#1812: [2020] 「La Comédie Virtuelle」――パンデミック下でライブ・バーチャルダンスを続ける試み

The Voices of VR Podcast. Deux-Gilles back in September of 2020 at the virtual edition of what was then the Viennese VR expanded online edition that was happening within the context of VR chat as well as within the Museum of Other Realities. This particular piece of La Comédie Virtual was actually a standalone virtual reality application where I believe I had to open up the Oculus Rift, the PC version, in order to dive in and actually experience it. So Gilles Jermaine is somebody who's a choreographer, a dancer, but also kind of looking at the different trends and really saw the writing on the wall in terms of how there is this whole movement towards where things were going with motion capture and what you do with choreography and dance when you start to look at XR.

And so this was during the pandemic when all of his colleagues stopped touring around. And so he started to kind of experiment with actually building these replications of a theater and then also doing this kind of live performances within the context of a virtual theater. But also these live performances, being able to do things that you wouldn't necessarily able to do in terms of choreography and movement within the context of physical reality. And so really starting to play with the affordances of what kind of things you can do within a virtual representation of your body being live streamed, live captured within motion capture. So there's whole questions around what is the liveness of live. But I think from his perspective, he was going through all the trouble to do this whole setup to essentially do these live performances. And again, in my conversation with Gilles at Venice Immersive 2026, he sort of also recaps this whole journey into the space and also has reflections on this piece as well in terms of a part of his old journey for getting to where he's at now. So we're covering all that and more on today's episode of The Voice of the VR Podcast.

So this interview with Gilles happened on Friday, September 11th, 2020, at the Venice VR Expanded that was happening online virtually on the Museum of Other Realities and VR Chat, and this conversation happened virtually over Zoom. So, we're covering all that and more on today's episode of the Ways of VR podcast. So this interview with Gilles happened on Friday, September 11th, 2020. So, with that, let's go ahead and dive right in. My name is Gilles Jobin. I'm a choreographer, artistic director of the company Gilles Jobin. We are based in Geneva, Switzerland, and I've been doing contemporary dance for the last 20 years. But since about 2017, that's when I started into VR and like the digital realm. Great. So maybe you can give me a bit more context as to your background and your journey into VR. Yes, I started, I mean, you know, as a contemporary dance choreographer, I was always interested in technology and, you know, just in general, you know, the world of image and movement.

But to me, you know, 2D images, video dance was, to me, was really not a language. But when I saw this movie by Wim Banders called Pina about this German choreographer, and it was in 3D, and I was like, wow, this is amazing. This is like really something else. So these technologies really gives the possibility to have like the full body in volume inside the screen. So I thought, oh, that's something that's interesting. So I started to make a project for a 3D movie that was in 2012, something like this. And it took me quite a while to fund it and to be able to shot it. And that was in 2016. But meanwhile, that's when I started to be interested in VR. And I met Artanim, which is a foundation that is based in Geneva. and they had this mo-cap studio and also this immersive system. So, you know, little by little, just by discovering the technology, I thought it was so amazing to be able to capture the movement in such a simple way. Now a day is so much easier than it used to be.

And then to reproduce it and retouch it, like, you know, make the bodies bigger or smaller or multiply. I mean, all the possibilities that the digital gives. and for me it was like I felt pretty attracted because I felt quite confident because of the 3D space. So that's what I do. I work in the 3D space with volumetric bodies, which are real bodies. But basically I found myself quite comfortable in these new territories really to explore with the body and with different ways to be a body inside a virtual space. So basically that was a little bit what I felt attracted. And we did this piece, VRI, that was a piece where we had five people being basically mock-up and being able to see themselves as avatars and the other people as avatars and speak together in a space that was about eight meters by five meters. So that was quite big and they could move inside this space. And this piece was really successful.

We really had a lot of interest from this piece because I think it was like such an amazing experience to be like embodied into an avatar and see the others and start moving. And people were really talking a lot about their body experience. And so it was really interesting to see how people behave inside this space and all the possibilities we had. And again, you know, coming from the performing art world, I felt that it was not so complicated for me to kind of direct where people are looking and having the movement of the dancers and organize the space by movement and, you know, people would gaze where they see something moving. And so, you know, I really enjoyed myself, really. And also, we had a very good team. So I started working with Camille Martino, which is our creative director and technologist. And, I mean, since then we haven't stopped. And same with the dancers, also the same dancers. And so the same, we really have this kind of digital company that has been growing over the years.

