Methodology / Methods (to develop to start with & to develop as output)
Action Research: We propose a practice-led approach where we part from the accumulated knowledge that we posses in the subject andtogether create a new work in a systematic reiterative way which allows for furtherdevelopment. The process-based creative framework will enable novel approaches to research challenges, and will includethe integration in the research team of outstanding creators and companies. Using Action Research with a mix of participatory performance and immersive theatre narrative approaches, actors-guides, alongside Mixed / Extended Reality (AR/VR/360 video/live actors) visual and haptic and tactile wearable technology garments, the project will record and study how participants respond and interact with the experiences and record them for the online documentation, documentary and to inform more widely distributed audiences experiences. As we wish to find new ways to engage audiences in immersive and fully visceral mixed reality performances andexperiences, we want to communicate all development stages of this project: scenario testing of climate realities can bedistributed as modular offerings.
VR/AR/MR/ER as a medium creates it's own kind of "inner space" and puts the viewer at the centreof the perceived world and is therefore a highly relevant, emerging medium to explore how we explore participatoryaudiences. The development of this piece will be experimentally documented with VR films / vignettes that explore thetheme of living between heaven and earth, and questions of time and the macro view in relation to the self through short360 experiences distributed on Youtube 360 or via headsets (Google cardboard).Connecting with the reality of the earth may be a healthy means of connecting humans so that technology, ecology andhuman consciousness are all working to evolve together. Filming participants and their reactions will be effective researchmaterial: as a study of the responses and experiences of the audience participants during experiential immersion, as well as by measuring biofeedback and through post experience audience surveys to help refine the experience for the experience development.
Technological Research :
Outreach - testing and feedback: The project team is committed to making the experience accessible. Initially by running workshops exploring immersion, social responsibility in action, embodied and haptical interaction, emotional engagement with the earth and the audience's relationship to real and virtual worlds.
Participation: We want to make an exquisitely beautiful and moving story experience that will call people to ACTION. There will be a Virtual Reality experience, and the development will workshop howto integrate real world and virtual world exploration as a congruent experience.
The experience can connect audiences up with info / groups that can get them active as earth protectors.
Outputs
The project hopes this will result in a number of outcomes to:
- understand and motivate action for individuals
- more than a documentary game or immersive theatre experience, it use realtime climate data to create ER/MR environments and simulate real danger, but also study and shed light on how to stimulate not just empathy but action and citizen/ social responsibility and stewardship of the planet.
Outputs include methodologies, methods and a framework for understanding activist motivations and making immersive performance experiences to instigate personal action.
Academic & Non-Academic Beneficiaries
Using mixed reality (VR/AR/live theatre/sound), with live data and haptic wearable sensing systems in performance is notnew, but still a developing and novel approach to immersive performance and entertainment experiences. We will prototype for two (or more) audience members to experience via motion tracking and
haptic sensing equipment, to explore meeting each other in a virtual realm created from astronomical and
atmospheric data about the Earth systems. The immersed audience members connect and communicate
through their movement, bodily sensations, breath, and through audiovisuals of colour and sound,
redefining completely what “being part of the audience” means.
Scientists, artists, technologists, and Human Computer Interaction (HCI) experts will have the opportunity to benefit from our novel interaction techniques and strategies, and the new forms of expressivity, and narrative approaches we employfrom the project. The concept taps into the exponentially growing areas of VR/AR/360 film, wearable technology/haptics,real-time data integration- contributing to all of these areas, while trying to address very real global issues.Performance academics and historians can examine these methods and results, charting development of performancetechnologies and techniques over time focussing on this new ways of exploring the climate change science, alongsideextreme weather events, utilising live data and the data from the body, creating new empathic and experiential narrativeapproaches, to provide a full body immersive experience.
The outcomes will contribute to ongoing and developing theory on the intersection of the human body and the planet in flux, and the embodiment of technology and technologising of thebody in the 21st century. The work, as can happen, may also have reverberations for activism, education, entertainmentand games, climate sciences or provide insight into alternate methods for the UN or aid agencies to instigate action.