DOK Exchange XR
DOK Exchange XR took place in hybrid form on the 20 October 2022.
This year our programme focused on:
- the issue of agency and accessibility
- spatial imagination and the process of prototyping
- healthy embodiment practices
- the future of safe social VR/AR
- designing and curating emotional convergence of virtual and physical worlds
- and finding alternative sources of financing for XR projects
Weronika Lewandowska
exchange [at] dok-leipzig [dot] de
DOK Exchange XR Conference was a hybrid event with speakers presenting an in-depth look at the various aspects of XR development. We critically looked at and analyzed new directions for XR and storytelling to better understand and take sustainable decisions on design, production and distribution processes.
Keynote Speakers
“Immersive audio for mindful embodiment”
Awarded audio director, composer and metamusician based in Warsaw, Poland. Teaching and research assistant at Fryderyk Chopin University of Music at the Sound Engineering Department. Guest lecturer at Visual Narratives Laboratory in Film School Lodz and Fine Arts Academy in Warsaw. Spatial and interactive audio expert. Founding member of INEXSISTENS xr art collective. His latest works include immersive music documentaries, interactive 6DoF VR performances and experiences, and also immersive journalism.
“Alternative sources of financing immersion productions (NFTs, Metaverse)”
Viviana Hochstätter is a creative Producer for XR content. A graduate of traineeship in International Producing and the program Atelier Ludwigsburg-Paris at the renowned Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg. She works for Expanding Focus in Leipzig where she has been Creative Producer for several VR / AR and Games projects pursuing strong visual experiences and working across mediums and genres. Among others she has been working on Games such as UTOPIA TOWER ENDGAME, KAIJU and several VR Experiences like LOST FORMS and the transmedia VR Experience CABINETS OF WONDER which has been running successfully in different festivals and world premiered at IDFA 2020.
“Designing and presenting an emotional convergence of virtual and physical worlds”
Dr. Monika Masłoń is a visual artist, an art educator and the author of the VR experience “CONTROL NEGATIVE”. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź and Ph.D. studies at the Film School in Łódź, where she completed her Ph.D. thesis entitled “Do zobaczenia” (See you), under the supervision of Prof. Józef Robakowski. She is a lecturer at the Maria Grzegorzewska University in Warsaw and the University of Leipzig where she conducts classes with the students of the department of Arts education in fine arts. The scope of her art activities is manifested mainly through realizations based on audiovisual material. She participated in numerous exhibitions and shows.
“XR prototyping – shaping spatial imagination”
Dr. Michael Nebeling is an Associate Professor of Information at the University of Michigan, currently on sabbatical at Meta Reality Labs Research in Redmond. At U-M, he leads the Information Interaction Lab, a human-computer interaction research group focused on virtual, augmented, and mixed reality applications (XR). His work has contributed novel XR authoring tools that accelerate design via rapid prototyping techniques, sometimes borrowing and extending concepts and techniques from filmmaking. He is XR Faculty Innovator-in-Residence with the U-M wide XR Initiative and created the XR MOOC series, a three-course AR/VR specialization on Coursera.
“Agency and accessibility – shaping ethical immersive experiences”
Born in former Czechoslovakia, Michaela Pňaček(ová) is an award-winning XR artist, creative technologist, a PhD candidate and ELIA scholar at York University, Toronto. Recipient of FIVARS Award for Excellence in Sound Design 2020, nominee for Best Entertainment at VRNow Awards 2021. Listed by Forbes Magazine among the best XR installations of 2019. Her focus lies in the ways emerging media impact the real through interaction with algorithmic processes and artificial intelligence. Director and producer of Symphony of Noise VR (2019) and co-producer of the VR piece Chomsky vs. Chomsky: First Encounter which premiered at Sundance Film Festival 2020.
XR creators presented their cutting-edge projects in development in front of an online audience, followed by feedback by more than 20 experts from the fields of research, funding, distribution, art and technology. We focused on building openness and equality in the process of knowledge exchange. A great opportunity to develop fresh ideas and build a bridge between the creators and the community of XR experts.
Brigid O’Shea started at the Berlin International Film Festival, working for various departments including Berlinale Talents, Berlinale Co-Pro Market and the EFM. She went to DOK Leipzig in 2010 and was appointed head of DOK Industry in 2014. She left in 2021 to establish the Documentary Association of Europe. She freelances for many documentary institutions in Europe and production companies and tutors across the globe on international co-financing and pitching as well as festival strategies and cultural management. She moderates and curates programmes on non-fiction filmmaking as an internationally-respected consultant with a wide and diverse network. She serves on the advisory boards of B2B Doc, Dokufest and Circle: Women Doc Accelerator, and is a programmer at Docs Barcelona.
