Door Into The Dark

This is a labyrinth. All you have to do is follow the rope.

Door Into The Dark is an immersive installation by Anagram exploring what it means to be lost in an age of infinite information.

Combining documentary storytelling with a visceral physical experience, audiences enter the work blindfolded, shoeless, and alone — navigating through darkness guided only by a rope. As participants move through the space, they encounter a vivid binaural soundscape of real stories from people who have experienced disorientation, loss, and transformation.

Using spatial audio and responsive technologies, the experience unfolds through a series of environments: from forests and suspended bridges to enclosed and shifting architectural spaces. Sound, texture, and movement are carefully orchestrated to heighten immersion, with stories and instructions triggered in real time as participants progress.

The audio includes interviews with contributors such as John Hull, author of Touching the Rock, alongside personal accounts from individuals navigating extreme experiences of uncertainty, risk, and perception.

Blurring the boundaries between installation, theatre, and sensory experience, Door Into The Dark invites audiences to surrender control and engage deeply with the unknown — embodying the stories they hear through physical and emotional experience.

Read more about it on IndieWire.

 

“The best work I saw at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival wasn’t a film at all… setting a high bar for future generations of interactive art.”
“Door into the Dark was like encountering a foreign country, using a language I’ve lived with for years but will never quite understand.”
“Are you horizontal? Or upside down?”
“Hand over hand, you wind your way through a 6,000 square foot labyrinth with no sensation but those voices, cool air on your skin, the ground beneath your feet, and the rope you are clutching in your hands to guide you. And then the rope ends.”
“My favourite interactive installation to date… achieves a level of emotional empathy to the subjects’ stories rarely experienced in interactive work”
Loc Dao, National Film Board of Canada, Head of Interactive
“Door Into The Dark is incredible. Really blew my mind. Kind of experience where the world feels different afterwards.”
Ingrid Kopp, Director of Interactive, Tribeca Film Institute
“A unique and unforgettable experience that combines non-fiction narrative and audience interaction in a ground-breaking and deeply personal way.”
Laura Poitras, Oscar-winning filmmaker
“In an overwhelming media environment in which we struggle for control we recognise a work that viscerally reconnects us with the value of letting go. Door Into The Dark offers a meticulously crafted storyworld that allows us to cerebrally, emotionally and quite literally leave our baggage behind and step into the void. In that void we become disoriented, take risks, make choices and find ourselves again, changed. Ambitious, simple and profound, this work marks a fresh and promising direction for the field of immersive theatre. It evoked a euphoria that stayed with us long after we left it.”
Tribeca Storyscapes Jury; Shari Frilot, Andrew Golis, & Charlie Phillips
“I found Door into the Dark to be a transformative experience. When I exited, I had a whole new relationship to my body and my other senses. I have been through many immersive experiences at festivals and Door In the Dark definitely stands out as one of the most powerful. I will never forget it.“
Sarah Wolozin, Director of MIT Open Doc Lab

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Events

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April 2017
Door into the Dark
Immersive Experience
STRP / Mu gallery
Eindhoven, The Netherlands
April 2015
Door into the Dark
Immersive Experience
Tribeca Film Festival
New York, United States
June 2014
Door into the Dark
Immersive Experience
iDocs (work-in-progress version) Sheffield DocFest
Sheffield, United Kingdom

Awards

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Credits