, considering what is happening to trans rights and queer rights here. It's a VR experience that tells the true story of Carolyn Mercer, who is a survivor of electroshock conversion therapy because her gender identity was considered illness. This piece includes a wearable haptic vest, sleeves, and gloves. So while you're hearing and seeing Carolyn's story, you also receive vibrations that move to the rhythm of her storytelling and signal electroshock itself. You know, the haptics don't hurt you at all, but they bring you deeper into the sensorial experience of this forced procedure on Carolyn. This is a really powerful work. It's also very difficult because of the horror of Carolyn's story. And so it felt important to us and important to Cameron that we think very carefully about the experience and the immersion that we were putting people in and inviting them into and make sure that we gave that same amount of thought to the care that they deserve after they come out of this kind of thing. So alongside the installation of the VR experience, we will also have an off-boarding area where you can go sit down, have a sip of water, talk to an exhibition facilitator if you wanna know more, if you have reflections, and also see some reading material from the Trevor Project or other organizations that can speak more to what this therapy was and what we can do to combat the kind of prejudice that created the situation where this kind of therapy was ever considered medicine. So, you know, it's a powerful upstairs moment as well there where we have this look into this darkness of this electroshock conversion therapy told very bravely by Carolyn Mercer. Then we also have There Goes Nikki, which is this you know, futurist communitarian vision of possibility when we are gardeners, you know, in the cosmos. So hopefully people will feel that there's this effort that we have, you know, the show is called In Search of Us. So we've made this effort to look at the past, look at the present and think about the future in light of today and in light of what artists are thinking about and doing. So I hope that that's something that people feel as they move through the exhibition. And I hope that people come back more than once because there are a lot of stories here to take in, a lot of beauty and ideas to really take in.
[00:47:40.146] Kent Bye: Awesome. Well, we're I'm so hyped to be there and check out all these pieces. And I guess as we wrap up, I'd love to just get some final thoughts on the selection or any other reflections on this as a medium and where it might be going here in the future.
[00:47:55.037] Casey Baltes: I think just from my perspective, a lot of the thinking of this really came very naturally, which was a very refreshing process to have, both in the selections themselves, as well as the name of the exhibition, as well as the partners. You know, I think that Immersive artists really excel in telling stories about the most pressing issues today, and that technology only enhances the storytelling. So this idea, this imperative, I think the universal aspect of the show is namely drilling down to us as human beings and saying nothing more or less than that, having no other comment than to just sort of try to have a shared experience. And then seeing this work as well, we look at it digitally, but the way that even as Jazia walked you through the space, I think immersive exhibitions are by and large actually a very physical exercise. And this idea of physicality and proximity to other people in the room and shared experiences can only happen in the physical realm. And so I feel like that's something that should be acknowledged, I think, even in the immersive world as well, that that physical part and enhancing the physicality with the digital is really the aim. Josie, I'll let you finish.
[00:49:14.230] Jazia Hammoudi: Yeah, no, Casey, that's so well said. Yeah, I think exactly In Search of Us was really about bridging the physical and the digital. And, you know, with these artists as storytellers and world builders, we really tried to do some measure of justice to this world that they created by creating building the immersiveness within Headset and outside of it and giving people as an act of, you know, both trying to do the stories justice and hopefully as an act of generosity to the audience to give people multiple points of entry and multiple points of engagement in each one of these big creative worlds. So we really wanted to invite both body and mind into immersive art in different ways and at different kind of levels. And, you know, In Search of Us really is just that, you know, even before we started looking at submissions, Casey and I thought a lot about what our responsibility was to artists and to audiences. And it became clear and plain to us that our job was to present the multiplicity of us, of where we are now, you know, as best we could and through as many different creative and storytelling and aesthetic avenues as we could. So I'm excited for you to see it and tell us what you think.
[00:50:47.463] Kent Bye: Awesome. Yeah. So it's running from June 6th to 15th and then the following two subsequent weekends from the 21st, 22nd, 28th, 29th. And so I'll be there on site checking it all out and very much looking forward to it. And yeah, Jazia and Casey, thanks so much for joining me here on the podcast to get a little bit more insight as to this year's program and what we can expect. And I'll look forward to seeing you both on site and seeing all the projects. So thanks again for joining me here on the podcast.
[00:51:12.921] Casey Baltes: Great. Thank you, Kent. Thank you, Kent. See you soon.
[00:51:16.479] Kent Bye: Thanks again for listening to this episode of the voices of your podcast. And if you enjoy the podcast and please do spread the word, tell your friends and consider becoming a member of the Patreon. This is a, this is part of podcast. And so I do rely upon donations from people like yourself in order to continue to bring this coverage. So you can become a member and donate today at patreon.com slash voices of VR. Thanks for listening.
