 is Experiments in Digital Storytelling. I am Maddie Barber-Balkman and I work with Culture Hub. Experiments in Digital Storytelling is a new initiative between Culture Hub and LaMama to work with artists, creative technologists, and more to discover the potential of emerging technology, meaningful stories and meaningful experiences for folks online, particularly online in this moment. This was supposed to be an in-person experience in the downstairs at LaMama, but you know due to the current situation in the world that everyone is experiencing, we had to bring it online. It's kind of crazy that we have programming that can make a somewhat seamless transition to an online venue, so that's really exciting and it's cool to be working with people who are already here. So this is Experiments in Digital Storytelling. This exactly is an open rehearsal with Double Eye Studios. Double Eye Studios is a group that's been working in virtual reality to create theater. They're, we're supporting their work within this program and what we're about to see is an open rehearsal. It's not a show, it's not a performance, it's sort of an opening up into process. They were in our studio back in August working on Love Seat, which you'll learn a little bit more about soon, which premiered at the Venice Biennale and right now we're supporting them as they venture into a new storytelling world called Pandora X. So this is a little teaser basically and we'll be showing a more fleshed out piece of the theater work itself in May. This thing that we're doing here right now is going to be happening in VRChat, which is sort of the theatrical venue that they're working in. We are connecting with their technologists, actors, our team, all remotely using LiveLab, which is our own experimental software that we've been developing for networked performance, collaboration amongst artists and audiences. So yeah, thanks for being with us. I know it's either morning afternoon or night wherever you are. I hope, I hope you're doing all right. And without further ado, I will welcome Kira Benzing, who is the director of Double Eye Studios. Thank you, Maddie. Thank you entire Culture Hub team and thank you audience that is joining us from wherever you may be, hopefully safe within the comfort of your homes. I love, Maddie, you use the word process. Today is really about process. We're going to share a little bit about our process. We are creating new processes together with you, our digital and virtual audiences. We're going to make yet an even bigger expanded process. It's really new territory. We love working in virtual reality. We've been working with this medium for a while now. And I'll just give an overview of what we're going to do with you all today over the course of the next hour. We are going to run two themes from an existing production. We're going to do an interactive experiment. With those of you on Facebook, you can be adding comments and we're actually going to work them into a kind of live audience collective experiment. And then we're going to show you something that we're working on this production of Pandora X, which is really new. We have just begun writing it maybe even as old as a week ago. So we're really going to choose something just hot off the presses and it will be chaotic and beautiful all at once. And something that we've been playing with my studio team and I in New York City is this format that we're calling VR Theater where we're actually performing to two audiences simultaneously. Usually that's a live audience in a theater with everyone gathered together close to each other in this dark and intimate magical space. And now that live audience is you guys watching online from your homes. You're now the live audience. And then simultaneously we have the virtual world running in parallel. And that will gather a potential virtual audience today. We're keeping that small as we're running these experiments. So that's what we're doing. And we are going to show you a trailer to look back at our very first experiment in this format, which we performed at the Venice International Film Festival just about eight months ago in this September of 2019. It was a production we built amazingly quickly and roughly about six weeks with playwright Mac Rogers. And that was from casting to 3D modeling, you're creating the virtual world, everything. So we're going to take you inside that world and play the trailer from Love Seats. Matt, anyone like you, perfect partner. You know, like an electric blanket plugged into the sun. I will transform into a colossus of organization to protect you, my shield of preparedness. Why the perfect partner of a portal to another dimension? Are you nuts? Where no bee ever has. You landed anyway. The fresh chance to pair an ordinary someone with the perfect partner. A face that's still ready to just jump into the unknown and witness nature's like chaotic wonders with exhilaration instead of fear. Keeping a thing in maintenance. That is a daily, hourly battle against every force that exists. How your perfect partner sitting in that chair. What would you see? We're now live from across the country. We have Jonathan David Martin. As you may see him in headset, he can hear us and he can see those of you in the virtual world. And he is on the stage of Love Seat now. And Jonathan originated the role of Bruce in the production of Love Seat. So Jonathan David Martin in California and Jen Harris, who is here with us in New York City, Jen originated the role of Abby. And we're just going to run a scene that happens in the production. It is technically scene five. And what's happening here is these two characters of Abby and Bruce have been competing for the love of the perfect partner. And we kind of did this production in a very light and sort of presentational style. But there are these undercurrents running through the production. These themes about loneliness and connection. And these two characters are not in love. And they have different opinions about what love means to them. And they find themselves magically on this reality competition show in this virtual world. And they're competing for the love of the perfect partner, which happens to be represented to the audience as an empty chair. And what happens here is these two characters are going to, this is kind of their second round of competition right now, they're going to vie for this. And they're both assigned to compete for different audiences. And so Bruce is assigned to the virtual audience and Abby is assigned to the live audience, which in this case is you guys online. So I'm going to give them their first the line that the host gives them to set off this competition. And they're both going to compete for your attention. Okay, Abby and Bruce, let the interviews begin. Look, there's a reason I chose these over lovers. I dated a lot of mediocre people in my life. We people and imaginative people or the total opposite, like controlling people who wanted my life to match theirs. I kept on believing and I kept on being let down until I made a momentous decision for myself. I mean, I'd rather be lonely than disappointed. And I stuck to that decision for years. And so me to go back on that now, I mean, it would have to be someone amazing. Well, the