Virtual Reality is Performing Art (en)

Emma Bexell, Stefan Stanisic How can the makers of VR experiences learn from the performing arts? By treating VR as a stage.The artistic directors of virtual reality performance studio Bombina Bombast talks about VR as a performing art form and theatre as an essential field of expertise when designing MR/VR/AR experiences. The talk is centered on the example of The Shared Individual, a live multi-user VR experience, created by Bombina Bombast in collaboration with Danish film studio Makropol. The Shared Individual begins with two presenters and a mannequin on stage. Sporting a specially-made helmet with a custom built camera, the mannequin delivers a panoramic field-of-view-video stream, which broadcasts live to the audiences VR headsets. Through a calibration process, the audience then becomes ‘the shared individual’. What follows is an out-of-body experience in which things aren’t always as they seem.