De la Peña has two pieces at Sundance 2016: Across the Line, based on footage from women crossing the omnipresent and often abusive anti-abortion pickets outside Planned Parenthood; and Kiya, which dramatizes a 911 call that captured two sisters unsuccessfully trying to stop a third's ex-boyfriend from killing her. The first ends with a remembrance of the three killed and nine injured by a gunman who targeted Planned Parenthood last year, and the second closes by reminding participants of the number of women murdered by romantic partners and ex-partners every day.
...my initial reaction to Across the Line — which I tried first — was analysis. De la Peña's work is aesthetically unique: it uses real location blueprints, photographs, and motion capture data to create simple digital scenes that participants can walk through in VR. It feels distinctly influenced by the blocky style of Second Life, suggesting reality rather than recreating it. Across the Line, though, opens with a short 360-degree video introduction that follows a young woman through the picket line and into the clinic. I'm told this was done to create a greater sense of space, since the HTC Vive it's being demoed on provides less space than the custom headsets of her earlier work. But it also fills out the work in an interesting way, like a photorealistic cutscene in an otherwise low-detail video game.
See the full story here: http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/24/10820778/sundance-2016-virtual-reality-immersive-journalism-experiences