YOUR NAME:

George Faya

WHAT IS YOUR THESIS QUESTION? (limit to one question and approx 2-3 sentences for an additional explanation)

What is it about shared experiences that makes them special? Our physical and social isolation during the COVID pandemic has heightened our need for them, but the “genie” of ZOOM living (work/schooling from home, FaceTime, livestreaming) is out of the bottle, and won’t likely go back. Can we truly reproduce the effect of a shared experience in a virtual space?

WHAT DO YOU PLAN TO MAKE? (approx 3-5 sentences)

Although much effort has already been made to translate theater and performance to the virtual realm, I want to focus on recreating/approximating the audience’s experience in VR. Being able to immerse the spectator in the environment is the primary draw of VR, so why not explore its ability to effectively simulate a populated performance space, concert, movie theater, or sports arena?

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT TO YOU? (approx 3-5 sentences)

I’ve spent my entire academic and professional life in arts and entertainment, both in performance and event production. When COVID came, an inability to physically bring people together wiped my whole industry out (among others). Technology kept us (mostly) functional and operative, but something palpable was still missing. That thing, that energy we missed is what I’m after – is it independent of physical proximity? Does it travel over wires and fiber?

WHAT ARE YOUR GOALS WITH THIS PROJECT? (approx 3-5 sentences)

While the essence of shared experience may remain elusive, hopefully this project will resonate with those of us who’ve felt the mental effects of the separation we’ve encountered for the past year. Technology is another tool in the aim of bringing people together, so perhaps the project could even address our larger societal ills of tribalism and ideological division.

INFLUENCES OR INSPIRATION? (approx 1-2 sentence description accompanying each link)          

Shared Experiences Are Amplified – A 2014 study that demonstrated that “a person’s sensory experience of a stimulus can change depending on whether another person who is present is engaging with the same stimulus or engaging with a different stimulus. These results are consistent with our hypothesis that shared experiences are intensified compared with unshared experiences.”

In 2019, EDM artist Marshmello held a virtual concert in the online world of Fortnite. Over 10 MILLION people attended. Many have referred to it as “the future of live entertainment”.

Is “live” dead?

Simulacra and Simulation, Jean Beaudrillard – I’ve always felt that even though much may be lost in translation, simulation often serves as a distillation of a thing’s essence – like a musician reinterprets another’s song as the way they hear it, or a drag queen exaggerates the presumed qualities of femininity. Depending on the faithfulness of a recreation, certain details may be omitted but it’s done in the service of capturing its intrinsic nature. Sometimes approximation becomes more accurate than reproduction.

Live albums/Concert Films/anything “recorded live” – Woodstock, The Last Waltz, even National Theatre Live: Any attempt to capture live performance in a different medium – by definition – alters and reduces it to the limitations of that medium. Sure, the best ones capture memorable performances for posterity, but can’t approximate the “feeling”. Still, I love them.

When professional sports returned to television in 2020, the need for connection with fans quickly became apparent. Teams and networks began pumping crowd noise into the stadiums: cheers, reactions, simple ambience. It was ridiculous, hilarious, surreal – but also poignant: athletes, like performers, needed us. Then, it got weird: https://youtu.be/q_FQcKH4xL4 – these “virtual fans” weren’t for the athletes, but the tv audience. Why? Does an audience need an audience…?

HOW DO YOU ENVISION REALIZING THIS PROJECT? (max 150 words)

I had a fair amount of difficulty in deciding how to approach this topic, and I’ve only recently arrived on this idea so it may shift in scope or scale, but I’d like to explore creating an accurate VR model of the Skirball Center, based on actual 3D scans. From there, the next step would be populating it with a virtual audience, and using AI to simulate their individual and crowd behaviors, and creating an interface to control variables like crowd size, excitement, etc. Creating a pipeline of sorts, to feed in some actual performances would be ideal, but my focus will be on what happens in the house, not on the stage.

If possible, doing the same for a massive arena would be a fascinating endeavor, but focusing on an available, existing space gives me a starting point before trying to create an original.

While the end product is intended for VR, it would likely have to be created with WebGL, in order to work online for those without VR headsets.

OPTIONAL QUESTIONS (approx 2-3 sentences each)

  • WHAT ARE YOUR AREAS OF STRENGTH?

– As an employee of the Skirball Center, having access to it will certainly be beneficial, and being part of the production staff will yield additional technical resources.

– Research! – Now that I’ve somewhat honed down the goal of my project, I’m looking forward to researching both the academic and practical reference points

– As previously mentioned, years of experience in live entertainment, although I’m not sure exactly how producing all those real events will translate to creating imaginary spaces and audiences just yet

  • WHAT AREAS DO YOU NEED TO WORK ON?
    – Project management, coding, game engine scripting, timeline planning
  • TECHNOLOGIES YOU WANT TO EXPLORE IN MORE DEPTH?

– Artificial Intelligence – “Epic Battle simulators” use basic AI to dictate the behavior of armies in their gameplay, and while the audience will be largely static, perhaps I can use it to simulate other crowd behaviors (cheering, laughing, gasping, etc.)

– I may pivot from using Unity to Unreal Engine, although I don’t want the learning curve to be an impediment to my progress

– Three.js, WebGL, A-Frame – Javascript libraries

TAGS

Please share up to 5 “tags” that you would like to associate with your project that help to address both the content and the form. Tags should be single words. You’re welcome to use any tag words you like. Examples might include “installation”, “climate”, “identity”, “vr”, “sound”

Your tags: #VR, #liveVR, #virtualtheatre

Video link:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/13MlYAkofZN3WW35jahZkbnKh76zbKq-i/view?usp=sharing