Optical-Active

Free UR Head is an accessible dance experience that uses VR to create instant group choreographies through the participation of its audience.

Taiwanese theatre and film director Chou Tung-Yen earned his stripes for his cross-border approach, his inventive use of new media, and the unexpected angles he takes on his subjects. This time he wants to take a step back from what happens inside the VR goggle, and wonders about the real physical repercussions outside of it. The result is Free UR Head, a tool for instant VR-conducted group choreographies.

Symbiosis is a performative, multiuser, and multisensory VR installation in which the human body will be redesigned. It allows every participant to embody a post-human or even nonhuman reality: a completely symbiotic human-animal or human-technologic relationship. Dutch experience design collective POLYMORF investigates in a speculative way how a more symbiotic exchange of genetic, cultural, and technological traits between people and other present or future living entities can increase or change the agency of all.

From the director of Madagascar, INVASION!, and ASTEROIDS! comes Baobab Studios' latest visionary VR animation. The carefree forest animals imagine spring will last forever. However, winter comes and the animals soon realize that their lives are in danger. What they need is a hero; what they need is Crow: The Legend.

An interactive pilgrimage through an emotional geography of immigration and family to recover what was lost.

In 1935, Yonezo Okita left his home in Hiroshima, Japan, and began a new life in Canada. Then war and state-sanctioned racism changed everything—he became the enemy. Three generations later, his grandson, artist Randall Okita, leads us on an interactive virtual pilgrimage through an emotional geography of immigration and family to recover what was lost.

When wind and snow fill the sky and the fire has grown cold, relight the coals, warm the wine, and turn up the wick of the lamp. We enter these tales in the shadows of the night but hopefully emerge into daylight.

Written in China centuries ago, Pu Songling’s Strange Tales are now adapted for the stage by the acclaimed immersive theatre company Grid Iron in co-production with the Traverse Theatre.

Baobab Studios’ Emmy®-winning VR experience, Baba Yaga, invites viewers to be a main character in a haunting fairytale world completely reimagined. Their choices determine the ending of this story of love, fortitude, and magic. Sometimes a force for evil, sometimes a force for good, the enigmatic witch Baba Yaga (Kate Winslet) uses her powers to stop the villagers whose settlement encroaches upon her enchanted Forest (Jennifer Hudson).

On January 13th 2018, 1.4m people across Hawai’i received an SMS from the state’s Emergency Management Agency: BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. In the minutes that followed, they were forced to confront existential questions that had been unthinkable just moments before: where could they go for shelter? What would remain of their communities if they survived a nuclear blast? How could they explain to their children why we live in a world where such unimaginable destruction was possible?

The Tempest was performed at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon as part of the winter 2016-17 season before moving to the Barbican Theatre in London. It was created in collaboration with Intel and in association with The Imaginarium Studios.

A contemporary dance performance radicalizing the human body in the virtual world. This international and interdisciplinary research project explores the dancing body through technologies including motion-capture technology, VR, and digital avatars to wield a narrative between man and machine. The work seeks to question the human body’s engagement, sensorial response, and viewership in the fields of virtual design and dance.

Immerse yourself in a dark and shadowy world, and let your whole self be moved as you choose your own viewpoint and flow within the dance. Experiment with the dancers as they explore new pathways within Virtual Realities – fall, rise, turn, and fly with us into the stars. 

Watching dance is often a passive experience with one fixed point of view. We set about creating an immersive and visceral experience, allowing the audience to explore dance from all viewpoints, creating their own flow within the choreography.