LACUNA

↳ In development: expected fall 2024

↳ Synopsis
Sonja always knew that the people she grew up with were not her real parents, but she has no memory of the one crucial, life-altering moment of her childhood. In this virtual reality multiverse of flawed memories, you meet Sonja and together you imagine what was lost. 

In Lacuna, the visitor is invited to look for that moment in January 1943 that she no longer remembers: the separation from her parents. Together with Sonja, we go on a journey into what happened eighty years ago and we hover around this lost moment through different stories and memories from before and after. Using autobiographical memories interwoven with ‘communicated’ memories, Sonja guides you through crucial scenes from her life and that of her parents. A story that leads from Paramaribo to Amsterdam and back, via the Jewish Psychiatric Center ‘Het Apeldoornsche Bosch’. Sonja is always by your side and she keeps you grounded. Together we build a virtual presence of what was lost and finally give Sonja back her story. 

DRIFT

↳ In development: expected fall 2024

↳ Synopsis
DRIFT is an audio odyssey and an openworld podcast, that generates a never ending daynamic listening experience in your favourite podcast app. Step into a techo-fluid future of the Netherlands, 500 years from now. A world where water logged country, AI infused systems and a post-climate crisis society blossoms.

↳Credits
Showrunner Nienke Huitenga
Tech lead Hay Kranen
Audio lead Lieven Heeremans
Dynamic music composition Mark IJzerman
Additional music Suzie Hagens
Narrative design Minem Sezgin, Iza Marley, Nienke Huitenga
Editor-in-chief Abel Enklaar
Produced by Studio ZZZAP and VPRO Medialab

Supported by De Machinerie and Creative Industries Fund NL

(this conversation is) OFF THE RECORD

↳ Premiered at IDFA DocLab fall 2023

↳ Synopsis
In this performative lecture, Nirit Peled investigates crime-prevention algorithms, and their profound impact on people’s lives. The performances build on her decade-long study of the consequences of risk-based profiling by Dutch police. In OFF THE RECORD she takes a deep dive into the systems that are supposed to predict which young individuals will become criminals. The focus is on the algorithm developed by the police being used as a risk assessment instrument. In front of a live audience, Peled presents individual people as both humans and datasets to show the workings of this algorithm in situations based on real-life events. People who are adversely affected by this kind of profiling have no one to turn to; no one is accountable. The main characters are a journalist, a police officer, a human rights lawyer, and 125 youngsters. Peled combines radical imagination with thorough research to pose these questions: Can anyone’s life truly be captured in data? Who writes the script that dictates our lives?

Supported by the Film Fund DocLab Interactive Grant 2023, AFK and Creative Industries Fund NL

↳ Credits
Creators Nienke Huitenga & James Bryan Graves
Digital design Vera van de Seyp & Karina Zavidova
Sound design Mark Meeuwenoord
Scenography and technical design: Sanne van Deijl, Ivo Koolen
Projectpartner: SETUP

Supported by Creative Industries Fund NL, City of Utrecht and Sandberg@Mediapark Masterclass (2019)

WINWIN A CONSENSUS ALGORITHM

↳ Premiered in 2021 - in collaboration with SETUP and Library Utrecht

↳ Synopsis
A new ritual for democracy. Conversational experiences online often go sideways, down the meaningless customer chatbot vortex or toxic discussion trolling. While technology accelerates and creates new practices, democracy lags behind in old structures. This friction results in a society that is too impatient to listen to each other to have a decent exchange of perspectives. Creators Nienke Huitenga and James Bryan Graves see WINWIN as a new routine for democracy that matches the empathic nature of humans and the harmonizing potential of an algorithm.

The experience. WINWIN is a participatory and performative experience for a small group of people guided by an algorithm: they debate a societal issue, dressed in playful statements, to discover common ground within the group. It can be played in any language you’d like as long as the group can speak/write it. WINWIN softly installs a person in a pleasant ambiance designed for anonymity, and at the same time make the 'person-node' a radically equal player in a group.
WINWIN celebrates consensus as a key outcome.

↳ Tour
Dutch Design Week (2020), Impakt festival (2020), SETUP pre-election online event (2021), het Grootste Kennisfestival (2021), Library tour (Deventer, Zwolle,  Wageningen 2021), Theatrical try out in collaboration with SETUP and Library Utrecht 2021.

ROZSYPNE

↳ Premiered in 2021 - in collaboration with SETUP and Library Utrecht

↳ Synopsis
A roomscale VR story about Nina, an old lady trying to preserve daily life in the Eastern-Ukrainian warzone, with the MH17-crash at her doorstep.

In the summer of 2014, the village of Rozsypne in the eastern Ukrainian countryside found itself in the midst of a raging civil war, the lives of its inhabitants unsettled by the destruction and chaos at their doorstep. But the suffering of Rozsypne only made international news after Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down, killing all 298 passengers and raining debris, bodily remains and other traces of human life over the fields and homes of the village—whose name translates as “scattered.”

While international coverage of the crash mostly centered on Western European lives, this poetic roomscale VR experience offers a fragmented window into the life of Nina, an elderly woman living in Rozsypne. Moving through the distinctive Ukrainian sunflower fields, we witness the details of Nina’s austere but cozy home and experience the feeling of this faraway reality up close. A vivid and brightly colored exploration of mourning, endurance, and common human feeling.

↳ Tour
IDFA Doclab (2019, premier and in competition), Wintertuin festival (2019), fundraise event for Ukraine  at Grey Space in The Middle (feb 2022), fundraise event for Ukraine at W139 Amsterdam  (mar 2022), Into The Great Wide Open (2022), Bookstore De Utrechtse Boekenbar (10  days during ‘boekenweek’ 2022), Sheffield DocFest (2022, in competition), Drim Short Film Festival in Macedonia (2022), Library event about digital literature LocHal Tilburg  Netherlands (2022, September).

COMMON GOOD #3: Sense of Belonging (in development)
By Nadja van der Weide

THE MODULAR BODY (2015)
By Floris Kaayk

HUMAN BIRDWINGS (2010-2011)
By Floris Kaayk