The Imaginarium, the studio co-founded by Andy Serkis and Jonathan Cavendish, presented Nevatars, a 31-minute XR storytelling installation directed by Serkis and Josh Nelson Youssef. It ran in competition at Venice Immersive on Lazzaretto Vecchio from 2 to 12 September 2026, one of 30 works in the festival's 10th edition. The run has ended.
Viewers watched the work on XREAL Aura, Google-powered augmented-reality glasses. Animation, virtual reality and mixed reality run together, and the digital characters are placed into the visitor's physical surroundings, so people can interact with characters and objects while remaining aware of the real world around them. Variety reported that the glasses' voice activation opened up new storytelling tools.
Origins and production
The idea had been developing at The Imaginarium since 2011 and gained momentum when Google's immersive production division approached the team. XRMust credits the work to Imaginarium Productions, Boona, Google 100 ZEROS and 3Dar.
