Immersive Choreographies

[ e s c ] explores escapism as a concept and state of mind. Inspired by the logic of algorithms and social media, a choreographic research project was created that deals with digital escape mechanisms. The work consists of five modules and takes a critical look at the interactions between virtual realities and human behaviour. The audience interacts with the artworks using their smartphones and the Artivive app.

Concept & choreography: Anna Näsström and Johan Bandholtz; image production (stills): A EYE (Vytis Gruzdys and Rapolas Vosylius); AR and image animations: Yuvia Maini; animated video material: dr_formalyst; music: Rosanna Gunnarsson & Yared Tilahun Cederlund.

Wave is a psychedelic, immersive dance film in which the dancer's body is manipulated through repetition, delay and shifting of image sequences. This creates a choreography in which the story of each movement forms a new, organic structure. A group choreography, danced solo – each movement changes the overall silhouette. With the help of 360° 3D and VR, the film becomes an experience in which the audience not only watches, but can also control time and perspective. Digital manipulations create additional emotional dimensions – from claustrophobia to euphoria.

Director: Bart Hess, choreography: Sedrig Verwoert.

Funded by: Nederlands Filmfonds & Stimuleringsfonds.

3D video animation, 16:9, HD, sound, 20:10 min. 2025

Dominik Geis' artistic practice focuses on the body as a stage and mirror of social, cultural and media inscriptions. The 3D video animation rhythm is a theatrical staging of periodically recurring social patterns. Dominik Geis primarily explores the gestures and role models of masculinity; digitally animated figures are assigned specific gestures and movements that reflect these role models. The body becomes a projection surface for social power relations.
A digital stage space forms the framework for the staging, with found footage collages appearing in the stage design consisting of televisions and projections. Animated figures move within this space, creating a simultaneous stage that combines visual and performative levels. A continuous camera movement through the scenery generates the video and creates a flowing narrative from the interplay of image and sound. The music, composed especially for the work, serves as the basis for the choreographic dynamics. Driving rhythms, distorted sounds and atmospheric tones appear in changing and recurring overlays, developing into a steadily intensifying soundscape. (Juliane Hoffmanns, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf)
Dominik Geis was awarded the 2025 Förderpreis der Landeshauptstadt Düsseldorf (Düsseldorf State Capital Sponsorship Award) in the visual arts category.

The immersive 3D installation takes visitors on a digital journey into mysteriously dissolving spaces modelled on a theatre auditorium. As in a lucid dream, you move through a point cloud of the building, encounter ghostly figures on stage, hear voices from past performances and become aware of the fleeting nature of sensory experiences. The dance piece developed for the work deals with logic and control, with distorted and distorting lucid dreams and toxic-transformative dependencies. The background narrative shows excerpts from the play Vom Licht (From the Light) by Anselm Neft.

Concept & development: Laurenz Ulrich x MIREVI, choreography: Charlotte Triebus.

A production of MIREVI (HSD) as part of the research project "Theater of Expanded Realities". Project partners: Theater an der Ruhr and Academy for Theater and Digitality, Dortmund. Funded by the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia as part of NEUE WEGE in cooperation with the NRW KULTURsekretariat.

The work lasts approximately 25 minutes, runs in a loop and unfolds in the superimposition of video and XR.
If things continue to fall apart, and fall apart properly, then I wonder how our children's children's children will know what it felt like when things weren't falling apart. What would pictures mean to them if they had never stood on a beach and felt the waves lapping at their feet? What use are moving pictures if those pictures seem to refer only to themselves?
So we set out to capture the world not just as fleeting moments, but as relationships translated into code that could perhaps one day be reactivated in real time."
Clouds, waves, wind, fog, smoke and other forms of turbulence play a crucial role not only in this work, but also fundamentally in immersive art forms such as anime and video games. Although they usually remain peripheral phenomena of perception, they are indispensable vehicles that enable us to enter imaginary worlds. Artists have developed a variety of ways to simulate them, drawing on the latest developments in technology and science, and in doing so, advancing them. Although they are often based on scientific models, they are only concerned with illusion, with the balance between precision and computing time, with doing just enough to evoke familiar sensations in foreign worlds.

By: Norbert Pape, Sound and music: Franziska Aigner, Text: Ben Woodard, Voices (in order of appearance): Norbert Pape, Göksu Kunak, Ben Woodard, Kyra Kaisla, Pêdra Costa, Spiritual guidance: Pêdra Costa, Technical development: Norbert Pape, Simon Speiser, SFX and XR implementation: Norbert Pape.

With the support of Beyond Gravity / Theater im Depot Dortmund and the Moovy Dance Film Festival. Funded by the Ministry of Culture and Science of North Rhine-Westphalia as part of the Neue Künste Ruhr programme.

Are you able to fool AI? How easy or difficult is it for us humans today to keep up with the capabilities of modern AI when it comes to spontaneously giving a short answer in the role of a well-known historical figure? The Reverse Turing Experiment gives you the opportunity to test yourself, compare yourself with other players in a skill, and get a feel for how close AI has already come to us today and where it may even have moved on.
The Reverse Turing Test is an interactive virtual reality installation that explores the boundaries between artificial and human intelligence and raises fundamental questions about human nature and reality in an increasingly digitalised world. At a time when AI systems and virtual humans are becoming increasingly sophisticated, the installation challenges participants to question their ideas of authenticity, identity, and human behaviour.

Concept & development: Tore Knabe.

Participatory AI installation

Gaitless is an interactive dance space exploring anti-surveillance and anti-AI tactics as choreographic concepts.
The idea came from a peculiar news story: a group of bank robbers allegedly outwitted AI-powered security cameras by rolling instead of walking – bypassing motion detection systems trained to recognize human gait. It was a subversive act of evasion, but also, in an unexpected way, a dance performance. The robbers were accidental dancers. Their improvised movements exposed the flaws in AI perception.
The paradox of Gaitless is that participants, in proving they are in the eyes of AI not human, prove they in fact are human – strange and creative.
Drawing from historical precedents like the Dazzle camouflage of WWI, Adam Harvey’s "CV Dazzle", and authors´ previous project "Tactical Poetics" – as well as the evasive tactics of Serbian anti-Ottoman outlaws and Yugoslav antifascist partisans – Gaitless extends the lineage of aesthetics born out of strategy and tactics.

Concept and Direction: Uroš Krčadinac & Marko Milić x MIREVI; Creative Development and Support: Ivana Družetić-Vogel, Patrick Kruse, Ben Fischer; Multimedia Software Development: Ben Fischer; Music: Kӣr.

Created in the framework of MODINA project. MODINA is co-financed by the Creative Europe program of the European Union.