PHI IMMERSIVE RESIDENCY is an eight-week residency with PHI Studio in Montreal, Canada focused on the conceptualization stage of a proposed project. Selected artist(s) will work alongside PHI Studio experts to develop, plan, and prototype an interactive artwork or immersive experience. The selected project will receive personalized support, space, and select resources to develop and elaborate their concept within a broader context and create a prototype to prepare the project for eventual production and financial investment.
Thank you to all the 2021 PHI IMMERSIVE RESIDENCY applicants; the applications are now closed. Our entire team thanks you for your time, your effort, and for sharing your art with us. As PHI IMMERSIVE is an annual residency program, we encourage you to re-apply in 2022. You can keep up to date with PHI’s current and future opportunities, residencies, and exhibitions on our website or subscribe to our newsletter.
Iolanda Di Bonaventura & Saverio Trapasso
This year’s laureates are an XR artist duo formed by Iolanda Di Bonaventura, a transmedia artist, director, and screenwriter of virtual reality projects; and Saverio Trapasso, a creative technologist with expertise ranging from programming to knowledge of the entire production pipe-line of XR and computer graphics projects.
In 2019, they made their first VR project as a duo, The Weight of Everything that is Not Here, presented at the VR Sci Fest in Stockholm and at the UKYA: Nottingham City Take Over in the UK, in collaboration with the Biennale of Young Mediterranean Artists (BJCEM). In 2020, as directors, writers, and producers, Di Bonaventura and Trapasso won a grant offered by Biennale Cinema College - Virtual Reality to produce their first interactive film in VR made in computer graphics—Vajont.
They continued as tutors in the following editions of the Biennale Cinema College - Virtual Reality: Iolanda as a story-developer in the 5th edition Italian workshop, and Saverio as a creative technologist in the 5th and 6th editions of the Italian workshops. They are currently based in Italy.
She was born in L'Aquila, Italy, in 1993. As an artist, her research encompasses different techniques and languages, including site-specific installation, photography, and video making, despite XR productions being her favourite medium of expression. Di Bonaventura's artistic research investigates human identity in relation to new technologies and the environment in which people feel they belong.
In 2015, her site-specific installation Beating Heart, designed to represent the condition of the Italian city of L'Aquila (destroyed by an earthquake in 2009), was selected for Re-Place: The City Lights Up Again, an art festival supported by UNESCO, in collaboration with the Maxxi Museum's Education Department in Rome.
In 2017, her short film Presence Absence—fully self-produced and created—was selected to be one of the five finalists of the Corti d'Argento award, organized by the National Union of Italian Cinema Journalists, and presented in Europe at the Animatou Festival in Geneva and the Rome Independent Film Festival.
In 2019, she was selected by the Venice Biennale as a director to participate in their training program and develop her interactive VR movie, Vajont, which was then presented during Venice VR Expanded in the 2020 Venice Biennale.
Di Bonaventura has participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions and photography and digital art festivals.
Saverio Trapasso was born in Catanzaro (Italy) in 1986. He has always been interested in the world of research and development in the technological field. As a 3D generalist and software developer, he has taken on different positions throughout his career, including computer programming for industrial software, financial markets, web and mobile applications, in-depth studies on 3D software for offline and online rendering, including virtual reality applications. He was a researcher in new computer vision technologies in recent years, working on prototypes of cross-industry technologies and new body-tracking techniques.
In 2018 he founded his own company, Artheria, dealing with cross-realities (VR, AR, MR) for industrial purposes, with a specific branch dedicated to art and entertainment in VR. Currently, Saverio is the CEO, producer, and head of the research and development department for Artheria.
0 is the suspended dimension between presence and absence, life and death. 0 is the place that used to be before we came into the world: the metaphorical journey that we must all make before being born, from darkness to light, from absence to presence, from being disembodied to having a body.
What does it mean to be born? Is it possible to represent this place of transition from non-being to being? Is it possible to depict primordial experiences linked to the symbolic and preconscious world to recover a memory of meaning? Can art and technology help us rewrite our history— the past, our primordial memories, and the future in which we will transform into digital avatars—guiding us along a path of awareness?
The artwork combines visual art, video art, and interactivity using infrared cameras and real-time engines while integrating linear storytelling. The body and movement of each participant control its narrative according to each individual's inner rhythm.
Can art and technology help us rewrite our relationship with the experience of being alive?
Can art and technology lead us back to our essence?
Applications are now closed.
Location
Montreal, Quebec
PHI IMMERSIVE RESIDENCY (8 weeks)
→ Call for Proposals: October 4 to November 1, 2021
→ Q&A Webinar (45 minutes) via Zoom: October 19, 2021, at 10 a.m. EST
→ Public announcement of the selected artist(s): December 1, 2021
→ Residency Period: January 24, 2022 to March 19, 2022
Contact
For more information, please contact [email protected]
Positioned at the intersection of art and technology, PHI Studio develops and presents collective experiences centred around audience interactivity. PHI IMMERSIVE RESIDENCY is an annual residency program that offers the opportunity to conceptualize and prototype a new immersive or interactive artwork. This residency is part of PHI’s continued effort to contribute to the development of future generations of immersive storytellers.
Local and international artists or small production companies with established or emerging careers are encouraged to apply. Through PHI IMMERSIVE RESIDENCY, PHI aims to invest in incredible artists with incredible ideas and contribute to the growing global field of new media art and experiences.
What kind of projects are we looking for?
Artists are asked to submit a proposal for artwork including but not limited to:
We are looking for experimental projects with a strong storyline and narratives, and technologically driven.
Devoted to the conceptualization stage of the project, selected artists participating in PHI IMMERSIVE RESIDENCY will receive:
Technical support;
Production support;
Conceptual and creative support;
Design and scenography support;
Programming and other specialty support.
The artist(s) will retain the Intellectual Property of their project, but PHI will ask for the first option for co-production, distribution, or exhibition.
Annabelle has more than twenty years of creative experience, starting in advertising and graphic design before moving to exhibition design. In 2015 she joined the GSM Project team, where for nearly five years she contributed to several large exhibitions. In 2019 she joined the PHI Studio team to develop large-scale immersive experiences such as THE INFINITE.
The selection will be undertaken by a committee composed of PHI staff and invited external professionals who reflect a diverse set of expertise and perspectives.
Applications will be assessed according to the following criteria:
PHI is committed to equity in all its forms.
Michel Reilhac
Immersive author, Curator of Venice VR Expanded, and Director of Studies for College Cinema and College VR at the Venice Biennale
Caroline Monnet
Canadian multidisciplinary contemporary artist
Phoebe Greenberg
Founder and Chief Creative Officer at PHI
Myriam Achard
Chief, New Media Partnerships and Public Development at PHI
Coline Delbaere
Producer of immersive experience at PHI