Maitry Rao is a London-based Indian digital artist working in 3D and VR animation, her niche lies between monologue style poems and surreal moving images. Anywhere But Here is a metacommentary film about the desire to encounter new possibilities, places and faces, and the lack of progressive movement. The narrator unravels a bittersweet resolution in the self-reflexive filmmaking process as we dive deeper into her dreamscape. Anywhere But Here was created in a free-flowing manner and as a form of therapy for the creator.

Maitry Rao “Anywhere But Here shows a reasonable desire to escape the loop of being confined in the same space over a duration of unreasonable amount of time.  Even though I was not able to visit Scotland, I made a dreamscape in my room with my VR headset  and controllers. I really enjoyed performing in VR for the Scottish Highlands and Waterloo graffiti  tunnel scenes. This explains why those scenes are the most evocative and playfully visualised where I  am borrowing a lighter from a smoking cow, making friends by duplicating sheep into infinity and  seeing sheep paint ‘Go vegan’ on the Waterloo tunnel walls. 

To show the fact that I am in complete control of this world, my world, I exposed my process by  showing wireframe of 3D models and cursors on the screen. It becomes a metacommentary format  when I shed the layers and show the code of how I interacted with and within my imagined world. I started writing poems at The Royal College of Art when we were introduced to the free writing  process. This stream of consciousness writing style was overwhelming because I have never before  seen my ten-minute-long chain of gibberish thoughts typed down on my notes app with autocorrect  turned off. I abstracted words and phrases from the long text and condensed it into a short poem.”

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