HTC Vive has partnered with Rafael Pavón, an acclaimed virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) director and creative producer, to develop Memoria: Stories of La Garma, a new interactive VR documentary experience in Santander, Spain.
Memoria takes visitors inside the La Garma cave complex, rediscovered in 1995. A UNESCO World Heritage Site the caves date back more than 16,000 years.
La Garma is known for its parietal art – cave paintings – and for having one of the best preserved floors from the Paleolithic period, containing more than 4000 fossils.
It debuted at the Museum of Prehistory and Archaelogy of Cantabria in Santander, Spain and will now be available for virtual viewers to experience, using the HTC Vive Headset, via Viveport, a VR subscription service from HTC.
Set during the Paleolithic era, the experience tells the story of a hunting party returning to their home in the caves, only to find it has been blocked off by a landslide, sealing the caves in time and preserving thousands of artefacts in the process.
"From the beginning, the mission was to let the world know about the archaeological treasure hidden under the hill of Omoño, but soon we realized that alone would not be enough," said Pavón.
"We needed to go a step further. We needed to inspire and overwhelm like we felt when we went down to the cave. We needed to help people understand that what happened in the cave more than 16,000 years ago is much closer to us than we imagined. Those humans had the same essential questions we do, and these were reflected in the walls and objects of La Garma."
Since the caves' rediscovery, only 50 people, approximately, including Pavón, have entered.
The VR documentary is narrated by Geraldine Chaplin, renowned actress and daughter of comedy legend, Charlie Chaplin, and lasts approximately eight minutes. It was nominated for the Best Documentary Experience at Raindance Immersive, a film festival which champions independent film making worldwide.
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