and in four years we did a lot of projects and we did also a project in AR, location-based piece in augmented reality. Then we did this piece, Dance Trail, that was at Sundance and now we have this project at the Community Virtual which is like even more ambitious and big and I think we'll get into this maybe later. Yeah well back in 2011 I was able to see Sleep No More which is probably one of the first examples that I saw, like just trying to tell a story just by using dance and moving bodies through space. And I first went to Sundance in 2016. I know that they had programs the previous two years, but I hadn't made it out until 2016. And I saw a piece that was by some of your collaborators on your follow-up piece of 2017, where they were creating a piece where I was able to have track feet and to be able to walk around. It was the demo actually of the system that we used to create VRI. Yeah, right. So, you know, having that full body tracking and then the next

year when you started to add a little bit more of the choreography with Dance Trail as well as this piece that you have this year at Venice, all of them are using dance as a way of using the body moving through space to almost be a embodied communication. And that as we speak, we have body language and we have ways that we look at our bodies to be able to communicate. But with dance and the pieces that you're doing you're trying to in some ways just use the body to be able to communicate so maybe you could talk a little bit about why you think dance is so important when it comes to the spatial language and being able to communicate emotion within a medium like virtual reality well you you said the spatial language and i think that's very right when you talk about dance is really a language about space a language in space and it's working with space and also the space in between the people. Not only the space as space, but also the spaces in between things and the tensions that you create between different spaces. If I'm close to you or far away from you, that's a different intention.

So this is what we use all the time in contemporary dance. Contemporary dance is mostly non-verbal and non-narrative. So contemporary dance carries meaning. So you carry meaning through movement. So people get what you mean, but they get it like they think about it for themselves. They're like, oh, he's coming from there and he does this, you know, and they're like, oh, now the other one is coming and doing that. So they have this kind of inner dialogue. And at least that's what I use in my stage pieces. And I think it's exactly the same process in VR because I think VR is in real time. So even VRI, of course, it was all recorded and all the dances were animation recorded, mock-up. But the situation for the spectator was in real time. So the experience of the spectator was in real time. So everything was thought about from the real-time perspective of the spectator. So that's what we do, you know, in a theater. You invite people to come at 8, and then they have maybe a drink, and then they go to the room, and this is a show. Maybe there's a break in between, and they go back.

So all these kind of things that we deal with, with the idea of a person coming to a space and then at 8 and living at 10, you know, and everything that happens in between. So this is really the real-time situation that we live. So I think in VR you have the same kind of, I mean, very often you are alone with yourself, you know, just like in life. So you think for yourself. And that's why personally I'm not very in favor in VR of off-voices, for instance. Off-voices in VR are very disturbing to me because I'm like, I cannot choose if I listen to the off-voice or I'm looking at what I'm seeing, you know. Sometimes I get confused, you know. so yeah I think dance always has been interested in new technologies if you look at American choreographer in the 60s he was one of the first one to use videos he's a very important video artist apart from being a choreographer and again because what he was doing was very abstract so it's very good abstraction to experiment images and filters and you know all these kind of effects that you would do in the

70s with the video systems So I think that's why dance and choreography are always interested in this kind of new technology and also new spaces. Again, like in the 60s, in the 70s, in New York, they would start to dance on the roofs. They would start to dance on the street. But back then, dancing on the roof was considered as not being danced because dance is in a theater. If it's not in a theater, it's not dance. So these kind of new spaces were being taken by the choreographer and said, oh, we can dance on the roof, why not? And then that became a thing. And now any festival in the world has outdoor performances or dance in the street is totally normal. So I think VR is the same. It's like new spaces that are available and are ready for us to discover. It's like they've been there all the time. It's like scuba diving. One day they invented the autonomous caffender and you could just buy it and take a couple of classes and be with the fishes for hours.

Something that was impossible maybe 10 years before. So, you know, this kind of accessibility through an equipment, and then you get the equipment, and then you get access. And then it's infinite, because then what you can do when you're inside is amazing. And for live performances, there's really something, you know. And not even talking about the actual situation, that is obviously, in a way, helping this kind of stream of performances, you know. yeah so i had a chance to see vri at sundance 2017 and you know there was a collaborative element of you know having these trackers and being a part of other people that were in the space with me as well they were fully embodied but you're i was also seeing these different worlds that are very surrealistic that you're playing with scale in different ways of having giant people walk around and so you had like these pre-recorded aspects and then at sundance 2020 you had the dance trail which I did not have an iPhone, and so I wasn't able to see it directly.