perfect partner is that amazing. You better believe I'm not going to let groups stand in my way. I'm not here to make friends. There's nothing I won't do to win this game. Well, of course, it would be Abby who'd be trying to ruin things for me. I mean, it's been that way since the moment she moved in two years ago. But I was trying to act like I'm the one with the problem. Oh, what's wrong, Bruce? Don't you like honey? Look, you know, actually, no, I don't. It's sticky. It gets into every nook and cranny. I mean, it is impossible to clean. Every time I try to establish some exquisite order in this building, she comes along and she pours that stuff all over it. But I never thought that she would try to drip her beeswax over my one chance of happiness. And hey, not just mine. I mean, the perfect partners too, because I know that they would be happier with me. I'm not here to make friends. And she is not the only one with a sting in her tail. Awesome. Awesome. Thank you guys. So Jonathan, I'm here in VR with you right now. I see that you're kind of hovering in this quadrant, which is typical of the blocking from Venice. Why don't you feel free to use more of the stage, you know, even if you want to teleport into the audience? I know we're just like the theaters in New York, you know, we're without a lot of audiences right now. But feel free to use the whole stage. Right. You want me to pick it up from the top of that? Yeah. Can you start and give Jonathan the line just before? I know that we've kind of rearranged this from how he originally did it. Can you just give him a little bit of your, maybe if you come from, well, the perfect partner, is that amazing? Yeah. Sure. You ready, Jonathan? I'll set. Okay. Well, the perfect partner is that amazing. And you better believe I'm not going to let Bruce stand in my way. I'm not here to make friends. And there's nothing I want you to win this game. What? Of course it would be Abby who'd be trying to ruin this for me. Always trying to act like I'm the one with the problem. Oh, what's wrong with these Bruce? Don't you like honey? Well, you know, actually, I don't. It is, it's sticky. It gets into every nook and cranny. It's impossible to clean. Every time I tried to establish some wizard order in this building, she comes along and she pours that stuff all over it. But I never thought that she would try to ruin my one chance of happiness, dripping her beeswax all over it. And hey, not just mine. I mean, the perfect partner's too, because I know that they would be happier with me. I'm not here, my friends. She is not the only one with a sting in her tail. Nice, guys. Awesome. So now why don't we skip forward to a later scene that happens in the production. And this is going to be scene eight. And so what's happening in this scene is it's quite a moment and tonal change for the production. It's really this moment of a kind of reckoning and reasoning is kind of break in reality. The scene that we just showed you was actually a moment where Abby took her headset off and addressed the live audience. And this is another moment where that happens for her. As her perception of what's in the chair, she's realizing is actually different from that of what Bruce has been seeing in the chair. And so I'm going to let them shift into this moment and get a little real with you guys as we take it here. So Jen, whenever Abby is ready, whenever you're ready. Well, I don't see a beard. What I see is a clean, hairless face. An earnest face. A young face. A face that's still a face that hasn't learned the habit of staring. A face that doesn't know what kind of adult it wants to be is open to deciding that in tandem with someone else. A face that's ready to just plunge into the unknown. Where it looks at nature's chaotic wonders, where they go in celebration instead of fear. A face that turns every corner expecting to see something amazing instead of a epistemity. A face that thinks that shadows hide treasures instead of flaws. A face worth breaking apart, if you may be at fault for. A face worth giving up aren't giving up for. It's weird. What is? I can see it while you say it. I mean, you know, why do you say those words? I can see it, but. It's then it goes back to what you see. Yeah. Which is what? Well, I mean, there's the beard, of course, but it's not about the beard. It's about all of the beard type things that I see there. What's a beard type thing? Oh, well, it's a thing that, it's a thing that you can make perfect, but it'll never stay that way, meaning that it will always be made. And someone that wants to do that maintenance. So this is an experiment like we said at the beginning. We have a lot of beads coming into the system from all over the world. Our moderator is going to be joining us from Milan and Italy later. And some of you might be trying to watch in VR right now. Our actor, Jonathan, is still in there right now, still embodying his avatar and character of Bruce. So we're going to take it from the top of scene eight. And again, this is the source and the show where our two characters are having this realization that they've been seeing someone different in this chair, which of course, the audience looks like an empty chair. And I think we're all feeling these themes of emptiness and loneliness these days. So thank you for those of you who hung in there with us. And again, sorry for this technical glitch while we pushed all of this technology together. So Jen and Jonathan, as Abby and Bruce, why don't you take it from the top of scene eight. Okay. Well, I don't see a beard. What I see is a clean, fair face. An earnest face. A young face. A face that's still ready to believe in today. A face that hasn't learned the habit of smearing. A face that still doesn't know what kind of result it wants to be and is open to deciding that in tandem with someone else. A face that's ready to plunge into the unknown, that looks at nature's chaotic wonders with exhilaration, instead of fear. A face that turns every corner. It's definitely going to be something amazing. A face that thinks that shadows like treasures instead of laws. A face that works in a pharmacy may be yourself. A face that works for living up my mind is enough. It's weird. What is it? I can see it while you see it. But while you see those words, I can see it, but then it goes back to. Wait, when you see it? Yeah. Which is what? Well, like, well, there's the beard, but it's not about the beard. It's about all of the beard type things that I see there. What's a beard type thing? Well, it's a thing that we can work on and make perfect, but it'll never stay that way, meaning that it will always mean making, and someone that wants to do that may need it. Because if you think about it, maybe it's the hardest thing that you want to do. So we're going to have a chance to cloud those. That's going to take some longer, too. But keeping those hedgerows trend when all they want to do is grow, because that is the whole life's work. Making is a thing that our living battle against its every force that exists. For instance, this is where peace, dirt, aging, danger, against its climbing, keeping a thing in a state of organization, it's creative, and it's exotic. It's standing up in the face of decay and saying, everything