White Spots, a Journey to the Edge of the Internet

How does it feel to be disconnected? Can people still choose to live without digital networks? In White Spots VR, documentary artist and filmmaker Bregtje van der Haak takes us on a surprising journey away from our familiar networked world to “white spots,” where people live completely isolated from the internet and cell phone reception. Starting off inside a live 360-degree visualization of the network data around us, we travel all over the place to meet people living without connectivity. From the self-imposed digital isolation of writer Aram Pachyan in Armenia to the exclusion from digital networks caused by poverty in a gypsy slum in Seville, Spain; from the religiously inspired low-tech lifestyle of the Amish in Shipshewana, Indiana to the loneliness and pain caused by electromagnetic radiation on a campsite in the Dutch countryside. is an exploration of alternatives to our permanently connected world and seamless technological utopia.