Recent Events
Euromersive's first xr art residency program, together with İstinye Üniversitesi and BASE. From 1 to 12 August, residents will be working to create original works of ar and vr art.
Euromersive supports creatives in Türkiye to develop and gain recognition internationally for their XR art. This event is supported by Euromersive members Isabel De Peuter-Rutten, Hatice Öz Pektaş, İrem Coban, Aylin Taslak, Lance Powell, Selen Lun, and Michael Barngrover.
Euromersive Türkiye presents two days of metaverse content for BASELECTED 2022, sponsored by Meta
VRDays Europe's Immersive Tech Week
Euromersive Türkiye was the satellite partner for the VRDays Europe conference, a annual global event in Amsterdam that bring together the academic, creative, and industrial XR communities for high level talks and product exhibitions. This year Istanbul was again hosted a satellite site and saw over 500 visitors meet new Turkish XR startups and listen to leaders in the field over the four day event from 13 to 16 November 2021.
The event was organized by Michael Barngrover (Raptor Dance Studios), Firat Kacmaz (Medex Lab), and Selen Lun (Lun Family Company) and held at Kolektif House Maslak.
Venice VR Expanded
La Biennale di Venezia’s “Venice VR Expanded” satellite programme, which brings the virtual reality (VR) section of the annual film festival, was held between September 1-19, 2021 in Istanbul. The coordinators of the event this year were: Virgile Film and Raptor Dance Studios. Salon İKSV and Kolektif House were the venue partners.
As part of the 78th Venice International Film Festival, Venice VR Expanded 2021 saw a selection of cinematic VR works of art compete for festival prizes. Through the satellite programme, these works were made available to audiences around the world to explore new possibilities of storytelling in immersive audio-visual experiences. Approximately thirty works were exhibited, most in competition for festival awards while others reflected the best of the VR creative industry. The projects selected for the festival represented creative talents from a wide spectrum of artist backgrounds, from cinema to dance to gaming.Tickets to the programme in Istanbul provided 50 minutes of access to festival’s content, which allowed guests to select a number of projects they wish to experience.
Thanks to Datagate, Oda Studios, Akkaş&Partners and the French Institute of Turkey for supporting the event this year; and very special thanks to Salon İKSV and Kolektif House for hosting the event.
Euromersive Türkiye's Art and XR Technologies Panel event
On 19 May 2021, Euromersive Türkiye hosted a panel of innovative artists working with XR mediums for a discussion of their work and what inspires them to experiment with emerging immersive technologies. While immersive works of art have long been featured in major museums and galleries, the lockdowns have seen an emerging trend of virtual exhibition. This comes with new opportunities but also new compromises. Featuring Meltem Sahin and Can Buyukberber, artists in Türkiye working with immersive technologies, and to friend and XR artist Tim Deussen. Digital art curator Esra Özkan moderated this panel with these three creators on their experiences working with AR and VR technologies.
Photogrametry for VR Heritage Panel
On 20 January 2020, Euromersive Türkiye hosted a public discusson about the emerging field of photogrammetry and volumetric recording. Both are very important to the future of augmented and virtual realities, particularly when it comes to documented, preserving, and increasing accessibility to culture and heritage. In this panel discussion, practitioners from Europe and Türkiye presented their work in the fields of cultural heritage and performance as well as shared information about some of the tools they use.
Turkish XR Startups Panel Discussion
On 19 December 2020, Euromersive Türkiye hosted Turkish XR startup founders to tell their stories, discuss their challenges, and share advice for other entrepeneurs interested in AR & VR. Together, Güven Çelikkaya, Tuğra Şahiner, Emrah Uluçay, and Emre Çelik represent a wide spectrum of XR industry verticals, from enterprise tools and gaming, to AR & VR and software and hardware.
Euromersive Türkiye's Medical XR Panel event
On 3 December 2020, Euromersive Türkiye hosted a public discusson in Zoom about applications of XR in medicine and healthcare. These fields have been early adopters of augmented and virtual realities, but with every use case there has been challenges to overcome and lessons to learn. In this event, entrepreneurs working on the fronts lines of this industry shared their thoughts and experience with our community. The panel consisted of: Firat Kaçmaz, AR/VR Development Lead at Medex Lab; Ruben Boyd, General Manager of NeuroReality; Yusuf Yeşil M.D., founder of Yeşil Science.
