Brand new performance “The New New Babylon”
I am super-excited to announce the general availability of my brand new performance “The New New Babylon”. Here is the trailer:
The New New Babylon performance is an immersive experience, divided into six chapters- Awakening, Stepping, Flying, Gliding, Folding, and Vertigo. Each chapter explores different facets of the New New Babylon concept, blending art and interaction. Audience members are invited to actively participate, engaging with interactive elements that promote a sense of community and shared creativity. To create a multisensory journey, the performance integrates rich soundscapes, video projections, visual art, poetry, masks, VR, and stage props. It’s a brand new format to deliver content, quite different from more traditional keynotes and talks.
This artistic performance has a poetic, gentle, and profoundly human touch, evoking a dreamy, Magritte-like surrealism. The atmosphere is calm and harmonious, steering away from Sci-Fi or dystopian themes toward a vision that is non-aggressive, understated, and subtly utopian.
Designed for corporate and institutional clients, art galleries, and museums, the performance’s content, materials, and timing can be adapted to suit specific needs. The performance can also be organized as an online or in-situ workshop format.
The performance is now available for both online and on-stage presentations, with options for bespoke adaptations or commissions. If you’re interested, feel free to reach out!
The next step is to create a fully immersive VR headset performance with live interactions with AI voices. Already available are six Unity VR packages, each designed for distinct VR spaces in the performance, including specific controller actions that control both on-stage and in-VR lighting, and different camera angles. These packages are tailored to support the various acts of the performance. These Unity packages are developed by NUMENA, a renowned interdisciplinary creative studio from Germany, specializing in award-winning spatial design and programming.
We are also developing an API-supported LLM infrastructure to enable live interactions with AI Agents. Our goal is to facilitate real-time exploration of historical New Babylon research resources during on-stage and online sessions. This infrastructure is currently being developed by Thomas McLeish, Adjunct Lecturer — Berkeley Master of Design, and master creator of the 2018 replica of the Colloquy of Mobiles.
And here is an extract from ACT4 of Petervan’s New New Babylon Performance.
And as the cherry on top: alongside a talented young cinematographer from Flanders, I’ll be applying for one of just twelve coveted spots in the 9th edition of the Venice Biennale College Cinema — Immersive program (BCC-I).
The performance is one of the deliverables of my more ambitious transdisciplinary Artistic Research Project, where I am imagining and scaffolding a City of Play through different formats. These formats can be analog and digital artwork and productions, digital overlays, sketches, performance lectures, writings, poems, blogs, installations, soundscapes, recordings, documentaries, spaces, time capsules, curations, events, group experiences, immersions, expeditions, and exhibitions.
Petervan
Originally published at http://petervanstudios.com on November 1, 2024.
