British and international artists, filmmakers and creative teams, such as Shirin Neshat, Tania de Montaigne, Bjarne Melgaard, Karen Palmer, Darren Emerson and Anagram, are featured on the line-up for LFF Expanded program of Immersive Art and Extended Realities, at the 67th BFI London Film Festival.

The LFF Expanded will present powerful real-life experiences that take audiences to the heart of both the current news agenda, and seminal moments in history. In Colored, a new immersive experience based on the book by Tania de Montaigne, join fifteen-year-old trailblazing Civil Rights activist Claudette Colvin, who fought segregation laws in 1950s America. Follow a trail of Banksy murals to the frontlines of the war in Ukraine in the arresting and poignant Murals. In The Fury viewers are taken through the trauma and emotional turmoil a female protagonist must endure during political imprisonment in Iran, while VR documentary Letters From Drancy accompanies a child on the run during the Holocaust.

The 2023 program also questions the role of technology itself, the power of AI with Karen Palmer’s award-winning Consensus Gentium integrating cutting-edge facial detection and AI. This timely and powerful work won the South by Southwest 2023 Award for Innovation XR Experience. Things Fall Apart: a musical installation in Mixed Reality transforms W.B. Yeats’ 1919 poem The Second Coming into an artistic exploration of music, poetry and visual landscapes, with innovative use of spatial VR technology and AI-generated imagery transporting viewers to a virtual art gallery.

The Festival has added Bargehouse at Oxo Tower Wharf as a major new main venue for LFF Expanded, The program at Bargehouse features the Virtual Reality adventure The Imaginary Friend, in which you become the titular friend to Daniel, helping him fight demons and overcome grief – using state-of-the-art holographic filmmaking techniques, this mind-bending ride through the human psyche will move and enthral. Dive into Forager, the highly sensory VR experience that transports participants into the rich and fascinating world of fungi. Making stimulating use of sight, sound, touch and scent, this documentary explores the life cycle of fungi: from spores, mycelium and fruiting body to the inevitable states of decay. Flow, an adaptation of Adriaan Lokman’s award-winning 3D short film, immerses users in a painted world entirely composed of air, where a woman’s reality is altered by invisible elements.

Back this year, Guy Maddin’s augmented reality installation, HAUNTED HOTEL – a melodrama in augmented reality, which was commissioned by the BFI and premiered at last year’s BFI London Film Festival, enfolds the audience in surreal paper worlds, filled with longing, hysteria and madness. All set to an intricate soundscape by acclaimed composer Magnus Fiennes, the piece will be on show, for free.

LFF EXPANDED 2023 IMMERSIVE ART AND XR PROGRAM

COLORED – UK PREMIERE
6 – 22 Oct (closed 16 Oct) | Bargehouse | 32min | Lead artist(s): Pierre-Alain Giraud, Stéphane
Foenkinos, Tania de Montaigne
This Augmented Reality installation tells the true story of 15-year-old Claudette Colvin, who fought segregation laws in 1950’s America. Employing holographic images and immersive sound, this powerful artwork, based on Tania de Montaigne’s biographical essay, transports us back to a pivotal moment in the history of the US Civil Rights Movement. In 1955, Colvin, a young Black girl, stood up for her beliefs in refusing to give up her bus seat to a white passenger. This riveting work is a potent exploration of everyday prejudice and racism.

THE FURY – UK PREMIERE
6 – 22 Oct (closed 16 Oct) | Bargehouse | 22min | Lead artist(s): Shirin Neshat
Shirin Neshat’s two-part exhibition, The Fury, takes us through the trauma and emotional turmoil a female protagonist must endure during political imprisonment. Her unshielded body becomes the distorted target for objectification and sexual assault by her oppressors. Never graphic or explicitly violent, internationally-renowned Iranian filmmaker and artist Neshat’s highly stylised and dreamlike artwork, consisting of a two-channel video and a 360 VR film, is all the more arresting as a result.

