INTERFACE: Alternate Reality is a new work-in-progress that had its first incubation period during a three-week residency as a 21C Seed project at the Institute for 21st Century Creativity at the UC-Irvine Claire Trevor School of the Arts. This work builds upon our earlier works which use the LAIT mobile application system for live performance, Critical Mass and Public Figure, both of which seek to use the mobile phone as a means of increasing audience engagement with dance as an art form and theatrical experience. Alternate Reality is a work that incorporates game culture and game thinking into the conception of live dance performance. It seeks to find ways to modernize dance performance to be in line with contemporary culture that is heavily influenced by first-person user interaction and competitiveness and the goal-orientated thinking which that promotes. Many people, particularly young audiences, are used to taking an active role in the direction and outcomes of their entertainment activities. They’re used to using game controllers that help them navigate game structures. With the capabilities of our LAIT-based app, now called “Mosho”, we have been able to craft a live-action game structure that incorporates contemporary dance.

We crafted a plot where a ship (undefined: could be a spaceship, or a sailing vessel) had hit a maelstrom which scattered her crew into many different places and times, and now they all were existing resulting in alternate realities. The captain of the ship was looking to reunite them, and enlisted the help of the audience “players” to locate them and bring them all back to one reality. To reunite the crew, the players had to solve various puzzles that would yield clues, that would lead players to discover keywords by scanning AR target images. These words were then used to complete phrases about “reality” which had come from three famous personages: Albert Einstein, John Lennon, and the film director Tim Burton. The audience used the Mosho app to find the various locations of the crew, to solve the puzzles that were found at each game level, to scan the AR target images to uncover the keywords, and then text those keywords to the captain.

Below is video documentation of the work-in-progress showing. For even more in-depth writing about this production, visit Prof. Toenjes’ new CV site page about Alternate Reality.

I have just updated the video of how the cellphones performed during the Critical Mass shows. This gives you a great insight into how the system works, and how it is integrated into the performance. Check it out!

We are hard at work on the premiere of the dance Critical Mass, which will occur on February 2-4 at the February Dance concert at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts. We have a cast of eight U of I dancers, and Chad Michael Hall of Multiplex Dance came back from Los Angeles to work with us once again on the conception and choreography. We are having to make the work for both audience who will be coming onstage as well as audience that will sit in the seats like a traditional theater, so we’ve have to redo some of the staging. But the LAIT app is going to be central to this show, and showing off its many new capabilities! Tony Reimer, our programmer, has been hard at work, and he ROCKS!!

Click for more photos of the rehearsal process!