Golden Calf nominations for Best Digital Culture Production 2026 announced

In Being Gregor, Kafka's The Metamorphosis is the inspiration for an interactive VR experience in which you, as Gregor Samsa, slowly change from human to insect and become increasingly alienated and isolated. As your body shrinks, you lose control and walking gives way to crawling. Through interactions with family and surroundings, and through alienating scenes, you experience up close what it feels like to lose control and connection. 

Strong is the combination of literary inspiration and the way it has been translated into an experience. It is powerful that the visitor is placed directly in the shoes of the main character: they experience from the inside what it is like to lose control, bit by bit. The strong, modernist design – with Art Deco and Czech puppet theatre influences – creates a distinctive, believable world of its own.  

Here, interaction is used to make frustration and powerlessness tangible. As you step into the shoes of protagonist Gregor Samsa, you slowly turn into an insect. The more you lose control over your movements, the more palpable this powerlessness becomes. Small possibilities, such as still being able to move your antennae, make this all the more powerful and moving.  

At the same time, the experience holds up an important mirror to something that is still very much present: othering, the exclusion of people and treating them as 'the other'. The work is therefore not only about alienation, but also about how the world looks at you and how it feels when you have less and less grip on how you are seen.

A medieval boy on the Isle of Man sees a raven as a messenger of the god Odin and seeks from it redemption from his guilt and desires. Through an interplay of projection, sound design and animatronics, the installation brings together eight days from the first plague year of 1349 in an alienating experience. The raven becomes a metaphor for the echo chamber of AI: what we mainly get is a reflection of our own beliefs and fears. That is precisely why it is meaningful that the work itself was made entirely without AI. 

The jury appreciates the internal cohesion of the work; film, sculptures, movement and atmosphere together form a powerful and painterly whole. The various elements do not stand apart, but constantly reinforce each other, creating a world that is both tangible and enchanting. It is a work that stirs all the senses, gets under your skin and carries you along.  

Delicate and never too explicit, the work, with its recurring motifs, keeps inviting you to other interpretations. In space and time, too, the work gives the viewer great freedom: you can find your own way, shift your attention and immerse yourself in this magical world. That freedom makes the experience personal and inviting. 

Remarkable is the great command of both digital techniques and physical materials, and the attention to the smallest details. Graves' End draws attention not by shouting, but by whispering.