WHY SHOULD CHOOSE THE VR TO BROADEN THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SPECTATOR AND THEATRICAL SETTING ? 4 . 1 . What do we call a presence ? (original) (raw)
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Virtual Reality in Contemporary Theatre
Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage
This study examines how virtual reality images are used in contemporary theatre. Modern technologies get into various areas of life including the theatrical environment. Therefore, the study of the role of virtual reality in contemporary theatre is crucial for the qualitative understanding of the tendencies in development of the contemporary theatre scene in the context of the development of contemporary art. This determines the relevance of this study and subsequent academic research in this field as well. The purpose of this study is to assess the degree of influence of modern technologies on creating virtual reality in the development of theatrical art. The leading approach for this study is a combination of a systematic study of the main trends in the creation of virtual reality within the framework of the development of modern technologies and the logical construction of conclusions retrieved from the results of this study. The main results obtained in this study are supposed t...
Repossessing Spectatorship in Immersive Theatre and Virtual Reality
2020
Repossessing Spectatorship in Immersive Theatre and Virtual Reality proposes that material constructions borne by the ambitions of “immersion” do not fulfill their intended purpose: total passage to the reality of the performance. These materially constructed doorframes are not fully functional portals, as they ultimately have no bearing on the impassable barrier between our actuality and the virtual reality of a performance. Due to that barrier, encounters with the reality of a performance are still necessarily virtual; the spectator’s perception must traverse the performance through a sort of astral projection, as a dis/embodied ghost still tethered to corporeality and ultimately returning to it. Although these doorframes reveal and conceal no more than the actuality that already haunts spectators, these constructions produce exciting new theatre practices. Through a combination of the author’s embodied research, interviews with immersive theatre practitioners, and performance theory related to immersion, embodiment, and liveness, Repossessing Spectatorship in Immersive Theatre and Virtual Reality explores two contemporary case studies of immersive theatre that model the virtual reality headset as a visible, tangible example of one such “doorframe.” These case studies both integrate the virtual reality headset for the sake of immersion: 1. Tequila Works’s The Invisible Hours, one title in an expressly immersive and theatrical genre of virtual reality (VR) gaming, and 2. The University of Iowa’s Elevator #7, a mixed-reality production that adds an additional layer of tangible stimuli through live theatre, in order to supplement the immersive experience of wearing the headset. This thesis articulates its larger, abstract argument about spectatorship by tracing these case studies’ applications of the VR headset. Overall, Repossessing Spectatorship in Immersive Theatre and Virtual Reality encourages a reframing of the idea of immersion, away from total passage and toward a conscious repossession of the corporeal body in virtual visitation with a performance.
Virtual Reality and the Theatre: Immersion in Virtual Worlds
Digital Creativity, 1999
The Institute for the Exploration of Virtual Realities (i.e.VR) is a project group at the University of Kansas dedicated to exploring the uses of computer technology in performance and computer-generated images as a scenographic medium. Three recent productions are described which aimed to use VR technologies not to simulate reality but to achieve 'engagement' of the audience. This is described as immersing the participant through engaging storytelling. The three plays were The Adding Machine, Wings and Tesla Electric, and they have provided a wealth of information on the art and practice of immersing a theatre audience within a fictive world.
Virtual Teleportation of a Theatre Audience Onto the Stage: VR as an Assistive Technology
2020
For more than a decade, virtual reality (VR) has been employed to enrich and heighten media experiences. Despite the recognized potential and promise of VR, and ample investment, it has yet to fully transform or replace existing screen-based experiences (e.g. film or gaming). This research forms a part of a larger project to shift VR applications beyond otherwise apparent areas of screen-based media, in order to enhance audience access and propinquity to a live performance. This study is being conducted in the field of theatre, a dramatic medium in which audience are traditionally static and where an individual’s seating position determines their perceptual experience (distance, angle, lights, obstructed vs clear view). This paper introduces the broader project and its experimentation with VR as an assistive technology. The project seeks to utilize VR as a means of converting an otherwise static experience to provide collective moments of visual teleportation, onto stage, into props...
VR and the Dramatic Theatre: are they fellow creatures
International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, 2018
This paper describes an experimental project that aims to investigate the scope of methodological and technical possibilities of using 360° videos for experiencing authored drama. In particular, it examines how a work written for the medium of theatre, with a traditional audience-drama relationship of viewer invisibility and non-participation, might translate into a viewing experience as a VR drama. The technical and dramaturgical issues arising from this are discussed. Specifically, the shared voyeuristic quality of both media is examined. Is the invisible viewer of VR drama in the invidious role of Glaucon’s iniquitous shepherd Gyges, or does the medium give invisibility a cloak of aesthetic value?
