A Tomorrowland Venture
by Karen Pecota

Films that expand, experiment with, and explode traditional storytelling exhibit their products at the annual Sundance Film Festival. Artists around the globe chosen to show off ingenuity and a culmination of their hard work have a home at the Sundance New Frontier exhibition, under the direction of curator, Shari Frilot.

Frilot describes what the audiences will experience this year, "The 2014 edition of New Frontier traverses public and intimate settings, indoors and out, and features a variety of contexts--simulated ecosystems, buildings that tell stories, computer-generated sexual visualizations, recombinant documentaries and groundbreaking virtual-reality technology." She concludes that "This year's artists explore the ways our deepest innards are being recreated by the cutting edge of moving images, technology, and storytelling."

Technology today allows for talented artists to experiment with strange technological devices to create. Using their intelligence, research and imagination the artist of today develops amazing works that effectively adapt to film. The New Frontier staff works hard all year long to find the world's most ingenious art projects that have an adaptability to film. The 2014 featured artists showcase their work with exhibits, films and panels to share up-close and personal their journey to greatness.

Here is the list of hands-on exhibitions:
Clouds - James George & Jonathan Minard. 
An interactive documentary assembled from code and stunning 3-D scanned conversations.

Digital Diaspora Family Reunion - Thomas Allen Harris.
Using the social network by inviting audiences to upload and share their own family photos,                thereby building a "One World, One Family" Album.

EVE: VALKYRIE - CCP Games. A video game where audiences can put on an Oculus Rift headset (see below), take a seat inside the cockpit of a spaceship, and enter a 360-degree- surround dogfight against enemy invaders.

I Love Your Work - Jonathan Harris. Interactive documentary featuring the personal lives of nine women who make lesbian porn.

I Want you to Want Me - Jonathan Harris & Sep Kamvar. An interactive installation that explores a form of tracking online dating.

Mesocosms - Marina Zurkow. Two parts of a series of animated landscapes that change over time in response to software-driven data. Featuring Butterflies.

My 52 Tuesdays - Sophie Hyde, Sam Haren, & Dan Koerner. An interactive photo project over one year what one person did every Tuesday.

NOT EYE - Lauren Moffatt. A woman creates a helmet she wears in reaction to the constant violation of people looking at her.

Reifying Desire Anthology - Jacolby Satterwhite. Transforms a universe where sexuality runs hungry and wild through a psychobioelectric matrix.

Sound and Vision - Chris Milk & Beck. The first live-action virtual reality (VR) film for the Oculus Rift (see below) recreating a cinematic sound and vision that one experiences through the headset. One can roam around or be stationary.

STREET - James Nares. Using a high-speed HD camera the subjects on the busy streets of New York are slowed way down to a snails pace. Coupled with varied of music styles it mesmerizes the sight of the beholder.

The SOURCE (Evolving) - Doug Aitken. A series of conversations held by the artist compiles a documentary featuring famous people who are making a difference in their field of expertise. A world where time, space and memory are fluid concepts in communication.

What's He Projecting in There? - Klip Collective
A 3-D projection-mapping of images celebrating the 30th Anniversary of the Sundance Film Festival. A special narrative. Beautiful images of design. Projected on the front of Park City's Egyptian Theater.

OCULUS RIFT - A virtual reality headset designed by Palmer Luckey known as Oculus VR (used with some of The New Frontier Installations) will hit the market for purchase in 2014. Designed to change gaming and cinematic content.

-I like to think of The New Frontier exhibition as an ever-changing showcase of modern ingenuity.  More advanced but similar to those futuristic ideas Walt Disney sought after and shared with a television audience of the 50s. Ideas that would materialize. Things we might own one day. A world of tomorrow. A new frontier to explore. Sundance Film Festival gets it. Their New Frontier Exhibitions generate the interest for a tomorrow land connecting art, and technology with the moving picture. Exploring a new world where no one has gone before.

Walt Disney was known for his futurist views and, through his television programs, showed the American public how the world was moving into the future. In his own words he'd describe a world of tomorrow, "A vista into a world of wondrous ideas, signifying Man's achievement. A step into the future, with predictions of constructed things to come. Tomorrow offers new frontiers in science, adventure and ideals. The Atomic Age, the challenge of Outer Space and the hope for a peaceful, unified world." —Walter E. Disney, July 17, 1955