Screen grab from a video filmed in ‘Uncanny Alley’, a VRChat world created by MetaRick.
In October 2021, Mark Zuckerberg renamed his company ‘Meta’. The name was inspired by the metaverse, the emergent network of virtual 3D spaces – accessible through virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) tools – that many technologists believe will transform our work and leisure. By appropriating the word ‘meta’, Zuckerberg has staked a territorial claim on the metaverse, aiming to make its future symbiotic with that of his company.
Of course, the metaverse does not (yet) belong to Meta. It is still a work-in-progress. At this key moment in its development, it is important that independent creators can also contribute to shaping it. For the metaverse to become an inclusive and democratic space, the tech giants’ corporate goals needs to be balanced by a plurality of grassroots visions for what the metaverse could become and how it could serve society.
This project aims to foster discourse about what kind of metaverse we want to inhabit. It began in September 2020 with an intensive two-week workshop led by VR filmmaker Joe Hunting (director of the Sundance hit ‘We Met In Virtual Reality’) with TV Production students at the University of Bergen, in which students created a series of short documentaries filmed with a virtual camera on VRChat. The resulting four short films were exhibited as a part of the ‘BIFF Expanded’ exhibition at Bergen Film Festival in October 2022.