Virtual Immersion Performance
Research summary.
This summary presents the following topics of research : New creative scenarios, narrative composition through live virtual reality immersions set to “performance” level of experience. Evolving interface, hardware and distinct stage setups. Praxis to theory : performances through key studies and storyline scenarios (behavioural, movement, psychological analysis) collaborative and constructive dynamics, towards publications.
The following diagram concentrates the information on this summarised proposal.
what’s it about:
Virtual Immersion Performances are directed live immersive experiences that allow a user to access a heightened creative availability, provide for a multiplicity of relationships to unfold, and evoque a story.
During immersion a dialogue between director and user takes place. A live director - user link establishes direct creative relationship with a constructive sense of responsibility, intuition and expertise.
Coming from physical theatre (Lecoq) film and literature, my conception of immersive experiences has developed towards an analytical and theoretical framework, relating audiovisual imagery to narrative structures and layered performance levels of participation. Placing a user on a performative level of experience allows fo a heightened availability and access to personal and intimate worlds. A connection between an internal intimacy of creation and an outward expression happens, a loosening of the individual “I” identity.
A user is introduced to the stage and as immersion begins a story unfolds. Time and geography becomes attached to internal imagination, expression allows for an individual experience to become a shared one through live projection of immersive worlds and staging.
Immersions provide three levels of control / determination towards construction of story and experience:
1. Director flows information, intensity of effects, transition choices and specific inputs of live audiovisual information.
2. User margin of choice, visually and through voice controls (i.e: live voice recognition inputs are looped into story).
3. A limited, adjustable, variable and random ‘spin’ of free will from both director and user choices.
It is through my work towards live virtual immersions and presence in the development of platforms with Ruse Laboratories (California, USA), currently in use, that I articulate my current proposal.
structure:
My research is rooted in narrative scenarios and stems towards technically driven stagings. Work is structured through nodes of information, analysis, association of ideas, that, like an organic document or a layered prism of elements, allow for several access points to form an understanding. The form of which leads to a multiplicity of relations and coordinates of information. Working through constant artistic praxis, specific storylines towards scientific research yields a continuous creative act. An exchange between the practical and the theoretical allows for the growth of the overall environment of research, ultimately providing an understanding on how virtual worlds allow for a re-signification of our understanding of reality.
nature of reality:
The vicinity and multiplicity of images in our contemporary lives open a dialogue. Questioning the nature of reality leads us to look for answers in the nature of the imagination, our desires, what makes us humans. Through all cultures, ancient and contemporary, the image, the symbol, the depth of rites and rituals, our psychological patterns, language, evolving frameworks, it is our creativity that adheres to our existence and it’s transcendence.
How we live an image, our memories, our projection of the self, our identity, provide the limit on our collective consciousness. The eccentric pull of information, clicks, likes, media activity, an ubiquitous part of the user’s self becomes an external variable substance for the staging of live Virtual Immserion Performances. However, the overall outcome is to transcend this horizontal level of experience towards a pure narrative state, user becomes axis mundi, offering a recognition and a sense of personal liberation.
collaboration:
Experience levels activity towards a mounting diving board, the height of which is calibrated through the expertise and sustained support of scientists, programers, collaborating artists and life encounters. In addition all creative work deals with the constancy of focus and keyed towards the development of language.
Departure points and key elements for research that surface towards praxis performance include:
Relationships: user - director / user - self / user - audience.
HMD / virtual immersions as mask.
Live immersive scenarios: cognitive triggers (behavioural analysis, movement capture feedback), stimuli (visual, sound, haptic), narrative content towards structure, live visual effects, manipulation of virtual environments.
Time as place: the moment as capsule of information.
Applied outcomes of this research for artistic, medical or entertainment purposes.
An audiovisual document on the relationship of masks, particularly on the ideation and implementation of Snout Masks, available through this link: