Educational Course
Digital Autumn:
For the third year in a row, Less Media Group held its open call for digital and multidisciplinary artists to take part in an immersive educational course in XR.
This course was an integral part of the Digital Autumn: Changing Perspective VR Festival, which unfolded from September to December 2024 across Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Russia.
Over the course of 10 days, from November 24th to December 3rd, participants engaged in expert-led sessions, hands-on workshops, and collaborative experiments inside VR.

They explored cutting-edge tools and methods for virtual exhibition-making while connecting with leading creators and technologists
program highlights video
As a culmination of the program, nine original project concepts were developed and presented to an international audience in VR during a special graduation showcase, offering a glimpse into the next generation of immersive art experiences.
graduation event: short video
This remains the only practice-focused program of its kind introducing artists to the immersive world entirely online and within virtual reality.
In 2024, the focus shifted to exhibition formats in virtual environments, offering participants in-depth insight into how immersive art can be curated and presented within XR platforms.
Digital Autumn:
Changing Perspective
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Ru
Digital Autumn:
Changing Perspective
Cross-cultural VR initiative introduced by Less Media Group in partnership with the French Institute. VR Festival showcasing award-winning narrative VR projects in Tashkent, Almaty, Astana, Moscow and Saint Petersburg.
The immersive format is gaining popularity worldwide, and this year, audiences in five cities across Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Russia will once again have the opportunity to see both the latest innovations in immersive cinema and iconic projects that have already become classics in virtual reality.
This year, the main theme of the festival is PERSPECTIVE. Changing perspective, altering the point of view, and seeing the world from a different angle — these are all made possible through the unique storytelling format of virtual reality. Thanks to the "Digital Autumn" festival, the audiences in three countries have a unique opportunity to see new works and understand the direction in which this new form of digital art is developing.
This year the “Digital Autumn” VR festival will take place in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Russia for the third time. The festival is organized by the French Institute in Russia in collaboration with the Less Media Group agency.
SAINT PETERSBURG
01.11 – 10.11.2024
MOSCOW
15.11 – 18.11.2024
TASHKENT
12.12 – 22.12.2024
ATYRAU
14.09 – 22.09.2024
ASTANA
24.09 – 06.10.2024
ALMATY
15.10 – 27.10.2024
MOSCOW | SAINT PETERSBURG
06.11 – 10.11.2024 | 21.11 – 23.11.2024
Past Events
MOSCOW
06.11 – 10.11.2024
SAINT PETERSBURG
21.11 – 23.11.2024
AKTOBE
21.05 – 28.05.2025
Programme 2024
FLOW
Flow is a turbulent day, driven by air.

Fragments of the life of a woman, a city and a hurricane, when all we can see is the air around us as the invisible becomes visible.
360° animation
15 minutes
Venice Immersive 2023
Winner of the Jury Special Prize
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Empereur
Empereur is an interactive, narrative experience in virtual reality, inviting us to travel to the heart of a brain: that of a father who has become aphasic.

In a monochrome rendering inspired by traditional animation, this intimate story is seen as a journey with surrealist overtones, exploring aphasia as a faraway land.
Interactive VR
40 minutes
Venice Immersive 2023
Winner of the Achievement Award
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Goliath:
Playing with Reality
Through mind-bending animation, explore the limits of reality and a true story of mental health and the power of gaming.

Echo (narrated by Tilda Swinton) guides you through the many realities of Goliath, a man who spent years in isolating mental health institutions but finds connection in multiplayer games. Combining heart-felt dialogue, mesmerising visuals and symbolic interactions, weave through multiple worlds to uncover Goliath's poignant story.
Interactive VR
20 minutes
Venice Immersive 2021
Winner of the Grand Jury Prize
Emmy Award 2022
Outstanding Interactive Media Innovation category
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The Hangman
at Home
“What does the hangman think about when he goes home at night from work?”

