_Myriad. Where we connect | VR experience

Myriad is about animal migration in the Anthropocene.

It follows the migratory journey of three animals, its main protagonists – The Bald Ibis, the Arctic Fox, and the Green Sea Turtle – making their way around the globe. Crafting a highly artistic and poetic virtual reality (VR) experience based on scientific migratory data, the project invites visitors to experience our world as an interdependent system.

From global to elemental, Myriad includes the science of interconnectedness into an impressive artistic concept by creating a world out of carbon. Flexible and abundant, carbon is an element that forms the basis of all life on earth. Myriad’s visual concept uses this building block as a narrative and aesthetic link between individual components and global networks to show how all life on earth is part of an endlessly connected cycle.

Carbon forms the main creational and artistic element across all of Myriad’s formats, generating atmospheres and landscapes, transporting movement, and reconfiguring interaction in a constantly changing, living cosmos. Analog charcoal drawings, produced in the studio, are integrated into the digital virtual reality environment and combined with carbon particle systems to form the world of Myriad. While accompanying the journeys of the migrating animals, the interactive format enables the viewer to get up and close to the animals and experience the world as a living networked system.

The VR experience, by Interactive Media Foundation and Filmtank in co-creation with Miiqo Studios and Artificial Rome, is part of a larger cross-media project at the intersection of art, science, and storytelling. Myriad has been created in close scientific collaboration with the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behaviour and the Natural History Museum in Berlin.