that you accomplished today, I'm going to roll that right back. You're going to roll that right back. And try again. And making is a battle that you always lose. So if you start to grow, you're fighting, and you can create so much new while you're fighting, and that's what I'll see. The chance to take the makings that I've mastered in the rest of my life and bring it into love. And as you're saying it, I can see it. But as soon as I stop, it goes back in their mind again. Beautiful, guys. Thank you. Thank you for doing that again. Thank you for staying in character and all your patience and the same to you, digital audience. So, Jonathan, I'm going to let you change domains now and portal over, teleport over to the Pandora domain. Head on over to Mount Olympus. And I'm going to see you over there. Right now, actually, maybe I'm going to try and teleport through that too. And we're going to do this audience experiment now, and we're going to bring up something called Slido. And for those of you that are watching online, we are going to need your Facebook comments. So please Facebook viewers, we need you to watch and send comments to these questions that we're going to be asking you about. Excellent. So, well, Jonathan and I head over to the Olympus virtually. Jonathan, I'll see you over there. We're going to try out this exciting audience experiment. So, I've got this question up on the, on this website that we're playing with called Slido. And we're going to build a word collage here. Eventually, that's going to take over on the left side of this screen. You'll see that Mount Olympus will change into this Slido image. And we've got these questions for you guys. So, for those of you on Facebook, can you type in a response to the location of your last dream? And Jen, how about you? Do you remember, do you dream, do you remember any of the dreams? I actually don't do it very differently, but I did have a dream the other night that I was on the street somewhere. On the street. Okay, so we're going to put street in. And for those of you on Facebook, now we've got one, we're taking a look at your Oh, a dark shifting type of cube. Wow, we've got a dark shifting type of cube. This is from our video artist, Michael, that makes a lot of sense. I can, I can almost imagine that. Here, uh, Toby Lawrence is beach. Beach. Beautiful. Julia Baker says outdoors. She's outdoors considering. Really nice. Oh, that must be a lovely play. Mac Rogers are a writer set of love pieces of glass. Angelique. These are some other virtual reality creators that are that are jumping in here through our digital stream. Angelique has near a tree and Kim has got a long chair. Michael spends a lot of time in VR. Yes, clearly. Maybe he lives there. Oh, nice. These are some amazing locations. And some of them even have the overlapping themes I can see. So I'm going to change it to a new question, guys. Here we go. We're going to, we're going to change it to something that deals with colors. So culture hub team, if we update the slide, it should change over to these colors right now. Awesome. Beautiful. Blue, yellow. Yeah. I see a pink. And the question is what colors do you see in what colors did you see in your last stream? Mine was blue. Black and white. Technicolor. Oh, I like that one. Technicolor. We could do a little musical there. Amazing. Technicolor dream coat. Green. Not my favorite musical. Do you have a favorite musical, Jen? Hairspray is a perfect musical. How was the best silent? Well, I didn't want to, silence musical is the best musical ever written, but I didn't want to self-promote too deeply. For those of you in the New York theater scene, you may have seen Jen perform the Jodi Foster character in silence. Angelique says turquoise. Turquoise. That's a beautiful color. Our musicals. Michael Sharon. No movie doesn't help. Gray. Gray. Amazing. Really, really great colors. Thank you, digital audience. I love this. Thank you for being a part of this experiment. I'm going to take it to one final question, which is going to take us really into the land of VR, where we're going to get back to Jonathan soon. And so this last question is, what superpower would you like to have flying? Yeah, that's a really good one. I like that one, Fongman. For the superpower, do you like curing a virus? Like a virus killer? Jen, that's brilliant. Why not? She's a little universal. To be invisible, flying. Angelique says to be invisible. Ulrich says flying. Ken says flying. Alyssa says flying. I see from Michael the ability to stop time. Yeah. I also liked Jen's ability to cure a virus. Yeah, how can we put that into words? Virus extinguisher? That's a good one. Invisibility. Toby says invisibility. Absolutely. These are really, really marvelous. So we're going to experiment with all of these ideas that you've given us here and generated collectively, and we're going to think about ways that we might be able to integrate them into our virtual production going forward. So thank you so much, live audience, for doing this experiment with Jen and I, helping us build out this word cloud of potential. And we're going to come back to VR. Jen's going to disappear offstage, as she does, and we're going to find Jonathan in the virtual world. There he is. He's back and he's going to play with this new monologue that Alyssa Landry, a writer from Pandora X, has crafted for him. It's all in verse. He just got the text a handful of days ago, so he's probably going to call for line, and I'm going to be juggling VR with him and also putting him online if he needs them. So this is really new, really experimental. Welcome to our new domain that we just got uploaded on VR chat. Shout out to the platform. We're excited to be playing with this new platform in virtual reality. This social VR platform where we can all gather together in this exciting temple and space and magical space. So Jonathan, as the new character, I'm going to let you take it from the top of this temple and find your way down to the dairies and take whenever you're ready. Yeah. Take your time. Take your time. All out for line. Sorry, yeah, Jonathan. Because Jonathan has that. All righty. Good job in. Jump in. Okay. Good job, Jonathan. Shoot. Go ahead and be ready. Great. Satyrs and nymphs of the forest and streams, users of Greece who give glory through song, goddesses, gods, awake from your sleep. Come hither, come lie and join the throng. I, the great Zeus, do so command. Mine is the power to make a man strong. I humble the proud and raise up the obscure. Whomsoever shall call me wrong will suffer my vengeance swift and sure. I, the great Zeus, do so command. Bethesda's, Bethesda's, Bethesda's, attend to me now. Bethesda's, the sculptor. Come, baffled mighty of beauty untold. Athena, bring now your wisdom and valor and hermies. Bring your voice strong and bold. When you hear, I feel you. Oh, lend me your ears and eyes, my friends and allies. For the time has come to strike again. To shake with fear were hearts of all men. Prometheus, did you think my vengeance forgotten? That your misbegotten act would be lost in the mists of Mount Olympus? Do you not recall the destruction and danger? The thunder, the bolts of anger which from my hand rain down upon the heads of man? A plague upon you