According to the World Conservation Union (IUCN), there are currently about 37,480 endangered species worldwide. The causes of species extinction are many: climate change, pollution, deforestation or overfishing are just a few examples of why more and more life forms are becoming extinct. This circumstance is painful, but results from so many factors that an often reflexive closing of eyes to these issues sets in. Together with artists and experts from the fields of climate change, species protection or nature conservation, we asked ourselves how we can initiate a change here and what new forms or platforms could look like that bring the topic not only into the consciousness, but above all into the hearts of the people. Our VR Experience Lost Forms is our answer to that. We see it as a platform - a “virtual archive.” This archive preserves and conserves forms that are threatened with extinction. It gives them a place of permanent preservation and documents their existence - a reference library for life on our planet, which can constantly grow with more forms.
With our VR Experience, we want to pay tribute to the breathtaking, beautiful and majestic nature of these forms in the presentation on the one hand, but at the same time also show and document their decay through various forms of representation and interaction. It is not just about looking at these unique and beautiful forms, but more importantly experiencing them in a vivid way. The transformation of the forms into geometric grids to point clouds to their complete disappearance into empty space becomes the focus of contemplation and represents the decay of nature that has already been ongoing for a long time. This form of representation enables us to depict ecological loss in a new way and to create a lasting awareness of it in the viewer.
Lost Forms was inspired by the idea of capturing an iceberg in VR. The team soon realized that there are many other natural forms that share the same qualities of beauty, majestic appearance, and delicate fragility that so fascinated us about the iceberg. After an intensive research of the endangered species, we came across many completely different forms. We decided to start with seven forms in our “archive”, which represent a very broad spectrum of endangered species. Of our original seven forms, six are currently in our prototype. The only form we were not able to integrate due to time and financial resources is the Sunflower starfish, but we will make up for this shortly. For these six shapes we researched image material with our 3D artist Violeta Garkova, who made a unique 3D model for each form. Our programmer, Marcel Karnapke, then created an initial interaction for each form, including its slow resolution in wireframes and pointclouds. For the prototype, we decided on intuitive, simple interactions that allowed us to test the performance of the VR experience. We feel we are on a very good path here, but look forward to further exploration during production as well.
When visitors enter the experience, they find themselves in a dark room. When they look around, they discover a massive iceberg not far away that rises more than 20 meters into the air. Using a simple and intuitive control system, they can approach the iceberg in a slow gliding flight. The iceberg is initially static and unchanging. After about a minute, however, it begins to change. Slowly, it transforms from a photorealistic 3D image into a wireframe, a more abstract image that represents the data layer that underlies the full 3D image. From there, it further resolves into what’s called a point cloud: an even more abstract visualization of data points that form the base layer on which the image was scanned. Eventually, these data points go out like stars, leaving only darkness. As the visual recedes, so does the sound. Gently but steadily, the sound waves become simpler, more artificial, and more rudimentary, until they finally disappear into silence. The iceberg is the central shape in our VR Experience. With its mighty size and history and habitat for musk oxen and walruses, for example, we want to bring the viewer:into awareness of the immensity of this natural phenomenon.
When visitors enter the seastar’s space, it begins to move gently, and as one hovers on the underside, the feet begin to dance and sway and the arms contract as if the seastar were a prey animal. Once common on the west coast of the U.S., the Sunflower starfish is almost completely extinct as a result of a disease whose origin is unknown. This starfish is another monstrous predator. It has more than 20 legs and a bulging, orange body. On its underside are thousands of tiny tube feet, delicate transparent instruments that it uses to grab its prey and penetrate its insides before expelling its own stomach and digesting them alive.
Compared to the strangeness of some other forms, the columbine’s appearance is rather ordinary: a small wildflower with small, purple petals - but with a root system that extends beneath it almost as far as the stems above. The movement of the observer triggers the movement of the flower in the wind on its local hillside: While the roots remain motionless, the stems sway and flutter back and forth. The columbine’s habitat is only 50 square meters and consists of steep limestone cliffs overlooking the Flumineddu River in eastern Sardinia. A recent study showed that the entire world population consists of only 40 adult plants.
When visitors activate this giant monster, it begins to move its many legs in the air and turns its face and body toward you as you explore it.It is named for the only place it occurs, a strikingly bare, flat hill overlooking Cape Town, South Africa. Velvet worms have short, round legs stretched out like a teddy bear’s and cartoon-like faces with blind, protruding eyes. The Lion’s Hill velvet worm is distinguished by its purple-pink color. Although they look cute, they are very effective predators that can prey on insects their own size.
The size of an iceberg, it looks like a geodesic dome that has reached futuristic dimensions. But behind the hard material of the shell, you can barely make out the larva that grows inside it. It is green and shapeless, moving gently beneath the geometric surface as visitors explore it. The egg of the Miami Blue butterfly is shaped like a thick, round disk made up of a lattice structure of spherical nodes connected by slender tubes. It is almost perfectly white, with a slight blue tinge, and is only 2 mm in diameter.
