Concepts:
- The Circus of Spectacle
- I’ve long wanted to make the Night Circus a reality. I love the idea of a huge, magic and performance filled wonderland, that people can explore for hours, or days, or weeks, and never find the end of. Circus meets theater meets interactive installations. The entire concept is really way too big for thesis, so I am thinking I would build a prototype in one of the game engines (I’m working in both Unreal and Unity this semester). Not sure if this would end up being more video game or more VR experience, or somewhere in between, but definitely explorable. I also would want a story to explore throughout it, a bit of narrative, a bit of mystery. I also would want to use the Virtual Production techniques I am learning this semester to bring in contortion, aerial, dance, and magic performances (along with other performances I may decide to add. Music perhaps?) into the game engine to create a more true to what the full, live show might be.
- The Zoe Monologues at Everyone for 30 Minutes Show
- If it wasn’t clear from my slides, I love being up on stage in front of people. I have been toying with the idea for a one man show for a while. I have so many diverse interests and experiences, I think it could be very fun to pull them altogether and write a show for myself.
- I’m thinking the final product would likely be a 30 minute one-act / monologue that weaves through all of my interests and areas of experience, along with showing examples of everything and playing around with different art forms and tech forms and whatnot. See list:
- Dance (ballet, contemporary, jazz, modern, tap)
- Musical Theater (specifically any musicals that are dance-heavy)
- Building my first robots in high school
- Acting in straight plays
- Discovering immersive theater (Sleep No More)
- Discovering immersive, location-based entertainment (Meow Wolf)
- Working for a New Media Art Festival
- Discovering circus/aerials
- Making it to ITP, playing with all sorts of new technology, where I want to see this work head in the future
- AR Headset Experiences for Escape Rooms and Immersive Theater
- While I’m not completely enamored with the state of headsets at this point in time, I am enthusiastic about the future of the AR/XR headset and what can possibly be done to augment live, in-person entertainment. I am especially thinking about it from a gamification standpoint, where the headset actively adds to the experience of solving the room or interacting with a show and a story, but isn’t itself the entire experience. As headsets get more sophisticated cameras for both world tracking and wearer tracking, I think these ideas could be more viable. Figuring out how to extend battery life while also not making them heavy or bulky is also important. While I don’t love the current use-cases/concept art for the new Apple Vision Pro, I am excited about what it’s entrance to the market means for the future of this kind of hardware. I’d love to craft an experience that is enhanced by an AR headset, and prototype what the experience of playing it is like.
Inspiration List: