FIVARS spoke with Simeone Scaramozzino, visionary creator of “Totems of Hope.”
What lead to the creation of this piece?
Totems of Hope arose from a longing to mend the silent rupture of disconnection—between self and soma, reciprocity and action, care and cultural memory. Rooted in trauma-informed design, it honours bioindividuality, offering each participant the dignity of self-paced, symbolic engagement. It invites coherence through presence, allowing the body to remember what it already knows.
With Totems of Hope, I offer a ceremony of reconnection—softening the boundaries between inner and outer worlds, self and other, ancestral and emergent. A self-directed initiation into interbeingness where participants attune to the viscerality of their intentions and trace their resonance through gesture, symbol, and silence.
At its core is a quiet invocation I once received: I am the bridge that remembers. This became both compass and practice—reminding me to create experiences that do not impose, but attune; that walk between worlds, gently reweaving the visible and invisible threads of what it means to be in relation.
What was the production process like for you and your team? What did you learn?
Totems of Hope is a living, multidisciplinary fractal. While I craft each iteration solo, I honour the quiet brilliance of my on-site team—whose attunement to the work nourishes its unfolding. Their presence echoes the very essence of the piece: that deep resonance awakens coherence.
Technological collaborators include Enophone (brainwave attunement), Artivive (AR symbolism), and Teemew (remote presence). The totemic language was shaped through sacred dialogues with African elders—keeping the work relationally rooted.
What I’ve learned most is this: when presence is held with care, coherence reveals itself. Presence arises from pattern recognition—the realisation that intention has shaped the outer ritual. And that moment—the softened gaze, breath, and body language—is the heart of this sacred work.
How did you become an immersive content creator and why?
A car crash gifted me with a Near Death Experience. In that liminal state, I encountered consciousness not as only internal, but relational—woven, cyclical, symbolic. That moment became a lifelong inquiry into presence.
My journey led through Amazonian ritual, into nervous system science and somatic psychology, I trained in Peter Levine’s work and developed a high-touch embodied leadership programme. I came to see that sacred experience and somatic literacy do not oppose—they inform and entrain one another.
Immersive media became the vessel to translate these insights: a form where technology and ancestral intelligence, symbol and sensation, ritual and reality converge. As a bridge between nature and neurotechnology, I design adaptive, entraining, trauma-informed experiences that invite people back into coherence, agency, and transformation.
What is the AR/VR industry like in your region?
Though based in Southern Europe, I move across cultural and technological landscapes without fixed alignment to geography. What I sense—perhaps more as a yearning than a certainty—is a gentle shift in the field: a leaning toward emotionally resonant, culturally rooted, and somatically attuned forms of XR. I witness flickers of creators exploring intimacy, symbolism, and the nervous system as design interfaces. These may be early echoes, but they suggest a grammar in the making—one that privileges coherence, relational depth, and the sacred potential of immersive media.
What do you have planned for the future?
The next movement of my sacred geometry is already in motion. A plethora of projects is flowering—each rooted in my commitment to designing adaptive, trauma-informed experiences that honour bioindividuality, nervous system attunement, and symbolic intelligence.
Totems of Hope continues to evolve as a modular, site-responsive ceremonial ecosystem—reshaping itself with each activation, in dialogue with the bodies and cultural rhythms it meets.
Technologically, I’m expanding neuroadaptive feedback systems and developing decentralised artefacts for remembrance. Spiritually, I remain devoted to deep listening—crafting sensory rituals where pacing becomes care, and coherence becomes lived experience.
What would you like to share with fellow content creators and/or the industry?
Begin with the breath. Before the tool, before the render—drop in. The future of immersive media may not be driven solely by invention, but by attunement. Let us honour our pacing, and the pacing of those we design for. Let us create as if the nervous system is listening—because it is.
We have the chance to shape experiences that don’t shout over the body, but invite it home. To craft spaces where symbolic intelligence, bioindividuality, and emotional resonance aren’t ornament, but foundation. We are not just building content—we are co-creating grammar for presence, for coherence, for care.
Do you think VR festivals like FIVARS are important?
Yes—deeply so. Festivals like FIVARS serve as cultural hearths, gathering the architects of new perceptual grammars. These platforms honour nuance, intimacy, and experimentation. They offer ritual space for artists and audiences alike to recalibrate—where simulation, as Baudrillard might suggest, no longer displaces the real but begins to restore it. Here, immersive media becomes sacred technology: a medium that reorients us toward presence, and entrains our nervous systems toward coherence. I’m grateful for curatorial ecosystems that recognise the quiet power of pacing, symbolism, and embodied storytelling.
Is there anything else you would like to add?
If this spotlight has offered a glimpse into the spirit that animates my work, I’m grateful. I walk this path not alone but accompanied—by ancestors, collaborators, technologies, and stories. I believe immersive media can become a sanctuary: a space for coherence, remembrance, and gentle revolution. Thank you for witnessing this fragment of my offering.
I’m wholeheartedly present with my joy and gratitude for being here.
You can experience Totems of Hope at the FIVARS 2025 in-person event in conjunction with VRTO Spatial Media World Conference, on June 25th and June 26th, at OCAD University.
