Insects serve as food for other animals, pollinate our crops, act as natural pest control agents and play a crucial part in turning dead organic matter into fertile soil. The numbers and diversity of insects have been in sharp decline over the last few decades. If this trend continues, it will dramatically affect human welfare.
Insects & Us invites you to explore an animated, augmented reality environment and engage with the interwoven stories of its inhabitants.
Observe crickets, dragonflies, butterflies, beetles, and ants make their simple, yet vital contributions to a functioning ecosystem - while listening to four scientists talk about why they matter and what can be done to help.
The story app is available for free download on the iOS App Store and Google Play Store.
Creative Team
Kris Hofmann (director)
Kris has been working with animation since earning an MA in Communication Art and Design from the Royal College of Art in London in 2010. She moved to Vienna in 2018 and is now focused on the design of Augmented Reality stories and experiences.
Her most recent immersive works are the site-specific Augmented Reality experience The Bookworms (directed and produced for the Austrian National Library in Vienna) and Ready for Red 3D – an interactive learning platform about all things female menstruation.
Abigail Addison (producer)
Abigail is a Producer, Programmer, and a Director of Animate Projects.
Animate is a not-for-profit organisation, based in the East Midlands of the UK, championing female and queer animators and those from underrepresented communities in its work.
Animate works at the intersection of film, art, and animation, producing award-winning, innovative and experimental films. She has produced slates of shorts for Channel 4’s Random Acts, Silent Signal, a large-scale touring art & science project that received Wellcome Trust support, and Untold Tales, micro-commissions for Instagram.
Abigail co-produced experimental animation I’m OK by Elizabeth Hobbs with the National Film Board of Canada, which was nominated for the BAFTA British Short Animation 2019. Last year she completed multi-award-winning productions, Bloomers, an animated documentary by Samantha Moore, and The Flounder by Elizabeth Hobbs for Austrian music ensemble Klangforum Wien’s Happiness Machine project.
R5 Region Five Media GmbH (3D content and animation)
R5 Region Five Media GmbH was founded in 2012 by Hannes Heidenreich and René Kasperek and is baseded in the Nürnberg Metropolitan Region.
Region Five develops innovative visual and interactive media content. Core competencies are animation, film, game engine development, VFX, and more recently interactive 3D web applications such as Virtual- and Augmented Reality.
Code: WAMMS
Sound & Music: Marian Mentrup
Edit Consultancy: Susan Brand
Additional Edit Consultancy: Martin Nguyen