The company Of Curious Nature takes the audience into a fascinating world in which dance and technology become an exciting unity. Together with the CyberRäuber, experts in the synthesis of virtual reality and theatre, Helge Letonja and the dancers of OCN lift movement into a technology-based parallel universe. Real performance becomes digital dance. Bodies of muscle and bone transform into avatars of bits and bytes that animate the virtual space in a variety of movements. 

The audience becomes part of the experience, can participate and become creative themselves: With the help of VR glasses, the audience enters a virtual dance space and meets the avatars of the Of Curious Nature dancers.  

In the VR world, the three-dimensionality of the space and the body can be explored, and creative elements can be designed using one’s own movement. Each visitor thus creates their own experience. The boundaries between viewer and dancing avatar are shifted with casual ease.

Organized and curated by Claudia Schmitz & Nicola L. Hein | in collaboration with programmers Sven Hahne and Marco Gajardo | AR stage concept by Claudia Schmitz.

With UnStumm | Transatlantic Movements, Claudia Schmitz and Nicola L. Hein invited artists from US and Germany to a telematic real-time performances with dance, video and sound in a mixed reality format.  

Using the UnStumm AR App, as well as AR glasses and headphones, the project Transatlantic Movements developed the completely new format of a telematic mixed reality performance in real time. It brought together 6 artists from the disciplines of dance, media art and music from the USA and Germany. The audio and video streams produced by the artists, by the means of video art, music and movement, were projected with the UnStumm – Augmented Voyage AR app. 
The audience in Berlin joined the artists from Germany (Colusi, Hein, Schmitz) at bUm (Berlin), while the artists from the USA (Masaoka, Alpert, Collwes) performed together with them from New York, in a telematic fashion. 
The entire performance could be experienced live and afterwards in the UnStumm App gallery.  

Download the App: 
https://unstumm.com/augmented-voyage/ 

The dream of creating a new (wo)man was yesterday. Now we find ourselves facing new intelligent beings that transcend anything human. Welcome to dystopia! The hybrid dance performance AUTONOMOUS AVATAR by Tobias Staab focuses on the threshold between analog reality and virtual reality. In the full dome of a planetarium, two dancers find their own human bodies, only to encounter computer-generated avatars that stretch across the giant dimensions of the planetarium hemisphere. The dance performance, which premiered in December 2022, consists of three parts: In Part I, the focus is on the real dancers in space. On a circular stage covered entirely with flowers, a choreography of first steps, collapses and ever new attempts to fight against the external and internal forces of the body. In Part III, the dancers encounter their giant digital avatars at the dome of the planetarium, which slowly but surely take control of the movements. Part II is a 3D animated film for a full dome. The film is based on the short story The Circular Ruins by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, narrated by the German actress Sandra Hüller. The story is about a shaman whose goal is to dream a human being. When he succeeds in doing so, the layers of reality become blurred. As part of Avant Premiere, this 15-minute Part II will be shown, which was converted from a full dome film into a virtual reality experience.

The AR-Loopmachine was developed by scenographer Oliver Proske and realised together with LöhnDigital. The development basis and reference project for this new kind of combination of hardware and software is the AR dance project "Du musst Dein Leben rendern!", which premiered in 2022 and was produced by NICO AND THE NAVIGATORS in the choreography of Yui Kawaguchi. The technology combines two innovative approaches: On the one hand, a CMS system allows AR content to be synchronously transmitted to any number of devices. At the same time, the AR loop machine - comparable to a loop station for live musicians - offers the possibility for the performers to enter a dialogue with their own movements and dance a duet with themselves. 

Working in cooperation with Berlin's DOCK DIGITAL, for „Du musst Dein Leben rendern!" motion sequences were recorded with motion-capture suits and transferred to AR glasses. The relationship between analogue reality and virtual expansion shifts through this method analogously to the freely selectable viewpoint of the audience, virtual bodies multiply, change their size and proportions - the game begins. Do you have to render your life?