The Tribeca Film Festival for 2021 brings back VR and AR movies, experiences, and games with stories that rekindle people’s 360-degree sensory environments with sight, sound, and tactile feedback.
The festival had been postponed in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, and many of its features were shifted online and made available through HBO, the festival’s website, and Oculus.
As the situation seems much better now, the festival is coming back with online, outdoor, and in-person options through three different lenses that present the several ways in which people can participate and experience these stories. These include the Storyscapes at Spring Studio, outdoor and interactive experiences, and the Virtual Arcade.
Storyscapes at Spring Studio uses a mix of technologies to explore experimental styles of storytelling. As a result, virtual reality brings documentary-styled stories such as ‘Critical Distance’ to life, making them look like a family of orcas and giving the viewers a sense of echolocation. Similarly, ‘We Are At Home’ presents a virtual reality experience inspired by the Carl Sandburg poem, ‘The Hangman at Home.’
The Virtual Arcade presents different stories, namely ‘Madrid Noir’ and ‘POV: Points of View.’ The former is a 42-minute animation about a young woman who dives into her memories to solve a mystery after her uncle is declared dead. And the latter is a futuristic story about a 21-year-old Black computer coder tracked by a drone embedded with AI after being released from prison.
The Virtual Arcade at Spring Studios in downtown New York will accommodate visitors in one-hour time slots, and you can also experience these works right from your home using a VR device, such as Valve Index, HTC Vive, Oculus headset, or a VR-ready PC.
The film festival will also offer outdoor AR experiences. One of these experiences can be accessed anywhere through an AR app called ‘Breonna’s Garden’ designed to honor Breonna Taylor. Another AR artwork app called ‘Procession’ showcases experiences around climate change similarly.
The Tribeca Film Festival is set to begin on June 9 and will run until the 20th. Tickets are now up for grabs online.
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