Experiencing Interruptions?

Totems of Hope: Your Brain On Philanthropy

A neuroaesthetic ritual experience that bridges immersive technology, social impact, and ancestral symbolism.

It is a modular, trauma-informed experience that blends ritual, XR, and symbolic action into a multisensory act of immersive giving. Designed to meet participants where they are, it offers a responsive, emotionally attuned journey shaped by personal pacing and presence.

At once poetic and participatory, the work integrates augmented reality, brain-responsive spatial audio as the primary perceptual interface, and real-world interaction into a layered experience — creating a future-facing expression of immersive philanthropy. Participants engage through neurotechnology-based headphone immersion, where real-time physiological signals inform the evolving sound environment.

Built as a neuroaesthetic ritual, Totems of Hope orchestrates symbolic and technological elements into a cohesive arc — one that fosters embodiment, connection, and a deepened sense of shared humanity.

  • Simeone Scaramozzino
    Director
    The Immersive Burning Man Temple Trilogy
  • Simeone Scaramozzino
    Writer
    The Immersive Burning Man Temple Trilogy
  • Simeone Scaramozzino
    Producer
    The Immersive Burning Man Temple Trilogy
  • Simeone Scaramozzino
    Lead Artists
    The Immersive Burning Man Temple Trilogy
  • Project Type:
    Virtual Reality, Installation, Game, 360 Video, Augmented Reality, Other
  • Minimum Runtime:
    22 minutes
  • Maximum Runtime:
    33 minutes
  • Average Runtime:
    26 minutes
  • Variable Runtime Details:
    Totems of Hope is a modular, trauma-informed, neuroaesthetic experience that shifts in length and depth, meeting people where they are in the moment. It offers participants agency throughout — the freedom to engage at a rhythm that feels safe, attuned, and embodied.
    Blending ritual, interactivity, immersive technology, and social engagement, the piece is crafted to honour personal pacing while gently inviting presence, connection, and participation.
    At its core, Totems of Hope is a quiet invitation: to slow down, feel deeply, and take part in a gesture of giving that is simultaneously ancestral, sensory, and future-facing.
  • Completion Date:
    September 26, 2024
  • Production Budget:
    8,800 EUR
  • Country of Origin:
    Italy
  • Language:
    English
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Digital Cinema Package:
    Unavailable
  • AWE EU 2024
    Vienna
    Austria
    October 29, 2024
    Austria Center
    Invited Selection
  • Immersive Tech Week Rotterdam
    Rotterdam
    Netherlands
    December 4, 2024
    de Doelen
    Invited Selection
  • IMPACT 2030 @ H-FARM
    Roncade (Treviso)
    Italy
    March 28, 2025
    Italian Premiere
    Invited Selection
  • AWE USA (Long Beach)
    Long Beach
    United States
    June 10, 2025
    US Premiere
    Invited Selection
  • AUGGIE AWARDS USA - BEST SOCIETAL IMPACT
    Long Beach
    United States
    June 11, 2025
    US Premiere
    Finalist
  • FIVARS
    Toronto
    Canada
    June 25, 2025
    Canada Premiere
    FInalist
  • VRTO
    Toronto
    Canada
    June 10, 2025
    Canada Premiere
    Invited Selection
  • Arizona State University (ASU) + AGOG
    Los Angeles
    United States
    September 16, 2025
    Invited Selection
  • Creators Meetup - Palo Alto, Barcelona
    Barcelona
    Spain
    October 7, 2025
    Spain Premiere
    Invited Selection
  • VRINN - HAMAR, UNESCO Award
    HAMAR
    Norway
    October 14, 2025
    Norwegian Premiere
    Hamar UNESCO City of Media Arts AWARD
  • ASU’s Herberger Institute and FYI (will.i.am’s creative AI hub)
    LOS ANGELES
    United States
    October 15, 2025
    Relaunch
    Invited Selection, Internet Tech Week
  • XR Europe
    Bruxelles
    Belgium
    December 8, 2025
    Belgium Premiere
  • AUREA AWARDS
    Rust
    Germany
    February 2, 2026
    German
    Finalist
  • IVRHA Symposium
    Tampa
    United States
    February 27, 2026
    Florida
  • Human Tech Week, San Francisco
    San Francisco
    United States
    May 12, 2026
    San Francisco Premiere
    Selected as Official Partner
  • New York Tech Week
    New York
    United States
    June 1, 2026
    New York Premiere
    Selected as Official Partner
Director Biography - Simeone Scaramozzino

A visionary at the intersection of ancestral wisdom, immersive technologies, and systemic transformation, his work fuses spirit plants and algorithmic intelligence to bridge animistic traditions, neuroaesthetics, and biodigital systems, crafting multisensory experiences that expand consciousness and foster deep healing.