for bringing fire? A plague on all men who embrace their desire? And by that beloved art jet shall know a thing most that jet. Living in misery bereft, another shred of hope left. Did you think I'd forget my sacred vow? But the passage of time would have faced it somehow. Nothing is forgotten. Really nice, Jonathan. Thank you, virtual camera team for all you guys are doing, changing up cameras and following Jonathan around in this space. So, Jonathan, I've got an idea for you. Let's play with something where you change avatars. Can you actually stay down here on this dais, right where you are? And I've got this idea where you did with the character of Ruth and loves me, you grew really tall. You've got some avatars that are a little bit bigger. Could you pick a bigger avatar and just start from your line Prometheus and just take it from Prometheus to the end and try it in a bigger avatar? Great. I want this does to your sense of height, sense of scale. See if this gives you a different perspective for when you get to these lines. And if you need a line, feel free to call line. I'm here on book. Prometheus, did you think my vengeance forgotten? That your misbegotten act would be lost in the mists of mountain lettuce? Did you not recall the destruction and danger, the thunder, the bolts of anger which from my hand rain down upon the heads of man? It's not even funny to see you in front. It's like on all men who embrace their desire. And why that beloved object shall know a faint most object, living in fear, bereft without a shred of hope left? Did you think I would forget my sacred power? That the passage of time would have faced it somehow? Nothing is forgotten. Really interesting. Thank you so much for trying that. I like it. I think there's something interesting happening there with with the size of this character and what that's doing to to your body posture and your voice. Great. So we are going to let Jonathan come out of VR and we're all going to head into a Q&A now. And I'll just I'll remind everybody that the avatars that we're using right now in the Zeus scenes in this Pandora, these are temporary avatars, they're avatars that are created by other creators that we found online in VR chat. They belong to other stories and worlds. We have not designed or customized ours yet, but if you are a VR 3D modeler and you want to work with us, let us know because we are looking for the right creators to partner with to create the customized worlds that we'll be building for this for this Pandora Mount Olympus. So we're going to come into a Q&A and bring the love seat creative team back. Jen is going to come back to the stage, Mac Rogers, our writer is going to do this and I'm going to pass the torch over entirely and I'm going to I'm going to not talk very much. I can just be a really quiet human and and pass the torch over to Chiara Fagnoli Gabardi who is joining us all the way from Milan in Italy and keep in mind that we're connecting our devices, everything may disappear again and we may have to you know re-import things and you know we're really pushing all the technology in the system here so so we're going to bring all we're going to bring like five video feeds to the screen, we're going to try and see if we can pull this off for this Q&A and those of you on Facebook in the comments feel free to drop in questions for the love seat team, for our actors, what it's like for them to be doing what they're doing, for our writer Mac and Chiara are here to you. I think we're just we're just maybe she's just going to come to the screen to the stage and just comment here. It's easy to get lost backstage here. It is, there we are, everyone's on stage. We all made it to the virtual stage, exciting. Exciting indeed. Thank you so much for this very experience through love seats and then Slido and Kandora. So I would like to begin with you Chiara since you're the double and I recall um admiring love seats in Venice at the film festival and I truly agreed with the Michel Reijach who sought a touch of Lumière Brothers, a budding new media at its very beginning and I wanted to know you as a pioneering the art artist who manages to blend in such an archaic medium as that of theater. What was your reaction in Venice and seeing how the live audience was engaged in this completely new experience? Well it's it's we're definitely blending forms here and I feel like I'm very much an explorer and an experimenter. So the title of this whole series with culture hub and the mama is very fitting. I do feel like we are you know we are experimenting in this medium and these multiple medias that we're combining and even here right now with everyone gathered online this is yet another format for us. We intended to do this live through it to a regular theater audience and still maintaining our parallel world also to a live audience but in VR. So those are still two live components which we have playing here um but this was not the intended format so this was yet a new a new venture for us and um I mean the audience in Venice was wonderful but it was very pleasant. I didn't know how they might react to the actors being on stage in headsets for the majority of the production you know about 75 percent of the time they're in headsets only in some key moments do they come out and talk to the audience face to face and at the same time they're getting all these projection screens of what's happening from the virtual world. I wasn't sure if that would mean anything to the audience but we had some really interesting conversations with audience after about how they did understand that there is this virtual world and how they did pick up on these really touching themes about loneliness in this production which just feels incredibly timely for us to be dealing with right now in these times. Absolutely I find it it's a very uh nourishing art for the soul we are right now that we're all locked indoors um I wanted to share the similar insight with the actors Jen and Jonathan starting with Jen um because I want I know you Jen have a very solid background in theater and I wanted to know what it feels like to perform in VR breaking that fourth wall in love seats I saw you switching from the theater to this digital realm and both you and Jonathan were acting with this heavy gear so what is it like to perform in VR? Um thank you I I actually uh breaking the fourth wall by lifting the headset up during the audience was sort of the most familiar of course because that's the most close to me being able to see this great audience um it did take a lot of getting used to the VR just because you know an audience is out there you just couldn't see them and even though on a stage sometimes with lights you can't see the audience anyway but there was something about being in a space that you knew what the literal space and still performing knowing that people are watching you and talking to your friends but after a while I got used to it and the the stage that uh they built that we built virtually I got used to it and that just felt like the stage and when I saw Jonathan's avatar that just felt like Jonathan and I knew that he was really around me but anytime I just got used to it and that was the blocking that we did the virtual blocking um once we that