Post by Paula Strunden

After 1.5 years of developing a large room-scale XR experience of heat, wind, spatial sound, physical sets, and poetry for Apple Vision Pro, it's a strange and beautiful thing to see this work meet its audience. ÅTERFÖDELSEN / REBIRTH, created with the incredible Silvana Imam and commissioned by MUNCH Oslo for the EU Horizon Europe project XTREME, took visitors through an 'espresso shot of life' in three acts, experiencing Birth, Love, and Death. An article on the work by Weronika Zurawska in Paragone captured what I've been reaching for all these years more precisely than I could have hoped: "And yet it is not the research project or the technology that lingers most strongly afterwards, but the physical experience of the work. Paradoxically, it is through artificial reality that I become most aware of the real body. I feel the wind against my skin, hear the rhythm of my own steps, and stretch out my hands to touch. At a time when digital media are often accused of fragmenting our attention, the installation uses that very same technology to demand full presence. The work doesn't ask me to disappear into another world, but to meet it through the body I already have.” — Weronika Zurawska, Paragone, 2026 (translated from Norwegian) To meet the world through the body we already have. That has been the whole aim of developing embodied virtuality through 1:1 XR installations. To Munchmuseet and the fantastic team that made this possible: Silvana Imam; our core team on site — Nisj, Marijn Cinjee, Konstantinos Iliadis and Christian Sivertsen; at MUNCH Julie L. Parisi, Dr. Birgitte Aga, Awo Abdulqadir and the amazing MUNCH Youth Collective — Suleman, Akif, Daniel, Hodan, Maria and Aicha; and the whole R&D team behind XTREME - Mixed Reality Environment for Immersive Experience of Art and Culture spanning across 4DSOUND Amsterdam, Bolt Virtual Athens, Khora Virtual Reality Copenhagen, ITU Copenhagen and the University of Nottingham; with our wonderful photographers Adrian Kirkerud (Image 1) and Blindt (Image 2/3) and everyone who carried it through countless prototypes — thank you! 🙏 🔴 Step into the journey, explore the visuals and listen to Silvana's poetry in each act → https://aterfodelsen.com/ 👁 Read about the experience through the eyes of Hodan Beegsi from the MUNCH Youth Collective → https://lnkd.in/eVuZrUur 📄 Zurawska's full article (in Norwegian) → https://lnkd.in/eG3-bivk #XR #ExtendedReality #ImmersiveArt #EmbodiedVirtuality #MediaArt #MUNCH #NewMediaArt #VirtualReality