40 minutes…
Dear readers
That's how long a single torch burns.
Our ancestors, 17.000 years ago, had maybe a handful of torches. They burned them crawling 800 meters into the stone heart of a mountain near the Pyrenees.
Not to hide, but to paint.
I was there on holiday, when I followed them down into the Cave of Niaux — to the Salon Noir, where horses, bison and Alpine ibexes were drawn by the Magdalenian people between 13,000 and 17,000 years ago. It took us 75 minutes to get down on lights on battery light, on a prepped and pre-determined path; they came with torches that lasted roughly 40 minutes. They didn't stumble into this chamber, they chose it very intentionally.
And somewhere on that descent my vacation quietly turned into something else. That made me realise something beyond the cliché comparison of caves and immersive experiences…
When our guide mimicked that flickering light, the animals seemed to move. It was marvelous to look at. Plato was right. The visual ingenuity felt old and super modern at the same time.
But then the guide switched the lights off,…
And in the dark she sang. The sound rose and folded back on itself, cathedral-vast in the towering 50m tall cave. The sound, the acoustic reverberation and full harmony of her voice had overtaken everything.
There and then, I understood what I'd had backwards the whole way down. They didn't choose this place for the eye. They chose it for the ear. But that part…leaves no traces. Just memories.
The tips for the après immersion summer have that in common. Sound as a leading element. Space that renegotiates the story. Smart instruments leaving traces.
Enjoy!
❤ Nienke
Coming soon
Alterity
by Jacoo Gardner (production UpscaleXR)
28 & 29 August 2026 - live show at MU Hybrid Art House (Eindhoven)
Progress rarely stops to ask what it leaves behind. In ALTERITY, Jacco Gardner treats the machine not as a tool, but as a curious partner. Out of old recorders, synthesizers and light, he creates a live performance that plays with him and surprises even him. It's a warmer, more human take on AI and creativity, and you don't need to know a thing about digital art to be swept up in it.
> The Live show is free entrance. More info here.
Digital Darkroom x NFF x Nemo Vos
Hallucinating mini festival with VR art taking center stage, minus the creepy big-tech vibes.
1 October 2026 at De Helling (Utrecht)
Have you always wondered what happens when you strip digital art of all algorithms, megacorporations, and chastity filters, and replace it with Taiwanese avant-garde films, Parisian cyber queer fetish performances, and eclectic DJs from Utrecht?
This is your sign.
> Tickets available here
Otion presents W.A.V.E
This is part three in a series where Otion activates three essential elements: space, voice, and body, guiding audiences along a path from listening, to embodiment
3 October 2026 in Felix Meritis (Amsterdam)
OTION returns to Felix Meritis with the third part of W.A.V.E: Making the Wave, an immersive performance series exploring the invisible forces that connect sound, body, and space. Through sound, movement, and ritual storytelling, OTION transforms live music into a fully spatial experience, where sound is not just heard, but physically felt.
> Get a ticket here
Open Lab Sessions
Four studio’s test new immersive material during NFF
26, 27, 28, 29 September 2026 - at Kinepolis (Utrecht)
Studio Nullshima, Studio Nergens, Studio Richard Vijgen and Studio ZZZAP open up their new immersive ideas for audience testing. Expect an exciting array of open lab sessions: there will be a full work to experience in new presentation setup, early immersive experiments for large groups, a performative vr-theatre experiment and a never ending library that challenges you to not go mad in all the knowledge of the world.
> Come help these artists test the material. Book a slot to experience
and feedback on the works
Artistic styleframe of R&D by Studio ZZZAP - by Mila Paparizova
My Unrelenting Skin
An English-language interactive body horror experience
4 - 6 September 2026 - at Fringe Festival (Amsterdam)
Together, the artist and a participant play out a story for an intimate audience. The participant plays Henry: a man looking for romantic connection with other men, but whose own fears and anxieties constantly hold him back. Henry undergoes a bodily transformation that brings him in direct conflict with his own desires. Searching for solace in a small gay club bathroom, Henry encounters a barmannamed David and discovers that he is perhaps not as alone as he thinks. Horror genre meets transformative play and LARP.
