Through the eyes of a vacuum cleaner

Five XR developers from all over Europe pitched their ideas for artistic and/or narrative XR projects at the "XR Pitch Battle" on 14 November - as part of the Nextreality Festival, live in front of an audience and jury in Hamburg's Speicherstadt. "Harvest" by Anetta Jones and Matthew Shaw was selected by the jury (consisting of Britta Schewe, Ulrich Schrauth and Ralph Heinsohn) and will receive funding totalling 10,000 euros. The XR Pitch Battle took place for the fourth year in a row in 2024. A total of 40 submissions from all over Europe were received by MOIN Film Fund for the competition over the last few months

The project:

The Roomba robot hoover has passed tens of thousands of images taken in private homes to human categorisation teams to further train its AI. While seemingly trustworthy household appliances collect very personal information about us - how we live, where we go, what we buy, who our friends are - this data is worth a lot of money to companies. "Harvest" is a darkly comedic VR experience that explores surveillance capitalism through the eyes of a robotic hoover.

The production:

Anetta Jones is a producer with extensive experience in award-winning XR projects, feature films, TV and branded content. Projects she has produced have been exhibited at the Venice Film Festival, Tribeca, IDFA, Sheffield DocFest, CPH:Dox and the PHI Centre Montreal, among others.

Matthew Shaw is co-founder of ScanLAB Projects, an award-winning creative studio specialising in the use of 3D scanning in architecture and the creative industries. Matthew has spent the last 15 years pointing 3D scanners at everything from giant mirrored sculptures and arctic ice floes to graceful dancers.

The finalists:

Other participants in the XR Pitch Battle 2024 were Lilian Hess ("Strata", Germany), Spyros Boukas ("Visitor", Greece), Jing Zhao ("Snow, Tiger, Reunion", United Kingdom) and Pedro Harres ("Darchipelago", Germany).