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During this module I have written a brief summary of the exercises and workshops that we took part in each week. I have left the full notes for Week 1 as an example, however, in the later weeks I have included extracts.  I have used a mix of written text, voice notes, videos and photos throughout the process and I have included media that I feel is most significant in demonstrating key ideas and how my practice has evolved.

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Experiencer: '...suggests a more immersive engagement in which the principles of composition of the piece create an environment designed to elicit a broadly visceral, sensual encounter...' (Bay-Cheng, 2010, p.45).
I think Char Davies term 'immersant' is an effective term for describing the experience of VR performance as it reflects how multiple sense are used to immerse the participant.

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1)      Explored the terms ‘extended reality’, ‘augmented reality’, ‘mixed reality’ and ‘virtual reality’. Then introduced the concepts of high or low immersion as a way of explaining how absorbed we were in the experience we were.

2)      Watched a clip from The Magic Flute by 1927 at Edinburgh Festival (2015).

3)      We then used our laptops and phones to experience WebXR a virtual space, discussing our level of immersion.

4)      Paper exercise.

5)      Short experience with the VR Headsets.

6)      We then created a short performance in small groups about our experiences, our group focused on how we found it relaxing and at times slightly bewildering. Personally I was particularly interested in how the ‘immersant’ could interact with their surroundings to alter their experience. We began to explore this aurally by playing different sounds on our mobiles and allowing the ‘immersant’ to move around in the space altering their experience.

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The Magic Flute by 1927 at Edinburgh Festival (2015).

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The Magic Flute by 1927 at Edinburgh Festival (2015).

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I was particularly interested to explore how projection can ‘augment reality’ and how this compares to VR. I was struck by the visually striking performance of The Magic Flute by 1927, I hadn’t previously considered how projection can interact with live performance.

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We wanted to create a piece inspired by VR using all the other senses except sight, exploring the concepts 'displacement' and 'deterritorialization'.

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Week 3-Political Performance with Matthew Elliot

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Week 3-Political Performance with Matthew Elliot

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Proposal- We were looking into Liz Truss and the environmental laws that she passed and how they are detrimental to the already dwindling environment. We want to make people aware of what is going on and encourage them to take a stand and help us to make a change.

-          Projections of endangered birds flying across the building, starting with thousands and slowly is diminishes to a fraction of the number, leading into the animation of the crack forming.

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I chose to include this proposal from Matthew Elliott's workshop on Political Theatre as it demonstrates how I was interested in using projection from the start of the process and I think this stems from the production of The Magic Flute by 1927.

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Week 5- Day Trip to Leeds Centre for Aerial Arts

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Week 5- Day Trip to Leeds Centre for Aerial Arts

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Reflection:

I really enjoyed visiting Leeds Centre for Aerial Arts and I was struck with how my experiences outside of theatre influenced my aerial ability. An example of this is that my yoga practice improved my core strength and flexibility which meant I could attempt more moves whilst on the silks. This has shifted how I view my practice as performer and made me more aware of how it is interdisciplinary. In the future I will attempt not to neglect these other skills and hobbies as they can directly support my professional development.

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Week 5- Refection on Leeds Centre for Aerial Arts

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Week 5- Refection on Leeds Centre for Aerial Arts

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Reflection:

In this session we used Gravity Sketch VR to create sculptures and proposed potential performances. This was an important session in the development of our piece as most of the groups quickly ran out of time while devising their performances. When reflecting on this workshop it made us all aware of how much time it takes to create a VR experience and informed our final assessment.

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'We want to disorientate our audience member by blurring the boundary between reality and virtual reality. We aim to create a dystopian immersive circus experience that uses live performance, pre-recorded videos projected onto screens (such as Eleanor dancing) and a 360 video in VR of our arial performances (exploring unusual view points).'

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Inside Yellow Sound, (2021), Stage@Leeds

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I think it's interesting to recognize how our final assessment was remarkable similar to our initial proposal. An insight that I’ve learn is that I find it useful to state the performance I would create with unlimited time and resources. This is an effective starting place as it establishes the broad aims of the project and even if each aspect of the proposal isn’t possible the fundamental aims are often still achievable.

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Notes on 'New Work in Contemporary Circus' by Lavers, Leroux and Burtt.

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Notes on 'New Work in Contemporary Circus' by Lavers, Leroux and Burtt.

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This article explores how performers can feel ‘imprisoned’  by their specialism and how the ‘bitter’ training leads to years of performing the same skill. Recent circus companies are exploring moving away from more tradition ‘tricks’ based performances, incorporating different performative elements and new technologies. It goes onto explore how contemporary circus is a ‘hybrid artform’, questioning what happens when a company interacts with aspects such as space and place (Lavers et al, 2019, pp.164-156).

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Refection on 'New Work in Contemporary Circus' 

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Refection on 'New Work in Contemporary Circus' 

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After reading this article I became very aware of how we could introduce multiple disciplines into our performance, such as dance. This article also made me aware of how portraying stereotypes or more traditional styles of circus without proper research could lead to misrepresentation and potentially create issues.

