Art is no longer just observed—it has become a shared participative experience, blossoming into immersive worlds where physical boundaries dissolve and we inhabit and traverse creativity together.
Moderated by Raindance Immersive Curator, Mária Rakušanová (aka MariRaku), this panel in VRChat brings together three award-winning XR artists—Anders Fray (aka Ders), Durk van der Meer (aka Durk@Work) and Reverse Butcher—to discuss the leap from traditional mediums to new forms of artistic expression enabled by social VR, and the emergence of a new genre “art world”.
This session will dive into their creative processes using native VR tools like Gravity Sketch and Open Brush, and examines how shared virtual environments transform the "viewer" into an active "participant." Join us as we explore how the unique fabric of social VR is pushing the boundaries of creativity, and what it means to experience art together with a global community.
Anders Fray (aka Ders) is a game developer and XR artist. As a Level Artist at Treyarch, he applies his experience in architecture and level design to craft immersive, interactive environments centered on shared experiences. His independent XR work, including Natura’s Queendom, winner of the Best Art World at Raindance Immersive 2025, was hand-painted entirely in Open Brush and designed to foster identity exploration and collective participation. Through his practice, Anders explores how social VR transforms audiences into active participants, pushing the boundaries of artistic expression through collaborative, immersive storytelling.
Durk van der Meer (aka Durk@Work) is a Curaçao-based freelance digital artist, illustrator, and virtual world builder. Originally an architectural visualiser, he now designs environments, characters, and assets for games, animations, and films.His acclaimed art world, SUKU, won Best Art World at Raindance Immersive 2024, was featured at the Venice Biennale, and won at France's NewImages Festival 2026.
Since 2021, he has co-created the Akudreams project with Micah Johnson, illustrating a TIME magazine cover. He also co-authored and illustrated the Aku book series for Penguin Random House, including the New York Times bestseller Aku, Journey to Ibra. His film credits include award-winning animations Polska Warrior and Miss Moxy.
ReVerse Butcher (rVb) is an XR artist and poet whose immersive practice spans virtual sculpture, film, sound, performance, collage, painting, illustration, and visual poetry. Grounded in the fusion of traditional and digital art-making, she merges analogue materials and hand-built techniques with immersive technologies to create richly layered, experiential works that interrogate embodiment, language, and perception.
Her practice acts as a poetic intervention, weaving the surreal and the absurd into environments that inspire, provoke, and captivate. Across media, rVb distorts and reconfigures the boundaries of text, image, and space—blurring the distinctions between the physical and the virtual. As a queer, female artist, she actively disrupts aesthetic norms and established power dynamics, encouraging audiences to embrace uncertainty, multiplicity, and presence across worlds.
This hybrid process allows her to shift seamlessly between formats, including live performance, videopoems, immersive installations, and virtual worlds. Notably, her immersive art, music, and poetry experience, work The Continuous Present won Best Art Experience at Raindance Immersive 2025.
Mária Rakušanová (aka MariRaku) is the Curator and Executive Producer of the Raindance Immersive festival—now in its 11th edition—which takes place in London and, since 2020, across social VR platforms like VRChat. With a keen eye for innovation, Mária empowers independent creators and game developers to push the boundaries of the XR medium while championing pathways to profitability for the industry.
In addition to her decade of experience leading Raindance Immersive, she has held key roles in content acquisitions and partnerships at HTC VIVE, Microsoft, and Samsung. In these positions, she established strategic partnerships with leading XR studios and developers, with her teams directly contributing to the publishing of over 2,000 titles and shaping the funding landscape for XR games, immersive narratives, art experiences, XR for impact projects and enterprise applications. While at HTC VIVE, she also served as the Executive Producer for foundational VR and MR games and experiences.
By curating the work of independent virtual world builders and artists for the Raindance Immersive festival in VRChat in 2020, Mária didn't just discover the emerging talent from the platform—she elevated their craft to rival AAA developers and traditional filmmakers. This visionary move ultimately set the blueprint for other XR festivals to follow.
Join the session live on Zoom on Friday, 19th June or watch the replay. Please see the schedule below for your local time. For sessions that fall too early or too late in your time zone, we highly recommend catching up via our on-demand replays.
EUROPE – FRIDAY, 19 JUNE
4:10 PM - 5 PM BST (UK)
5:10 PM - 6 PM CET
6:10 PM - 7 EET
NORTH AMERICA – FRIDAY, 19 JUNE
11:10 AM - 12 PM EDT
10:10 AM - 11 AM CDT
9:10 AM - 10 AM MDT
8:10 AM - 9 AM PDT
CHINA – FRIDAY, 19 JUNE
11:10 PM - 12 AM CST
JAPAN, KOREA & AUSTRALIA – SATURDAY, 20 JUNE
12:10 AM - 1 AM JST
12:10 AM - 1 AM PM KST
1:10 AM - 2 AM AEST