Immersive

Technologies

The

Performing Arts

&

What is Opera on Tap?

And Why are We Here?

Our Work With Immersive Technologies

WHY OPERA IN VR?● It’s a marriage of two multi-sensory experiences● Opera is an art form that over centuries has accrued an arsenal of diverse storytelling tools

through its marriage of sound, language, movement, theater and visual art.

● Opera needs new audiences while VR needs more content and new audiences

● Spatialized sound is really cool to us music people

"Help me," she cries. Two words

sung on two notes that make an

immediate impact."

LA Weekly

“If David Lynch were to write an opera…it

would be something like The Parksville

Murders.”

Philadelphia Inquirer

THE PARKSVILLE MURDERS

www.theparksvillemurders.com

PARKSVILLE(What’s Next)

THE SHRINE ENCOUNTER

-Game Engine Portal

-Social VR Experimentation

-Cinematic VR Episodic

Material

-Sonic and tactile interactivity

that lends to our narrative and

musical composition

-Location Jumps with

integrated musical composition

THE IMMERSIVE

OPERA PROJECT

The Immersive Opera Project is a collaborative effort by Opera on Tap, Austin Opera TX and Tapestry Opera

TORONTO to develop and showcase immersive opera inclusive of live, virtual and mixed reality projects. PARKSVILLE

is our inaugural project.

LOOKING AT YOUSpectators are seated at tables with built-in

touchscreens in a Silicon Hills company

headquarters that encompasses a coffee shop,

saloon, health club and roof garden. Once you

click on a standard user agreement,

information from your digital footprint —

information you have shared publicly on the

internet — begins to be folded into the lyrics

and visual content of the show.

As the drama of high romance amidst

government and corporate surveillance unfolds

around you, your screen reassembles into a

series of singing faces: your face, the faces of

your tablemates, the faces of your loved ones.

An Immersive Techno-Noir Music-

Theater Piece

ARTISTS:

Rob Handel-

librettist

Kamala Sankaram- composer

Kristin Marting-

stage director

David Bengali-

video designer

Tech Partners:

Carnegie Mellon Usable Privacy

and Security Lab

Joe Holt & Daniel Dickison- Coders

for Bandcamp.com

*Photos courtesy of BRIC Arts

Projects In The Commissioning Phase

(Immersive Opera Project)

R.U.R (Rossum’s Universal Robots)- In the 1920 science fiction play Karel Čapek is imagining a technological future, one that is both vastly different from and eerily

similar to the time we are approaching now with the advent and mainstreaming of AI, VR, and AR, and Big Data's unending presence in our lives - what does the

convergence of Big Data companies and robotics developers mean for our everyday? What would it look like to critically incorporate the elements he feared in an opera

that emphasizes human connection?

Composer: Nicky Lizee

Librettist: Nicolas Billon

Tapestry Opera- lead producing partner

Krystle Palace- is a site-specific AR opera.

The work is about the real person Krystle Cole, an artist and author who at a young age became an unwitting strip tease dancer and psychonaut under the complex

leadership of a guru. The story comes both from her own memoir “Lysergic” and from the VICE video essay that brought her to a larger public, with AR to be used to

simulate LSD trips, the atmosphere of the clubs in which she danced, the silo in which much of the collective experimentation took place, and the open spaces of her native

Kansas

Composer: Daniel Felsenfeld

Librettist: Brittany Goodwin

Director: Cari Ann Shim Sham*

Opera on Tap- lead producing partner

Projects Across The Spectrum Of The

Performing Arts

THE TEMPEST

Immersive technology:

-Mark Quartley – the actor playing Ariel – wears a suit

laden with motion sensors.

-The Imaginarium uses Intel Core i7-based computers to run

Unreal, the game engine that renders the avatar’s motion

by the data captured from Xsens sensors built into

Quartley’s suit.- rsc.org.uk

A Royal Shakespeare Company production in

collaboration with Intel and in association with the

Imaginarium Studios.

