The Anticipation of Rain

TAOR has been nominated for the following awards

The Anticipation of Rain is in competition and will be presented as world premier in IDFA festival — Click the photo for more information.

The Anticipation of Rain is nominated for the VR Social Impact Award by the AIXR

The Anticipation of Rain is nominated for Crystal Owl Awards by Steriopsia Europe

Synopsis:

The Anticipation of Rain is fine artist Naima Karim’s memoir and plea for global collaboration in a time of drastic climate change.

Naima’s artwork celebrates the changing beauty of skies, but in particular the dynamic nature of skies, the arrival of the monsoon, and its significance to her homeland, Bangladesh. Her fascination with the beauty of the natural world was born from a time in her life when she was left temporarily paralysed by a virus. Unable to move for over a year, she spent her time studying and staring at the sky in awe and wonder as it morphed in colour and form above her.

It is a seven minute, linear virtual reality experience, it utilises 3D digital representations of Naima’s unique brushwork, two specially designed scents, and a rich and immersive sound design to represent the arrival of a monsoon storm. Having grown up in Bangladesh, the South Asian monsoon is a joyous, exciting, and romantic experience for Naima. Naima’s voice guides the audience through her moving lived-experience and provokes questioning around climate change.

Climate change has made the South Asia monsoon increasingly erratic and dangerous, causing extreme rainfall and drought in equal measure across the Indian subcontinent. In low-lying Bangladesh, the arrival of the monsoon, once associated with hope and renewal, is now a time of fear and loss.

In order to create The Anticipation of Rain prototype, Naima learned to paint using virtual reality painting tools. This enabled her to create 3D digital paint strokes to digitally visualize her artistic style in virtual reality. This piece will be expanded into a large-scale location-based immersive experience allowing the user to walk through her artwork as it unravels around them whilst immersed in a haptic and sonic representation of a monsoon storm.