Virtual Reality and Theater: Simulacra and Simulation | William Cusick | TEDxJerseyCity

Theater has evolved, adapted and transformed to embrace new technologies for over 2,500 years. Virtual Reality, as both concept and technology, has been rapidly developing for the past 50 years and is now approaching a tipping point of accessibility. As the tools of VR creation become readily available to theater artists, questions emerge: How does a live performance medium wield VR as a storytelling tool? What are the possibilities for a wired audience? Can a simulation of live theater, outside of the live performance space, transcend its own theatricality? The histories of these two art forms are fundamentally connected and suggest many ways forward into the unknown.
William Cusick has written and directed two feature films, both highly stylized combinations of live action and animation: Pop Meets the Void, and Welcome to Nowhere (Bullet Hole Road). Cusick’s video projection designs for theater, music and dance have been featured in productions around the world, on Broadway and as representative of American Theater Design in the 2011 Prague Quadrennial. Cusick received the 2007 Henry Hewes Design Award for Projection Design for The Coast of Utopia on Broadway at Lincoln Center Theater. Cusick is on faculty at The New School in New York City where he teaches creative technologies and filmmaking at the School of Drama.
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