was sort of the most the trickiest thing but once we got that sound it actually felt very responsible to me and um it was different but more like anything else with practice it was good blocking it it feels like acting well I can imagine it it must have quite an experience and obviously Jonathan if you want to add some of that and with you I would also like to expand on the themes of love seat which are very pertinent to the way the contemporary world interacts with all these uh apps and dating sites and I know you your past works uh revolved around socially relevant topics so perhaps uh what what themes in love seat were very dear to you yeah I think thematically one of the things I really resonated with was this theme of identity and of course anytime that we're talking about um our virtual selves and our memorial selves there's uh uh we're conscious the design thing that we're doing with our virtual selves how do we want to appear to people how do we want to present ourselves in a virtual space because we can curate our our personas and identities in a really particular way and um and so I found that really fascinating to um to kind of be in a show that was really pushing the exploration of that topic in a really uh what felt like a really new and uh an interesting way um and um I think that there's also this um question about what is connection and what is love so you know when this is both sort of uh it's a bit of a meta theme in the show right where we're trying to connect as performers to two different audiences and then to kind of connect to each other uh on two different levels as actors both with our avatars and in the space together um and the characters are really trying to do that as well and they're trying to figure out what what they want like they really like having their space and yet they sort of realize that they actually not only want companionship but they would rather have real companionship than than just their own idea in their own hermetically sealed world um and so I think that that's that's a very universal topic but it's certainly one that I think we're all grappling with in new ways because of um both because of the pandemic and also because of technology definitely I found it very fascinating the way our playwright Mack to which I'm going to be asking the next question was very much delving into this idea of the what meaning we give to words when in C-nate you were discussing a beard type thing very much about Shakespeare arose by any other name would smell as sweet and uh of course I wanted to know from Mack um what defines the perfect partner and how was the writing process to create a parallelism between this existential idea of love and the more pragmatic and uh digital dating that occurs nowadays well it's funny I I have a big uh I had a big sort of chasm to cross in order to like uh uh engage with this topic at all in a couple level this this is one of many ways in which I feel like the old timer getting to play with the kids on this project because everything I've the guy's been writing like plays my whole life I don't know any of this technology I'd never worked with VR before and so like when you and Kira approached me about it I was like you're gonna have to walk me I don't even know what the scripts should look like in this genre and she said no no I approach you because you're a playwright let's you know let's write a play but a play that can kind of explode outward into the kinds of realities that you wouldn't you know just put into like the more uh uh you know that you wouldn't put in a black box theater space like I've always been writing for now you mentioned uh you mentioned uh Shakespeare and and uh the rose by an inner name there was a lot of that um when we got to the process defining how the love story was going to work uh uh in this like how it could be something that we could be rhapsodic and inspirational but at the same time as you say have that kind of pragmatic touch that could make audiences believe that they'd seen a genuine love story happen right in front of their eyes uh a big part of it was actually starting with some of those Shakespearean traditions in the in the form of the host who was like could you actually have instead of the puck from Midsummer Night's Dream who makes people fall in love for no reason just enchants them makes them fall in love with each other uh and because purely because of a compulsory magic enchantment what if our host what if I follow you back our host in lead seats brought people together in a much more consensual and clear eyed way what if we could take that the sort of rhapsodic Shakespearean energy of Midsummer Night's Dream but turn it into something that that that the two people falling in love felt like they were full partners with agency in it and and just something that audiences could believe so the beard moment that you're talking about right there at the middle that was the crucial turning point of the script I'm not exactly sure how many drafts we had to go through to find the beard second but we definitely I mean we don't smoke cigars but if we did we would have lit up cigars when we came up with the beard idea because we've been looking for that turning point what's the moment in which our two partners uh in which Abby and Bruce figure out that they're seeing different things because the moment that they realize they're seeing different things that's the moment when they can actually build a bridge to each other that's the moment when they are clear eyed they see the differences and seeing those differences they can imagine a way to bridge those differences the beard was the moment where Bruce references the beard Abby says well wait a second I don't see a beard then they each describe what they're what they're individually seeing hear those differences and and only at that moment can begin to imagine a world in which those differences are reconcilable right it's uh it's basically projecting how each person projecting the I would like to wrap up this section with Kira um to delve into more the this the VR dating situation of course you portray it in a fictional world um I I would like to know from you if you think this could become a thing since VR is developing so quickly in all sorts of ways sure I think this would be a very fun very fun competition show for for people dating and looking for something new why not I mean Matt could write an app our actors could be involved to add questions competitions and things that people could go through in VR together to get to know one another sure I think it's very imaginative it's probably better than other things that a lot I don't know I think we've got I'm noticing Jen and Jonathan have created the good model sorry kira you got cut off um one last question uh I'm informed one more question from the audience I'm informed they wanted to know the difference experience of acting within the VR world sure so I'll jump in jump in first I think acting in VR is a for me reminds me a lot of of being a puppeteer and because the avatar essentially is a puppet it's sort of like a full mask that you're wearing and you can't convey physically expression and meaning and thought and emotion the same way you do with your own body so it actually reminds me a lot