Ten editions in, Venice Immersive has plenty to celebrate — just don’t expect the new-media showcase to spend much time looking back. This really feels like the beginning of a second chapter, for us and for the wider medium.” Still, it’s impossible to mark the milestone without taking stock. What launched in a modest nook between two floors of the Palazzo del Casinò now occupies its own island in the lagoon — evolving from festival curiosity into a key hub for a protean art form.
The industry’s progress, meanwhile, has been anything but linear. The long-awaited consumer boom in personal headsets never quite materialized. Project financing from platforms and hardware makers contracted sharply as a result, and (mostly European) public funding stepped in as a bridge — though global profitability is now increasingly coming from elsewhere, as event-based spaces and collective exhibition models prove viable on their own terms.
The storytelling and design have gotten far more sophisticated, too. In the past you weren’t really embodied as a character, and you couldn’t interact with objects or people. That’s changed.” Competition titles like “Amsterdam 1652: The Hands of the City,” “Smithsonian Starstruck: An Immersive Experience” and “Everest: The First Ascent” embody that shift, bringing free-roam, multiplayer experiences to educational and heritage venues.
Their partners lend a degree of stability — and, increasingly, new sources of financing. In a certain light, the music experience “Bowie: Unseen | Unheard” could be seen as an artistic showcase underwritten by a hardware manufacturer eager to demonstrate its latest technology. Only here, that company is speaker maker L-Acoustics, and the project does away with headsets entirely — redefining immersive LBE around spatial sound.
A purpose-built space like the one created for Venice can be replicated around the world, giving people the same unique experience. The goal is to keep it intimate, with 20 to 30 people at a time living inside Bowie’s world while staying sonically true each time. That’s where LBE is heading.” Indeed, the 30 projects selected for this year’s Venice Immersive competition illustrate just how far the ecosystem has expanded beyond tech.
Sloan Foundation is backing “Empire at Sea,” while human rights organization B’Tselem makes its first foray into production with “Raj’in (We Shall Return),” a 360-degree documentary following three Palestinian families in the West Bank. National film funds and co-production partners, meanwhile, have adapted traditional film-financing structures for XR — even turning arthouse éminences grises like Abderrahmane Sissako (“Artou”) into immersive evangelists. For her part, director Hilde K.
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