Mixed reality in threatened environments

ABSTRACT

This article considers the ecoscenographer’s use of technologies to ‘timeshift’ performances. Timeshifting refers to watching locally recorded content after its originally scheduled broadcast. It explores the evolution, refinement, and emergent issues related to applying this approach to performing relationships within threatened environments, including how they relate to notions of ‘hauntology’ in highlighting and collapsing time in reference to climate change. The article reviews the cultivation of new technologies to provide located media in remote locations, such as: Dance Exchange’s 500 Miles/ 500 Stories, Out of Box Productions’ Rallentando, and more recent projects including Toasterlab’s Groundworks and park-based projects, Swim Pony’s TrailOff, The Only Animal’s 1000-Year Theatre, and Nakai Theatre’s Landscape Theatre. These projects establish a trajectory of emplaced mixed reality practice. This includes practical production topics such as asymmetrical data infrastructure and the trade-offs of accessible technology. It considers how gaming (i.e. open world games) and 360VR provide tools for scenographers to stage spatial performances that examine the deep performativity of space over time despite the limitations resulting from the phenomenology of archive.

KEYWORDS:

• Ecoscenography
• non-human performance
• extended reality
• climate change
• scenography

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 ‘Doubled’ here meaning that there are two parallel versions of the place coexisting at the same time.

2 Background information suggests Mark Clamen has a scenographic past as a lighting designer in his undergraduate experience.

3 The term ‘uncanny valley’ is most commonly used to refer to computer generated people in popular entertainment, such as Robert Zemeckis’ film The Polar Express, which are unsettling in their near, but not quite realistic rendering – a common approach to preventing this discomfort from distracting a viewer is to move towards the cartoon, or a believable exaggeration or abstraction.

4 Pronounced in French, ‘hauntology’ is intentionally a near homophone of ‘ontology’.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ian Garrett

Ian Garrett is designer, producer, educator, and researcher in the field of sustainability in arts and culture. He is the director of the Centre for Sustainable Practice in the Arts; Associate Professor of Ecological Design for Performance at York University; and Producer for Toasterlab. He maintains a design practice focused on ecology, technology and scenography. Through Toasterlab’s Mixed Reality Performance Atelier, recent work includes The Stranger 2.0 with DLT Experience; Groundworks with Rulan Tangen and collaborating artists from Pomo, Wappo, and Ohlone communities; The locative audio project TrailOff with Philadelphia’s Swim Pony; and Transmission (FuturePlay/Edinburgh and Future of Storytelling Festival/New York). Notable projects include the set and energy systems for Zata Omm's Vox:Lumen at the Harbourfront Centre and Crimson Collective’s Ascension, a solar 150’ wide crane at Coachella. With Chantal Bilodeau, he co-directs the Climate Change Theatre Action. His writing includes Arts, the Environment, and Sustainability for Americans for the Arts; The Carbon Footprint of Theatrical Production in Readings in Performance and Ecology, and Theatre is No Place for a Plant in Landing Stages from the Ashden Directory. He serves on the Board of Directors for Associated Designers of Canada. He was the Curator for the US for the 2019 Prague Quadrennial, and is co-chair for World Stage Design 2022 in Calgary.