Photo credit: Topher McGrillis © Royal Shakespeare Company

NIGHT FALL

“If you create a ballet, you create it for stage.” As a

dancer, you have one focus point, and that’s the audience.

But if you’re working for virtual reality, then depending on

where you are in the room, you have to change your

direction. The choreography should really be different. So

we realized we had to make something new. A new

ballet.”

-Harm-Jan Keizer

Marketing Manager, Dutch National Ballet

Photo Courtesy of Marijn Korver and Dutch National Ballet

The Dutch National Ballet created the first Virtual

Reality Ballet

Inspired by the famous white acts from Swan Lake

and La Bayadère

-operaballet.nl

VR Production: &samhoud media

DUST VRDUST aims to transform the way people see and

experience contemporary dance through a 4

minute long immersive virtual reality experience. It

explores the boundaries between the virtual and

the real-world experiences and advances

research in the fields of participatory

performance, human-computer interaction and VR

technologies.

Andrej Boleslavský ― digital artist

Mária Júdová ― digital artist

Patricia Okenwa― choreographer

Soňa Ferienčíková ― dancer

Roman Zotov ― dancer

Carmen Salas ― creative producer

Miles Whittaker aka Demdike Stare ― musician

vrdust.org.uk

Immersive Technologies:

-2 kinects connected to laptops with

interactive software for audience

movement and sounds to control visuals on

the inflatable

-3 Optoma wide angle short throw

projectors

-Design of Inflatable space

-15” Stereo Speaker system PA (200W -

600W) Systems, with 2 speakers

Emily Beattie choreography

Cari Ann Shim Sham* interactive video

and video art

Mary Hale inflatable architect

Eric Gunther interactive sound & sound

design

DANCE LIKE NO ONE IS WHALE WATCHING

“The objective of the performance was to immerse the audience in this underwater world enough that they felt an empathetic impulse

to move within it. By design, both the performers and the visuals had the ability to move the storyline forward as the work went

deeper into an imaginative space. During open play time before and after the performance, the kinect cameras captured the

audiences movement and sound and used these to manipulate the visuals. Essentially, their movement changed the environment and

empowered them to move.”- Emily Beattie, dancelikenooneiswhalewatching.com *Photo credit: Bruce Hooke

AFTERA mind-bending examination of what constitutes a

single life and the endless possible outcomes at

the precise moment of death.

Created by Andrew Schneider

In collaboration with Alessandra Calabi, Bobby

McElver, Alicia ayo Ohs

and with Kedian Keohan and Peter Musante

Schneider collaborated with the Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) to build a custom Wave Field

Synthesis speaker system, which creates “sound holograms” that move around the audience in three dimensions. EMPAC invited the creators

to use the system they had already built, then shared their designs so the creators could build their own.

The result: noises that emerge right next to you, only to run away, hover above the front row, then circle back. Paired with grids of

projected light and pulsing movement by the performers, the work aims to leverage sensory overload and collective hallucination to

question reality, the lived experience, and our own consciousness. -andrewjs.com

Andrew Schneider, AFTER, the Public Theater, January 2018.

Photo Credit: Maria Baranova-Suzuki

Conclusion

What are the benefits of partnering with technology companies from the performing arts perspective?

-Artists seek to use these tools in the most benevolent way possible- to enhance works of art that seek to directly

communicate and engage our audiences. And they continually prove to be helpful tools, both from a creative

perspective and a distribution perspective.

What are the benefits of partnering with performing arts companies from the tech perspective?

-“I realized that Gregory’s untethered ambitions for The Tempest would test the capabilities of our technologies,”

she said. “It would stretch our thinking about the kind of magic artists could create.”- Tawny Schlieski, former Director of Intel’s Desktop Research speaking about the experience of partnering with The Royal Shakespeare Company on its 2016

production of The Tempest- directed by Gregory Doran

- Performing Arts companies ideally perform beautifully conceived and rehearsed pieces in real time, and

technology is expected to keep up.

Contact

Anne Hiatt

anne@operaontap.com