of that there's something also that's interesting when you're both performing you know in a live space front of a live audience and also in front of a virtual audience in that you're trying to juggle two spaces at the same time and two senses of awareness between those two spaces um and actually you know today I was thinking about again how everything is being captured today with what I'm doing in VR is actually being captured by a virtual camera and so there's this other layer of I'm doing virtual theater for a camera and so that's those are all very unique things uh in terms of where my head is at as an actor as opposed to just being on stage wow fascinating Jen do you have some insight for us in these regards yeah yeah again the question was from Toby what are some differences that actors experience that the audience would not think of when acting on stage versus acting in headset and just to piggyback on what Jonathan was saying when we were in headset we also had a camera crew shooting us in VR so when we were so if you're in headset and you're watching it if we had to know where the camera was so not only were you acting for screen you were also acting for camera so you kind of had to get an idea like when you flew up to the cloud we had to like look there was a cloud I flew up to and then when I flew up to the cloud I knew I had to look down this way to the depth where the camera angle is coming so that in VR didn't see the back of my avatar so there was some blocking for camera that we were doing that the audience didn't know you know hopefully they know and they just thought perfectly on how to screen it for live in Venice or in in VR for in VR well excellent I look forward to see more of your performances in VR but the Kira directing you and of course with her amazing tech team coordinating every everything and we shall move on to them for more questions passing an amazing tech team and I'm going to be starting with a question for Mark I actually had my own but we also have a brilliant question from Michael Woods joining us in the audience who wanted to know I'll read it out to you so it's his words exactly I don't know if this is possible but assuming much faster processing is the performance able to be recorded not just as a video but as a unity asset yeah so that's actually a pretty involved question there was a company that was looking at doing this I think they're he's on right now um what's involved so we can't do it quite yet which is VR chat platform although VR tech does run in music theoretically sorry do that in the future with some development but it is theoretically possible to record a performance in such a way that it is almost as game assets but then people could go in and see again so like pre-recorded immersive theater that you can then move through and walk around and basically um just for everyone the way that this works is we're using avatars that are rigged with skeletons and what each one of the pieces of the skeleton there's about 20 pieces in the skeleton and it's obviously a real human one there's over 200 but each one of the pieces of the skeleton have to be called transform it tells you how it moves your stage so to record it how each one of those going to move and transform and scale through the world you can then um record that and play it back to somebody to see the department later the technology for that would need to be coded isn't what exists yet but it is hope that answers the question I see well well thanks for clarifying this um maybe um more um philosophically tech question for our Lara um since I was fascinated by your experience also in the mental wellness that blended with virtual reality and if you could tell us a bit more about the interconnectedness issues related in love seat and of course how this can be beneficial uh for for a virtual audience considering while we're all living in isolation and alienation so how it can bring us together and also give examples of this through the work you did on love seat definitely that's a very thoughtful question I think in today's state people often think that technology draws us apart but I don't think that's the case I think technology is a way to bring us together and there's different ways of using technology as a medium whether it's through narrative and story telling or through that you can draw people together by making it seem like they're in the same room together or they're participating in the same activity together um we're creating a sense of community I think that's so necessary right now and especially because we've been forced into this situation due to COVID-19 um so there's different ways and at different studios I've been fortunate that fortunate enough to work with besides Kira that have been trying to solve this problem of how do we how do we connect with others so it's interesting to see the ways that people have applied mixed reality technology to make this possible um one piece I'm working on uh Lou Ward he's brilliant out of Seattle he's telling me that all cameras is really light by putting it in first person perspective so he created a narrative around that experience all Kira's doing is incredible she's connected to the audience with the actors and making them in the same environment together um kind of with no no-proscenium um so the way that technology has evolved to art is tremendous in the way that it's going to connect uh individuals in the future I just can't wait to see what's going to happen well definitely I agree with you on this sense of community that we are creating I experienced it at the Venice Film Festival and I wanted to ask a question to Christopher Topino because obviously being part of the Love Seat team he was there set up this entire um dreamlike stage at the back island which actually used to be a hospital that cured during the plague epidemic so it we can relate to it right now and since you are so accustomed to VR stages what was it from a technical and perhaps more personal and spiritual point of view to to create a VR theater in that setting um so when we arrived I uh I I think Mark was the first one to point out that this many hundred year old space is an extremely dusty location and we're we're trying to very quickly set up 14 very powerful gaming computers and we were immediately concerned that that all this dust in the air was going to affect the computers um the uh yeah I think I think the the challenges of being on an island in a in an ancient or relatively ancient facility kind of just added to the stakes the whole time the uh just you know even the the first few days that we were there um there was no uh there was no consistent uh you know food or water on the on the islands so we have to wait for a boat to get back to the to the other side to be able to actually get any food or coffee um which is pretty essential for me at the moment then as far as actually it's really important that nothing could actually touch the structure because it was so old and so uh protected and so um so we had to um we were not allowed to actually rig any of our any of our sensors or any of our wiring to do the actual beams in the space and then lastly uh the I think the part of the the power of the the experience being there and one of the things that made