In this post, I'm discussing the immersive worlds at the Adelaide Fringe. I attended the Fringe festival in March 2026, and I’ll share some thoughts on producing and presenting this kind of content.

https://adelaidefringe.com.au/immersive-worlds

A little bit of a preamble → I work in software development making apps, games & XR. I am especially interested in how technology can be used in location based entertainment (LBE). I was quite impressed with the immersive programming for the Adelaide Fringe as it is for the entire duration of the festival which was 5 weeks long; this was a great opportunity for such work to be exposed to a larger audience & immersive worlds was prominently featured on the main website for the festival, I saw:

• 2 360º videos dome

• 3 VR experiences

• an interactive cinema experience using cell phones & a cinema screen

I'm a sponge for knowledge; I like to learn things, and I'm also interested in how technology can enhance content. Most of what I experienced was documentary work.

My first exposure to dome video was at the Adelaide Fringe in 2024. 360º dome video is easy for participants to use as you don't have to put on a headset; you just go sit on the floor position yourself & let the experience happen - ok you do have to orient yourself in the space. I do like VR & it has its place for creating experiences & requiring headsets for each viewer for each screening. If interaction is key to the experience, I’d recommend VR. Dome video does require using a dedicated space or having an installable dome cinema. The cost of VR headsets can add up quickly & having a sufficiently large enough dome can cost a bit of money (of course they can be rented).

Actually, as I thought about it while reviewing this post, I realized I’d experienced a form of 360º dome cinema years ago at the Starry Cafe at Haneda Airport in Japan. It’s well worth checking out if you’re at the airport and have time before your flight. Having short-form movies at an airport is a good idea, in my opinion.

I went to 2 of the 4 venues used for the Immersive Worlds content: the Mercury movie theatre and the Olympic Hall Cultural Centre, which housed the 360° dome cinema and two VR areas.

A side note: Adelaide still has many notable modernist & art deco theatres for live performances & cinema going.

https://www.adelaideexaminer.com/best-art-deco-buildings-adelaide/

I give the planners of the event compliments for the signage to get this venue. I have been to many events & sometimes finding the venue can be a mission in itself. To get the Olympic Hall venue there were numerous waypoints on the sidewalks (or footpath in Australian English) in the area.

The Great Kimberly Wilderness

• VR movie

This was incredible. I learned about places in North Eastern Australia in Queensland that I had never heard about. Such beautiful & unique vistas. There was one part filmed on the Great Devonian coral reef. I had not seen anything like that before. This was being presented using Pico headsets. Pico headsets can be quite affordable compared to other models. The video quality was decent. On a higher quality headset the video experience would be incredible; I do have an Apple Vision Pro which is a significantly more costly headset (it would be so good to be able to watch this movie on an AVP).

https://adelaidefringe.com.au/fringetix/the-great-kimberley-wilderness-with-luke-hemsworth-immersive-worlds-af2026

https://www.whitesparkpictures.com.au/the-great-kimberley-wilderness

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7Lqzr1mcZ4&t=4s

I would have liked to know if there was a website to continue the experience and learn more about this part of Australia. I felt there was a missed opportunity here: having a QR code displayed on the cinema screen linking to a website would be great. I asked some of the other patrons at the screening if they had been to this part of Queensland, and they had. I would really like to visit this part of Australia and see it with my own eyes. In that sense, this documentary showed me a place I’d never known about before—one I might visit someday. I did some web searching about the reef.

https://www.internationalparks.org/australia/Devonian Reef

As the screening was in a cinema, you could watch an edit of the movie for cinema if you did not want to experience the documentary in VR or there was an issue with the headset.

Monsieur Vincent

• VR interactive

https://adelaidefringe.com.au/fringetix/monsieur-vincent-immersive-worlds-af2026

https://unframed-collection.com/en/experiences/monsieur-vincent

This was a guided VR experience in that you are taken on a path through the content sections. It was really well done; Van Gogh is obviously a well known artist & I actually learned some new things about his art via this VR experience.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nk55tV-DR0U

Iwakura

• 360º dome video

https://adelaidefringe.com.au/fringetix/iwakura-immersive-worlds-af2026

I was especially looking forward to this audio visual experience. This was a work by a Japanese audio artist Kazuya Nagaya with a visual artist from Germany Ali Demirel.