In every century, there are different apparatuses that are redefining and refining the notion of immersion. After experiencing panoramas, planetariums or even IMAX movies, we are now longing to see whether VR can really fulfil our expectations. We are ready to offer all our senses and to experience new situations and to be present somewhere else. But is the virtual reality's medium prepared for these expectations? Meanwhile the immersive theatre's genre is spreading and engaging the audience for couple of hours into their very peculiar environments. The aim of my research is to point out different features of live theatre that, when combined with or added to VR-experiences, can enhance the immersion and create more realistic illusions. My investigation is related to narratology and reception studies, and is based on recent findings related to VR. First I'm going to present through some examples how 360-degree fictional movies are exploring their specialties by transferring the narrative literally into the viewers head (e.g. Alteration by Jerome Blanquet, or Rhizomat VR by Mona el Gammal) as a way to capture the viewers empathy more. In immersive performances the audience is considered a participant with a given role. This way the narrative environment is constructed in such a way that allows the participants to unfold the story by directing their focus to carefully planned details. This does not make the participants the story's protagonist, but they can become the protagonist of the experience itself. They can have a variety of experiences that are directly addressing all of their senses creating more suspense. Based on different examples, I will point out various tactics that VR-movie creators can use to draft their own language and offer more inputs for their viewers. I will also point out how to create such environments for using the VR HMD that can dramatically be built into a viewing situation, without having the forced isolation feeling. My research is based on an audience survey made in June 2017 in Mannheim following a performance by SIGNA, on several interviews conducted with immersive theatre makers, and also on hermeneutical analysis of different VR creations. Virtual reality. 360-degree movie. Immersive theatre.
Virtual theater: Theory and practice
From the moment we expand the reach of the term ‘theater’ beyond its ephemeral, unique, irreproducible realization, we obtain a broader perspective on the contemporary scenic creation. By broadening the field of theater to before its scenic realization, as project and as creative process, and to after, in the form of the various discoursive elements (comments, criticisms, accounts) or iconographic elements (photographs, recordings, remains of sets and costumes) that amplify it, effuse it, disseminate it, spread it, deform it, and transform it we free ourselves from an overly narrow image which is not able to do justice to the multiplicity of experiences of contemporary theater.
Staging Spectators in Immersive Performances: Commit Yourself!
Staging Spectators in Immersive Performances: Commit Yourself! , 2019
At present, we are witnessing a significant transformation of established forms of spectatorship in theatre, performance art and beyond. In particular , immersive and participatory forms of theatre allow audiences and performers to interact in a shared performance space. Staging Spectators in Immersive Performances discusses forms and concepts of contemporary spectatorship and explores various modes of audience participation in theory as well as in practice. The volume also reflects on what new terms and methods must be developed in order to address the theoretical challenges of contemporary immersive performances. Split into three parts, Staging Spectators in Immersive Performances, respectively, focuses on various strategies for mobilising the audience, methodological questions for research on being a spectator in immersive and participatory forms of theatre, and thematising new modes of partaking and ways of spectating in contemporary art. Poignantly capturing experiences that can be viewed as manifestations of affective relationality in the strongest possible sense, this volume will appeal to students and researchers interested in fields such as Theatre and Performance Studies, Media Studies and Philosophy. Doris Kolesch is Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies and a co-director of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)-funded Collab
Watching, Attending, Sense-making: Spectatorship in Immersive Theatres
Journal of Contemporary Drama in English, 2016
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Challenges of the Internet of Things, 2018
In the first part of this paper, we will introduce the scenographic design on which our presentation is based, and the modifications we have made in relation to our previous work. Next, in the second section, we will discuss in detail the impact of augmenting the player’s game using an avatar, compared to the scenic limitations of the theatrical stage. In part three of the paper, we will discuss the software-related aspects of the project, focusing on exchanges between the different components of our design and describing the algorithms enabling us to utilize the real-time movement of a player via various capture devices. To conclude, we will examine in detail how our experimental system linking physical actors and avatars profoundly alters the nature of collaboration between directors, actors, and digital artists in terms of actor/avatar direction.