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Be my (body) guest, (2018), by Carolyn Watt

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Be my (body) guest, (2018), by Carolyn Watt

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This was an essential week in planning for the filming at Leeds Centre for Areal Arts. In order to ensure we were prepared we choreographed the dance and aerial routines, establishing where the camera would be placed when filming. We then developed a detailed timetable of what to film and how long we should spend on each section, including additional elements if we had extra time. During this week I also filmed the dance routine and attempted to put this onto VR Headset. This was a big learning curve as I tried to upload the video onto the VR headset via cable but unfortunately this video was not in 360. I then discovered the best process was to use the Insta360 App to export this video onto my phone and then upload this onto Youtube VR. This was crucial moment in developing our piece as we would use process to test the 360 footage and decide what was effective when watching the performance in VR. During this week we also made the risk assessment which was particularly important due to the nature of our performance.

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A significant challenge was choreographing the aerial routine without the apparatus, we found that the best method of recording our work was through video. We recognised that due to the short time frame we would have to make a decision about which song to use quite quickly. It was our intention to explore the relationship between the two characters and to do this we began by discussing our emotional response to the apparatus.

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Eddie's Reflection on VR Aerial Routine in the Dance Studio

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Eddie's Reflection on VR Aerial Routine in the Dance Studio

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Eddie's Reflection on VR Aerial Routine in the Dance Studio

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Eddie's Reflection on VR Aerial Routine in the Dance Studio

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Whilst studying I have also been working with Stage@Leeds Youth Theatre developing a VR Alice in Wonderland and it has significantly informed the creation of our piece. Besides learning how to use the 360 camera the key thing I’ve learnt is that you have to be very aware of the whole space that you’re filming in, ensuring that if you make cuts everything is in the same place. Not only is this exceptionally difficult but the majority of the work I’ve done has been in an end-on configuration and I’m not used to thinking about every angle. I noticed that when filming in Leeds Centre for Aerial Arts there was the advantage of the fact that there was already a location or ‘set’. Another difficulty when recording in 360 is the audio as the quality of the microphone on the camera we used wasn’t suitable. In order to combat this we introduced another microphone but this brought difficulties during the editing process as it was important to ensure the audio track matched the dialogue. This directly informed the piece we created on our module as I was aware of these difficulties and brought another microphone when filming.

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Week 9- Filming at Leeds Centre for Aerial Arts (Part 1)

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Week 9- Filming at Leeds Centre for Aerial Arts (Part 1)

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Week 9- Filming at Leeds Centre for Aerial Arts (Part 2)

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Week 9- Filming at Leeds Centre for Aerial Arts (Part 2)

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This was a really challenging session where we had to radically change the direction of our piece due to the footage being too overwhelming and causing nausea. We debated not using VR and creating a concept based performance that explores circus and our experiences in VR. Specific moments didn’t work such as walking into Leeds Centre for Aerial Arts. The overall narrative is less important and its more about how we have evolved as performance practitioners. In this moment we felt collectively deflated but we decided to tackle these problems practically and focus on how we can use the footage that we had.

From using Katie’s provocations we decided to look at using projection to show the 360 footage and how this can be used to create an immersive experience without the headset. This idea also allows us to further incorporate sound and lighting that might’ve been overlook if we used the VR headset. Overall this was a key turning point in the process and although we found it challenging it was exciting working out we could develop the performance. The biggest challenge I found was matching these expectations with the time frame of one week.

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This was potentially the most difficult part of the process as nobody in our group had editing experience and we had lots of challenges uploading the 360 footage. It was my role (with Jennifer) to edit the videos for the projections and initially we struggled to export the files due to their size. Consequently, we partially edited the videos on the Insta360 app where we discovered (by accident) that you could set the camera to track the other performers face. This was an exciting development as it gave an interesting perspective to the footage and meant we could still see the aerial routine from different angles. A problem we faced was that it chunked the footage into smaller sections and we then had to then edit these together, ensuring there were no overlaps. Another challenge we faced was making the videos the same length and we did this by putting parts of the routine into slow motion. We were both thrilled with the outcome as this meant you could see some of the moves in more detail, adding to the final product. Overall it was very difficult but we were both pleased with the outcome!

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Aerial Footage- Matthew Perspective Clip

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Aerial Footage- Matthew Perspective Clip

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Prior to the day of the performance I had uploaded all of the videos onto QLAB and edited in fade ques so all of the videos started at the same time. I also set the levels for the sound and developed a basic lighting design to save time on the day of the performance.

There were multiple difficult technical aspects, particularly ensuring the videos were playing on the correct projector screens. Due to this taking longer than expected I ran out of time mapping the videos onto each screen so they didn’t full fill the screens.

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After the assessment we decided to show the projection installation without the VR aspect of the performance. This led to multiple interesting insights and several audience members commented that they found the experience calming, particularly in relation to colour. In the future I would ask to record audience reactions to aid further development of the project and compare experiences.