OYA is a 13-minute mixed-reality installation by Tobias Staab, developed with Berlin-based Brazilian artist and dancer Black Pearl de Almeida Lima. It asks how transition can be experienced not as an explanatory model, but as embodied knowledge—a practice of crossing thresholds and resisting fixed norms.
Visitors encounter a body in the process of becoming. Archival and newly recorded footage of Black Pearl, filmed between 2020 and 2025, is interwoven with a digitally constructed visual language and holographic imagery developed by 3D designer Warja Rybakova and XR studio govar. The dancing body appears as a fluid presence between layers of Mixed Reality, until distinctions between the recorded and the rendered, the remembered and the present begin to dissolve. A composition by Heiko Tubbesing shifts between sensory overload and club-like euphoria.
OYA reflects on gender, transformation and rites of passage, staging transition as an immersive choreography between death and rebirth.
The XR experience will take place every 60 minutes during the following opening hours:
WED-FRI: 16:00–19:30
SAT-SUN 14:00–17:30
Capacity is limited. Admission is on a first-come, first-served basis.
University of Arts Linz, Hauptplatz 8 (West Building), Courtyard // DANUBE TRIANGLE
More:
ars.electronica.art/negotiatinghumanity/de/view/oya-39738ddb450c81af9c94eb06c5647033
ars.electronica.art/news/de
freundederkuenste.de/aktuelles/kultur-und-medien/oya-xr-installation-von-tobias-staab-beim-ars-electronica-festival-2026-in-linz
Dancer: Black Pearl De Almeida Lima | Direction: Tobias Staab | Music: Heiko Tubbesing | 3D Design: Warja Rybakova (DOCKdigital) | Lighting Design: Torsten Podraza | Cinematography: Stefan Korsinsky, Florian Schaumberger | Lead Developer: Kağan Batuker | Developer: Mehdi Khadir | Production: Alla Kolpakova | Technical Direction: Stefan Göppel | Produced by: govar GmbH for EMIXAR | Supported by: Senatsverwaltung für Wirtschaft, Energie und Betriebe; Kühlhaus Berlin; Projekt Zukunft Berlin | Special Thanks to: Christoph Seeligmüller – DOCKdigital LAB