Complete darkness. Our concentration turns to the spherical sounds around us. Basses wander through our body, triggering images, emotions. The sensory overload which usually has us so firmly in its grip is turned off. Sound – improvised and modulated interactively – takes the lead. Stories emerge. And all this exclusively in our own heads.

This insight into an international subculture shows that the ballroom scene is more than just extravagant competitions. Five ballroom dancers describe a reality in which white-dominated, heteronormative patterns have no place. They talk about ideas of cultural appropriation, about safe spaces, community and mutual support, about identity and self-expression.

Osario and Benedito, two brothers, lead a quiet and isolated life. Gravity doesn’t seem to exist in their cosmos. Objects float around – no up, no down, no points of orientation. The two have never known anything else than this floating in space. We float along and are irritated: is all this lightness just an illusion?

In collaboration with the mycologist and activist Giuliana Furci a VR experience was created that actually contains a whole universe. Hardly anyone knows the world of fungi, though it surrounds and shapes us. We shrink to the size of a hypha, communicate with tree-roots, transform toxins into valuable nutrients and become part of a nearly endless but invisible network carrying our earth.

When the artist duo Karnapke and Johnson are separated by Covid-19 in the middle of a project, the result is a correspondence about the constant change we live in. The VR experience based on this is a walk-in meditation: about reality, about normality and about the signs that distinguish the rule from the exception, visualized in a space made of countless particles.

Loosely based on Raymond Roussel’s novel “Locus Solus”, we explore the world of the inventor Martial Canterel. His estate is a place of innovation, a space for experiments that elude ethical responsibility. All its guests become objects of research – and must ask themselves whether scientific progress justifies every sacrifice.

Welcome to the Anthropocene. Welcome to an age entirely shaped by humanity’s actions. This multiplayer VR ritual arranges a meeting with Mother Nature. We get the chance to become reconciled with her, re-establish lost connections to the world and re-achieve some harmony with the earth and ourselves.

Covid-19 has made quarantine and self-isolation the everyday experience for many. This project, developed at the CPH:LAB, invites people to scan their most personal places and moments. The resulting VR experience is a walk-in archive and time capsule, the collective memory of a state of emergency which also preserves forgotten virtues like deceleration and the spirit of discovery.

What happens when we digitize our consciousness? We explore a virtual refuge of three-dimensional pixels. Gradually the outlines of a city unfold before our eyes. A choir of memories of its (digital) population is heard, tracing the past. The subjective knowledge of history fades away in a jumble of voices and pixels.