LETTERS FROM DRANCY – UK PREMIERE
6 – 22 Oct (closed 16 Oct) | Bargehouse | 22min | Lead artist(s): Darren Emerson.
A captivating story of loss, longing and the power of love, Letters from Drancy compassionately evokes life amidst the horrors of the Holocaust. This VR documentary accompanies Marion Deichmann on her daring childhood journey across the borders of Northern Europe, detailing her traumatic separation from her mother, her escape from persecution with the help of the French Resistance and her vivid memories of the D-Day bombings. Marion’s story is full of loss and longing, but is also one of persevering love – a profound story of courage from those who embraced the compassion of humanity in the face of hatred.

MURALS – UK PREMIERE
6 – 22 Oct (closed 16 Oct) | Bargehouse | 9min | Lead artist(s): Alex Topaller, Daniel Shapiro,
Artem Ivanenko
This immersive visual experience uses cutting-edge 3D scanning technology to place viewers face to face with the war devastation in Ukraine, capturing Banksy’s artwork left on the rubble of people’s homes, schools and infrastructure. Participants can experience these powerful images, which tackle warfare and destruction while also finding hope and determination in those caught up in the maelstrom of conflict.

CONSENSUS GENTIUM – WINNER OF SXSW 2023 AWARD FOR INNOVATION XR EXPERIENCE
6 – 22 Oct (closed 16 Oct) | Bargehouse | 25min | Lead artist(s): Karen Palmer
Winner of the South by Southwest 2023 Award for Innovation XR Experience, UK artist Karen Palmer’s Consensus Gentium (Latin for ‘if everyone believes it, it must be true’) is a powerful exploration into the implications of today’s AI technology. The award-winning international artist and TED Speaker uses interactive storytelling to explore race, bias in technology and social justice. It is an interactive, emotionally responsive smartphone film that integrates cutting-edge facial detection and AI, and transports audiences on a unique quest to discover what could happen if we succumb to unchecked surveillance. Consensus Gentium is an interactive experience designed to drive discussion about data privacy, race, unconscious biases and the power of technology.

FORAGER – UK PREMIERE
6 – 22 Oct (closed 16 Oct) | Bargehouse | 8min | Lead artist(s): Winslow Porter, Elie Zananiri
Some of nature’s greatest secrets are revealed in this highly sensory VR experience that transports participants into the rich and fascinating world of fungi. Microscopic highways of mycelium, more than a million miles long, lie unseen beneath the earth. Making stimulating use of sight, sound, touch and scent, this documentary explores the life cycle of fungi: from spores, mycelium and fruiting body to the inevitable states of decay. Conceived by acclaimed director and creative technologist Winslow Porter, this experience, featuring unique volumetric time-lapse technology, uncovers a little-known world.

THE IMAGINARY FRIEND – UK PREMIERE
6 – 22 Oct (closed 16 Oct) | Bargehouse | 26min | Lead artist(s): Steye Hallema
Ever dream of stepping into someone else’s mind? In this extraordinary Virtual Reality adventure, you become 8 year-old Daniel’s imaginary friend, helping him fight demons and classroom bullies overcome grief and become the kid he was always meant to be: a healthy, happy boy on the brink of adolescence. Using state-of-the-art holographic filmmaking techniques, this mind-bending ride through the human psyche will have you defending yourself against magical monsters and soaring through the skies with your own set of wings.

FLOW – UK PREMIERE
6 – 22 Oct (closed 16 Oct) | Bargehouse | 16min | Lead artist(s): Adriaan Lokman
This adaptation of Adriaan Lokman’s award-winning 3D short film immerses users in a painted world entirely composed of air, where a woman’s reality is altered by invisible elements. Conceived as an interactive, three-dimensional painting, through gentle movements, users float with the wind, exploring a woman’s transformative night of wanderings. When the dream-like experience concludes, the world undergoes a profound shift, forever changing its nature.

