Theater and Virtual Reality

Josephine Anstey, University at Buffalo

1 Introduction

I started working with VR in 1995, and have always considered it a theatrical medium. I studied at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory, at the University of Illinois at Chicago, which developed the CAVE VR system. In the earliest papers describing this system, it was referred to as a Virtual Theater [4]. Virtual Reality is now a term used to describe many virtual spaces, such as on-line worlds and multi-user games. But today I am using the term to describe a more elaborate system that is designed to support the user’s senses more fully. The CAVE and Head Mounted VR systems typically support stereo vision and are designed to completely immerse the user in 3D graphics. Tracking technology is necessary to allow the system to draw the graphics from the user’s POV, and also to allow the user to impact the world more directly. The user can reach out and virtually touch, grab, pull, or hit objects in the world.

I was initially interested in Virtual Reality as a site for dramatic first-person experience. I envisioned an intimate theater for one person, who would act as a protagonist in her own drama. Later I became involved with creating and staging networked VR events, and I became interested in the potential for creating performances in shared virtual environments. More recently I have also become interested in mixing the virtual and the real, in mixed reality and mixed media environments, and in playing with the relationship between live and virtual performers and performances. Today I will talk about my work with networked VR, mixed reality and mixed media.

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