by Conan Simmons – August 11, 2020 – 8:13 pm
Avant-Garde cinema is finding a comfortable home by embracing the interactivity of virtual reality. Audiences can now journey across psychedelic frontiers and have their own unique experience through the choose your own adventure format that has become a driving force of the emerging VR industry.
A notable proponent of this is the five part VR experience ‘Terminus’.
Artist Jess Johnson and animator Simon Ward, both hailing from New Zealand, have created an extravagant journey through surreal landscapes. From the serenity of the Unknown to the dangers of religiously connected Tower of Gog and Magog the experience is one of marvel.
Commissioned as an art exhibit by the National Gallery of Australia where it premiered in 2018, the exhibit went on tour to New York and Tokyo where audiences could enjoy the location based experience complete with tessellated floors.
That experience has now come to the Oculus Rift (minus the floors) for you to enjoy in your own home.
Developed by Kenny Smith and featuring music by Andrew Clarke. Animator Simon Ward has said that the intention was to make a space where “the rules of reality don’t apply”. Artist Jess Johnson claims on the intention of the VR experience is to show “reality is not fixed but rather malleable and multiple.”