Monoliths

Three women. Three voices. The northern landscape.

Three stories open the world of the English northern landscape in virtual reality, what it means to come from it, live in it and belong to it.

Monoliths interweaves radiant renderings of three northern UK environments – a moor, a city and a coast – with sweeping soundscapes and poetic monologues by Hannah Davies, Carmen Marcus and Asma Elbadawi. At once imaginative and immersive, this XR experience is an arresting testament to the inextricable link between person and place.

Their stories and origins are tied to the landscape where they come from and have grown up. They are monoliths – standing stones – powerful and influential forces.

Monoliths has been nominated at the BFI London Film Festival for ‘Best Immersive Art and XR Award 2022’, and featured at the Melbourne International Film Festival, Aesthetica Short Film Festival, Sheffield Doc Fest 2022, and re;publica digital festival in Berlin.. Monoliths is available to book for your venue or school by contacting lucy@pilot-theatre.com.

---

This poetic VR film by UK artist Lucy Hammond integrates soundscapes captured in the north of England with three women’s powerful testimonies.

Monoliths explores the use of virtual reality and audio soundscaping (audio that listeners would normally hear in a real environment), to create a unique immersive storytelling experience. Audiences experience three artistically rendered environments based on real outdoor locations in the Northern landscape: The Moor, The City, and The Coast. Original poetic monologues are delivered using spatially recorded voices, combined with the soundscapes of real locations fusing real audio soundscapes of a location, with 3D rendered environments.