When the visitors enter the room of the coral, the tentacles begin to move very gently and sway with the ocean stream. If you look closely, you can see how in several places larvae emerge from the tip of one of the tentacles. The coral is native to the Galapagos archipelago, where it was common until an El Niño event in the 1980s. Since then, it has become increasingly rare and is found at only one confirmed site. Its corals are deep pink, from which sunflower-like polyps emerge at dusk.
With the VR Experience Lost Forms, we are creating a small universe that will enable us to bring the issue of species extinction to the public in a sustainable way. So we will carry this project over all available channels into the world. A comprehensive website will serve as a hub on which images, 3D models and information about the project can be found. In addition, data on exhibitions and opportunities to rent VR glasses with the project will also be available here. On Instagram, we will soon create a dedicated channel for the project and use it to drive traffic to our site. In addition, Lost Forms will be available for purchase through popular VR stores. At the same time, we have a partner network of museums, libraries and events, which we are constantly expanding and where Lost Forms will be seen. Furthermore, we will develop an educational concept, which is complementary to our VR Experience and can be obtained free of charge by schools and educational institutions. Last but not least, we will sell our Lost Forms as NFTs (nonfungible tokens) and use the proceeds to add more forms to our universe.
A multimedia artist interested in dream-like narratives, mythos, ritual, and biodiversity. While his concentration is on working in VR, Johnson also directs fiction and documentary films. His most recent project is The Republic of Dreams: a traveling installation that adapts the literary worlds of Bruno Schulz through different mediums, all inspired by rituals, dreams, and the imagination.
A journalist whose work has appeared in Slate, The Atlantic, Vice, National Public Radio, and other outlets. His work focuses on the intersection of environmental and political crises. He also writes on a variety of other subjects, including extremism, history, and art, as well as book reviews and essays. He has collaborated with Mika Johnson on a number of virtual reality projects.
A Creative Producer for VR / AR / MR and Games content. A graduate of traineeship in International Producing and the program Atelier Ludwigsburg-Paris. She works for Expanding Focus GmbH in Leipzig where she has been Producer for several projects such as for example the VR Experience Cabinets of Wonder VR which has been running successfully in different festivals and world premiered at IDFA 2020.
A creative Producer, after studying Multi Media Art, Dramaturgy and international Co-production he founded expanding focus GmbH, now traveling the world giving workshops and creating stories and concepts for the digital realm. Having produced numerous XR Projects with partners like Goethe, Fraunhofer, the foreign Ministry of Germany, public broadcasters and many more he is always out to discover new cutting edge approaches to new technology and purposeful interactions.
A theater director, award winning developer, lecturer and co-founder of CyberRäuber, a collective realizing new formats and applications for mixed realities in the context of classical theater, opera and ballet. His work focuses on the fusion of high technologies with architectures of human narrative and includes topics such as virtual reality, artificial intelligence, future architectures, and archaeology and reality reconstruction.
Dedicated independent and collaborative synesthetic interdisciplinary artist with over a decade of experience in arranging and creating music and artwork. Professional musician, singer, songwriter, producer, composer, keyboardist and sound designer with extensive experience and holistic approach. Passionate ecologist with Masters Degree in Environmental Studies.
A sound designer, audio engineer, podcast editor, and web developer. Aside from commerical podcasting work, he does creative sound design for film, XR, and installation. His work can be found in film, installation, and commercial projects in the United States and throughout Central Europe, including the BFI London Film Festival and the Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film.
A bulgarian-born multimedia designer, currently working for expanding focus as a 2D and 3D artist. Creativity and the passion for animation, cinema and the world of virtual reality have been part of her life from childhood all through university. During her course of study and in the present she has been working on a variety of projects, from animation films, AR-apps and virtual reality experiences.
Focused on nature-inspired digital art. Fascinated by life-forms of all sizes. Admirer of microscopic photography. Since childhood interested in 3D creation. At age of 12 started by modding games, later became an architecture visualizer, which led to interior and furniture design career. Recently has made a shift towards an entirely procedural approach, combining both 3d and programming skills, to create art that feels alive.
A creative technologist & technical director focusing on VR, AR and Games. Worked on projects such as “A Ride in 2049” a VR experience part of the documentary “Mobile Zukunft. Die Stadt von morgen”, produced by Hessischer Rundfunk and ARTE, or on a transmedia project “Cabinets of Wonder“. Current works are the AR Theatre Experience “Sax@Play” and the Game “Utopia Tower Endgame”.
A Unity developer at Expanding Focus, with a background in mechanical engineering and 3 years of experience in VR and MR applications, ranging from visualizing complex machines, to immersive gaming experiences. Passionate about procedurally generated content, advanced rendering techniques and GPU accelerated algorithms, he tries to enhance the world of gaming with interactive simulations of all kinds.
A multidisciplinary designer with focus on art direction, branding and visual communication. With his functional approach and timeless artistic style his work strives for the ideal end user experience regardless of used medium, be it a complex branding for companies, retail store designs or application design for controlling the production in breweries and distilleries.