Inspired by the 1922 Carl Sandburg poem of the same title, this VR single-user immersive experience explores themes of acknowledgement and participation. It is not about hanging people, but about the awkward intimacy that comes with being human, and the connection between spectator, witness, and accomplice. The animated, interactive experience invites you into five interwoven stories, capturing pivotal moments in people’s lives.
Interactive VR
25 minutes
Venice Immersive 2020
Winner of the Grand Jury Prize
Cannes Film Festival 2021
Best XR work
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-22.7°C
Electronic music producer Molecule cuts himself off in a hunter village in Greenland. He recorded sounds of the Arctic there to compose music.

The -22.7°C experience offers a sensory and musical immersion into the Arctic circle, based on his adventure. The viewer/user experiences artistic creation in an extreme environment and discovers the Far North. He explores the sounds of this spectacular nature and becomes aware of its fragility. This hybrid project combines the best of immersive technologies, cinema creation and sound experimentation for a unique adventure.
360° video
10 minutes
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On the Morning You Wake
(To the End of the World)
Hawaiians suddenly confronted a real and urgent nuclear threat — one that we all currently face, but rarely acknowledge.

On the Morning You Wake (to the End of the World) is a virtual reality documentary that immerses the audience in the first-hand experience of citizens in Hawai’i to make clear the fundamental injustice of a world where nuclear weapons exist.

Premier — at Sundance 2022 Film Festival.
360° animation
38 minutes
SXSW Film Festival
Jury Award Winner
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Isle of the Dead
A timeless journey, based on Arnold Böcklin’s painting.

Isle of the Dead is a timeless journey, starting from an everyday apartment towards our final destination, guided by Charon, ferryman of the Underworld.

This VR experience is a loose recreation of the eponymous work painted in 1883 by the Swiss symbolist painter Arnold Böcklin.

The famous masterpiece also inspired a symphonic poem by Rachmaninov, which makes a perfect soundtrack to accompany the experience.
360° animation
8 minutes
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Éternelle Notre-Dame
Éternelle Notre-Dame is a technological challenge that allows visitors to immerse themselves in the history of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris and its treasures, from its construction in the Middle Ages to the current restoration work.

It's a journey through time and space, giving visitors the chance to discover every aspect of this iconic monument through a genuine virtual reality experience in which they become real players in the monument's rebirth.
360° animation
5 minutes
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Notes on Blindness:
Into Darkness
Notes on Blindness: Into Darkness is an immersive virtual reality project based on John Hull’s sensory and psychological experience of blindness.

In 1983, after decades of steady deterioration, writer and theologian John Hull became totally blind.

To help him make sense of the upheaval in his life, he began documenting his experiences on audio cassette. Over three years he recorded in excess of sixteen hours of material – a unique testimony of loss, rebirth and renewal, excavating his interior world of blindness. These original diary recordings form the basis of this project, a six-part interactive documentary using new forms of storytelling, gamplay mechanics and virtual reality to explore his cognitive and emotional experience of blindness.

Each scene will address a memory, a moment and a specific location from John’s audio diary, using binaural audio and real time 3D animations to create a fully immersive experience.
Interactive VR
20 minutes
XR Peabody Awards 2022
Peabody Legacy Interactive Winner
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Missing Pictures:
Naomi Kawase
MISSING PICTURES is a VR documentary series that takes you behind the scenes of a film that never saw the light of day. Japan's best-known filmmaker revisits a project she considered after her 2015 film The Delights of Tokyo.

Oh Debu tells the story of Aya, a young woman who is overweight and very sentimental. With this story, Naomi Kawase admits she wanted to challenge herself by making a comedy with a tone far removed from the poetic naturalism of the rest of her work.
360° animation
15 minutes
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Planet ∞
In a world in ruins, only fungi and mold grow in the middle of gigantic dried insects bodies. When a weather change occurs, rain irrigates the arid planet and floods it gradually. In the water springs an ecosystem, populated by giant carnivorous tadpoles.
360° animation
6 minutes
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