Euromersive Türkiye organizes "State of XR" panel event
On 27 October, Euromersive Türkiye organized a public discusson in Zoom on the state of the XR industry in 2020. The XR industry has changed a lot in the past few years, but no year has been as dramatic as 2020. New challenges for the world means new challenges for this emerging industry, and yet new opportunities have emerged. Founding members of Euromersive Turkey came together discuss where XR stands now and what new trends have emerged in the past months, globally as well as in Türkiye . This panel discussion was free and open to the public. Euromersive Türkiye is a member of Euromersive, the federation for XR professionals in Europe.
Some of Our Members
Michael Barngrover
Michael Barngrover
Michael Barngrover
Michael is the founder of Raptor Dance Studios, an Istanbul-based XR design and development company. He is a phd student researching collaboration in virtual spaces and organizes the ZeroEvent series of multiuser VR platform explorations for the international XR Crowd.
İsmail Burak Çendik
Michael Barngrover
Michael Barngrover
İsmail is the Founder and the Lead Artist of Freya Gameworks, a game art outsourcing studio based in Istanbul. Freya Gameworks creates art assets for a wide range of platforms, but especially for VR. In addition to creating art, İsmail also consults on local and international VR projects, helping to streamline their 3D content production pipelines.
Ayhan Çerçi
Michael Barngrover
Ayhan Çerçi
Ayhan has been working on Learning Management Systems, Massive Open Online Courses, Gamification, VR&AR Technology, 3D modelling, synthetic environments, Game-Based Learning, Serious Games and Simulation projects that are both national and international as a Training Technologist, Project Manager, and 3D Modeler for 11 years. Currently, h
Ayhan has been working on Learning Management Systems, Massive Open Online Courses, Gamification, VR&AR Technology, 3D modelling, synthetic environments, Game-Based Learning, Serious Games and Simulation projects that are both national and international as a Training Technologist, Project Manager, and 3D Modeler for 11 years. Currently, he is working on Simulation-Based Training, VR-AR Training projects.
İrem Çoban
Feride Zeynep Güder
Ayhan Çerçi
İrem Çoban is a digital artist and academician at Doğuş University’s Faculty of Fine Arts and Design. She opted to take her Bachelor’s Degree at 1st rank and completed a Master’s Degree in Cinema at Galatasaray University at İstanbul, Turkey. She has participated in group exhibitions, festivals, and workshops in various countries such as
İrem Çoban is a digital artist and academician at Doğuş University’s Faculty of Fine Arts and Design. She opted to take her Bachelor’s Degree at 1st rank and completed a Master’s Degree in Cinema at Galatasaray University at İstanbul, Turkey. She has participated in group exhibitions, festivals, and workshops in various countries such as the USA, Japan, UK, Canada, Italy, South Korea, Bulgaria, Germany, and Turkey. In the Art Woman 2020 Geo-Graphies exhibition organized by Primo Piano LivingGallery in Lecce, Italy, she was awarded the best technical practice award and the Silver Certificate for her video “Tell me my future”. Her short film “Hear”, which experimentally handles the story of a child bride, has been selected for the official screening selections of various international film and art festivals. She is one of the 7 resident artists of Immensiva 2022 which is a project to create projects and prototypes with inter-disciplinary teams using advanced technologies: XR, AI, scanners, sensors, holograms etc. by Espronceda Institute of Art & Culture.
Egemen Ertuğrul
Feride Zeynep Güder
Feride Zeynep Güder
Egemen is a VR/AR researcher, software developer, and cyberpunk enthusiast. His research interests include Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality, Human-Computer Interaction, Machine Learning, and Ubiquitous Computing.
He's experienced developing novel and intuitive user experiences that are powered by machine learning and multi-users for the
Egemen is a VR/AR researcher, software developer, and cyberpunk enthusiast. His research interests include Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality, Human-Computer Interaction, Machine Learning, and Ubiquitous Computing.
He's experienced developing novel and intuitive user experiences that are powered by machine learning and multi-users for the web, desktop, and mobile platforms. He is currently focused on achieving real-time 3D articulated hand pose estimation from monocular RGB to enable novel input on low-end mobile VR/AR.
