Open call #1:
The Reciprocal Trap
As part of RiT 2 – Unwritten Worlds, V2_ (NL) invite artists and designers to co-create a shared artwork during a residency that explores the hidden loop between human labour and machine world-building.
Deadline to apply
March 29, 2026
In the age of agentic AI, Extended Reality shifts from a space of immersion into a system of extraction. What was once seen as a means of accessing virtual experiences now continually captures our interactions to use as training data. While it feels like you’re interacting with a system and shaping your experience, the reciprocal tarp unfolds: the system learns from everything you do. Over time, it uses your input to guide your choices, so you gradually start behaving as the system expects. XR becomes an operative environment in which perception and production collapse into a single feedback loop—an ecology of isolated co-creation. Drawing inspiration from Greg Egan’s Permutation City, the project explores how human behaviour—gestures, choices, and “common sense” actions—can serve as data to train autonomous AI agents, generating dynamic, shifting simulated worlds in real time.
The hybrid production residency is designed as a communal creation process of one joint artwork, with all residents contributing according to their individual expertise and vision. In a collaborative work environment, the residency aims to provide a nurturing space for a community of XR creatives who want to critically investigate the interplay between simulation and reality.
Medium
Extended Reality (XR), AI systems, simulation, generative environments
Place & time of the residency
Online: June–July 2026
At V2_, Rotterdam (NL): August–September
Online: October–November
Presentation of the final project
February 2027 at V2_, Rotterdam
⮑ 3 artists will be selected and joined by a creative technologist. Together, they’ll work as a group, to create a collective XR artwork.
⮑ The residency will alternate between moments of shared work, critical discussion, and practical experimentation, allowing ideas to emerge, transform, and consolidate in dialogue between artists, technologists, and cultural contexts.
⮑ Each phase is conceived as a necessary step: from conception to prototyping, from testing the works to meeting with audiences and professionals.
What do we offer?
➜ Three 15.000€ grants (one for each artist.).
➜ A 6-month hybrid residency hosted by V2_
➜ A 2-month in-person period (at the host institution premises), including a public Test Lab, an event to present the artwork in production to the local artistic and professional community.
➜ Support for the artwork distribution after the end of the residency.
➜ A mentoring programme to support you in your creative process, from production to mediation, from narration to distribution:
- Mediation of XR experiences, ethics and inclusion;
- Hybridisation of spaces and collective interaction;
- Accessibility of XR art pieces ;
- From production to distribution;
- Business Models for collective artworks;
- XR art and ethics and ecology.
What does the budget include?
The three selected residents will receive a grant of 15.000€ each. This amount covers the artist’s fee as well as travel, accommodation, and subsistence costs for the duration of the residency.
The grant will be disbursed in three installments:
→ A first payment of 7.000€ will be made upon signature of the grant agreement.
→ A second instalment of 4.000€ will be released following the completion of the Test Lab phase.
→ The final 4.000€ will be paid at the end of the residency period.
Artists will have to send separate invoices at the three payments.
Production costs for the residency will be covered by the host partner and will be up to 5.000€ (the final budget will be discussed between the 3 artists, the creative technologist and the host institution). The host will cover the costs of the Test Lab and the first showcase.
Eligibility check
Please refer to the general open call page.
Partners of Realities in Transition 2 – Unwritten Worlds
