The emerging medium of “mixed reality performances” integrate digital technologies as a move toward live pieces that invite the audience onto the stage through interfaces such as AI systems, AR apps, and VR sets, that superimpose and/or juxtapose the real with the virtual. In an industry brief presented to our master's cohort by my team’s industry partner, ‘FANDCO’, a limited company made up of creative entrepreneurs Fred Deakin and Robert Armstrong, this idea of placing a mixed reality experience in the hands of the audience was extremely apparent. More apparent was the idea of bringing a real-time performance into someone’s home, streamlining our team’s pitching efforts into making an experience that could be enjoyed in solitary or together in a composed setting. Although not limited to the set of assets we could utilize to imagine and prototype our own piece of content using the ‘Transportal’, made up of a magnetic miniature stage with wooden blocks and a handful of Rif6 mini-projectors, there were salient themes that emerged from the brief, including the idea of it fitting into everyday life, having repeatability, and being accessible for more reluctant users of immersive technology, whilst still being compelling as an immersive experience and centring embodied practical action as the source of meaning.
The result was a piece entitled 'Yearning the Machine' which was demonstrated at an intermediary showcase in July 2021. The piece combined projection mapping with a p5.js script running real-time code from Google’s Teachable Machine that modulated the volume of different stems from a looping audio track. The visual projections were inspired by Modernist interpretations of synesthesia.