Feride Zeynep Güder
Feride Zeynep Güder
Feride Zeynep Güder
Feride Zeynep Güder is an associate professor in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Uskudar University. She received her Ph.D. in journalism at Istanbul University. She gives courses mainly on “Political Communication”, “Media and Truth”, “Media and Ideology”, “Postmodernism”, and “Social History Space and Memory”. She is th
Feride Zeynep Güder is an associate professor in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Uskudar University. She received her Ph.D. in journalism at Istanbul University. She gives courses mainly on “Political Communication”, “Media and Truth”, “Media and Ideology”, “Postmodernism”, and “Social History Space and Memory”. She is the vice president of the Political Psychology Application and Research Center at Uskudar University. At this center, she focuses on the redemptive discourse, perpetual peace, and algocracy. Her academic research interests mostly cover the critical and theoretical analysis of digital identity, AI and XR technologies which correlated to the perspectives of political communication, dataveillance, heterotopia, and metaverse.
Fırat Kaçmaz
Fırat Kaçmaz
Fırat Kaçmaz
Founder and head of product at Medex Lab. Firat has been working with AR / VR SDK`s since 2015. His team has created holographic patient examination simulations for the Istanbul Faculty of Medicine. He is currently working with Hacettepe University faculty of medicine to develop a healthcare education app.
Oytun Kal
Fırat Kaçmaz
Fırat Kaçmaz
Oytun Kal is an XR Designer and has given lectures on experience design with XR technologies at educational institutes like Bahcesehir, Medipol, Isik Universities, Bau Idea and St. Benoit High School. He is a 'digital filmmaking & animation' (SAE Berlin) and game design (Bahcesehir University, M.A.) graduate. After working as a filmmaking
Oytun Kal is an XR Designer and has given lectures on experience design with XR technologies at educational institutes like Bahcesehir, Medipol, Isik Universities, Bau Idea and St. Benoit High School. He is a 'digital filmmaking & animation' (SAE Berlin) and game design (Bahcesehir University, M.A.) graduate. After working as a filmmaking instructor at FSA (Ankara) and SAE Istanbul for many years, he wrote his thesis on "Educational Virtual Reality Game Design for Filmmakers", which is still an ongoing XR project. He is a resident member of VR First Lab BAU and continues to work on a variety of XR projects with a focus on cinematic storytelling.
İpek Kuran
Fırat Kaçmaz
İpek Kuran
İpek is a PhD student at Yıldız Technical University, an architect and media artist, as well as an Adjunct Prof. at Istanbul Bilgi University's VCD and Digital Game Design and Halic University's Cartoon and Animation departments.
Between the years 2016-2021 she worked for the Mekan.Space Experience Design Studio as Co-founder and Creative
İpek is a PhD student at Yıldız Technical University, an architect and media artist, as well as an Adjunct Prof. at Istanbul Bilgi University's VCD and Digital Game Design and Halic University's Cartoon and Animation departments.
Between the years 2016-2021 she worked for the Mekan.Space Experience Design Studio as Co-founder and Creative Director. In 2021, she founded her own studio - Duende Multimedia Arts & Design + Architecture. Her studio is playground for creating artistic experiences using XR technologies. Currently her research and PhD studies are based on a post-humanist approach. She explores different fields such as AI, ancient cultures/rituals and virtual creatures. Her research interests include: XR Cinema, Virtual Fashion, Digital Game Design and New Media Art. She is also a yoga instructor and interested in developing experiences for the Wellness Industry.
Selen Lun
Virgile Mangiavillano
İpek Kuran
Selen Lun is the founder of Lun Family Company; a community based, multi-diversed start-up love story. Her work as an actor, writer, director, instructor and community manager on theatre, film, performance art, dance and pantomime expand themselves with her experiences and research on XR technologies, AI and HCI.
Currently, she is writing
Selen Lun is the founder of Lun Family Company; a community based, multi-diversed start-up love story. Her work as an actor, writer, director, instructor and community manager on theatre, film, performance art, dance and pantomime expand themselves with her experiences and research on XR technologies, AI and HCI.
Currently, she is writing two online series scenarios, creating a mobile game for health & wellness and getting ready for a mo-cap suit acting job.
Virgile Mangiavillano
Virgile Mangiavillano
Virgile Mangiavillano
- Founder & CEO of Virgile Film https://virgilefilm.com , Creative Producer.
- Founder : Virtual Reality club at Saint Benoit high school in 2017.
- Actor for Turkish cinema and television www.imdb.me/virgile
- Coordinator : Digital Research Development Committee | Comité Développement Recherche Numérique | Dijital Araştırma ve Geliştirme
- Founder & CEO of Virgile Film https://virgilefilm.com , Creative Producer.
- Founder : Virtual Reality club at Saint Benoit high school in 2017.