So it was iPhone only. I had Android, so I couldn't experience it directly, but I saw lots of videos, and I have to project my experience onto the two representation of again having these prerecorded dancers that were at different scales across the different places of Park City There was I think four different QR code markers that would trigger different dance events, and I did track down each of those four, but then I couldn't actually trigger the dances that were unlocked with each of those. And then this year at Venice, you have La Comédie Virtual, where you have live performance of dancers that are being streamed from across the world into a live experience. Also, you've built out a whole theater with different prerecorded dances that are there, which I thought was very compelling to walk around and see that. That within itself is an experience that you created in that theater on top of the live performance. And so just curious if you could trace the evolution from VRI to Dance Trail to this latest piece here at Venice, La Comédie Virtual,

while where you are maybe figuring out something new about how VR and dance and choreography are interplaying with each other and that evolution of what you're able to do in each of those pieces? Well, I mean, that really comes out of VRI. And La Comédie is a theater in Geneva, it's the main theater institution. And it's been like many years that they needed a new building. And finally, this building is happening and they're constructing it. And it was due to open September this year. So in 2017, both co-directors came to see VRI, and they were very enthusiastic. We spoke after, and they wanted to collaborate. And I said, look, I mean, you're building a new theater for the 21st century. Why don't we make directly a perfect model of it that we can, you know, go inside in VR and do things in VR, like, you know, have audience in VR and connect people from all over the world? It was kind of a dreamy kind of concept. And they said, yes, let's do it. And they found the funding to do it.

So we started. It took us about a year, I think, to get to completion. So we were in March, which is when for us came the lockdown here in Switzerland. We were, like, finishing. It was almost finished. We were doing the last little touch. It was supposed to be presented before the theater opens in April. And it was meant as, like, a local network. so you could put like four, five or six computers together and people could visit the space together. So the idea was to create this theater and to show it, it was a way to show the theater that was under construction to the theater goers of Geneva. And it was meant to be left like for the whole season, for the whole first season of the theater in the hall and people could just go and, you know. So I wanted to have a representation of the theater that was welcoming, that was not like just cold with nothing, you know, just an empty building. I want to have life. So I thought, how can I put life? How can I make a space that is inclusive, that represents diversity, but is not diverse in a kind of obvious way?

So I thought, maybe the way is just to put people that are doing things, like having a dream, talking, some rehearsing, and doing things on stage. So that's like activity in many of the different spaces. And they're meant to be like loops, and so you can spend one hour or three days if you want. It's going to be always the same. but it's kind of, you know, I think people probably use it for 20 minutes or 30 minutes and they can go through, make the whole visit. So it was meant like this. It was meant to be like to discover the theater and the whole kind of digital program aspect of it, which was the second part of the project. Because, of course, I told them you make a digital model, but then it has to function. Something has to happen because otherwise it's just like a model when it's finished, you throw it away and that's it. So the point is really to kind of develop a digital program that runs along your real creation program. So they say, okay. But when the COVID arrived, we were working on a dance piece on stage with live motion capture. So it was a duo with two dancers in front of big screens.

And so they would like mock up in live and we would show the images behind them. And it was like really going super well and we were like very happy. And we had some interesting tech to play to change this really quickly. But then came this, so we had to stop. This was one month and a half before the premiere, so I had to cancel the premiere, pay everybody, bye-bye. That's it, it's finished, there's nothing we can do. And all our touring from VRI just died off, like, instantly. We had, like, 10 or 12 more cities to visit before the end of the year, so everything went down. So I was, like, a bit left, like, okay, so now what's the thing, you know? And so I thought, then in the meantime, I was talking with Liz and Michelle because I was thinking to present this project for the Venice Biennale. And I told them, you know, I was thinking about making like a network. But, you know, at the time, you know, before the crisis, I thought, you know, like a social network was very complicated. Get the people coming. Are people really going? Are people really equipped with VR? Do they really gather like in those kind of virtual spaces?

That was really like a bit of a gadget, you know. So I thought, we're not in a hurry. We can really develop something on the kind of next year or so. Little by little, we will start to get into this kind of gathering of audiences from different places in the world and live shows and stuff like that. But then talking with Liz and Michelle, I told them that was the plan. And they say, yeah, but, you know, now is like the serious good moment to get into this kind of projects because that's the big thing that everybody's talking about. And I was like, okay. So we said, okay, so let's reconsider everything. So I went to see the theater and I said, look, you know, everything that has to do with live, I just cancel it. Let's forget about it. We had also a show for the big stage that was open in two years with a lot of projections and mock-up and whatever. I said, look, you know, I'm not in the mood of imagining like a huge show for a big stage that will never be traveling anywhere because, you know, it's so complicated. So I said, I think we should like really consider like starting this digital program like now, now.

And that was the thing. So we said, but we decided to make the network ourselves. So the multi-user network, we decided because we didn't want to go into VRChat or any of those kind of existing platforms which are very restricted. And our project is so complicated. So we said, no, we need to have our own network. So I was really lucky to find one of those geniuses. His name is Pierre-Higord Bertin. He's a very good developer, and he really got the thing going. And now we have a network. We can connect, you know, like 30, 40, probably more people joining together. During Venice, we had people from like 17 different countries connected, like China, South Africa, India, USA, you know, together, and no problem. So that was a big, bold move because, like, I was not so sure that we would pull it off, you know. But then we did. And the last weekend we were panicking because there was some serious problem, of course, because we tested all the network with bots, you know, like bots.

