Explore the XR+ Showcase at SXSW Sydney 2025

This year’s XR+ Showcase features 13 bold, boundary-pushing projects that capture the creativity and innovation shaping the future of immersive storytelling.

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XR+ continues to evolve beyond headsets, embracing experimental interfaces, embodied interaction, and tactile media. This year, audiences can expect everything from motion-capture environments and AI rituals to physical-digital games, sensorial feedback systems, and worldbuilding installations.

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Spanning local and international talent (from Japan, Taiwan, Belgium & the USA), the 2025 program highlights emerging voices and bold concepts that sit at the intersection of play, performance, and technological inquiry.

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Check out the lineup below:

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Revolving Time Domain

FutureZoetrope

This immersive VR installation transforms physical motion into digital time. As audiences turn a rotary controller, they animate a virtual zoetrope and gradually generate time through their actions.

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Rising River: A Personal Odyssey to Your Shadow

HYZ Studio

Inspired by Jungian theory, this AI-driven VR game invites players to restore a symbolic river using their voice. The experience culminates in a face-to-face encounter with a giant fish—the player’s shadow self.

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The Extra-Terrestrial Divining Stick

Thomas Marcusson

A suspended dowsing stick inside interlocked gimbal rings draws parallels between water divining on Earth and the search for biomarkers in space. The work playfully explores pseudoscience, ritual, and cosmic speculation.

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Vase With Flowers (Intercession of a Young Woman on Behalf of a Madman)

Soren Saville Scott

Referencing a Tiffany vase at The Met, this work explores the evolving relationship between art and viewer. It reflects on how external influences shift the meaning of still life over time.

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Cathex

Cinnamon Entertainment

Cathex is an artistic VR game/experience that unfolds like a virtual poem, guiding players on a journey of emotional transformation and self-discovery. Inspired by the philosophies of Mary Whiton Calkins, particularly the Universe as the Absolute Self, the experience immerses participants in an internal subconscious digital landscape.

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FORM

MOCAPZ

A motion-capture installation where participants’ movements generate real-time audiovisual landscapes. Using Rokoko suits and Unreal Engine 5, FORM turns the human body into both interface and instrument.

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Plonk! A 4D Puzzle

T&DA

This mixed reality game reinvents the jigsaw puzzle by adding movement and time. Solve shifting claymation puzzles and restore animated worlds by tracking clues across multiple dimensions.

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World Comes Alive

fEEL & Big Anxiety Research Centre (BARC)

A series of virtual environments that encourage emotional presence and imaginative projection. Inspired by psychoanalyst Marion Milner, the work explores how we locate ourselves in the world.

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Future Stories: Creating Virtual Worlds with Young People in Hospital

A VR wellbeing project where young patients co-design their own immersive worlds. Artists-in-residence collaborate with participants across hospitals in QLD and NSW to build personalised digital environments.

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Emote

Prachi Lai, Plai Design

Emote externalises emotion through tactile play and visual projection. Visitors use colourful cubes to reflect feelings, creating an evolving emotional landscape over the 7 days of SXSW Sydney.

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Leads to Nowhere Real

Shila Xu

A poetic installation that strips away screens and processors, using only light and darkness. The work evokes memory, emotion, and infinite internal landscapes.

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MultiBall LED

InterPlay Sports

An interactive wall-based gaming system combining real-world sports and digital play. Designed for activation events and team-building, it transforms any wall into an immersive and high-energy game zone.

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Funique

Combining ultra-high-definition VR and stereoscopic visuals, Funique explores the future of immersive film. The platform pushes the boundaries of visual fidelity to create rich, unforgettable viewer experiences.

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Don’t miss the XR+ Showcase within the Innovation Expo at ICC Sydney from 15-18 October.  On 18 October, the Innovation Expo is open to the general public as part of SXSW Sydney Unlocked, SXSW Sydney’s free program. 

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Explore more about XR+ and the Tech & Innovation Festival here and secure your Pass now.

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