Kremfest 2026 XR Showcase

Director Statement: For as long as I can remember, I have looked up at the Moon and dreamed of what it feels like to leave Earth behind. When the private dearMoon lunar mission was canceled, I felt a deep ache - not just for myself, but for the millions of dreamers who yearn to experience deep space. I realized that if the doors to commercial lunar flight were closing, I had to open a new one through code. I built Artemis: The Free Return to place everyday people in the commander's seat. I refused to put the spacecraft on pre-baked animation rails; the universe doesn't have rails. By calculating dynamic Newtonian gravity and active aerodynamic drag in real time, the simulation honors the true danger, math, and silent awe of cislunar flight. When you watch our fragile blue world vanish behind the lunar limb, my hope is that you feel both the terror of the void and the profound realization that we are all travelers on the same small island in the dark.

Director Biography: Larry James is an independent VR director, creative technologist, and systems architect based in Seattle, Washington. As the founder of UpLiftVR Studios, Wulf Design Studios, & VRMakerDome, he harnesses spatial computing, browser-native WebXR, and real-time physics to make complex science and cosmic wonder universally accessible. With over two decades of systems engineering experience, Larry fuses technical rigor with deeply humanistic storytelling. His previous works include High Desert Eclipse, an acclaimed 4K 360° total solar eclipse documentary on the Meta Quest Store, and Maiden Flight, a whimsical aerial VR installation showcased at the SIFF VR-Zone, praised by the Seattle Times and featured on KING 5 Evening Magazine. Inspired by the historic NASA Artemis missions and a lifelong passion for space exploration, Larry created Artemis: The Free Return as a solo developer to prove that humanity's greatest orbital voyages don't require billion-dollar budgets to experience - just curiosity and an open web browser. His work bridges interactive aerospace science, festival curation, and indie creative coding.

Director Statement: With Firedrake, as the solo developer, I wanted to create a world that feels less like a game level and more like a place that actually exists, an old, forgotten space that continues to live and change even when no one is there. VR gives me the ability to make that space physical, turning the audience from an observer into a visitor moving through the unknown. My goal is to create a living liminal space: familiar enough to invite you in, but strange enough to make you wonder what was here before you arrived and what might still be watching.

Director Biography: Long time indie film animation and VR creator. Solo developer behind Firedrake 1–3.

Director Statement: Together, de Heer’s projects form a unique artistic practice that combines animation, technology, and ecological awareness — using digital tools to make us look more closely at the lives and deaths around us.

Director Biography: Tote Tiere Maarten (Maarten Isaäk de Heer) is a Dutch animation artist living in Berlin. His work moves from traditional drawn animation to installation art and, more recently, to immersive XR experiences. Throughout his career, he has explored themes of nature, death, and the overlooked lives of the small animals that surround us. After beginning with hand-drawn films, de Heer shifted toward experimental installations and fulldome works, gradually expanding his animation practice into three-dimensional and immersive forms. His artistic turning point came with the creation of his “Dead Animals” series, in which he collects animals that have died in his everyday environment, 3D-scans them, and reanimates them digitally. This resulted in the 2022 project Dancing with Dead Animals, a surreal animation and installation piece where scanned animals “dance” in a poetic afterlife-like landscape made of twigs, moss, and forest debris. Building on this direction, de Heer moved into XR with We Are Dead Animals (2025), an immersive VR experience that allows viewers to enter a desolate virtual world, encounter digitally preserved animals, and interact with them in reflective, meditative ways. Alongside these works, he created Influenza, an ongoing Instagram animation series featuring a digitally reconstructed dead cormorant who acts as a strange, humorous “influencer.” The project blends satire with his ongoing interest in giving new narrative life to dead creatures. Together, de Heer’s projects form a unique artistic practice that combines animation, technology, and ecological awareness — using digital tools to make us look more closely at the lives and deaths around us.