So because you cannot really get like 30 or 40 or 50 people from around the world to connect together to test your system, you know, especially when you have to do it in two months. So we say, okay, let's do it with bots. But then when we brought some Asian bots and it was just like stopping, all the animation would just like stop and freeze after every two minutes. So we were desperate. But then they found a solution because they're a genius. And now it runs like a Swiss cuckoo clock. So we are very happy with the system. And the other thing that we wanted to do, because also I have this digital company, so I have other dancers. So I have various dancers who are five or six dancers, and two of them, one is in Australia and the other one is in Bangalore. So I get invited to come to Switzerland, and they did it for a month or whatever. It was needed to do the recordings. but in this case, it was impossible to make them travel. So we send them to each. I mean, one, Victoria, she was supposed to be in a mock-up studio in Melbourne

with the Swedenborg University because that's a collaboration we're starting. So that should work fine. But then Melbourne got into lockdown. So she was stuck at her mom's house in Sydney with her kids and partner. And on the other side, she was in the studio, but she only could work with the Rococo suit. So I had two Rokogosudas, and one to Sydney and one to Bangalore, and then we connected them together with some text report, a local text report. And we managed to connect three different mock-up systems together and to work simultaneously without any lag, really. And we worked for the whole month of August, like three or four hours per day connected live. We have a Zoom connection to talk to each other, and on top of that, we have this live connection of those three mock-up systems. And what they did, my guys, they did that we can connect any mock-up system together. It doesn't matter to anyone. We just bring them together into Unity, and it works. So this is massive for us because this is really like a very useful tool

because, of course, we did what we did, but the same system can be adapted to any kind of project. It's really something we want also to share with other people. We want to bring in people to also help us make this system be better and have more possibilities. So it's very kind of interesting. So what happened really is that we had to accelerate everything. We had to accelerate all this kind of thinking, shrink it into two months, and say, okay, let's do it as an impulse and say that's the moment. Let's not think about it. and now we are in the situation that I did a piece that I think maybe, you know, will tour, so I will start touring from Geneva. And so, like, I would be traveling without traveling anymore. And, you know, for a company like me that is traveling all year long, touring their, you know, live pieces, that's a big, big kind of change. But it's quite interesting also to think how we are going to get into the circuit of diffusion

with this kind of immaterial project that brings not a lot of kind of problems. You know, like we're talking about, you know, doing it in China, for instance, but China, you know, it's not so easy to connect on the Internet in China. So there's the great firewall of China. So, you know, like doing live stuff between China creates some new problem and the distances. But then it works. I mean, that's what's amazing. I mean, we also have people from China connecting. So somehow this is feasible, you know, and we develop it ourselves. So then there's no licensing. There's no string attached to anyone. We do whatever we want with our system. And we want to develop in a kind of open source also mentality because that's useful, you know, for everybody, I think. Yeah, so I had a chance to see the La Comédie virtual and it's an experience where it's a performance, so there's a specific time I have to show up, use the Oculus Rift to be able to get in. And then there's entering on the outside of this theater, which after I saw the piece, you said, OK, this theater hasn't actually been finished being built yet.

So you're actually getting a virtual representation of an actual theater that is going to be built in Geneva. But we're in this model that you created. And it sounds like that started around a year ago or so. As I was coming into the show, what my experience was is that I accidentally hit a button or I think I teleported. So I was like moving around the map, teleporting around the map. And then I found where the show was going to happen. And then I like traced the yellow line back outwards where I was just teleporting, where I was able to find the entry point. Like I almost would have preferred to not have that map because I ended up getting lost of like getting thrown into like the basement of like, okay, where am I supposed to? And it was, as a viewer, I was like a little stressful to be like, oh, there's a show that's about to start. And here I'm stuck in the basement in the coat room with these people dancing in this little room. Once I found where the actual performance was going to be, there's a little bit of relief. Like, okay, a side relief. I know how to get here. But then I think I accidentally teleported away again. And so then I was like, oh, crap, I need to get back.

And so, but then I was able to trace the yellow line back out to the entrance and then to see where I spawned. And then, actually, my audio wasn't working, I wasn't hearing, so I actually had to restart. That was more of the audio driver of my computer, because whenever you install Oculus, it sort of hijacks my audio driver, and I had to uninstall that driver. Anyway. Oh man this is like a nightmare It like so many things where all these systems sometimes conflict with each other So there stuff that I had to deal with on the back end but I got the audio So like because I entered and I didn hear anything at first I was like, I'm pretty sure I'm going to be like hearing something. So then I had to quit and back in. I figured out the audio driver issues. So then I was like, okay, I'm here. I know where it is. I can hear things. So that was some of the onboarding, like thrashing that I went through that is kind of stressful because you have a performance. You have to show up. You have to figure out the technology. You have to debug all these things that may or may not be working, which I'm sure on your end, you're doing the same thing. And so we're all trying to, like, figure out how to get everything running.