it um so surreal was that this was this was a space where where hundreds thousands of people perished during the plague and you know in the room just next door to where we were setting up the you know there were etchings on the wall of patients who who had been quarantined there you know hundreds of years ago so um yeah the eerie and magical uh are sort of the the word that comes to mind there um I'm not I'm not sure if that fully answers the question that's where that's where we're at oh it definitely does answer the question um we have one more question for uh Chris Dawes uh from the audience and um or from any other of you who want to jump into the conversation um there's one of our members from the audience who would like to know how many actors can be on stage at one time and this is Kim Cassani who's asking yeah I can take that one so um the domains have their own limits um you can't generally have more than 30 to 40 people without seeing a performance without seeing a performance drop um so because it what it's essentially doing is you're sharing a connection with multiple people 30 people at the same time so these domains you can handle 30 to 40 people uh what we can do um actually similar to what Michael Woods was asking about before you can create several instances where some people are in different rooms but can only like the actors themselves are sort of interdimensional and can be seen in multiple events and like throughout these various instances but the in the they would only see the people that are in the first instance but their performances would then be carried to these other instances where other audiences would be but for them they wouldn't be able to interact. Okay um just one more curiosity from from our audience members um do the technicians come from do do all of you guys come from creative backgrounds or more engineer and software ones? I can start I come from a more creative background um I started more in traditional film um the next logical leap was 3ct video which was popular for a while um but I've gotten increasingly into these room-scale VR experiences um 60 to 3 of them um and while I have I do have that creative background um I've been definitely supplementing it with the knowledge of Unity which is a game internet a lot of these experiences are built in um even Unity is a basis for creating these portals and everything that you see in VR chat um and the avatars are also built in. So if you're interested in this space you can definitely start off creative but you will you know uh it helps to develop your technological background. One of the things that I think is amazing about mixed reality and I'm sure everyone in this department likes to agree is that you need to take all your different knowledge sets and and things that you never thought would be like become tangible or that you would use for example I was an English major and I minored in brain and cognitive science and I find that mixed reality is the beautiful fusion of the two because you're dealing with perception and and how you see the world and and what's real and the real connection and interaction means and and technology is the means to to make that fit together better um so I think in all different facets mixed reality and the technology and immersive technology you're not just dealing with that necessary software background but um everything that you can bring to the table to make it make it better for for people and and their experience is important. I personally think it's very interdisciplinary um topic and yes please please continue. Yeah my apologies um I also come from a business background and a creative background so I'm a corporate product manager and a documentary filmmaker and in my day job I actually briefly worked in Unity to create a technical pavilion for a show that we were doing and that's how I got interested in virtual reality and Kira and I have actually collaborated on documentary film projects before so it was really exciting to be able to collaborate with her in the VR world as well. On my end I am similar to Mark. Christopher Tupino a very very quick background on you so we can move on to the next segment. Yeah I was just saying they similar to Mark I started in I started in film um I have been in consumer technology for for quite a while and VR has sort of merged those two those two tracks in my life so I'll leave it. Well thank you Gus for sharing your background it feels like many people watching us today might decide to change jobs since virtual reality is such a fascinating and educational field. Next up we will be bringing the creative Pandora X so stay with us for the Q&A. Alyssa Landry who is a writer of Pandora X and she also collaborated on Love Seat and here I see you and Jonathan I assume very years so I would like to start with Alyssa since we still haven't had the chance to chat. Well first of all what inspired you into creating into bringing the Greek myth of Pandora to VR and so timely it is to show it now that in a way it is almost as if we were living those evils of the world being unleashed um as a jar was opened and hope remaining there at the end of that jar waiting for us to to move on. Yes well I have to say that that is a very timely coincidence um at the beginning we were really searching for our newest subject uh and I believe it was Mark and Lara who first came up with the idea of doing something from Greek mythology um I know that for both Kira and myself that's Greek mythology has been something that's fascinated us since we were very small. I remember when I was probably about 12 rewriting all the Greek myths and making a book for my younger sisters and reading it to them uh so we went through our minds through through quite a few different female heroines in Greek mythology until we hit on Pandora and the reason we hit on Pandora is because we discovered in doing our research that the original Pandora myth that predated um the version that we all now know uh in that oral myth before it was written down Pandora was actually an earth goddess and she uh was the person who um led bowls into the heavens led them up to Mount Olympus after they had passed and there was a festival where she opened up these wonderful enormous jars and released not only the evils but all of the good into the world. So she was really the nature goddess who was in charge of keeping balance in the world and little by little her myth was rewritten actually by men and the version that we all know know today was written by Hesiod and he apparently was a crusty old bachelor who did not like women and he transformed that myth into Pandora who it was by women that all of the evils were going to come into the world um and then still later a different Christian priest actually in a certain transformed that enormous jar into a very small box and thereby transformed Pandora uh you know this whole myth from something that was released into the world into in other words it was released by a really small portable object instead of being released by a huge immovable object and it changed everything. So what Kira and I are curious about exploring with Pandora is when your story will be been rewritten by someone else how can you take charge of that story again and one of the things that