Pivot: Mixed Reality Live Performance — Online!
What happens to an transdisciplinary performance using VR as a component that was designed for an installation space when it has to move online because of Covid-19? Collaborators at Berklee College of Music feel like they’ve been vaulted into the future, suddenly skipping several iterations between the in-person, in-place project they were planning, and prototypes for bringing live and recorded performance onto a virtual platform. Lori Landay discusses the goals, challenges, and potential solutions of Virtual Dream Machine; it is a story of pivots, improvisation, and creating presence however we can.
Lori Landay is an interdisciplinary teacher, scholar, and artist whose creative and critical work explores themes of transformation in audiovisual cultural forms, technology, and perception. She is Professor of Visual Culture and New Media at Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA, where she teaches courses including “Digital Narrative Theory and Practice,” “Art and Virtual Reality,” “Dance + Technology Lab,” and “The Language of Film.” Dr. Landay is the author of two books, I Love Lucy (TV Milestones Series) and Madcaps, Screwballs, and Con Women: The Female Trickster in American Culture, as well as numerous publications on topics including Minecraft, LEGO, virtual subjectivity, digital narrative, silent film, and gender and comedy. Her new media art has been exhibited at Boston Science Fiction Film Festival, Cyberfest (St. Petersburg, Russia), On the Wall Dance Film Series (Berlin, Germany), and Utopics Swiss Sculpture Exhibition (Biel/Bienne, Switzerland), and won awards such as Best of Show and People’s Choice Awards, New Media Consortium (NMC) Summer Conference Art Show; Best Machinimatography Award, International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) Conference SIGVE Group; and First Prize, University of Western Australia 3D Art Challenge. Her interactive new media art installation “ShadowLoop” was included in the AVATARS Exhibit at the Nave Gallery in Somerville, April-May 2019 during Open Studios.