Sharon Clark Fellowship – Part 3

This is part 3 of Sharon Clark’s Immersion Fellowship sharing. To see her other posts, visit Sharon’s profile

As part of the SWCTN fellowship I found myself considering how I might engage an audience as they journey to see a Raucous production, which is always performed in a found space, a non-traditional theatre space, such as tunnels under Bristol Temple Meads railway station or a disused Edwardian swimming pool. How might I as a playwright give the audience more information as they embark on a short walk to the space. How could the character from the show appear to them before they see her in the space? How could I introduce the world to them in an urban landscape? How could I redefine that landscape for them to make it more magical, more inventive, more visceral?

With the SWCTN Fellow and Raucous member, Coral Manton, who is a creative digital technologist and AI artist we looked at how we might design an experience utilizing augmented reality or spatial computing. During the R&D for The Undrowned we decided to take the opportunity to build a short experience sketch using Magic Leap – the interactive spatial computer that allows interaction with digital content in the world around the user.
What we wanted to see is how we could build a narrative for the Magic Leap that would precede the performance in the space – how could mixed reality help us kick start the experience and the story and how could it co-exist with a live performer?

We knew that the computer could help us change the landscape and environment of the physical world – so how would our story hold the idea of an urban landscape being transferred into a more gothic, magical one? The research led us to explore how we might use umbrellas in that pre-experience.

This initial idea was developed for several reasons:

  • An umbrella provides the user with a designated space that they can control, hide in, make their own while still in a public space. It becomes their own unique digital performance site. It is wonderfully flexible in revealing either the immediate or the environment.
  • We can design a beautiful, affecting, individual experience that fully harnesses the unique shape and properties of the umbrella – an age-old piece of technology illuminated and reinvented by modern day digital technology.
  • We can design a beautiful, affecting, individual experience that fully harnesses the unique shape and properties of the umbrella – an age-old piece of technology illuminated and reinvented by modern day digital technology.
  • The audience were on a journey across the Essex marshes on a dark ad storym night so the object used must fit in with that experience.

For this prototype Coral developed a short scene in Unity to illustrate potential usage. She used a particle array to simulate rain that fell around the user, forming splashes and puddles when it interacted with the floor. By simulating the umbrella in Unity she also made the rain particles interact with the umbrella in the ‘virtual’ and ‘real-world’. Then Raucous’ sound designer Helen Skiera composed a sonic rain landscape which Coral spatialised using the Google Resonance Kit in Unity. This sonic environment was affected by the movement of the umbrella creating an immersive experience that bridged both ‘virtual’ and ‘real-world’ spaces.