Project name:
Evoke
What we did:
Interactive / VR Storytelling
Guided movement experience nourishes and empowers the inner feminine
Trailer video
A poetic, embodied, transcendental journey, Evoke is a visceral exploration of energy inspired by ancient healing body practices, contemporary dance and the female form.
Part guided-visualisation/meditation and part dance-experience, Evoke is a VR experience for people who need or love to move. Five years in the making, it is an antidote and a tonic for a fast world built by the patriarchy - a world where we are addicted to tech and most often leave our bodies behind. It is the antithesis to the majority of VR games that leave a body adrenalised rather than nourished.
Upon entering the experience, your body is asked to step into a vast desert landscape and feel itself as a mystery. Users are met by goddesses who guide you through movements that wake up energy around you, that relax and free your body, and fill you with light. Evoke’s combination of visceral images, interactive movements, music, sound and a voice-over guiding participants into the rich emotional landscape of the body, makes for a compelling, grounding and nourishing experience.
Feminine deities were a key guiding force of the project. The experience embodies three elemental feminine figures that the work centres around and are modelled on the movement of wāhine toa Nancy Wijohn, one of Aotearoa's most esteemed contemporary dancers.
By crafting our own 3D models along with Nancy’s extraordinary presence and her body’s fluid powers, Evoke’s goddesses are primordial, strong figures and rebut against the traditionally thin, over sexualised female caricatures that dominate the gaming and mixed media space.
Evoke was funded by the New Zealand Film Commision and launched at Doc Edge Festival in June 2023.
Directors: Kat Lintott (Ngāi Tahu), Loren Taylor ● Writer: Loren Taylor ● Producers: Kat Lintott, Claire Barrilla, Ben Dunn, Tash Turner ● Lead Developer: Jeff Jones ● Junior developer: Eugene Park ● Animator: Tim Crossley ● Designer: Michelle Nordal Santos ● Fire, light and universe goddess dancer: Nancy Wijohn (Te Rarawa, Ngāi Tuhoe, Te Arawa-Ngāti Tahu/Ngāti Whaoa ● Movement director: Miranda Manasiadis ● Composer & sound design: Dylan Galletly, Briar Prastiti ● Guide and fire goddess voice talent: Loren Taylor ● Light goddess voice talent: Te Kahureremoa Taumata ● Universe goddess voice talent: Emma Draper (Ngāti Apa, Ngā Wairiki) ● Goddess artist: Brianna Fromont ● Texture artist: Jonathan Adams
And a big thank you to: NZFC, Miramar Creative and Footnote Dance.
