Culture Crawl – December Edition

O Cinema and FilmGate presents Stiltsville VR. An interactive narrative experience in VR, in which you play a photographer traveling through 100 turbulent years of the highs and lows of a magical place in the middle of Biscayne Bay just off the coast of Miami. Powered by the Knight Foundation Arts Challenge Grant, Stiltsville VR will be presented on Oculus Quest 2 in the lobby of O Cinema.

Seeming to float above Miami's Biscayne Bay shallow seagrass beds, Stiltsville has a colorful history that dates back to the 1930s, when "Crawfish Eddie Walker" built the first shack on stilts above the water. Told in the style of a time travelling journal, with puzzles solved, games played, images captured and clues discovered, the Oculus Quest experience, will guide us through the houses, their history, their underwater sea life colonies and introduce us to their colorful caretakers. From 29 houses, to 7 and most recently to 6, these fascinating houses have weathered historic and nature turmoil, not unlike Miami itself. The houses have influenced many talented architects, who are using their ingenuity as the blueprint for sustainable structures, where the sea is taking over the land. Now at the mercy of sea level rise and climate change, they are living on borrowed time and will remain preserved in posterity in a virtual world.