The Shared Individual

A genuinely pioneering example of augmented reality mixing film, theatre, performance, and technological trickery.

For those who remember virtual reality dinner-party-from-hell The Doghouse at Flatpack 2015, The Shared Individual is brought to you by the same crack team; Copenhagen-based Makropol. In creating this new work they teamed up with Swedish performing arts organisation, Bombina Bombast, and that’s what singles the project out as a genuinely pioneering example of augmented reality. Mixing film, theatre, performance, and technological trickery, this is a VR experience like no other.

The show begins with two presenters and a mannequin on stage. Sporting a specially-made helmet with a custom built camera, the mannequin delivers a panoramic field-of-view-video stream, which broadcasts live to the audiences headsets. Through a calibration process, the audience then becomes ‘the shared individual’. What follows is an out-of-body experience in which things aren’t always as they seem.

There will be an opportunity to hear from the creators of the work as part of Inside VR on Thursday 6 April.

We’re grateful for the technical support of Holosphere in delivering these performances.