Night Creatures

Made possible thanks to a grant from artist and philanthropist Ling Ang, Night Creatures is a series of augmented-reality (AR) experiences celebrating the energy, connection and intimacy of the MIFF queue – a hallowed space where the film community interacts in fevered anticipation during the festival.

A key project within MIFF’s 70th-anniversary program, Night Creatures will introduce audiences to animated cinema-goers who take the form of fruit bats – Melbourne’s beloved creatures of the night, which flock into the skies in parallel with the nocturnal rhythms of MIFF audiences. Blending the present-day physical world of MIFF with uncanny, animated reinterpretations of film-festival memories, the imaginative project has been brought to life on the screen through AR by artists Isobel Knowles and Van Sowerwine, with music and sound design by Lehmann B. Smith and technical production by Art Processors.

How to view Night Creatures

Night Creatures is a free AR experience that you interact with using your own smartphone. Visit any of the following MIFF locations to access the work: Forum, ACMI, The Capitol, Hoyts and The Astor. There, you will find Night Creatures bats with QR codes that trigger the AR animations.

The experience runs in a browser on both Apple and Android smartphones. You will need 4G or wi-fi internet. You don’t need to install any software. You will need to allow access to your device’s camera and/or motion sensors for the experience to work. We do not collect or store any personal data.

A version of Night Creatures can additionally be viewed as part of the MIFF XR Gallery, which can be accessed for free at home via your desktop computer (PC/Mac) or your Oculus/Vive console. You can also visit ACMI during the festival to view the MIFF XR Gallery on a headset (free, no bookings required).

Credits

Night Creatures is supported and made possible via an $80,000 grant from artist and philanthropist Ling Ang.

Written, directed and animated by Isobel Knowles and Van Sowerwine.

A Film Camp production in association with Art Processors.

MIFF XR is an extended reality program that encompasses augmented reality and virtual reality; the program reflects and represents the very best of emergent 360-degree and interactive filmmaking.