The theme of Night #2 at the 2019 Live Cinema Festival (in the unlikely event that the Festival has nightly themes at all) was one of traveling through unexplored virtual worlds.

The Italian artists V3RBO + MMRK used a VR headset and IR wands to navigate a high-energy, crackling world of seemingly enormous, polygonal, botlike insects — dragonflies, bees, crickets — dominated by alien space ships.

That the audience was experiencing — in the vastness of the exhibition space — what the VR-goggled performer V3rbo was at the same time experiencing in his own total VR isolation, gave the work a palpable sense of in-the-moment improvisation — yep, blew me away!

In his new post “MMRK: the concept of live cinema” MMRK (Mauro Frugiuele) muses on the performance and shares his thoughts on the concept of live cinema.

A video clip of the performance will appear here shortly.

The Hungarian VJs Daniel Besnyo + Patrik Kiss performed their haunting “Clouditects” World Premiere. The piece evoked a gossamer city and countryside appearing and vanishing in the spectral sands of time.