Creating a Theatrical Experience on a Virtual Stage

This paper describes the use of virtual and augmented reality, combined with motion capture technologies, to produce virtual theatre: live theatrical performance fully realized and experienced in a virtual space. The virtual theatre dance performance Farewell to Dawn, which was presented in Rochester, NY in December 2016, is used to illustrate and explore affordances of these technologies in terms the liveness, perspective, and social presence.

[1]  David Huynh,et al.  Adapting a Virtual World for Theatrical Performance , 2011, Computer.

[2]  J. Parker Theater as virtual reality , 2014 .

[3]  Ray L. Birdwhistell,et al.  Introduction to kinesics : an annotation system for analysis of body motion and gesture , 1952 .

[4]  Nick Couldry,et al.  Liveness, “Reality,” and the Mediated Habitus from Television to the Mobile Phone , 2004 .

[5]  Katherine Rowe,et al.  Crowd-Sourcing Shakespeare: Screen Work and Screen Play in Second Life® , 2010 .

[6]  Mel Slater,et al.  The Sense of Embodiment in Virtual Reality , 2012, PRESENCE: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments.

[7]  Tonia Sutherland From (Archival) Page to (Virtual) Stage: The Virtual Vaudeville Prototype , 2016 .

[8]  Teija Löytönen,et al.  Emotions in the Everyday Life of a Dance School: Articulating Unspoken Values , 2008, Dance Research Journal.

[9]  E. Hall,et al.  The Hidden Dimension , 1970 .

[10]  Glenn D. Wilson,et al.  Psychology for Performing Artists , 2001 .

[11]  Joe Geigel,et al.  Motion capture for realtime control of virtual actors in live, distributed, theatrical performances , 2011, Face and Gesture 2011.

[12]  Susan Sontag,et al.  Film and Theatre , 1966 .

[13]  Chen Wang,et al.  Distributed Liveness: Understanding How New Technologies Transform Performance Experiences , 2016, CSCW.

[14]  Javier Jaimovich,et al.  Measurement of motion and emotion during musical performance , 2009, 2009 3rd International Conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction and Workshops.

[15]  Matthew R. Lewis Bowen virtual theater , 2003, SIGGRAPH '03.

[16]  Joe Geigel,et al.  Farewell to dawn: a mixed reality dance performance in a virtual space , 2016, SIGGRAPH Posters.

[17]  Lesya M. Hassall,et al.  An Examination of a Theory of Embodied Social Presence in Virtual Worlds , 2011, Decis. Sci..

[18]  Matthew Lombard,et al.  At the Heart of It All: The Concept of Presence , 2006 .

[19]  Jack M. Loomis,et al.  Presence in Virtual Reality and Everyday Life: Immersion within a World of Representation , 2016, PRESENCE: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments.

[20]  Carlton Reeve Presence in Virtual Theater , 2000, Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments.

[21]  Bernie Roehl,et al.  "Bottom, Thou Art Translated": The Making of VRML Dream , 1999, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications.

[22]  Chen Wang,et al.  Sensing a live audience , 2014, CHI.

[23]  Michael Neff Lessons from the arts: what the performing arts literature can teach us about creating expressive character movement , 2014 .

[24]  R. Ascott,et al.  Telematic Embrace: Visionary Theories of Art, Technology, and Consciousness , 2003 .

[25]  J. Howell,et al.  Acting in virtual reality , 2000, CVE '00.

[26]  Matthew Reason,et al.  Archive or Memory? The Detritus of Live Performance , 2003, New Theatre Quarterly.