Immersive Virtual Reality Performance mit Live Motion und Face Tracking
Gurgling frogs, chirping crickets: In ARTIST TALK you meet a human avatar in a virtual landscape. How does entertainment actually work? Chattering, gabbing, babbling, remaining silent: the actual remains a mystery. What can you share when the other person is not flesh and blood? In the 1:1 performance ARTIST TALK, which always proceeds individually and remains confidential, a personal tête-à-tête between human and avatar emerges with you.
Our part was to create an avatar that was as photorealistic as possible, which in turn was set in motion with the motion capture suite from XSense and could also recreate facial movements with the help of face tracking. The special thing here is that everything happened live and was implented into the specially programmed game software for VR. For the first time we worked with the Unreal Engine and had a lot of fun creating the world with 3D assets or patching animations and logic with blueprints. The scene could then in turn be controlled with a midi controller and influenced in real time.
"Fascinating: poses the question of what can be understood as a stage here, where the bodies are to be located, and where the boundaries run between virtual and real environments, between fiction and reality." (FAZ)
**Credits
Performance: Judith Altmeyer, Director/Stage: Jakob Engel and Jan Philipp Stange, Digital Artist: Gloria Schulz, Sound: Laila Gerhardt, Dramaturgy: Philipp Scholtysik, Stage Planning and Construction: Marcus Morgenstern and Jesko Haschke, Motion Capture: Laila Gerhardt, Organizational Collaboration Director: Pia Louise Jahn, Operator: Janine Bürkli, Sara Gröning, Barbara Luchner, Ines Wuttke, Production Management: Alessia Neumann, Collaboration Production: Janine Bürkli, Sara Gröning, Barbara Luchner, Press: Dörthe Krohn, Photos: Camilo Brau, Internal training: Dr. Jessica Lütgens, Dr. Julia Schneider, Isabelle Zinsmaier. Many thanks to room fox for the use of the premises.
A production by Stange Produktionen in collaboration with studioNAXOS, with the kind support of the Cultural Office of the City of Frankfurt, the Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain and the Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media for the pending mediation program "Be my Guest". Sponsored by Manus™. Stange productions receives institutional funding from the Cultural Office of the City of Frankfurt am Main as well as multi-year funding from the Fonds Darstellende Künste.
