In the framework of the partnership between id w - Interactive Documentary Workshop and ESoDoc, the project "Afroroutes" has been selected to take part as guest pitch to the third session of ESoDoc 2017, which will take place in Vilnius (Lithuania).
From the project description:
Afroroutes is a VR music experience, an immersive journey through the diverse slavery roads, documenting and exploring todays afro-cultures, rites and traditions worldwide. At the very heart of this project, we want to create an experience explaining and tackling the dynamics of dispersed people and diasporic heritages, to help understand the slavery chapter and look beyond it in a constructive humanistic way. Using a simple and creative storytelling concept: users will take the road to an unknown destination. User will be in a dark space (comparable to a slaves cell or slaves boat cell ), surrounded by 4 persons (charismatic afro.descendant musicians) subtly lighted. The user (with user's gaze) can choose a character and start its journey, fading in a 360° video (each slave is a different story) Each journey will be guided by the voice the chosen character, whatever land road or sea, the user will be immersed in time TIME / SPACE story, to discover at the end the destination, totally immersed in music ceremony, a sensorial explosion. The purpose of designing such an experience is: to reconstruct a real journey: you don't know where you are, and you don't know where you embark to, you discover the today´s reality of those community.