ārǣfan [ Old English ]: “to set free, unravel”. Explore mind, embodiment, identity & your preconceived notions of what virtual reality is all about at Burning Seed 2018. 

Introducing: the ārǣfan collective, consisting of Stephanie Andrews, Lachlan Sleight, Cassandra Edwards, Toby Wintrmute Corkindale and Stefan Szo; with the advisory assistance of Toby Bell & Karen Melzack.

Our Burning Seed Large Art Grant submission made several months ago was more than approved (Artery liked us so much they gave us bonus moneys!), but a project like this is very expensive to create - our overall budget is not even half-funded by Artery and we are contributing a ton ourselves to make the project a reality. This is pretty normal for Seed projects, and many artists and camps also run fundraisers to get people involved,and we would like to offer people who might not be attending Burning Seed the chance to get in on the action!

Virtual Reality is an incredibly powerful medium to express creativity in new, unique ways and is innately interactive. Whether you’ve never experienced VR, or you’ve spent hours in it –  we're very pleased to be bringing VR to more people, and our Burning Seed project will offer something incredible and unique. We will be offering a selection of Virtual Reality experiences on the Paddock with "The Unreal" over 4 nights, including a completely new and built-just-for-Seed experience being a centerpiece of the project: an immersive out-of-body experience that is breaking completely new ground in VR using depth camera technology and the magic of Lachlan Sleight's incredible coding. But we'll also be offering those of you in Melbourne, Australia, a chance to expereince key aspects of "The Unreal" in just a few weeks, including a Q&A session with Lachlan at the end of the sessions! Or if you're anywhere in the world - you can support us financially even if you're not attending Seed, with a variety of rather cool rewards ... yes that's what you are here for!

(and if you really like the Vectra design, you can also pop over to our RedBubble store for more, these will be available after the crowdfunder finishes too!)

Thank you all so much for your support!

<3  ārǣfan 

Our overall budget is quite long and convoluted (VR needs a lot  equipment!) and a big chunk is covered by the Burning Seed Artery - but for crowdfunding purposes, we're not looking for a whole lot extra, just a little bitty push! The crowdfunding funds will go into our overall pool to help us pay back some of the money the team is chipping in personally, as the Artery grant doesn't even cover half of the costs of bringing The Unreal to the Paddock!