Experts
Ágnes Karolina Bakk is a narrative designer and researcher at the Innovation Center of Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design. She is the founder of the Zip-Scene conference; co-founder of Random Error Studio; co-curator of Vektor VR. She is currently involved in several video game and VR projects.
Photo © Mate Lakos
Zdeněk Blaha is the Programme Director of Institute of Documentary Film and is managing the East Doc Platform, a key networking event focused on upcoming documentary films from the CEE region. As a freelance consultant Zdenek is working as script editor and UX consultant on various documentary and interactive/XR works, most recently Darkening (premiered at Venice Film Festival 2022).
Jutta Brendemühl is an international arts programmer & writer. Engagements: Goethe-Institut; EU Film Festival Toronto; Toronto Arab Film; North American Cultural Diplomacy Initiative; Toronto Cultural Leaders Lab. Juries & mentoring incl. Toronto Jewish Film Festival; DOK Leipzig; Kassel Documentary Festival; ArtworxTO.
XR Curator and Producer currently responsible for Immersive programming at Tribeca Festival. In 2020-22 Head of Studio at Kaleidoscope. She collaborates with public funds (Creative Europe MEDIA), NGO, universities and business. Former Discovery Group Producer and Director, and Multimedia Lead at the Grand Theatre–National Opera in Warsaw. The author of awarded documentary and VR projects.
Gabriella (Gabs) is cofounder & CCO of the award-winning Austrian applied immersive entertainment studio vrisch, the founder of the XR community XRVienna, Austrian Ambassador of Women in Immersive Tech EU, and a South American momtrepreneur, as well as one of Forbes’s 2018 top 20 EU Women Founders.
Agata Di Tommaso is a festivals manager at the distribution department of Division cinema – a leader in distribution & diffusion of immersive productions. She holds the Bachelor's degree in Cinema of university in her hometown Turin, the Master's degree in Semiotics of University in Bologna (a thesis on the impact of new technologies on exhibitions, from its creation to the visitors’ experience) and the Master in Management of Cultural Goods.
Dr. Rob Eagle is an immersive media researcher-practitioner, based in Bristol, England. As a Research Fellow at the BFI (British Film Institute) and Associate Researcher in XR Stories at the University of York, Rob is currently investigating how young people in the UK engage with everyday applications of AR for entertainment. Rob is also an Associate Lecturer on the MA Virtual and Extended Realities programme at UWE Bristol.
Uta Eberhardt, professional experience includes production and distribution of film, games and new technologies. Following a Master’s Degree in European Media Politics she started working for Creative Europe MEDIA in 2005. The Creative Europe MEDIA Programme programme supports AV-projects with European dimension and encourages the use of innovative business models and new technologies.
Oliver Kadel is an Emmy-nominated, multi-award-winning sound designer based in London. Since 2014 he’s worked on over 140 projects specialising in spatial and interactive audio for new generation immersive media for virtual training, 360 films, games and immersive location-based entertainment. Currently, Oliver is undertaking his PhD program at the AudioLab, University of York, doing research in Spatial Psychoacoustics focusing on assessing the impact of spatial and interactive audio on cognitive load and information retention in virtual training.
As the founder and CEO of INVR.SPACE GmbH and reallifefilm Sönke Kirchhof has been involved in more than 500 projects. Having worked in the field of documentary filmmaking and XR documentaries for more than a decade, Sönke has produced astonishing documentaries such as Kusunda, Ernst Grube, Blended Isolations and African Space Makers.
Che Lin is a scholar and curator focusing on new media and multi-reality world exploration. She holds a Ph.D from Peking University, and teaches at Communication University of China. She has been the curator of Sandbox Immersive Festival (2018-2019) and of Beijing IFF for VR Section. She collaborated with galleries and art spaces such as Serpentine Gallery Summer Pavilion in Beijing, Goethe Institute in Beijing, to curate exhibitions and events featuring XR technology and content.
Lina Mitschke (M.A.) is an art historian with a special interest in global art history and the decolonization of visual art. Currently her research focuses on contemporary African art. In the past she gave lectures at Kunsthochschule BURG Giebichenstein, TU Chemnitz and Martin-Luther Universität Halle-Wittenberg about topics like postcolonial theory, modernism and contemporary art.
