#Congratulations! Director Hsin-Chien Huang's latest VR works, Samsara and The Starry Sand Beach, were nominated for the 78th Venice International Film Festival!
The 78th Venice International Film Festival (VIFF) announced the shortlisted nominees for the category of VR Film. Taiwanese new media artist, Distinguished Professor of NTNU, Hsin-Chien Huang, winner of the BEST VR Experience in 2017 with his work La Camera Insabbiata, will again contest for the Leone d’oro this year with two of his latest, sci-fi inspired works, Samsara and The Starry Sand Beach. While the Taiwanese athletes are striving for the Gold Medals at the Tokyo Olympics as we speak, director Hsin-Chien Huang dazzles the jury of VIFF with his visually-stunning and thought-provoking works — bringing cutting-edge Taiwanese VR films onto the international stage and letting world-wide audience sees Taiwan!
Before being selected for the 78th Venice International Film Festival, Samsara episode 1. has already grabbed the Jury Award at SXSW and Best VR Story at the Cannes XR Competition. This futuristic VR experience teleports the audience onto a journey that spans millions of years. Samsara is a Sanskrit word meaning “ the world ”. In Buddhism, it means what we perceive as the world is actually an endless cycle of karma (cause and effect), a cycle of life, death and rebirth in the six realms of existence. In this fascinating VR work, the audience is reincarnated into the bodies of different persons and creatures, experiencing the universe in their new bodies and in search for the ultimate spiritual transcendence.
Samsara depicts an apocalyptical story in the near future where human greed has depleted the earth’s resource. Catastrophic wars to fight for resource resulted in global destruction. Finally, the remaining humans had to leave the Earth and go on a search in space for a new place to live.
Nevertheless, their desperate, long quest for a new homeland… could it be just a loop in space and time? The cycle of greedy domination and total destruction that then necessitates the search for a new home…. may have hopelessly repeated itself over and over again? The constant evolutionary process and so-called progress, without transformation in consciousness and spiritual advancement, is nothing more than a Möbius strip that leads nowhere, perhaps…?
Samsara is an experiment based on the theory of Embodied Cognition. Through interactivity and VR, the audience gets to live inside the bodies of different persons and creatures, experiencing their feelings from within. Perhaps It is when we can perceive the world in different bodies that we may truly appreciate the thoughts of others and empathize with them. An experience that will also help us better comprehend our own existence and learn to live in harmony with all.
Samsara explores a complex of deeply interconnected issues of ecology, technology, natural resource and war, etc. It's a story about a journey humans are forced to take on, after having destroyed the earth with nuclear disasters. The survivors seek a new planet, in the boundless, interstellar space, to carry on their lives. Gradually they evolve into a new life form artificially. Yet, many years passed and they’ve come to realize that they would never make it to the new planet they’ve been dreaming of. In fact, they have simply been returning to the Earth, in different life forms, time after time.
Director Huang applies the concepts of embodied cognition, offering a unique way to contemplate about the nature of life. As the audience are transported into different bodies each time, they gain a brand new perspective to experience the world views presented in Samsara.
Samsara was produced under the guidance of Taiwan Creative Content Agency (TAICCA) and Kaohsiung Film Archive VR(VR FILM LAB), it’s a sate-of-the-art VR production made 100% in Taiwan. In the VR experience, viewers are transformed into various kinds of animals to interact with the scenes, including species unique and indigenous to Taiwan, such as Taiwan Blue Magpie and Formosan Black Bear.
Samsara Ep.1 features the latest somatosensory technology, including 4D views shooting techniques by the Industrial Technology Research Institute and TAICCA. A digital shooting system comprised of a high-sensitivity 4 million-pixel, full-color CCD sensor and 48 4DV-EX-Z cameras made it possible for Samsara Ep.1 to be taken from an omnidirectional view and shot without any blind spots, creating the ultimate immersive experience.
THE STARRY SAND BEACH, directed by Hsin-Chien Huang and produced in cooperation with Lucid Reality (France) and Oready 瑞意創科 Oready Innovation Lab (Taiwan), is a scientific fairy tale about a unique ecological wonder in Taiwan and Japan, the shiny starry sand beaches. Foraminifera, from the Latin word “foramen” meaning hole, is a single-celled organism that builds a shell with multiple chambers which intercommunicate with one another through holes. On the Qimei Island, Taiwan and the Yaeyama Islands, Japan, beaches have been formed by a specific species of foraminifera with star-shaped shells made of calcium carbonate. Like the real stars in the legends, grains of the starry sand have also been preserving the earth’s memories for millions of years.
THE STARRY SAND BEACH is a real-time 3D interactive VR adventure into the natural and mythological landscape of the starry sand beaches on Qimei Island in Penghu Archipelago, Xing Sha Wan in Kenting National Park and Taketomi Island in the far south of Japan. The experience is full of aesthetically-amazing elements and enriched with cultural and religious significance like Shintoism in Japan. A beautiful, haunting legend tells the story of the starry sand…
The final winners will be presented at the award ceremony held on Sep11. With great anticipation and hopes, Hsin-Chien Huang is expected to bring home again the grand prize for Taiwan!
https://www.labiennale.org/en/news/selection-complete-works-venice-vr-expanded-0
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