Events

A greyscale event banner with the core event details, styled like a zine with black labels and a hand-drawn border with a ticket, wifi symbol, camera, and lightbulb in each corner.
Sunday, December 18, 2022
1:00 – 3:00 PM MDT
Virtual Event
Register Here

Learn how TouchDesigner can build virtual interactivity and truly hybrid audience experiences when paired with the Internet of Things.

As we approach the 2-year anniversary of COVID-19, theatres are returning to more familiar strides and losing the awkward gait of their digital pivots. But where does this leave creators who wandered deep into the heart of these strange, pixelated lands – and who don’t want to be found? Savanna Harvey is one such roving creator, building an interdisciplinary home nestled in the clearing between theatre, game development, and smart technologies. This past fall, the Associated Designers of Canada matched her with designer, Matt Waddell, so she could learn the TouchDesigner software and add this new tool to her toolbox. Now at the end of their time together, Savanna will share her builds, from technical back-end to interactive demos, and map out the creative pathways artists can trek for designing digital and hybrid performance that is live, interactive, immersive…and physical. Learn how TouchDesigner can build interactivity into live, virtual performances and how it can network together physical and digital stages for a truly hybrid audience experience when paired with the Internet of Things. Matt will join Savanna at the end of the presentation for an open-floor Q&A. A group conversation will follow in Discord for anyone wishing to chat further about extended reality and creative technologies in performance.

Presentation Outline
  • Concepts and Tools
    • Extended Reality (virtual, augmented, mixed)
    • Experience Design
    • Interaction Design
    • Digital Dramaturgy
    • OBS
    • TouchDesigner
  • Touch Designer: Livestreaming / Digital Broadcast
  • Touch Designer: Virtual Interaction Design
  • Touch Designer: Mixed Reality Interaction Design
  • Q&A
  • Discord: Post-Presentation Chats
Virtual Hospitality
  • Questions: Please send any questions via the Contact Page.
  • Links and Accounts: Event links will be emailed to registered participants closer to the date. If you’re planning to join afterwards in Discord, you will need a Discord account (free). You can register for one ahead of time here.
  • Captions: Auto-captions will be available through-out, but may not be 100% accurate at all times.
  • Participation: The main event will be livestreamed to your device. Audience interaction during the presentation is available through a text-based Chat. After the event, Savanna will join participants in Discord for a more informal group conversation. Your camera/microphone will be available to you then, however, there is no pressure to use your camera while in Discord. Please join the conversation and participate in the ways that best support your comfort and access.
  • Privacy: The livestreamed presentation is open to the public, but registration is required to receive event links and full details. The Discord conversation is closed, access is restricted to registered participants only and any current Discord community members.
  • Tipping: The event is completely free. If you’d like to show your support, you are encouraged to contribute to my fund for robot brains, creative technology research, and on-going public resources – like this presentation. Tipping is available at registration and a link will be shared again during the event.
  • Recording: The livestreamed presentation will be recorded. The group conversation in Discord will not.
  • Virtual Room Agreement: Participants will treat everyone with respect, care, and generosity. Participants acting in bad faith or those who do not respond graciously to correction will be removed.

 

Acknowledgements

This creative research was made possible through the Associated Designers of Canada Mentorship Program funded by the Canada Council for the Arts.

Savanna Harvey

Savanna (she/her) is an extended reality theatre-maker porting into projects with an armful of scavenged electronic parts, coils of ethernet cables, scraps of code, and a roll of duct tape. Technology, whether it be flashlights in the dark or microprocessors connected to the cloud, have always been the tools she’s turned to when engineering audience experiences. Devised, site-specific, and immersive theatre protocols have proven perfectly compatible with any of the internet of things (IOT), livestreaming and content creation, robotics, or extended reality technologies Savanna has been exploring these past few years.

Since March 2020, Savanna has supported 300+ artists adapt their work to a digital medium and has run over 15 major livestream and hybrid events. To support the community-wide challenge of creating impactful theatre during the pandemic, Savanna founded and continues to lead an ad hoc creative technology R+D laboratory. She hosts fellow geeks for collaborations and mentorships, conducting experiments in artistic alchemy and electronic explosions. She’s mentored practicum students from across Western Canada and this past year supported x2 year-long, salaried apprentices with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts. Her current focus is on capacity-building for the lab so she can lead creative research and share learning resources consistently throughout the year.

Savanna’s most recent writing/directing was a multi-year project that opened this past spring. Wastelands is an apocalyptic comedy about garbage and the pieces of trash who produce it. The clown and puppet show was performed with junk in an immersive/interactive environment made entirely out of single-use plastics. Wastelands was streamed on a custom-built, interactive digital platform in response to COVID-19 restrictions.

Matthew Waddell

Matthew Waddell is constantly seeking fresh and startling ways to examine how technology manipulates and warps our understanding and experience of the world, as well as our cultural and individual identities. With a creative practice at once organic and synthetic, his work blends images, animations, and interactive software programs to distort analog reality through a digital lens. The results are often uncanny: familiar yet otherworldly, and at times profoundly disconcerting. Matthew’s recent projects have been showcased at Contemporary Calgary, The Alberta Gallery of Art (Edmonton), Eastern Bloc (Montreal), and the WRECK CITY Residency (Calgary). www.matthewwaddell.me