The Source |Source Sundance Preview: New Frontiers

With Sundance taking place completely online this year, visitors from around the globe will have a chance to experience the New Frontiers exhibits that were formerly done in person.

The Inside World is a sci-fi mystery-thriller NFT game set in the networks and streets of Las Vegas.Artists Jennifer and Kevin McCoy (creator of the first NFT) investigate a future where NFTs are both collectible art and the digital keys to a new deep world  of storytelling and community. Participants in the online game will collect one or more digital art NFTs depicting the 14 characters, which are combined on blockchain smart contracts to produce 8,000 unique initial NFTs. Best of all, the creators are giving away and auctioning off real NFTs throughout the festival. More information including how to play online can be found at https://festival.sundance.org/program/#new-frontier-info/61ae1f7514aef784ed1c5c12. 

Suga is a collective immersive experience that tells the story of resistance and resilience using live dance performance as volumetric video in a social virtual reality space. The experience takes audiences on a journey through the historical reality of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and the establishment of the sugar industry, which has had a lasting legacy on our world today. Suga’ weaves together movement, family stories, and cultural heritage to reimagine virtual environments once filled with pain and injustice as sites for healing. Suga’ can be viewed via web browser, and does not require and specialized hardware or software.  More information including how to play online can be found at https://festival.sundance.org/program/#new-frontier-info/61ae1eff14aef7791a1c579b. 

32 Sounds is a must-do experience for all hip-hop and music fans. The interactive exhibit, which only requires a computer with internet access and headphones, explores the elemental phenomenon of sound and how it affects our conscious and unconscious lives. This indelible, feature-length journey weaves together 32 audio experiences, crafting a cinematic poem about the power of sound to bend time, cross borders, and profoundly shape our perception of the world. More information can be found at https://festival.sundance.org/program/#new-frontier-info/61b3ceb48d12fab5a19f1a31. 

Diagnosia is a VR experience whereartistsMengtai ZhangandLemon Guolock visitors inside Mengtai’s teenage memory of a military-operated internet addiction rehab camp in Beijing where his “youth issues” had been medicalized and institutionalized as a mental disorder. This experience is based on real events. In 2007, at age 16, Mengtai was sent to a similar rehab in Beijing by his parents against his will. He later found out that the rehab camp had been using patients as research subjects and publishing extensively on the medicalization of internet addiction. More information including how to play online can be found at https://festival.sundance.org/program/#new-frontier-info/61ae1ec214aef719371c55aa. (VR technology is required for this experience.)