Having worked for 6 years in the international sales business, Maxime Montagne joined WIDE’s team in 2016 and he is now head of acquisitions and sales. Since then, he also manages the WIDE VR department which was created at the end of 2016 and is one of the leaders in the international distribution of VR Films. Maxime Montagne is also co-founder and producer at 21Juin Cinema where he produced three feature films (Paris Is Us, The World After Us, Roaring 20’s).
Fabian Mrongowius is an independent producer for all things XR and new media. Through his career, Fabian has worked with many different formats such as VR, AR, volumetric video, metaverse and web3 experiences with diverse partners including content brands, creative agencies or cultural institutions.
Creative technologist, immersive consultant, generative designer, educator, curator, and audiovisual creator. He has 20+ years of experience with crafting interactive experiences – hosted on the web, various screen-based media, around physical space, in virtual immersive environments, and in between. He is based around London and in Meta-spaces, providing creative technology services for interactive agencies, game development companies, artists, film studios, theatres, retail, and public institutions.
Born in former Czechoslovakia, Michaela Pňaček is an award-winning XR artist, producer, and a researcher. She is a PhD candidate and ELIA scholar at Cinema and Media Arts at York University, Toronto. Her focus lies in the ways emerging media impact the real through interaction with algorithmic processes and artificial intelligence.
Dr. Joanne Popinska is a Polish-Canadian award-winning XR filmmaker, documentarian, and sociologist, with a Ph.D. in Film Directing (specialization: VR). Her debut film, The Choice, premiered to acclaim at International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) and SXSW, where it won the Audience Award. Using the latest technology and various narrative techniques, she continually explores how to get audiences' attention and evoke empathy and interest from different perspectives.
Sadah Espii Proctor (she/her/Espii) is a composer/sound artist and multimedia director working in theatre, dance, opera, installations, and extended reality. Her work centers around themes of memory and diaspora, social issues, and presence within physical/digital/virtual spaces. Credits include: Direction – Girl Icon; Design –Finding Pandora X, Alliance XR Culture Gallery, Chronicle X, and Soul Tree Forest. Espii's work has been featured both nationally and internationally in numerous festivals. She is currently a Lecturer at Yale University's David Geffen School of Drama.
Mandy Rose is Professor of Documentary & Digital Cultures at UWE Bristol. Her research examines evolving documentary aesthetics, ethics, and audiences. Mandy is Co-Investigator on the UKRI My World programme, she was Co-Investigator on the EPSRC Virtual Realities: Immersive Documentary Encounters project. She is Co-Convenor of i-Docs.
Lars is a queer curator, networker, community builder for XR. Lars curates exhibitions, conferences, and workshops for several international festivals and institutions. He focuses on XR and playful new media as democratic tools and contributes to the ethics behind it. He explores how XR exhibitions can be seen as new forms of cultural techniques.
Dr Julia Scott-Stevenson is a researcher, producer and curator of interactive and immersive media. At UTS, she is using practice-led research to explore how immersive media might address the climate crisis. Julia produced Privy To, an XR project showcased at CPH:DOX's Inter:Active Exhibition in 2021, and she has published a manifesto for virtual futures.
Nim Shapira is a 2021/2022 fellow at the MIT Open Documentary Lab. He is a 2020 alumni of NEWINC and a graduate of the Biennale College for VR. As an XR filmmaker, Nim focuses on narratives that promote social impact. Nim’s most recent VR film, “Bystanding”, premiered at the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival.
Allegra Shorto is Art Director of Khora Contemporary and is based between London and Copenhagen. Her work focuses on establishing Virtual Reality as a widely applied medium within the arts through collaborations with artists and institutions working with new digital technologies.
Nataliya Velykanova is the founder and art director of Gate22 – a Cyber-Museum of Digital Arts in virtual reality. An architect, designer and visual artist, she is a citizen of the world and dreamer too, working to foster imagination in our daily and innovating in the Art and Culture sectors. She is committed to the development of virtual reality and the popularisation of new art forms in France and abroad.
Ludovico Vignaga is an entrepreneur, engineer and designer. He is founder of INTORNO LABS, a company specialized in immersive sound technology and spatial audio tools. He is member of the Academic Board for SAE Institute and post-master Fellow at Berklee College of Music.
Photo © Sergio Albert
Pola Weiß has recently joined Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg’s New Media Funding division as Funding Executive for Innovative Audiovisual Content/ XR. Previously, she was a journalist, blogger and speaker specialized in immersive storytelling and wrote copy for companies revolving around tech and XR. She also worked for about 4 years as commissioning editor of award-winning interactive transmedia projects, documentaries and web-videos in television (SWR/arte, Deutsche Welle).
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the MEDIA sub-programme of Creative Europe. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
