Alien Perspective (Venice Immersive)

This astral-projecting 15 minute experience sends us hurtling into the wild outer-space worlds of Italian artist Carlo Rambaldi, a three-time Oscar winner best known for his animatronics and creature designs. His most iconic creation is the titular character from Steven Spielberg’s beloved blockbuster E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, but he was also a painter, bringing surrealist and expressionistic qualities to depictions of distant alien environments, fusing mechanical, biological, and landscape elements into otherworldly hybrids.

Alien Perspective—timed to arrive 100 years after his birth—uses these paintings as world-building blueprints, whizzing us through a series of striking, now spatialised environments that give Rambaldi’s visions new depth and vitality. Directors Cristina Rambaldi and Jung Ah Suh do justice to his legacy, which is no small achievement given the enduring power of the work itself. Rambaldi’s images feel like visions conjured in the space between wakefulness and sleep, or on a bridge connecting one dimension to another.

Directors: Cristina Rambaldi, Jung Ah Suh
Screenplay: Cristina Rambaldi, Jung Ah Suh
Experienced at: Venice Immersive 2025

There’s some light interactivity, with various clickable elements triggering a satisfying sound effect and sometimes presenting additional information. But these touches are secondary, and structurally the piece unfolds like a theme-park ride, the viewer a floating vessel on a pre-programmed route. It’s well paced and timed, never overstaying its welcome, though I could have happily spent longer in one of the final spaces: a gallery of virtual paintings and pictures of the artist himself at work.

At Venice Immersive, where I experienced the work, I was positioned on a swivel chair in front of a print of one of Rambaldi’s paintings. Virtual reality often evokes the metaphor of being inside previously impenetrable, two-dimensional art forms—for instance, being “inside the movie” or “inside the painting.”

Alien Perspective obviously plays around with the latter, though not necessarily in the expected ways. For a big finish, the experience switches to mixed reality, where we see one of Rambaldi’s gloriously weird alien creatures enter the space in front of us. “Hey buddy!” I said aloud, though our time together was brief. The creature looked at me, as if to say hello, before stepping inside the painting, returning to whatever cosmic outpost he came from—a fleeting encounter that lingers, reminding us that Rambaldi’s art is both portal and companion, guiding us into the unknown.