Warm Worlds and Otherwise by Anna Bunting-Branch features a new Virtual Reality (VR) artwork commissioned by Wysing Arts Centre, The Mechatronic Library, FACT and QUAD.

The exhibition relates to Bunting-Branch’s interest in the encounters between feminist practice and science fiction—engaging painting, digital animation and Virtual Reality to explore ideas of worldbuilding, embodied perception and technologies of representation.

Central to the project is META (2019), an experimental 360-degree VR animation transforming the artists’ hand-painted characters, props and backdrops into an immersive virtual story world. Also included is the new installation AU Sandbox (2020) which expands her imagined worlds, and an accompanying ambient sound piece by artist Aliyah Hussain that underscores the viewer’s experience in the gallery space as well as in the virtual environment.

The first iteration of Warm Worlds and Otherwise was presented at Wysing Arts Centre in October 2018, with subsequent presentations being developed for FACT (2019) and QUAD (2020). Warm Worlds and Otherwise is supported using public funding by Arts Council England.