But, yeah, I don't know. I guess I would have preferred to not have a map to be able to get lost and to maybe only have access to that map after the show to be able to explore around. Because one of the other things that happened as I was coming in is that I saw all these prerecorded animations. And I was like, okay, these are clearly on a loop. So then when I get to the actual performance, there's this question in my mind is like, OK, is this just another pre-recorded animation? I'm seeing on the wall these live feeds that look like live feeds, but they could also just be video recordings that are projected on the wall. And then I asked after the show, I was like, OK, was that live? And he said, yeah, it was live. There's just a 30 second delay between that video feed and what was happening in that performance. And so when I see pieces like this, I think like an underlying question I have is like, how do you determine that this is live? How do I interrogate the liveness of a live show? And an actual performance of like Sleep No More, the dancers can like look at your eyes or there could be some sort of mirroring or ways in which they're interacting with the audience.

But because they're not immersed in VR, they're looking at things through 2D screen, then they're also have this level of abstraction where they're in physical reality around the world. Some of them are together. Some of them are not. And then you have dancers that are all being projected into this shared virtual space. And you have all sorts of other ways of having them negotiate that. But I guess one question is around that liveness of the live, but also just the onboarding and other things that you're coming in. But the main question, I guess, is that making sure that the audience, when they're there, they realize that it's like a live performance and not something that's just pre-recorded. Because for me as an audience member, it's actually really hard for me to tell the difference between what has already been prerecorded versus what's happening in that moment. Well, I think that's a very good question because that was exactly my main question. And that's exactly what I was telling the team at the beginning of the work. I said, look, guys, I mean, okay, so we're doing this live thing. But if we do a live mocap that looks like a bad recorded mocap, you know, what's the point?

You know, we'd rather record it properly, you know, because, you know, now it's, I think the mock-up is more fluid, but like at first it was not that fluid. So, but still, you know, I think if we would record everything, we would have a much better quality of movement from the dancers, especially with the Rococo suits that are jumping all the time because we need to recalibrate all the time because they have, with these accelerometers, they have a lot of sliding. So there's almost nothing you can do about it. And so you just kind of integrate this kind of recalibration in the show. So, but the question of Linus is like, okay, so at first I thought maybe with the video feeds, which I didn't expect to have such a long delay, and we really tried, and it's not that easy, actually. We thought it was going to be easy, but that was not. So we will keep on trying to have not that much. But I thought that could maybe establish some kind of dialogue between the audience and the dancers and some kind of more theatrical kind of relation to the interaction, you know. But it's not really my thing. And then I thought, you know, I do dance shows. I mean, my dancers, I mean, the dancers I work with, they don't interact with the audience.

And the audience is not expecting them to interact with them. You know, they just understand the rule. I mean, the kind of unwritten rule of theater is like you sit and they dance, you know. You don't really interact with them and they start talking to you. But, like, generally they don't. So I thought I don't have to. It's like it's not forcing to do an interaction with the audience because it's in VR, which I think, by the way, is kind of a wrong exception. and VR doesn't have to be interactive to me. I mean, it can be, but it doesn't have to. So I thought, okay, so still I have the problem with the line. So how am I going to make people understand that it's live? So I thought, maybe I have to give signs, like more signs that will kind of make them understand that it's live. So the first sign was to put the video stream from each spaces so you see what's happening in each studio. So you see Victoria in the mom's room. You see us in the studio. you see Diyah in Bangalore, and you have a clock. So you have a clock beside the screen, so you know what time it is. So I thought, okay, so at least we can realize, oh, it's 11, you know,

yesterday, 11 p.m., and it's very, oh, it's 7 o'clock in the morning in Sydney, you know. So it kind of starts to make you realize. And then I thought the piece we were working on with the duo, with the mo-cap in front of the screens, I thought actually that's what I was doing. I was demonstrating the motion capture and showing the result at the same time. And I was quite effective, actually, and I think the piece was really interesting and nice. So I thought, hmm, maybe I can do the same in VR, because I thought, first I thought I wanted to put projections. I thought I was going to put, like, virtual screens and kind of reproduce those screens. And then I thought, this is stupid. Why do you want to put 2D screens when you have a 3D space? You know, you just put the dancers. I thought, okay, so I'm going to put the mock-up space. So I'm going to put the grid, which is the grid, which is the reference for the dancers where they dance in Geneva. And then there's the grid that Victoria has in her bedroom and then that Dia has in the studio. So these three layers of these three different mock-up spaces

come on top of each other. So that's where they unite. So that's where they are together. So you can see the space where they unite, where they are together. And then on the other side of the room, you have like a set with a kind of quick kind of theatrical set and you and then you start to see them appear in a desert and then it's a forest so you see that double that triple you know that like another body of themselves but like doing the same thing but on the other side of the room in a different kind of situation so i thought maybe with these three elements i think there shouldn't be too much doubt but still of course there is doubt because there is the doubt that we cheat and that we put like, you know, that is not a real stream, it's not a real video, it's a recorded thing. But like at the end also, because there's no more screen and sometimes people are like, oh, but the end is recorded. No, everything is live. Why would I record it, you know? It's like, it's easier for us to do it live than to record it, you know. Because when you have dancers doing it live anyway, then you don't, you know, you do everything live. You don't need to kind of mix up with animation. You just try to find solution with the liveness of it.

