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# OTHERWORLDS won A MAZE's Human Human Machine Award
- URL: https://www.killscreen.com/otherworlds-won-a-mazes-human-human-machine-award/
- Published: 2026-08-22T01:48:41.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-22T01:48:41.000Z
- Description: Sophia Bulgakova's mixed-reality ritual, drawn from Ukrainian pagan practice, took the Berlin festival's prize for collective presence.
- Author: Kill Screen Staff
- Tags: OTHERWORLDS, Sophia Bulgakova, A MAZE, vr, mixed reality, ritual, Ukraine, Awards, performance, FIBER

You stand in darkness with strangers, a soft voice describing the world you are about to enter. Then reality slips: abstract color fields in virtual and mixed reality, spatial sound pressing in, the group moving together in shared choreography. *OTHERWORLDS*, the participatory performance by Ukrainian artist Sophia Bulgakova, rebuilds the communal ritual as a technology—[the project](https://sophiabulgakova.com/otherworlds/?ref=killscreen.com) Ukrainian traditions and pagan practices into what Bulgakova calls "tools for personal and communal transformation."

In May, at the 15th A MAZE. / Berlin festival, the jury picked it out of 435 submissions from 78 countries and [handed it the Human Human Machine Award](https://2026.amaze-berlin.de/award-winners/?ref=killscreen.com), writing that the work "takes something so ancient and leaves it not diminished, but amplified." That is the precise thing to say about it. The machine here is not simulating a ritual for a single headset-wearer; it is hosting one for a room, which is why the award's doubled "Human Human" fits so well. The piece was also a [Lumen Prize Experiential Award finalist](https://lumenprize.org/2025-experiential-award-finalists/sophiabulgakova?ref=killscreen.com) in 2025.

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Bulgakova, born in Odesa and based in The Hague, made the piece with creative development by Leonardo Scarin and Harm van de Ven and sound design by Mark IJzerman; it is produced and distributed by the Amsterdam platform FIBER. The through-line is one this publication keeps finding: virtual reality reaching past novelty toward the sacred, the same current we traced in [Uzoma Orji's spiritual undertones of virtual reality](https://www.killscreen.com/uzoma-orji/). Pre-Christian ritual bound communities through shared movement and altered perception. *OTHERWORLDS* makes the argument that a render engine can do the same work, together, in a dark room.