Wales Millennium Centre’s Bocs is currently hosting Earths to Come, a 12-minute VR film that exemplifies the growing intersections between immersive technology and cross-disciplinary artistic practice.
Earths to Come premiered at the 2024 Venice Biennale Cinema Immersive as a communal VR theatre installation with spatialized sound, as a collaboration between cinema director, Rose Bond, vocal group Roomful of Teeth, composer inti figgis-vizueta, spatial sound designer Massimiliano ‘Max’ Borghesi, composite artist Zak Margolis, sound engineer Randall Squires and creative producer Melanie Coombs.
Created in the post-Covid world, the piece reflects an artistic landscape reshaped by isolation and reconnection. Connection itself forms the central theme: the work draws on Emily Dickinson’s poem
I Have No Life But This and the experience unfolds within the headset (immersive sight) and spatialized sound (via speakers).
The screening at Bocs was introduced by Rose Bond, who also remained for a post-show conversation giving reflections on collaborative process, the decision to develop the work in a workshop-driven VR environment, and the challenges of creating immersive pieces outside traditional artistic structures.
Bocs , the Centre’s compact venue dedicated to immersive formats, provides a quietly apt setting. The film offers a series of visual and sensory impressions that favour atmosphere and poetic logic over narrative continuity. Viewers encounter shifting landscapes, skies scattered with stars, words that coalesce, dissolve and reform as shapes or birds, all moving in dialogue with a single, carefully composed musical line. Its willingness to inhabit ambiguity becomes one of its most distinctive qualities: creation appears to occur in real time, as though watching thought take shape.
As an artistic offering, it will likely resonate most strongly with those already interested in the evolution of VR as an art form. Audiences curious about how contemporary creators from different backgrounds collaborate outside conventional mediums will find it particularly compelling. While accessible, its emphasis on texture, rhythm, and exploratory form means it may appeal less to those seeking traditional narrative storytelling.
Overall, Earths to Come offers a compact but thoughtful glimpse into the potential of VR to expand the boundaries of contemporary art. Through technological curiosity, poetic influence, and direct engagement with its creator, it rewards viewers with a particular interest in the emerging possibilities of immersive media.
Until January 11.
https://www.wmc.org.uk/en/whats-on/2025/earths-to-come/performances