has always bothered me a little bit about the Pandora is it's by opening it she let out all of the evils and by closing it she left hope in the world well how can that be if either you open it you let the evils and hope out or you close it and mankind doesn't get what's in the box so we are hoping to take this forward and turn it into Pandora's real story which is it releases all good things out into the world and I think at this time when we're all going through the pandemic that is what we need we need hope out there in the entire world um and so that's what our protagonist our heroine is going to be doing is coming to the realization that if you want to bring hope to the world you have to release it out so that's a very long-winded answer but that's what we're hoping to do oh no actually thank you it wasn't uh it was a pleasure to listen to and to see all the connections with uh how females were portrayed and maybe think of Adam and Eve that also Eve was the female who was blamed on the story um as regards uh the performance I wanted to go obviously to Jonathan and uh considering your uh background in Broadway I know you acted in War Horse and you were performing uh an actual horse there so it was interesting for me and for us uh and the audience to know how does it feel to take the the appearance of something that is utterly inhuman so you had the experience of the horse on Broadway and here you're acting as a godly avatar so how is that that's a great question actually I think our little rehearsal today taught me something new um when we switched avatars from one that gives me the sense of being the same height that I actually am in reality there's a certain way that the character feels to me and then when we jump to that larger character um you know and I'm sort of aware that the body of the character is not just taller but just sort of larger it sort of inspires a different sense of performance which is really fun to um uh put your actor imagination into that given circumstance and to have um you know to be given up an avatar body that sort of helps support that by also being a bit larger than life um and so that's kind of a neat thing that I'm discovering with um with what you can do in VR and of course you can do it on stage as well you know certainly having the puppets that we had in in War Horse there was so exquisitely made and and the rehearsal that we did to really embody them also helped to transform your point of view from your sort of normal everyday self into the characters but you know there's there's ways that we can uh do that technically in VR that are really exciting and then on a certain level it also is the same process that you go through any time that you're embodying a character whether it's another human character or an animal or something that's supernatural and that it's really it really starts with your imagination and kind of letting that go in interesting places and trusting that all of the technical elements will work as resonators for that well thank you for that it's very inspirational I was um I was wondering I would like to uh uh ask a question also to our lovely director Kira um how meaningful is it for you to create a liaison between these Greek myths and this new medium and of course uh how do you feel this can have an effect on rereading those myths do you feel that in the future uh VR could also be introduced in schools to to teach these stories and history uh you're pulling from your uh from your professorial background there Kira uh I don't think anyone gave a proper introduction for you but you know I'll do that quickly now um Kira is a professor phenomenology from the understanding of our experiences um and was also with us as part of our production in Venice uh for Love Seat um and it's also a visible artist herself um and a writer so all of these that mediums coming together and yes I I think that great stories never go away it's why we you know we keep rejecting to the stories of Shakespeare we will continue to return to the great mythological stories because they have the truth from them that we cannot ever forget I I think that these are important stories that we learn from as humans and we connect to this deep pain especially in the Greek stories you know tremendous sacrifice and and um and and huge epic moments that help us remember why we're here on earth as as humans having these incredible experiences and now we have this ability to take storytelling into this new realm to this new dimension I mean to be able to embody a character or an artist member that could play a role in a portion you know this is something that we foresee in the future of our work that we are really bringing the audience into embody characters to take elements on to to play with the story and the narrative to get to interact more with our actors um we're having the opportunity to tell stories in a three-dimensional medium which is akin to the reality in which we live and who knows whether there are even dimensions that we can explore beyond that so and I do think that short we can use these for educational purposes and take these stories into classrooms um and I think the preview right now is that people can be a part of these worlds from their very home from their the couch in their living rooms that is terrific to see all the incredible potential VR has in all fields and especially we can consider it now in lockdown of how many cinema goers are going to be uh persuaded to explore this magnificent tool thank you very much for having me here today to chat with you all about the making of your beautiful story and I'll leave it to Matty from Culture House and goodbye to you all thank you for joining us from Milan and we're sending lots of love over there to your people thanks Kira that was awesome thanks Matty that was an experiment totally totally yeah we're like well yeah just an open rehearsal and then we're like okay let's try everything yeah how many video feeds and how many virtual cameras can we get in there we tried yeah we got something I mean that that was so great so um thanks Kira and Chiara and everybody who participated this afternoon um we've got another open rehearsal tonight actually at 8 p.m. we sort of did these two times to get uh different folks in different time zones the ability to join so if you want to come back at 8 p.m. we have a new moderator isn't that right that's right we'll have Nick Fortuno a game designer from Playmatics in New York great um and Chiara's team will also be working with us in experiments and digital storytelling for the next month and we'll have uh work to share with a virtual audience and a livestream audience um on May 16th that is correct and so if I want to follow you guys on Culture Hub NYC on Facebook you guys can subscribe to our newsletter on our double i website double i.co and we can be sending you updates and for those of you with virtual headsets we definitely want to bring some of you into our VR stage in May so let us know if you'd like to be in there and we would be welcome to have some of you in there exploring the virtual world with us and watching uh watching our our actors perform live great thanks so much everybody and thank you for watching uh and for participating we'll see uh on the other side