So I thought that between those elements, which I think are conceptual elements that get you understanding the thing. And the fact that I think that the way they move is a very kind of natural, they have a very kind of natural way to move and a very kind of, there is a liveness to their movement, which I think you cannot recognize. But now, saying that, we did the piece in one month, so for 20 a bit more minutes with developing all the text. So I'm more at a point to say, okay, now this is like a first kind of guess of what we can do. And then from there, I can work again the same amount of time and with the same amount of money or more as possible. And then I can like really finish the piece and start to get into like better transition and more kind of effects and like be a bit more than just trying to build something that works and that is kind of coherent, you know. But for me, it's very important that that's why I don't like it. Even though some people say, oh, it's okay that there's 30 seconds, delay, da-da-da,

but I don't like doubts. I don't think it's a good thing when you get into a piece and you have doubts. I think everything should be there, and you should kind of be ready to think for yourself. But like, oh, I'm doing right, oh, I'm doing wrong, I'm in the right place, I'm in the wrong place. This kind of thing I think is unnecessary. You have to establish very quickly that the audience can go everywhere, that there's no restriction. When they go into the space of the dancers, they become invisible. When the show starts, we think of their name. They cannot speak anymore with the microphones. You know, we try to have this kind of, to establish some conditions that are kind of, okay, oh, I got it. Okay, it's starting. Okay, you know. So you don't, like, oh, I'm right, I'm wrong, you know. And I think there's still probably some little questions that we need to find answers. But still, I think it kind of works. I mean, I was very happy with the solution because from the moment I had the solution, I was not restricted anymore by the conceptual problem. And again, contemporary dance is very mechanic. I mean, the way I understand it, it's like you have to put a mechanic.

And when the mechanic is in place, you start playing. It's like football or soccer, you know, like very few rules, like play with the feet, don't touch with the hand, the other one against, you're marking the goal, and it's that soccer. And you can see it from two kilometers away that these kids are playing soccer. It's very recognizable. And so, you know, I wouldn't call it improvisation. Soccer is not improvisation, but you have to be reactive to the rules and to the strategy. So you give the rules, you give the strategy to the team, and then you start to develop the movement inside. So that's the way I work. So in a system where there's a lot of technology and position, because the dancer is not easy because they don't have VR headsets. They have to look on monitors. So for all dancers on our side, they have big screens. but for Dia and especially Victoria in her bedroom she has like just a small screen to kind of more or less know where she is you know to have some kind of space connection with the others you know so there's a lot of improvement what we want to do now is to put some headsets

so that maybe they could have like a Quest type of headsets and then they could see each other be in front of each other so then they would go much further and also if you would have like an equivalent mock-up studio on the other side then you could do things much more precise and much more daring in terms of movement and choreography. So it's really the beginning, you know. But it can be other things. You know, I'm in Geneva, and I did a residency at CERN, which is a particle physics lab, very famous. And we have the big top physicists. So I can invite a physicist to my studio, put him in the mock-up, get another one in Australia. They meet together. They can make a conference worldwide, you know, and live. And they can even work together if there was of any interest of them, of being mo-capped and work together, you know. So I think it opens, like, different possibilities. It's not only about making a piece. It's about making kind of a combined digital space. Because I believe that in the future, like in the near future, at least we will have this kind of combined events where we have to combine real and digital because, you know, people cannot travel so easily

and we want to have, like, conferences. We want to have, you know, so we want to have both. So I think that's a little bit the line that we're following now with this project. So it's not only making a piece, it's really making a tool. Yeah, I know at the Venice Film Festival this year, there was another performance called Double, but it wasn't live. It was just a prerecorded, and the only reason they had it as a performance was to set the intention for you to make it feel like it was a live show that you were going to. And so I think this is going to be a perennial issue with any virtual performance of the line between what is prerecorded, what's real-time, because it's a bit of a cat and mouse. Yeah, but it's like playback in music, you know. Some big artist, you know, Madonna, she does playback because she cannot breathe otherwise. So do you accept it as an audience? Do you want the real Madonna or do you want the moving Madonna? So that's your choice. And as an audience also, and I think audience will select, you know, what is their point. I want to see Fanny Condora, which is a live show on VRChat with live actors.