THINGS FALL APART: a musical installation in Mixed Reality – UK PREMIERE
6 – 22 Oct (closed 16 Oct) | Bargehouse | 25min | Lead artist(s): CyberRäuber
German theatre collective CyberRäuber transform W.B. Yeats’ 1919 poem ‘The Second Coming’ into an artistic exploration of music, poetry and visual landscapes. This groundbreaking mixed-reality installation blends image, sound and text into a richly rewarding collective experience. Audiences are invited to step into and interact directly with a virtual gallery, composed of AI-generated images, spoken words and a captivating soundtrack – the latter created by Israeli composer Micha Kaplan. The physical space is transformed by the innovative use of spatial VR, allowing for new perspectives on Yeats’ renowned work.

HAUNTED HOTEL – a melodrama in augmented reality
4 – 9 October | Gallery@Oxo | 20min | Lead artist(s): Guy Maddin
This fascinating immersive exhibition by acclaimed Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin ruminates on the manifold permutations of desire, deception and death. A special commission from last year’s LFF Expanded and back by popular demand, this Augmented Reality installation unravels across eight three-dimensional collages. For his first fully immersive exhibition, Maddin enfolds his audience in surreal paper worlds, filled with longing, hysteria and madness, and all set to an intricate soundscape by acclaimed composer Magnus Fiennes.

MY TRIP 2023 – WORLD PREMIERE
MON 9 OCT 21:00–23:30 OUTERNET, MON 16 OCT – 27 NOV (EVERY MONDAY), 18:00–23:30 |
HERE at the Outernet | 7min | Lead artist(s): Bjarne Melgaard
Bjarne Melgaard’s artwork takes the viewer on a journey to the furthest reaches of the web and explores the apathy that our technological environments engender. My Trip 2023 features characters that have recurred in the artist’s practice for over 25 years, in addition to new mutant personalities created in collaboration with Acute Art. This artwork, presented as a fully immersive multi-screen installation at partner venue Outernet, questions how we choose to live – exploring the never-ending flow of information that is consumed daily through a striking visualisation of a psychedelic experience. Commissioned by LFF Expanded and Outernet Arts, produced by Acute Art.

GHOSTS OF SOLID AIR – WORLD PREMIERE
4 – 22 October | Trafalgar Square | approx. 60min | Lead artist(s): Amy Rose
Experienced through your smartphone, Ghosts of Solid Air is an augmented reality walk through central London which invites audiences to meet key historical figures during periods of civil unrest. Blending voices from the past with the realities of our present day viewers will explore the nature of disobedience, all against the backdrop of the monuments of state power in central London.

FLEETING FIGURES – WORLD PREMIERE
4 – 22 October | South Bank (BFI Southbank to Bargehouse) | approx. 60min | Lead artist(s): Åsa
Cederqvist, Lundahl & Setil, Untold Garden, Pastelae, Oscar Häggström, SONG
This open air Augmented Reality exhibition aims to create a collective experience in public spaces, focusing on what unites and connects us. Virtually connecting BFI Southbank with this year’s LFF Expanded venue (Bargehouse@Oxo Tower Wharf), this outdoor exhibition is a collection of interactive artworks from a number of Sweden-based artists. Take a stroll down Southbank and engage with digital manifestations of public art via your smartphone. Rediscover your surroundings and explore new perspectives on familiar places with this innovative virtual exhibition, created specifically for our festival.

ELSEWHERE IN INDIA
7 October, 15:00 – 16:30 | Science Gallery London | 60min | Lead artist(s): Murthovic, Thiruda
Combining gaming and Carnatic electronic music, Elsewhere in India transports audiences to India, 2079 for an audiovisual electronica performance about a future world where global cultures are nearing extinction and exploring the theme of ‘AI for Cultural Good’. Featuring digital avatars of visionary artists Murthovic and Thiruda, this groundbreaking audiovisual spectacle showcases immersive 3D worlds, generative AI art and rare moving images from the BFI National Archive’s India on Film collection.