- Actor for Turkish cinema and television www.imdb.me/virgile
- Coordinator : Digital Research Development Committee | Comité Développement Recherche Numérique | Dijital Araştırma ve Geliştirme Komitesi
- Pilot : Erasmus+ funded project 'Media and European Citizenship Education' 2020-2022 (Belgium, France, Romania, Turkey).
- Coordinator : International Digital Spring | Printemps Numérique International | Uluslararası Dijital Bahar #numistanbul #sbdijitalbahar https://youtu.be/2UDoRQA7_tI
- Mentor : FIRST international robotic competition www.robin8263.com
- Creator : artificial intelligence hackathon IATHON in cooperation with Google https://youtu.be/19OFPGrQgGw
- Teacher of French, educator, trainer
- Technology integration adviser - Conseiller pédagogique #Numérique - Eğitim Teknololojileri Danışmanı
Hatice Öz Pektaş
Virgile Mangiavillano
Virgile Mangiavillano
Hatice Öz Pektaş is a professor inthe Visual Communication Department of Uskudar University. She is the founder of the Medical Visual Design Technologies Research Group, that focuses on the producing design-oriented solutions in the field of health sciences. It is an initiative that combines medicine, art, design and technology. Her acad
Hatice Öz Pektaş is a professor inthe Visual Communication Department of Uskudar University. She is the founder of the Medical Visual Design Technologies Research Group, that focuses on the producing design-oriented solutions in the field of health sciences. It is an initiative that combines medicine, art, design and technology. Her academic research focuses on the sociology of virtual reality and neurological applications in XR.
Lance G. Powell Jr.
Lance G. Powell Jr.
Lance G. Powell Jr.
CTO at VEDX Solutions / VR Dev + Design / Public Speaking on Metaverse Security / XR Blogger / Cognitive Science Grad from BOUN / YouTuber at VR Special
Bora Sezer
Lance G. Powell Jr.
Lance G. Powell Jr.
C. Bora Sezer is an academician at the Istanbul Ozyegin University's Architecture and Design Faculty's Communication department. His MA is from Istanbul Technical University's Information Technologies in Design and he has another MA from the Netherlands Creative Design for Digital Cultures Master Degree from HKU University of the Arts U
C. Bora Sezer is an academician at the Istanbul Ozyegin University's Architecture and Design Faculty's Communication department. His MA is from Istanbul Technical University's Information Technologies in Design and he has another MA from the Netherlands Creative Design for Digital Cultures Master Degree from HKU University of the Arts Utrecht in the pathway of Game and Interaction. He gives Virtual Reality Design classes to interdisciplinary students as an elective. His interests concern xtended Reality including virtual and augmented reality, Internet of Things, Game Mechanics and cultural heritage preservation techniques via photogrammetry.
Ertan Toy
Lance G. Powell Jr.
Emrah Uluçay
Ertan is an assistant professor at Graphic Design Department of Yildiz Technical University. Moreover, he is the founder and director of Yildiz Technical University Reality Laboratory, that focuses on the use of extended reality technologies in the fields of art and design.
Emrah Uluçay
Zeynep Merve Uygun
Emrah Uluçay
Emrah is an entrepreneur, game designer & developer, and a cadet pilot. He is graduated from ITU Electronics Engineering. His current challenge is to create a globally successful location based mobile AR game.
Zeynep Merve Uygun
Zeynep Merve Uygun
Zeynep Merve Uygun
Zeynep Merve Uygun received her BA in English Language and Literature from Bogazici University and her MA in Film and Television Department from İstanbul Bilgi University. She received her Ph.D in trans-disciplinary documentary film from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Prior to her current occupation as an assistant professor in
Zeynep Merve Uygun received her BA in English Language and Literature from Bogazici University and her MA in Film and Television Department from İstanbul Bilgi University. She received her Ph.D in trans-disciplinary documentary film from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Prior to her current occupation as an assistant professor in the department of communication design at Özyeğin University, she worked as a lecturer at Istanbul Bilgi University, Istanbul Şehir University and Koç University.
Zeynep Merve Uygun has taken part in many international film festivals and workshops as a mentor, tutor and also jury member. Her animated and experiemental documentaries such as IN
OUT and Zigzag, besides receving many international awards, have been screened at more than 50 international film festivals including Cannes, Boston Turkish Film Festival, Golden Orange and IF Istanbul (Istanbul Independent Film Festival). Her research interests includes the visual representation of body and space in documentary film, digital ethnography, and new media documentary (interactive documentary, digital storytelling, transmedia documentary, and etc.).