> Tickets via the Fringe Festival
ADE programs
dome concerts and
immersive installations
We’ve browsed the ADE catalogue and discovered a few gems to mark down in your calendar: Colin Benders, Max Coopers, Olafur Eliasson, Maarten Vos & Maotik and several Julius Horsthuis fractal art performances.
ERRATIC WEATHER
by Maarten Vos & Maotik present
ERRATIC WEATHER translates historical hurricane data into a living audiovisual landscape that unfolds in real time.
Before each performance, the system selects a historical hurricane from a database. Scientific data—including geolocation, atmospheric pressure, temperature and wind speed—forms the foundation for a unique composition of sound and visuals. No two performances are ever the same. Each show follows the life cycle of a different storm, allowing audiences to experience the beauty, power and unpredictability of nature through an ever-changing generative artwork.
23 October at the Artis Planetarium
DEEP SEEING CURRENTS
by Olafur Eliasson in the Artis Aquarium in collaboration with 4DSound
As you approach DEEP SEEING CURRENTS you are slowly enveloped by darkness and the sounds of life underwater. Layers of oceanic cacophony – whale songs, rumbling of hydrothermal vents, and human-made noises, among others – surround you, while the vibrations can be felt throughout your entire body, emulating the experience of pressure in the deep sea.
The immersive sound of Deep seeing currents is brought to life by 4DSOUND. The exhibition is located inside the ARTIS Aquarium and can be visited with a valid ARTIS Park ticket.
21 - 25 October at ARTIS Aquarium
MAX COOPER 3D AV
“Where art, science and electronic music converge.” - ADE
Max Cooper started out as a computational biologist before turning to music, and he's spent over fifteen years digging into the same thing from both sides: the hidden patterns that run through nature, through us, through the science that tries to pin them down. His work doesn't sit neatly in either camp, it's what happens when a scientist refuses to stop being curious.
At Fabrique des Lumières, he turns the entire building into the instrument. Music, light and architecture collapse into one thing. You come out hearing differently.
24 October at Fabriques des Lumières
COLIN BENDERS & OTHERNODE
Most concerts run on rails. This one doesn't. There's no setlist and no fixed ending — just a shared system of sound and image that Colin Benders and Othernode pull apart and rebuild as they play.
Benders drives it with his modular synthesiser, chasing rhythms and textures that keep shifting under his hands. Othernode answers in light, projection and images that crawl across the room. Neither one is backing the other up. The sound and the visuals are arguing, agreeing and building the piece together, right in front of you, and nobody in the room knows exactly where it goes.
22 October at Fabrique des Lumières
support an exciting new production
An opera you walk into
by Tamara Shogaolu
Amsterdam, 1632. A free Black woman leads a community as the slave trade booms. History erased her. An immersive opera brings her back. It asks who gets remembered, who gets forgotten, and who gets to decide.
✨ This promising production is looking for crowdfunders ✨
With an exciting creative vision Ado Ato Pictures weaves cutting edge historic research, visual design and creative tech together to bring you The Invisible Woman. It is a living story world that audiences can step inside. The moment audiences enter light spills across the floor. Voices emerge from every direction. Vast animated landscapes bloom around them. You are suspended between memory, history, and dream. Live performers share the stage with their animated counterparts. Afro-diasporic musical traditions, are mixed with electronic textures, and contemporary soundscapes.
There is no fixed front row. No single perspective. Audiences move through the performance, discovering new layers of the story with every step, becoming participants in the act of remembering.
The performing team is Tony Award winner Adriane Lenox is The Future Ancestor. World-renowned soprano Claron McFadden is Idil. Mezzo-soprano Carla Nahadi Babelegoto, of Dutch National Opera & Ballet, is Francisca. Thalia Oyewole, Shanice Skinner, and Bahghi are the Ancestors.
Styleframe by Ado Ato Pictures. Source: Kickstarter campaign The Invisible Woman.
Back it now and you're one of the first people to make it exist. The production is in the final phase. They are not starting from zero. 61% of this production is already funded, the cast is signed, and the venue has the dates. What remains is the closing gap and this is the number that closes it.
We need your tips and recommendations
Mail us at hello [at] studiozzzap [dot] nl
or drop your new work in our form on the website
www.immersiveartcalendar.com
or immersievekunstagenda.nl