His career began in corporate strategy and emerging media, working with Fortune 500 companies across telecommunications, media, entertainment, and technology networks. Bridging corporate strategy with creative innovation, he pioneered digital business models, broadband services, and scalable infrastructures before transitioning into systemic transformation.

A near-death experience profoundly shifted his trajectory, leading him to train in Eastern philosophies, yoga, breathwork, and Peter Levine’s somatic healing methodologies. His deep apprenticeship in Curanderismo and initiation into ancestral entheogenic plant medicine inform his design of biosensing spaces that activate flow states and deepen embodied intelligence.

He pioneers AI-powered biodigital ecosystems, reimagining philanthropy as an immersive, reciprocal ritual through his acclaimed itinerant project, Totems of Hope (2024), recognised at AWE Vienna, Immersive Tech Week Rotterdam, IMPACT 2030, AWE USA 2025, VRTO & FIVARS Toronto...

As an advisor to leaders in XR, Web3, blockchain, and regenerative initiatives, he designs leadership programmes that integrate entheogenic practices, functional nutrition, breathwork, and neuroadaptive technologies to cultivate cognitive adaptability, resilience, and embodied intelligence. His contributions to youth resilience earned him the title ‘Honorary Monk’ in Burma.

He explored water consciousness through the acclaimed multimedia project, New Paradigms on Liquid Matters, featuring music by Ryūichi Sakamoto, exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in Milan and Seaport District Museum in New York. His research into the interconnections of water, sound, and consciousness expansion informs his work as a composer and performer of healing frequencies-imbued music, crafting ancestral sonic architectures that facilitate deep states of presence and neuroaesthetic engagement. Actively collaborating with Enophones, he explores the synergy between sound, cognition, and brainwave entrainment, designing immersive experiences that attune neurophysiology to expanded states of awareness.

A Burning Man Art Honoraria Grant awardee, his immersive media practice includes the Neuroaesthetic Immersive Experiences Trilogy of the Burning Man Virtual Temple, exploring digital ritualism, embodied storytelling, and neuroaesthetic contemplation. His work has received international recognition at festivals such as Chelsea Film Festival, Los Angeles, Sydney & Melbourne Lift-Off Film Festivals, Auggie Awards, and the World Happiness Foundation Award. Through his keynote talks in Transformative Technologies, he inspires industries like Insurtech to rethink well-being eudaimonically, embracing ancient wisdom and neuroadaptive practices that foster systemic resilience and human flourishing. His work envisions a self-sustaining, blockchain-enabled ecosystem where experiential data becomes currency, allowing participants to contribute emotional, sonic, and synesthetic imprints that dynamically shape the space.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

Totems of Hope was never designed to be an experience for the sake of experience.

I set out to honour the subtle —
to invite a journey through inner states
that might reawaken the sacred traits of care.

The kind that’s felt in the breath,
sensed in the body,
and recognised across distances,
even before it is named.

Totems of Hope emerged from this space.
Not as a product of urgency,
but of attunement.
A response to a world that asks us to perform, produce, and provide —
often before we are truly present.

Rather than adding noise to a saturated field of humanitarian narratives,
this work listens.
It listens to the nervous system.
To ancestral frameworks that have long known the power of symbol, rhythm, and offering.
And to the quiet, emerging potential of immersive technologies —
not to extract attention,
but to restore it.

This is why Totems is trauma-informed at its root:
it holds space for fragmentation.
It does not coerce coherence,
but offers it — through breath, repetition, ritual, and story.

Presence is never demanded.
It is invited.

The tools — AR, neurofeedback audio, metaverse bridges — are not the centre.
They are tuning instruments.
What matters is what they help us notice:
ourselves, each other,
and the invisible threads of relationship we belong to.

Totems of Hope was not made to impress.
It was made to imprint. Gently.
With every breath taken inside it, with every gesture made in its name,
a new kind of memory forms. One that says:
Giving is not a transaction.
It is a remembering — of who we are to one another.

So we offer this, not as a solution,
but as a sacred pause.
A moment to reconnect what has been scattered.

A reminder that:
We are the ritual.
We are the resonance.
We are — each of us — a totem of hope.