Neill O’Dwyer, Gareth W. Young, Aljosa Smolic, Matthew Moynihan, Paul O’Hanrahan: Mixed Reality Ulysses
Artist(s):
Title:
- Mixed Reality Ulysses
Exhibition:
Medium:
- Volumetric Video
Category:
Artist Statement:
’MR Ulysses’ is a creative project investigating the possibilities of live performance using volumetric video (VV) techniques displayed via VR and AR technologies. It explores the opening scene of James Joyce’s acclaimed modern masterpiece of twentieth-century liter- ature, ’Ulysses’. Set in 1904, ’Ulysses’ is noted for its geographic specificity, and every year Joyce scholars and enthusiasts ritualis- tically visit Dublin on June 16th to celebrate an annual literature pilgrimage called “Bloomsday.” The tradition involves dressing up in the fashion of the day, retracing the steps of the central charac- ters by visiting many of the sites that are mentioned, and eating, drinking, and re-enacting scenes from the book.
Since the Covid-19 pandemic, the global culture industry of live performance events all but collapsed. The impact on theatre per- formers, artists, audiences, and stakeholders has been substantial. Bloomsday usually attracts thousands of literature tourists to Ire- land’s capital city to engage in performances at multiple locations around Dublin; however, in 2020, it was canceled due to the pan- demic. In 2021 there was a better effort to hold online events, but they lacked the sense of place and presence so crucial to Bloomsday. This sociological turn has occasioned a profound new emphasis on the need for theatre/performance practitioners to explore the im- mersive potential of AR/VR technologies because the shortcomings of simple videoconferencing/webcasting are obvious for theatre audiences.
’MR Ulysses’ is the first part of a series of creative–cultural experiments investigating questions around preservation, access, reactivation, and the transmission of dramatic/literary heritage in the twenty-first century. Captured using cuttingedge VV tech- niques, MR Ulysses enables audiences from any part of the globe to experience a live-action Bloomsday ritual in a site-specific 3D simulation via a VR headset. The goal is to suggest new horizons for the performing arts in the context of interactive digital media technologies.
