Project LAB
Project LAB is a dance performance choreographed through VR, realtime projected visuals and generative music. It is a play between two dancers. They move on the same physical space, one of them only seeing a virtual, reactive stage.
The dancers’ movements drive a full stage gauze projection and a realtime soundtrack that responds to their movements.
The performance consists of three scenes: The Chair, Strings, and Perspective.
The Chair
A real chair is replicated and motion tracked in VR. Both dancers interact with it, but the VR chair appears to rhythmically change its state. The audience can see the real chair and its avatar projected on the full-stage gauze.
Strings
Each dancer holds a controller. Each controller allows a dancer to create plain geometries in the virtual space and its corresponding projection. The VR dancer interacts with the 3D as if they were real objects in their path, affecting the dancer’s motion.
Perspective
Each VR controller acts a projection point of a simple white grid. As the dancers move, the two grids warp and shift creating ever changing patterns in response to the dancers movements.
Credits
The concept and its execution are the result of a close, two-week collaboration between The Workers (VR graphics), The Light Surgeons (projections, filming), Annie-Lunnette Deakin-Foster, and Dave Meckin (sound).
Many thanks to James Turnbull at The Old Market theatre in Brighton for making it all possible through the TOMtech initiative.