MYRIAD. Where we connect.

VR Experience

MYRIAD. Where we connect.

VR Experience

Role

Co-Creation
Author
Artistic Direction
Art Direction
Story and Text

Production company

Interactive Media Foundation gGmbH
Filmtank GmbH

Release date

2021

A poetic journey along the paths of migratory animals

Myriad – Where we connect. takes the audience on a global journey through our interconnected world in an emotional yet informative, interactive, and immersive way.

In this 32-minute Virtual Reality experience, the audience follows the journey of three protagonists: the Green Sea Turtle, the Northern Bald Ibis, and the Arctic Fox. These creatures travel along wind and ocean currents, across continents, and over soaring mountain ranges as they make their way around the globe. Each journey weaves new scientific insights into fascinating, emotional stories of survival and perseverance. The audience can participate in these journeys and experience the emotions themselves before learning about successful resettlement and reintroduction stories, such as the human-led migration of the Bald Ibis and its reintroduction to the Alps.

„MYRIAD. Where we connect.“ was developed in close collaboration with the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and an interdisciplinary team of international scientists, using real data from over twenty thousand tagged animals. These data, sourced mainly from specific research projects and from the Movebank database—a long-term project by the Max Planck Institute for Animal Behavior—combine research on animal migration, behavioral biology, climate science, and infrastructure development. Myriad takes this scientific foundation as the core base showing the complexity of animal behavior and how global animal pathways have been influenced by anthropogenic changes to the environment.

The poetic storytelling, artistic language and unique soundscape translates this data in an empathetic experience that connects human imagination with knowledge about the global interconnectedness of our planet’s ecosystems.

Science and Art – Carbon as connecting element

A central artistic element of „MYRIAD. Where we connect.“ is carbon and function as narrative ans aesthetic link between content and form.

Flexible and ubiquitous, the chemical element carbon forms the basis of all life on Earth. Simultaneously, it assumes significance in the current climate discourse when existing as carbon dioxide.

Handmade charcoal drawings are integrated into all MYRIAD’s digital formats, blending analog and digital elements in its visual design. In a sculptural setting, the charcoal drawings transform into a spatial environment.

See the world through the eyes of many

Every year, myriads of living beings migrate across our planet. These migrations, in regular rhythms, are like the pulse, the heartbeat of a single living organism. They are part of the natural rhythm of life and one of the most vivid examples of the close interrelationships and interdependencies that characterize life on our shared planet. Follow their paths and see the world through the eyes of many.