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Young VR artists imagine uploading memories to survive

28 January 2021

This month, the award-winning virtual reality experience To Miss The Ending will be showcased at the Sundance festival; the most prestigious film festival in the US. For artists Anna West and David Callanan, the project is a chance to explore the nature of memory in digital worlds.

David Callanan and Anna West invite viewers to explore an unsettling digital world.

Imagine if you were bodiless

What if you had to abandon the decimated physical world, and your best chance of survival was to upload your memories to an AI server to reconnect with loved ones?

This is the premise of new Virtual Reality experience To Miss The Ending. State of the art technology allows users to imagine what might happen to five inhabitants of this digital landscape if they had to struggle to access their uploaded memories.

Innovative and award-winning

To Miss The Ending began life as a play by Lancaster University graduate company Theatre 42. The original work was inspired by video games like Minecraft, in which players build their own digital worlds. It was adapted by Anna West and David Callanan of Manchester-based digital arts studio idontloveyouanymore, who were keen to explore how they could adapt the work to a format which blurred the boundary between the digital and the physical.

BBC New Creatives

Anna and David's dystopian vision was produced as part of BBC Arts and Art Council England's New Creatives scheme, which invited young artists to push creative boundaries by creating innovative films, audio and interactive experiences. Last year, To Miss The Ending project won the first ever award for 'Best XR/Immersive Art film' at the BFI’s London Film Festival’s online awards ceremony.

In January 2021 it will be showcased at the Sundance festival, which this year takes place online.

Meet the Artists

How to view To Miss The Ending

To Miss The Ending was created in virtual reality. You can watch the film as part of this year's Sundance festival - the leading festival of independent cinema.

To enjoy the full experience you will need:

  • A high-end PC
  • Any tethered VR headset.

An adapted version of the project, which can be viewed on a wider range of devices, will be available later in 2021.

We were really interested in the possibility that a new stage of death exists now, where our digital footprint left behind is finally erased
Anna West - idontloveyouanymore

To find out more about virtual reality and how you can start to explore it, check out our How to guide: New to Virtual Reality.

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