Category
Crosmedia Storytelling
Virtual Reality
Immersive Installation
Fulldome Projection
Data Visualisation
Role
Author
Creative Direction
Art Direction
Story and Text
Technology
Unity
Cinema 4D
Stereoscopic 3D Film
Production Company
Interactive Media Foundation gGmbh
Filmtank GmbH
Release Date
2021
Understanding our shared planet
Global challenges like the destabilization of ecological systems, climate change and the massive decline in biodiversity demand a radical reconfiguration of how we understand and interact with the natural world. Humans are but one small part of a vastly complex planet, and the way we influence our shared habitat has wide-reaching effects for all forms of life. We need to re-think our relationship with the natural world to be able to create altnative common futures.
That is the basis and motivation for our project MYRIAD – a project that tells stories of migrating animals and the anthropogenic influence they face on their journeys. Migratory animals interact with and rely on complex global ecosystems to navigate vast distances and ensure their survival. Scientists are only beginning to understand just how sophisticated and interdependent these systems are.
Interactive, immersive and science-driven storytelling can help the public better understand the complexity of our interconnected and interdependent world through narratives of animal migration in the Anthropocene that are both emotionally impactful and informative.
Working in cooperation with the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, MYRIAD combines cutting-edge scientific data with innovative forms of immersive storytelling and sophisticated aesthetics. Through multiple formats, we meaningfully reorient audiences’ relationship with the environment, and spark active engagement with local efforts to conserve the earth’s biodiversity.
MYRIAD VR Experience - Through the eyes of many
MYRIAD VR has crafted a highly artistic and poetic virtual reality experience, based on scientific migratory data, that invites the visitor to experience our world as an interdependent system of life.
We follow the migratory journeys of three animals: The Bald Ibis, the Arctic Fox, and the Green Sea Turtle, along wind and ocean currents, across continents and through soaring mountain ranges as they make their way around the globe.
Experiencing natural cycles from an entirely new perspective catalyzes an intuitive, rich understanding of the natural world, while generating a newly responsible attitude towards the impact of human behavior on an individual and global scale. One journey at a time, MYRIAD’s immersive, unique experiences activate individuals’ connection to the world we share and the marvelous beings we share it with.
From global to elemental: storytelling with carbon
Flexible and abundant, carbon is an element that forms the basis of all life on earth. MYRIAD’s visual concept makes use of this building block as a narrative and aesthetic link between individual elements and global networks to show how all life on earth is part of an endlessly connected cycle.
Carbon accompanies us across MYRIAD’s digital formats, generating atmospheres and landscapes, transporting movement and reconfiguring interaction in a constantly changing, living cosmos.
Analog charcoal drawings are produced in the studio, integrated in our digital environment and combined with digitally animated carbon particles. As they disintegrate and reassemble, they convey a feeling of organic vitality and a unified understanding of a world that is in constant change and in which everything is interconnected.
MYRIAD Immersive Installation
An interactive and immersive walkthrough installation stages the story world of the MYRIAD project in three dimensions, bringing science to life in museums, exhibitions and festivals.
The installation focuses on the many changes to the earth that have resulted from human interference. Intuitively graspable data about animal migration, anthropogenic changes to the environment, and even more animal stories of the Anthropocene heightens visitors’ awareness of the explosive nature of global change and immerses them directly in the complex interrelationships of the Earth system.
Credits
A project of: Interactive Media Foundation & Filmtank
In co-creation with: Miiqo Studios, Context Film & Artificial Rome
With the scientific support of: Max-Planck-Institute of Animal Behavior, Museum für Naturkunde Berlin/ Mediasphere for Nature, Waldrappteam/ LIFE Northern Bald Ibis, Deutsches Meeresmuseum Stralsund, University of Exeter, Ascension Island Government, Zoo in der Wingst, Norwegian Polar Institute, Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, zoosuisse, Tiergarten Schönbrunn
In alliance with: World Wide Life Fund (WWF)
In cooperation with: ARD/ SWR, RiffReporter and Occupied VR
Supported by: Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, MFG Baden-Württemberg, Canada Media Fund, Bell Fund