They have, like, eight actors, and he's really, really live. And I was, like, unfortunately, I was, like, kicked out at some point of the VR chat, whatever, you know, because VR chat is very strange, and it sends you to very strange places sometimes, like, poof, and you're out, and then you have to find your way back, you know. But I was quite admirable on how they manage the liveness of it. Yeah. It was in a very difficult environment, but he was, like, really live and, like, okay, So it's very theatrical, they do a lot of live interaction, like this kind of, oh, they talk to you, you talk to them, you know so that easier to show the liveness of it But yeah I mean still to tell you the truth I questioning myself you know the interest I mean apart from the kind of intellectual interest But I think that artistically there something different And then when I see the dancers how they behave, how they talk, and how the piece is getting better every day. And that's another one that maybe we should talk about. Because, you know, what I like very much about VR is the fact that you can retouch everything. When you do a movie that says you're done.

I mean, if you don't like something, you have to live with it for the rest of your life. You cannot re-change. But in VR, you can. If you don't like something, you change the color. You just change the color and make a new glute. No problem. So it's closer to the live performance. When I do live performance, I watch the show at the dance. Okay, this, that. Maybe I change the end. Maybe I change the order of the scene. Maybe I cut. Maybe I add, you know. And maybe after one year, that's when the piece is really right, like really, like, nice, you know. And you see it again. You're like, wow, it's changed so much, you know. It's like, yeah, we just found the right. So this piece has been evolving in those 12 days, It's, you know, 11 days of festival. Every day they do it a little bit better, a little different. And so it's improving every day, which wouldn't happen with a prerecorded one. So maybe if you come on the first day and then you come on the last day, you probably will see the day. And some people did, and they would see the difference, just like they do when they come to see a live show. Some people repeat. It's rare, but it happens. And they say, oh, I saw that you changed this, you changed that. It's much better now. I didn't understand it.

Now I understand. So the live is not only being live, it's also being able to change and to modify and to say, stop, start, come to me, you know, give instruction to each other to organize the space. Because they have this Zoom connection while they dance, so they talk a lot to each other. So you don't hear it, which was the question also, should we hear the dancers? But then I thought, no, because if we have a technical problem, we're going to go like, oh, we have a technical problem. Okay, do this. Okay, do that. You know, and I thought that's, you know, it's a downer. So I don't want people to hear like technicians talking about technical problems that they don't see, you know. So I thought, no, okay, let's. And it's interesting because they feel really free so they can talk about whatever they want. It doesn't matter as long as it works, you know, so they can make a joke. So it's very playful. And, again, it's something that we discovered, and I think we're going to use more as the tool to kind of create what they don't have. I mean, they are physical people. They love each other.

You know, we know each other. We're really good friends and family almost, and we're separated. You know, our bodies are not together anymore. So we kind of reconstructed our kind of intimacy, you know, through those Zoom calls and working together. And, you know, especially for Victoria, because Victoria, she's alone. I mean, she's her family, but she's like alone with no technician, nobody, like in the bedroom, you know. And I always ask her, I say, how do you feel? And she's like, yeah, I don't know. I mean, when I connect, I'm with you guys. I'm not in Sydney. I'm not in Geneva. I'm with you guys. And that's, yes, I don't think more. I'm like, I'm in the present of moving and doing whatever we talk about that I'm supposed to do, you know. And it's very funny to see, like, the images. Like, sometimes when I go inside, I only look at what they do on the screen because it's really funny to see what they do, really, to see what is the result, you know. So there's a lot of meta kind of layers, I think, in this piece. And these, again, are the artistic tools that are available with this kind of technology,

which is to kind of, you know, I think in Finding Pandora, they have also actors in different places, you know, they're not together in the same place. And again, theoretically, they can do this piece from their bedroom, you know, and just connect and go, oh, Pandora, Pandora, you know. There is really something, I think, that is happening. And now the crisis of movement of artists, of course. So we're like, okay, so what are we going to do? Like I had this show in October in France, one of the last shows that I had. And I just found out in the newspaper that there's a new red zone in France. And probably if we go, we have to do a quarantine on the way in and the way back. So I'm not going to go to France to quarantine for, you know, which is like very close from here, like hundreds of kilometers. So, you know, it's very, very difficult to travel and to move. So this kind of technology, I think, and possibilities, and not only technology, also the network, the connection, the people. How are we going to get this to the people?

