The Market - Innovation Hub

The Clouds Are Two Thousand Meters Up

Singing Chen

CANADIAN PREMIERE
Taiwan, Germany | Large scale free roam VR | 62m

Guided by fragments of a lost voice, a man journeys through memory and myth to find what was left unsaid.

After his wife’s tragic death, Guan receives her unfinished novel — a story intertwining the endangered clouded leopard and the Rukai tribe’s sacred origin myth. Driven by grief and curiosity, he embarks on a surreal journey into the mountains and her subconscious, guided by her words and the ancestral echoes of the forest, in search of answers, healing, and connection. Adapted by a story from acclaimed Taiwanese author Wu Ming-Yi, The Clouds Are Two Thousand Meters Up is a single-user, free-roaming VR experience where the boundaries between memory, reality, and myth dissolve.

Mekwâc: “Now Is Good”

Quantum Wampum / James Monkman Studio

WORLD PREMIERE
Canada | 360° interactive and immersive projection | 25m

Grounded in Cree cosmology and Indigenous futurism, Mekwâc (pronounced, “muh-gwits”) is an immersive, interactive installation that transforms technology into a living space for reflection, inviting audiences to experience the interconnected relationships between water, land, memory, and one another.

Tartupaluk

Laakkuluk Williamson
Scintilla / Nation of Lovers Productions / Ánorâk Film
Distributed by Hubblo

WORLD PREMIERE
Canada, Greenland, Denmark | VR | 31m

Polar bear pants on. Borders gone. Decide if you belong.

Tartupaluk is an interactive virtual reality trip to the imaginary Republic of Tartupaluk, set on a tiny real-world Arctic island located within the territorial waters of northernmost North America and Greenland. Acclaimed Greenlandic-Canadian artist Laakkuluk Williamson invites viewers to tour the island and earn their stripes as citizens of the Republic among a nation of circumpolar lovers.

Tartupaluk unfolds as a poetic and at times satirical Inuit utopia; the island’s long history of imperialist geopolitical claims gives way to a call to embrace, gather, and connect.

Photo Credit: Jamie Griffiths

Reflections of Little Red Dot

Chloé Lee
Present Futures

CANADIAN PREMIERE
USA, Singapore, Germany | Mixed reality installation | 40m

A mixed-reality installation that reactivates the artist's 2015 archive of Singaporean voices as a walkable film. Switching physical slides on a retro projector shifts holographic neighborhoods while AI renders future landscapes, granting viewers the narrative agency urban renewal denies.

Lesbian Simulator

Iris Van der Meule
Studio Biarritz / art et essai / Timescapes / Podium Biarritz

CANADIAN PREMIERE
Netherlands, Canada, Belgium | VR | 40m

Lesbian Simulator is an interactive virtual reality artwork and video game which will immerse the user in the experiences of a lesbian girl. It’s an artistic ode to sexual preference, sexuality, and love that takes on a serious issue: the discrimination that lesbians still face today.

Solwata

Felix Gaedtke and Gayatri Parameswaran
Human Rights Watch / NowHere Media / Agog

NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE
United States | Mixed reality installation | 25m

Narrated by Mark Ruffalo, Solwata is a mixed reality installation exploring rising seas in Solomon Islands due to climate change. Interacting with water and artifacts, audiences enter the vibrant world of the Solwata, or saltwater, people.

Using 360° video, Gaussian splats, and 3D animations, participants join Martha, Francis, and Lawrence as they protect their homes and heritage amidst displacement and planned relocation to the mainland. Solwata transforms an abstract threat into a visceral experience of cultural resilience and the loss of home.

Body Proxy

Tender Claws

CANADIAN PREMIERE
United States | AI glasses | 15m

What does every AI dream of having? A physical body. And now they can have one: YOURS!

Body Proxy speculates that AI’s coming instrumentalization of the world will necessitate human embodiment. Collapsing the gig economy and agentic tool-use, the piece questions a future in which the human is no longer a user, but an interface — wetware executing commands the software cannot.

The project is framed as a start-up onboarding — part casting call, part IPO (“Initial Person Offering”). Recruits don AI glasses and enter a market where their physical agency is the asset. Assessed by AIs that treat the body as a peripheral device, participants enact algorithmic choreographies where props serve as test vectors, and compliance becomes a site of improvisation. Everything you do, or don’t do, in the experience is optional, inviting participants to explore how easily we slip into the mode of following directions and how we are increasingly offloading our own cognition.

The Big Picture - “Lunch Atop A Skyscraper”

Chloé Rochereuil
TARGO

WORLD PREMIERE
France | VR | 15m

The untold stories behind the photos you know. Step inside a photographer’s darkroom and rebuild iconic historical photographs as 3D dioramas, unlocking the untold stories, hidden characters, and forgotten details beyond the frame.