Warm Worlds and Otherwise (2018-2019) & META (2018)

Installation, Virtual Reality, Sound, Sculpture

Anna Bunting Branch, Warm Worlds and Otherwise (2018-2019), Installation environment (dimensions variable); digital animation for Oculus Go (11:40 minutes, looped)

Aliyah Hussain, META (2018), Audio (12:30 minutes, looped)

Warm Worlds and Otherwise transports us to an alternative universe, coming to life through painting, digital animation and virtual reality (VR). For this immersive installation, Anna Bunting-Branch has drawn inspiration from feminism and science fiction: exploring the worlds we create to understand the unique perspectives of other conscious beings.

At the heart of the installation is an experimental 360-degree animation viewed on modified VR headsets, complete with trailing tendrils and strange technology spilling out onto the tables of the Sister’s Kitchen restaurant. Wearing them, we are transported between environments – from an unknown planet, to a restaurant orbiting in space – inhabiting the bodies of different human and non-human characters.

Accompanying the installation is META, a sonic world created by artist Aliyah Hussain. Ambient sounds from handmade instruments and found objects permeate from the gallery space and into the VR world, blurring our experience between the real and virtual environment.

Warm Worlds and Otherwise and META were commissioned as part of Worlds Among Us, a collaboration between FACT, The Mechatronic Library, QUAD and Wysing Arts Centre. The project developed from the Worlds Among Us retreat in 2017, which featured contributions from Rebecca Allen, Katriona Beales, Ami Clarke, Sonya Dyer, Candice Jacobs, Wilf Speller, 555-5555, and Werkflow. Supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England. Courtesy of the artist.

The project was first presented at Wysing Arts Centre in October 2018 and will tour to QUAD in 2020.