The online participant interacted through a web interface with a predominantly text-based virtual environment that evoked the spaces of the physical show. Each pair ended up following a narrative thread from the show that was further developed for this experience. The augmented experience that the team at the Media Lab created connected individual audience members online with partners from the audience in the physical space. They provided the caveat that video and imagery of the physical experience falls short of capturing the immersive nature of being there and limits the sense of agency afforded to audience members. Punchdrunk approached the Media Lab in the fall of 2011 with the challenge of extending their existing production into an online experience. The audience proceeds to wander through the space as they please and soon discovers actors who, mostly through dance, enact the story over the course of the three-hour performance. Audience members are masked upon entering the experience and instructed to explore but not to speak. The New York production is set in the fictionally named McKittrick Hotel, a converted warehouse with a set consisting of over 100 cinematically detailed rooms distributed over the seven story space. Currently running in New York City, the production tells the story of Shakespeare's Macbeth intertwined with Alfred Hitchcock's 1940 film adaptation of Rebecca, based on the Daphne du Maurier novel of the same name. Sleep No More is a successful immersive theatrical production created by the innovative British theater group Punchdrunk. Further elaborations and next steps are currently being evaluated. The first version of the extended Sleep No More was offered to a limited public in May 2012. This project explored original ways of fostering meaningful relationships between online and onsite audience members, enhancing the experiences of both through the affordances that exist only at the intersection of the real and the virtual worlds. Pushing the current capabilities of web standards and wireless communications technologies, the system delivered personalized multimedia content allowing each online participant to have a unique experience co-created in real time by his own actions and those of his onsite partner. We developed an online companion world to this real-life experience, through which online participants partner with live audience members to explore the interactive, immersive show together. In the live show, masked audience members explore and interact with a rich environment, discovering their own narrative pathways. The MIT Media Lab collaborated with London-based theater group Punchdrunk to create an online platform connected to their New York City production of Sleep No More.
Remote Theatrical Immersion: Extending Sleep No More | Opera of the Future | MIT Media Lab Remote Theatrical Immersion Extending Sleep No MoreĪrticle by Peter Torpey, Ben Bloomberg, Elena Jessop, and Akito van Troyer
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