With a rich and diverse program of student films being screened on Friday and Saturday, the Regard Bleu presents recent productions of young filmmakers and academics from Switzerland and abroad. While providing a platform for students to discuss their projects and exchange their experiences, the Regard Bleu also gives insight into student`s engagements with audio-visual media and may indicate current trends among young academics.

Taking place on Friday evening and Sunday, this years’ symposium explores the question of how social anthropology may engage with the possibilities and limitations that virtual reality technology offers. For more than a century, social anthropology has attempted to describe, translate, and evoke the experience of Others. Using methods that situate the anthropologist in her collaborators’ time and space, the idea of “being there” and approximating what it must feel like to act and exist in different kinds of environments, has inspired a variety of approaches to looking, hearing, writing and recording. However, how close we as anthropologists can actually get to conveying the experiences of Others has always had its limitations, leading to critical debates of what is actually achievable. Currently, we find ourselves in the midst of a technological revolution: Virtual Reality (VR) and 360° video encapsulate the proposition of literally creating virtual environments that evoke an experience that comes closer than ever be- fore to a sensory reality. With a look behind the scenes of VR and/ or 360° video productions, discussing practical workflows, viewing selected examples and engaging with the theory behind the media, this year’s CAV Symposium is dedicated to the experiential, political and ethical possibilities, implications and limitations of the so- called new “immersive media”.