You know, how can you be in a film festival and then at the same time in another festival and at the same time in Geneva and at the same time? And can you bring people to, you know, like audiences together? can you joint by representation you have 10 vr so you buy for 10 and the other one buy for 10 you know how is the diffusion of how are we gonna tour this piece so in your piece there's like three different sections of the piece and i think with dance there's a part of a non-verbal communication that's happening and so it's really left up to the viewer to really project onto what the underlying structure or narrative or what's trying to be said. And when I see a piece like this, then I get out of it and it's like, okay, how do I match with what was intended to be communicated with what I experienced to know how well that using dance as a medium could work as a form of expression? So maybe you could just briefly describe your intention for what you were trying to say with this piece. well I think this piece has

this kind of different layers of understanding of course I think the obvious question of the separation of the fact that those bodies are separated and cannot be together so they have to find another way to be together and then when they are together they don't make a big deal about it it's not the subject of the piece the subject is not about being separated it's about being together so I think there's always like a double lecture to the thing it's not like a concrete story really comes from what do you think of it? What do you make of it? Now, again, you know, I wish we could go further and we could like really continue to develop this. We had to go like somehow really quickly. So we discover things, you know, things kind of come out, you know, by themselves. I know the question of when you come in, how you come in, how to receive the audience is so new. We have to invent everything. So that was also like a big discovery, how people come in, what are the tech problems, what are their problems on their side, which are sometimes most of their tech problems are on their side, not on our side.

So how do we deal with this? How do we get people in? How do we teach them? And how do we introduce a life piece? I know the question we talked about before. And then you have the end, which I think is kind of a cosmogony. It's like kind of thinking about who we are and what is this? What is this thing of being, you know, mortal, real, unreal, connecting, disconnected, reconnecting, and then just like disappearing? So, you know, it doesn't have much more pretentious than that, I think, to talk about life. And I think it has to do with the life that we are living now. But I don't want to make it like a kind of a COVID type of piece. It's not about it. It's just that it's the future. And it's like, yeah, it can be the future. I hope not. so finally what do you think the ultimate potential of virtual reality might be and what it might be able to enable well i mean if i had the answer i think i would have a villa in malibu i met people that are futurists and get paid properly i think to think about those things

i don't know man i mean i think it's very difficult to know because what i see i don't see people buying headsets. I don't see my friends having VR headsets. I see my friends loving what I do and other things that they get to see when they get the opportunity. So I think that's really a difficulty. But there's things that are, I think, coming up. So maybe it's not VR, it's like kind of XR in general. I think it's more about networking and kind of mixed realities, like mixing reality with virtual reality, you know, not making a Zoom conference, but making a VR conference, or like you are in VR, but on the screen it's in 2D, but like it's more interesting because there's more things that you can do in your environment. So this kind of manipulation of environment and sharing and also working simultaneously. We have this project, which is called Virtual Crossing, which was a project that 12S, the funding of Arts Council in Switzerland, and they opened during the shutdown, which was about trying to imagine new ways.

So we presented the project, and the project is about creating clusters of artists, of digital artists around movement and motion capture that work simultaneously, like one cluster in Argentina, maybe one in China, one in a different place in America. And then we start to exchange. We work, we research together, we connect for a weekend, or I don't know, we have to find exactly what kind of way to do it. And I feel that there is people are needing this, you know. They need to share, like, network stuff. You know, all these kind of things are so difficult to do that maybe someone has a solution for the headset we're looking for and we can give them, you know, other solutions. This kind of, which is already happening. And I think the crisis has given, like, a big move forward, you know, for the Zoom generation, you know. I didn't even know what Zoom was, and I'm pretty geeky, you know. so I don't know it's very hard to predict really what's going to happen with VR you know the headset I mean when you do a festival like Venice

you want to see things you have to be like really patient you know because like you know sound issues it doesn't work and this and that and you know conflicts between one program the other between steam and this and I'm like sometimes I'm so it's difficult you know so it's not very practical I find is very good in the location-based, but the location-based got killed by the COVID. So how are we going to really find a new thing? I think the location-based was really the kind of future, you know, obvious, even for art installation, not even for commercial stuff. But now, you know, can you really share headsets between people? You know. Is there anything else that's less than something you'd like to say to the Emerson community? Well, I think, I mean, we have an opportunity. I think we shouldn't be opportunistic, but I think there's an opportunity because, you know, these worlds are very flexible.

There's so many things that you can do with the same object. You know, like with the piece that we did, we can make a 2D video. We can make even 3D sculptures. You can make so many things out of the same thing. So the multi-entry and the multi-diffusion of the same project, I think it's something that is super interesting. And we are interested to connect with people that have the similar kind of question and people that are interested in the question of coming from the performing art world that have this kind of interest in looking at VR and XR, but from the performing art point of view, which brings live performances, but not only. Not only is not only about being live, it's about being alive. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining me today on the podcast. So thank you. Yes. So nice talking to you. And thank you for all the good job you do watching so many VR and so patiently. Great. I'll see you again in the virtual space. Okay. All right. See you. Bye. Thanks so much for listening to the Voices of VR podcast.

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