by Kathryn Yu | Sep, 2020 | No Proscenium: The Guide To Everything Immersive: There’s a dancer looking right at the camera. Their face is pressed up close to the lens, taking up almost all of the frame. In a museum or film context, this would not seem quite as odd; but in virtual reality, to have it feel like the dancer is looking at us? That’s a feat. And to have three live video feeds coming to us from Australia, Switzerland, and India, in a 3D replica of a real-life theater venue, well, that feels like a magic trick. But the really impressive part is that I’m watching multiple clones of the same motion-captured dancers beamed in from across the world in a custom built space in a custom built app, with about a dozen other invited press and industry folks.
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A lot of the comments that I've left over the past few weeks have dealt with two fronts of the same issue, namely how to deliver a theatre experience in a pandemic. The two fronts are either to drastically overhaul the live experience or to develop a completely new way to express the artistry. This article, obviously, falls under the latter, but in a way that's different from what I've seen when poring over these articles. The idea of a true immersive experience in VR is, I believe, fully realized with theatre. Especially in the case of the third "play" mentioned, it allows the participants to adopt an active role in the story rather than just sitting back and enjoying the ride. This may not be the best option, though. By design, plays are meant to have a clear distinction between audience and performer, barring some clever interactivity. To thrust a regular person into a world where they have to interact meaningfully with a pre-written script (or a technology they don't quite understand) is to create an experience much different than the type of theatre we all know and love. But, as with all of these new artistic delivery devices, they can not and will not function like how we expect. Though the paradigm shift is always uncomfortable at first, I still believe that we are entering a new era of artistic delivery.
It is really exciting to see the entertainment industry to begin experimenting with VR for performance! During the summer, I had the opportunity to redesign a venue for the future, wherein my team investigated the use of extended reality (virtual, augmented, and mixed realities) modes for enhancing the audience experience as well as opening up new markets. However, we came to the conclusion that for extended reality to find its niche in the entertainment industry, the technology needs to advance a bit further. Unfortunately, until we see 5G speeds become commonplace, more XR devices in the price range of the Oculus Quest, Samsung Gear, etc, and standardization of 3D file formats and processing flows, effectively utilizing XR technology for entertainment will be a costly and inefficient venture. As such, I will be following the Venice VR project closely to see how they continue to innovate within the realm of performance and performer-audience interaction.
I felt like the author of this article was pessimistic. I also realized after reading this article that those not as adept with technology might feel alienated by these new advancements in live theater. It is something that is hard for me to empathize with as I’ve grown up around technology like cell phones, video games and the internet so the simple tasks the article complains about only annoyed me because these tasks seem pretty simple to me. (For example, muting the mic to prevent echo if you have your device on speaker). Despite this, it did put in perspective how completely virtual versions of theater can be very exclusionary to older people or people who do not have access to these technologies (although theater is already a very exclusive form of art as is.) It also seemed like the writer of this article was very flustered to be put in the ‘main character’ experience, which maybe they should have opted to be a spectator if they were looking to take in more of their surroundings and not be faced with dialogue they had to respond to. I think that it is very impressive that people have managed to create versions of live theater in a virtual reality space that can end up being over an hour long, despite the limitedness of some aspects of the technology.
The first thing that comes to mind after seeing the images in this article is: oh man, thinking about these shows with the realistic style of video games being released today would be amazing, and after reading this article, this is definitely theater I would be invested in, I spend a lot of my time playing video games and Finding Pandora X sounds so cool to me. It was also interesting to see that there was a mod monitoring the audience in order to make sure that other patrons were not bothered during the performance (which is not something we can always do in live theater). While I agree that VRChat might not be the best program to use for this experience, the fact that it exists amazes me and opens a whole new world of performances. Not only are you watching a piece be performed, you get to interact with the performances and story line, which is something that may be able to hold the interest of today's teens and young adults, who are the constantly on games like this. Plus the interesting variation of genres (like sci-fi) is also a huge plus for virtual performances.
The experiences described in this article sound really interesting. I like the idea of virtual performance but it does sound like it needs some fine tuning, as any emerging art form would. These experiences sound more like escape rooms to me than anything else. I’m not quite sure why in this type of performance the narrative relies so heavily on the audience themselves as opposed to them being simply the viewers. It just seems less like performance and more like a really expensive video game you can only play once. I would be stressed if I had to answer comprehension questions live to a group of virtual actors.
I recognize that on one hand, one of the benefits of VR performances is that there can be increased audience participation, but I’m just not sure that’s something I was looking for. I often watch a performance to escape or lose myself in the world. Having to be an active participant in a show I only wanted to see does not sound very appealing to me. But still, I have nothing but respect for these artists putting in immense amounts of work to these virtual worlds. And maybe if I stop comparing them to other genres of performance, I can alter my expectations.
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