Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Video Games and Installations Take Center Stage as New Frontier Turns 10
Peter Burr | Porpentine Charity Heartscape | Shawn Peters | Barry Cole | Josephine Decker | Jess Engel | Nicole McDonald |
Rob Auten | yako (Jean-Christophe Yacono) | Ziad Touma | Nicolas Peufaillit | Mark Farid | John Ingle | Nimrod Vardi
Los Angeles, CA - Sundance Institute announced today the six projects selected for the New Frontier Story Lab, the groundbreaking cinematic new media program that empowers creatives at the forefront of innovation in entertainment and storytelling, May 19-24 at the Sundance Resort in Utah. Past participants include Roger Ross Williams, Yung Jake, Chris Milk, Cory McAbee, Navid and Vassiliki Khonsari, Karim Ben Khelifa, Tracy Fullerton and Lucas Peterson.
The Sundance Institute New Frontier program, celebrating its 10th Anniversary this year, supports and fosters independent artists working at the convergence of film, art, media, live performance, music and technology. Through an annual exhibition at the Sundance Film Festival and Labs, Residencies and workshops throughout the year, the program builds a robust community of storytellers and creative technologists.
Activities at the weeklong Lab include individualized story sessions, conversations about key artistic, design and technology issues, and case study presentations from experts in diverse related disciplines. The Lab is planned under the guidance of Sundance Institute Feature Film Program Founding Director Michelle Satter and Kamal Sinclair, Director of New Frontier Lab Programs.
Satter said, The massive Virtual Reality revolution now underway signals a broader shift towards increasingly immersive storytelling forms. Our New Frontier Story Lab positions artists at the forefront of this technological evolution and allows their new stories and ideas to lead us into the future.
Creative Advisors for the New Frontier Story Lab include: Nao Bustamante (USC Vice Dean of Art, Artist); Katherine Dieckmann (Filmmaker, Strange Weather, Diggers, Motherhood); Torfi Frans lafsson (Creative Director, EVE Universe IP at CCP Games); Alex McDowell (Production Designer, Minority Report, Fight Club); Rob McLaughlin (Executive Producer, National Film Board of Canada's Digital Studio); Mark Monroe (Writer,
The Cove, Sound City, Who is Dayani Cristal?); the legendary story expert Joan Tewkesbury
(Filmmaker/Writer/Actor, Nashville, Chicago Hope); Rose Troche (Filmmaker/Producer, The L Word, Perspective VR Series, Concussion); Saschka Unseld (Creative Director, Oculus Story Studios); Meiyin Wang (Former Co-Director The Public Theaters Under the Radar Festival) and Craig Zobel (Filmmaker, Z for Zachariah, Compliance).
For the first time, the New Frontier Story Lab will have an industry day that builds on the story-oriented conversations had earlier in the week, to go deeper into design, technology and strategies for project viability and financial support. Industry Mentors include: Michael Connor (Artistic Director, Rhizome); Michael Marchetti (Serial Entrepreneur and CFO & Executive Committee Member, Age of Learning); Tamir Muhammad (Director of Content & Artist Development, Time Warner Inc.); Kristina Reed (Producer, Paperman, Feast, Monkey Kingdom; Studio Leadership, Frozen, Tangled, Wreck-it-Ralph, Zootopia); Frank Soqui (General Manager Enthusiast Desktop Group, Intel Corporation) and Guido Voltolina (Head of Presence Capture OZO, Nokia).
Meet the creative teams and projects selected for the 2016 Sundance Institute New Frontier Story Lab:
Aria End
Peter Burr and Porpentine Charity Heartscape
Aria End is a science fiction video game and installation about Aria, a trans woman with cyborg intestines who works in a subterranean mega-ruin - the site of a bizarre disaster that changes all who are exposed to it. By inhabiting a series of underground base camps and modifying a network powered by intestinal flora, the player comes to identify with the space through the act of maintaining virtual architecture.
Peter Burr is an artist from Brooklyn, NY specializing in animation and performance. His work has been presented at venues across the world including Le Centre Pompidou, Paris; Reina Sofia National Museum, Madrid; and MoMA PS1, New York. Previously, Burr worked under the alias Hooliganship and in 2006 founded the video label Cartune Xprez, through which he produced live multimedia exhibitions showcasing artists working in experimental animation.
Porpentine Charity Heartscape is a new media artist, writer, game designer, and trash woman. She has been influential in the contemporary hypertext renaissance, and in popularizing the accessible text art software called Twine. Shes won the XYZZY and Indiecade awards; been exhibited at EMP Museum and the Museum of the Moving Image; been profiled by The New York Times; commissioned by Vice, the New Inquiry, and Rhizome, and she is a 2016 Creative Capital Emerging Fields awardee.
The Art of Dying Young
Shawn Peters and Barry Cole
The Art of Dying Young is a film installation and new media bike tour that examines the lives, local histories and place-making initiatives of the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Bedford Stuyvesant and South Williamsburg told through the lives of two young men who have been memorialized through murals.
Shawn Peters is a storyteller, filmmaker and director of photography. Peters started his career shooting music videos for artists like Esperanza Spaulding, Cody ChesnuTT, Pharoahe Monch, Breaking Benjamin, Michelle Williams, and Bilal. He has worked on narrative features and shorts with Terence Nance, Sebastian Silva, Laura Colella, and Raafi Rivero, which have premiered at film festivals including Sundance, Rotterdam, Berlin, Tribeca and Toronto. Peters has been awarded a 2015 Creative Capital Award for his personal project
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Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Video Games and Installations Take Center Stage as New Frontier Turns 10 
