Evento

Inside Our Town: A New Theatrical Experience

Discover how artists are combining hand drawn 360 imagery, projection, gesture based control and spatial audio in theatrical performance. Artist Clare Johnson will present her innovative work and process in the recent production of Thornton Wilders American theater classic, Our Town produced at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institutes EMPAC Center in Troy, NY. Clare created six intricate pen and ink drawings and one larger acrylic painting to be used as interactive digital backdrops for the production. The project involved working closely with the script to plan images that heighten the themes of the play while keeping within playwright Thornton Wilders parameters of avoiding showing the actual scenery of each setting. For the play, digital versions of the art were projected on a huge 360-degree screen above the theater space. These versions were animated digitally and controlled through motion tracking technology by one actor with hand gestures.