Open call #2:
Telepresence in the digital space
As part of RiT 2 – Unwritten Worlds, MEET (IT) invite artists and designers to co-create a shared artwork during a residency exploring telepresence and the shifting nature of presence in the digital age.
Deadline to apply:
June 10th, 2026
23:59 (CEST)
This residency will explore the evolving conditions of presence in a context where physical and digital realities increasingly intersect. At its core lies an investigation into how the body operates across these dimensions—no longer as a fixed entity, but as something that can be extended, translated, and reconfigured through technological mediation.
Participants will engage with the relationship between the physical body and its digital counterpart, examining how movement, gesture, and perception shift when captured, processed, and re-embodied through motion capture systems. The focus will not be limited to technical application, but will open up critical and speculative perspectives on what it means to inhabit a body that exists simultaneously in multiple forms and spaces.
The residency will also delve into movement as a form of language—one that can be encoded, transformed, and transmitted. Through this lens, motion capture becomes a tool for questioning authorship, identity, and the boundaries of corporeality, as well as a means to generate new aesthetic possibilities.
Another key area of exploration will be immersivity, understood as a condition that reshapes how space is perceived and experienced. Participants will investigate how immersive environments influence the relationship between self and other, presence and distance, observer and participant, opening up new modes of interaction and shared experience.
Through collaborative processes, experimentation, and dialogue, the residency will foster a space where artistic practice and critical inquiry intersect. It will encourage participants to develop new approaches to embodiment and co-presence, reflecting on how bodies, technologies, and environments continuously redefine one another within contemporary hybrid realities.
Medium
Motion Capture, Immersivity
Place & time of the residency
Online: October–December 2026
At MEET, Milano (IT): January–February 2027
Online: February–March 2027
Presentation of the final project
June 2027
⮑ 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 residencies program page.
Partners of Realities in Transition 2 – Unwritten Worlds
