Carolina Dias de Almeida Berger

For over 20 years, Carolina Berger has worked as a director, performer, and researcher focused on presence and emerging technologies. Her career spans documentary filmmaking, performing arts, and interactive intermedia experiences, with both national and international recognition.Carolina holds a PhD from the Graduate Program in Audiovisual Media and Processes at the University of São Paulo (ECA-USP). Her doctoral research, titled "The Presence Paradox", investigates the historical, aesthetic, and cognitive dimensions of presence production in audiovisual media. She also holds a Masters degree in Documentary Filmmaking from Universidad del Cine in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where she explored self-referentiality in cinema and digital art, analyzing how artists and filmmakers have incorporated personal cameras as creative tools.Her audiovisual works include award-winning documentaries such as Herança and Paragem do Tempo, both nationally and internationally acclaimed.In the field of digital performance, Carolina developed the #LiveLivingPerformanceProject, with its international premiere in Singapore under the mentorship of Steve Dixon, a global reference in digital performance and author of Digital Performance: A History of New Media in Theater, Dance, Performance Art, and Installation (MIT Press). Between 2016 and 2021, she was an associate researcher at LabArteMídia ECA/USP, deepening her investigations at the intersection of body, media, and presence.During her postdoctoral research, she founded the #DigitalSelfPresencaLab, a practice-based research laboratory that consolidated the theoretical foundations of The Presence Paradox, combining new media, body sensors, extended reality, and performative arts in immersive and kinesthetic environments. Her experiments explore how ritualization, nature, and the integration of technological artifacts can amplify human sentience and self-awareness.One of the latest outcomes of her research is the immersive film Virtual Ritual, her first project as a VR director, where she applied immersive dance techniques for cast preparation and character creation.In 2023, Carolina was the only Brazilian artist selected for the New Frontier Artist Incubation Program at the Sundance Film Festival (USA), reinforcing her international relevance in the field of immersive storytelling.Currently, she is the CEO of LabPresença, an immersive experiences studio recognized as a Deep Tech startup, a direct result of her two decades of research on presence and technology. Through @labpresenca, she applies her investigations in practice, developing immersive technologies as tools to stimulate expressive presence and human subjectivity.As Creative Director, she leads a team of creative technologists in designing and implementing VR solutions that influence behaviors, perceptions, and sensory connections in the physical world.Her main projects include:The "Regen_Era Regenerative Immersive Station", which combines virtual reality with real-world tree planting in Brazilian biomes.The "Toré Virtual" project, an immersive exhibition co-created with the Fulni-ô Indigenous people (PE), recognized for its potential in safeguarding ancestral memory through immersive technologies. (Source: Lattes Curriculum)