DESCRIPTION

From the team who created the Emmy award winning VR experience Collisions, visionary artist Lynette Wallworth and producer Nicole Newnham, AWAVENA is a groundbreaking VR documentary. AWAVENA is a true story with all the power of myth. It tells of Hushahu, the first woman Shaman of the Yawanawa, and of the radical reconfiguring of gender relations that occurs following her training by the tribe’s spiritual leader. Tata, the tribes 100 year old Shaman, lived through slavery and survived the cultural destitution wrought by missionaries. He foresaw challenges on the horizon for the diminished population of Yawanawa, and came to believe their future strength relied on power being shared with women. Tata broke an eons old cultural taboo to train Hushahu, and his decision sparked a revolution, one that changed the Yawanawa and has resonances for us all.

For the Yawanawa some of the most critical decisions involve forest protections in a climate crisis and their ability to convey what their forest means to them is a central underpinning of Awavena. While we were still in preparations the Yawanawa sent us a message: Tata was dying, we should come quickly so his message would not be lost. We were privileged to have our VR cameras present while Hushahu tended to her mentor during his final moments, returning to the community months later so Hushahu could tell her story and hold a vision using the traditional medicines. This time, in addition to 360 cameras, we took three canoes of experimental technology. Lynette wanted to create Hushahu’s vision state out of authentic recordings.  A portable PX-80 LIDAR scanner, one of only three available at the time in the US, was used to map the forest, generating 3D volumetric capture. This point cloud data, composed of hundreds of millions of points, showed the vegetation and the village in incredible detail, evoking an ethereal forest, simultaneously scientifically specific and completely wondrous.  A biologist specializing in natural  fluorescence travelled with us to locate fluorescent insects which we filmed under blue wavelength using yellow filters.

The invitation to come to the Amazon to record Awavena came from Tashka, Chief of the Yawanawa. Exposed to our work using VR/AR technologies Tashka saw an opportunity to share with the outside world something akin to the visioning techniques that sit at the heart of Yawanawa society. VR seemed purpose-built for this as it places the viewer central to the unfolding scene and allows us, for the first time, to show the world as Hushahu sees it, transported in her mind’s eye by the medicines Tata trained her to use. For the Amazonian Yawanawa, ‘medicine’ has the power to take you inside a vision to a place you have never been. By collaborating with Wallworth, Hushahu uses VR like medicine, opening a portal to the Yawanawa way of seeing. For this, our second film in a series of VR works transmitting urgent stories from indigenous communities, we shared Tashka’s passionate interest in pushing the boundaries of immersive technologies to convey a powerful story with universal meaning. We knew we had an opportunity to bring the work to audiences at Sundance, Davos and the UN-- we believed this was a critical story to deliver to world leaders and social and cultural influencers as tensions continue over gender rights, women’s leadership and decision making.

Back in California, Wallworth worked with Unity developers, system designers, microscopists and animators to integrate these  elements into the vision sequence.  An entirely new visualization and compression technique was invented to allow the enormous volume of point cloud data to be integrated, revealing a wondrous portrait in light. Breakthrough code was written to allow the vision-state-forest to respond to wherever the viewer looks, to replicate the Yawanawa’s conviction that the “forest is aware of you”. AWAVENA premiered at Sundance, was in competition at Venice Film Festival, was experienced by world leaders and CEOs at the World Economic Forum, Davos and by presidents and governors at WEF Latin America. It was featured at the UN General Assembly while last year’s disastrous Amazonian fires raged, and has been presented by Yawanawa leaders to Brazilian government officials who hold sway over Yawanawa territory and the Amazon’s increasingly precarious future.  AWAVENA has been used as a tool to influence some of the world’s most powerful decision makers. It has helped shift the mindset of those who are exposed to the Yawanawa’s crucial message on power and leadership and helps us to reconsider our own culture’s sense of possibility for future gender relations

DOWNLOAD INSTRUCTIONS

Download Awavena here or from the button above. The experience is viewable from any desktop virtual reality headset (Oculus Rift S, HTC Vive Pro) through SteamVR (which can be downloaded here.) Once you’ve launched the executable, press the spacebar to begin viewing the experience. If there is no audio or 360 video, you may have to update your HEVC video extensions via the Microsoft store, also located here. If for whatever reason you are still experiencing any technical issues during playback, feel free to reach out for support at support@marswong.com

PRODUCT INFORMATION

• Entry Category: 

  • Documentary

• Title: 

  • AWAVENA

• Running Time: 

  • 20 minutes

• Production Company: 

  • Coco Films & Studio Wallworth

• Release Date:

  • December 24th, 2019 

• Original URL (if applicable): 

  • Viveport

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

• Operating System

  • Windows 10 x64

• Processor

  • Intel i7 Series

• Memory

  • 8 GB

• DirectX Version

  • DX11

• Disk Space

  • 7 GB

• Graphics Card

  • (NVIDIA ONLY)

    • GTX 1070/RTX 2070 and above