AWAVENA: Behind the Scenes

Emmy awarding-winning artist and director Lynette Wallworth teams up with Technicolor to use immersive media to explore the way of life led by the Yawanawa, the indigenous people of the Amazon, for her newest acclaimed immersive experience Awavena. The stunning tale of metamorphosis, and the second in a series of mixed-reality works by Lynette and producer Nicole Newnham, Awavena follows the Yawanawa, who see immersive technologies as a tool to share their lives with the outside world.

“The invitation to come to the Amazon to film Awavena came from the Tashka, Chief of the Yawanawa. He looked at the VR/AR technologies of this moment and saw a compatibility with the visioning techniques that sit at the heart of their society,” explains Wallworth. “There is a humility in taking up this work, the gift of story that is being offered to us at, it seems to me, exactly the time we need it most. I am, as always, simply a translator for a larger story, one of profound hope, that holds us all inside it.”

As an Artist-in-Residency at the Technicolor Experience Center, Lynette was provided with resources to create Awavena, including immersive audio from The Sound Lab at Technicolor, as well as color-finishing services by Technicolor’s The Mill. The experience recently premiered at Sundance and The World Economic Forum in Davos.

To learn more about how artists and technologists collaborated to bring Awavena to life, check out the behind-the-scenes video.