Co-produced by MUTEK Japan and Miraikan (The National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation in Tokyo), with funding from the Goethe-Institut, this project is designed specifically for planetarium environments

Project page for Iwakura

https://youtu.be/uDldw92dgIU?si=CujStPNRlkqHNnhm

This work was made a few years ago back in 2022. As I watched it at first, I found the imagery somewhat bleak with the colour palette - it reminded me of a bad dream; this was short lived, it got much better & there was many different parts to the movie. I did find myself wondering how the visuals were made by Ali. There are some making of videos online. It did not quite delve too deeply into how it was made - it seems like photogrammetry was used with some of the twisty visuals done in a graphics engine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5v-jiW9FEu8&t=664s

I wonder how this work might be travelling around the world with it first appearing in Japan and now in Australia at the Adelaide Fringe.

Megafauna of the Great Southern Reef

• VR movie

https://adelaidefringe.com.au/fringetix/megafauna-of-the-great-southern-reef-special-immersive-worlds-af2026

This might be the closest I will ever come to scuba diving. A good example of VR experience taking one to place that might get a chance to visit in real life.

Fire Escape

• immersive - interactive using cell phones and web browsers & a cinema screen

Fire Escape - Immersive Worlds

An interactive film experience inspired by Hitchcock's world of tension, mystery and connection.

https://adelaidefringe.com.au

• https://www.inkstories.com

Coincidentally, Ink Studios had a game at Signals in 2025 in Vancouver which is my home city.

• https://www.inkstories.com/projects/lili.html

A description of the plot:

When a murder occurs in a gentrifying Brooklyn building, you must peer into the lives of its diverse tenants, making difficult narrative choices to uncover hidden secrets and unravel the mystery. Every window reveals a new story, every decision shapes your understanding, and every moment heightens the tension as you navigate the blurred lines between voyeurism and investigation in this immersive, anxiety-fueled exploration of urban life and human connection.

This was a very ambitious immersive experience. There was some technical difficulties with using the web app to connect to the audio - there was an audience of maybe about 50 people at the screening I went to. Using a cell phone, you could listen in to conversations in the different rooms in the apartment building. I was getting kicked out of the browser a few times - fat fingers? And sometimes when I was changing the room to listen it, there a long delay before the page would load & I kept tapping - I managed to the get the audio stream playing multiples times at once. I did mention the technical problem to the staff at the venue & they were not able to help. They could have at least noted the issue to send back to Ink Studios…

There was also a kind of hacker character who appears part of the way through the story; you cannot think too much about such story elements 😜 - I say this coming from having done some script writing where sometimes you suspend belief for the mechanics of progressing the story. I did find this hacker character a bit of a trope.

The game experience was being presented in real-time on the cinema screen. It was a lot to be dropped into - it did take a few minutes to understand how to interact with the experience. It was a time limited event which by the end the collective inputs of the audience would determine the outcome. It might been a better if there was a short tutorial at the beginning before starting the main story.

You could be listening to the audio of the selected room on headphones while also hearing the audio coming from the cinema - this was a bit of a challenge getting bombarded with so much sensory input.

https://www.inkstories.com/projects/fireescapelive.html

I’m glad I went, but ultimately it was a flawed experience. Maybe the complexity of the story was too much to present in this format. It made me think about how, with some immersive experiences, giving the user too much freedom can be detrimental—especially when the journey ends up feeling unsatisfying. I often feel there needs to be some kind of editorial or guided path through the experience.

I experienced a VR project a few years ago that was presented in a museum; the setup and presentation—with a video wall and waiting area—were well done, but the actual VR experience was open-world. You were left to wander without any real guidance, and I missed one of the main sections because there was a time limit to explore.

This reminds me of the work I did in interactive TV at the BBC, adding interaction to broadcast TV. TV is mostly a sit-back experience, compared to a game where you sit up and engage—Fire Escape is straddling both types of experiences.

The experience can also be played in VR as a single-player experience. I don’t know how the live experience differs.

https://www.inkstories.com/FIREESCAPE/index.html

A Sound Healing Journey

https://adelaidefringe.com.au/fringetix/a-sound-healing-journey-af2026

This was something different - a group meditation experience using sound in a planetarium.

More than a performance, this is a journey, where you will be taken on an experience submerged in healing frequencies and the lull of the Himalayan Singing Bowls that fill our dome, under the backdrop of a star filled night sky.

