Abstract
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.
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A 360 video of the December 2016 performance can be found at https://youtu.be/o5lO_7DFku0.
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Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their insights, suggestions, and pointers.
Farewell to Dawn is a collaborative effort between the Department of Computer Science, College of Imaging Arts and Science, and the MAGIC Center at RIT along with the Department of Theatre and Dance at Nazareth College. The author would like to extend a special thanks to Andy Phelps, Christopher Egert, and Jennifer Hinton from MAGIC, Heather Roffe from Nazareth, and all of the collaborators listed in the credits below.
This work is partially funded through a seed grant from the B. Thomas Golisano College of Computing an Information Sciences at RIT. Thanks to Anne Haake and Pengcheng Shi for their support.
Farewell to Dawn credits:
Dancers: Zhongyuan Fa, Anastasia Pembrook
Choreography: Zhongyuan Fa
Music: Hesham Fouad
Percussion: Peter Ferry
3D Stage Design: Stephen Cerqueira, Quincey Williams, Marla Schweppe
Virtual Stage System: Chirag Chandrakant Salian, Anna Dining, Victoria Mc Gowen, Rasmi Mukula Kapuganti, Felipe Caputo, Joe Geigel
Videography: Anna Dining
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Geigel, J. (2018). Creating a Theatrical Experience on a Virtual Stage. In: Cheok, A., Inami, M., Romão, T. (eds) Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology. ACE 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10714. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76270-8_49
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76270-8_49
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