Lastly, I wanted to mention a VR work by a friend was being shown in Adelaide coincidentally. I had seen this project by Camille Baker; it was featured as part of the immersive content at the film festival at the BFI (British Film Institute in London) some years ago. This VR work is a very thoughtful experience about a serious subject - people who have lived through cancer.

https://mammary-vr.art

https://adelaidefringe.com.au/fringetix/mammary-mountain-af2026

Me & Alfie a young Koala bear at the Gorge wildlife park

I’ve been going to the Adelaide Fringe festival for 3 years in a row now. Many years ago, I lived in the UK & would attend the Edinburgh Fringe which is where I met Alex Petty of Laughing Horse comedy - I was introduced to Alex by Craig Shaynak; Alex & Craig had mentioned to me that there is a wonderful fringe festival in the city of Adelaide; Alex would promote acts & put on shows in Adelaide at the Fringe. I had been wondering about making the journey ever since. What can I say - it is long way to travel to Australia but well worth the trip. I was in Australia for almost 3 weeks this time; I would visit Sydney before returning home; I would have liked to have stayed longer & see more of the country. Alex was not the first one to go to Adelaide. Actually it was Nik Coppin and Nik was going to be Adelaide again this year and we would met up.

The Adelaide Fringe is absolutely huge & it lasts for 5 weeks - the printed guide is like a magazine with all the listings. The Fringe features: stand up comedy, theatre, dance, cabaret, circus acrobatics. And of particular interest to me there is also immersive part of the Fringe which can be projections, 360º dome video & VR. This year’s program was no exception. The Fringe starts in February and ends in March which means I get to experience the end of Australian summer which was another reason to make this trip.

https://adelaidefringe.com.au/immersive-worlds

It is worth mentioning that there are many festivals in Australia back to back; I believe it's first Perth then Adelaide, then the Melbourne comedy festival and then Sydney. Many acts would be be going to multiple festivals; Alex and Nik would comment that Adelaide was probably their favourite festival in Australia.

I was in Adelaide for the last week and a half of the festival. I crammed in as many show as I could see - typically each performance is about an hour. I would be trekking between various venues around the central business district (CBD) in Adelaide; some days I would see 4 performances. And this trip I stayed for a few days past the end of the Fringe to be able to do some excursions outside Adelaide with friends

Being in Australia, there are many acts from Australia of course & also quite a significant number of acts from the UK & also some acts from places Japan, New Zealand, Norway & more. Many big UK acts would do shows in Adelaide; last year, I had the fortune to see Ross Noble in Adelaide, who is one of my favourite comedians who I never managed to see while I lived in the UK. Australia & UK have a close cultural connection in the that sense that many British comedians are better known in Australia than Canada.

On my first night in Adelaide, I managed to see a few acts & meet up with Alex.

Sully O’sullivan - Sully doing a bit at Laughing Horse comedy.

This photo was upstairs at the Historian hotel. This is one of the main venues that Alex would be putting shows on in Adelaide; Fun fact: a hotel can mean a pub in Australia; many of these places might have had a few hotel rooms above the bar in the past.

https://adelaidefringe.com.au/fringetix/a-complete-idiot-s-guide-to-great-britain-af2026

https://www.sullyosullivan.com

Bec Hill

https://adelaidefringe.com.au/fringetix/bec-hill-creates-the-perfect-show-work-in-progress-af2026

https://www.bechillcomedian.com

I had seen Bec Hill on UK TV; she does this hilarious comedy bits using a hand made pop-up book that she made - you have to see it; she is based in London & originally from Adelaide. I only got to see the first part of her work in progress show. She had a board with some post it notes about various topics and people were invited to pick a note & she would riff about it. Many performances could be in a small venue which made for an intimate up close experience ; some acts where performing in much larger venues. I saw a mixture of everything. My first night in Adelaide I would end up seeing three different performances; the last performance was for a card magic show; I had to dash across town to get to the show in time for the start hence only see part of Bec’s show. Being at the fringe festival, I would end up doing a lot of walking between venues and getting my steps in.

Over the course of the Fringe, I enjoyed getting to have many conversations with some of the performers & I would also talk with some performers that I had met before . And some performers would recommend other shows to go see; getting through the Fringe festival program is quite a task guide to find things to go see; word-of-mouth is so helpful I did make a short list of shows - the website has a planner feature which was great.

Also being a fringe festival, many shows would have some form of audience participation, which can be quite fun; did not participate in performances this trip & get up on stage; last year, I was on stage three times; I did get asked to go on stage at a performance by Laser Kiwi, who were great by the way, this trip but I politely declined - I was not feeling up to getting on stage 😜 in a fairly large venue.

A performance can go a bit sideways but it was all good as the atmosphere is very positive & the audience would often be rooting for the performer. I did see one show where some props didn't quite work, and the performer was trying to contain herself but persevered and got through the show. Live entertainment!

Maho Magic Bar at the Garden of Unearthly Delights

Magic tricks with cards performed by a mostly Japanese cast. It was just ok; there are 5 magicians who would work there around the venue and do card tricks. This show had been running for many years now at the festival.

https://www.mahomagicbar.com/adelaide