Embodied Synthesizer - A VR workshop experience
The thermometer at Prater Stern shows 29,8 degrees.
I’m on my way to the Vienna architecture summer school for a workshop experience.
“Embodied Sythesizer – an XR dance workshop” it’s called, held by Paula Strunden a VR researcher and artist. I met Paula a few months back in Berlin for an episode on VR Women Nr. 11.
I got so curious and after I heard she is doing a similar workshop in Vienna, I had to come.
The introduction of the workshop on the website of VAS goes like this:
„This week-long interdisciplinary workshop merges dance and virtual technologies to explore extended reality (xR). Drawing from Paula Strunden's PhD thesis on ‘Embodied Virtuality’ and her xR dance performance ‘Rhetorical Bodies,’ participants will work in groups to create a collective ‘Embodied Synthesizer.’ This synthesizer combines physical movements with auditory sounds in real-time. Using VR headsets, object trackers, and immersive software like Gravity Sketch and Manus Polygon, participants will engage in free movement, dance, and full-body VR drawing and tracking exercises. The workshop aims to foster experiences of hybrid intimacy and expanded consciousness. It will include introspection exercises, guided discussions, and culminate in an xR dance performance, open to all Summer School participants.“
As usual with VR or XR there does exist the language barrier. What does all that mean? How can that be put together in a pleasant and learn intensive workshop?
Well, Paula is a wizard when it comes to that.
It’s Sunday and the first day of the workshop. There is five of us as participating which is an incredible luxurious group size. Three women, two guys. The other members don’t have a background in VR and that is the other great part about it.
You do not need a background in VR to participate.
After giving us an introduction to the herself and an overview of the workshop we do a short meditation and then dive right into Gravity Sketch and it’s features to work on our assets and our avatars. Its an app like tilt brush with easy file sharing possibilities in which you can draw and create in VR. The goal for the next 5 days is to create a world in VR with visual assets and create sounds for this world and think of movements to trigger does sounds inside and outside of VR. The movements will be inspired by dancing lessons and our world will be one to be explored, both outside and inside VR. The afternoon is spend in Gravity Sketch and drawing and modelling assets and uploading them to mixamo.com, a website from Adobe where one can upload a 3D character and the site will rigg the character and animate it. Its still raw but it works out well for the reasons we need it for.
The next day we dive full on into the dancing part. Together with Bita Bell a Viennese based dancer we get physical. Despite the high temperatures. We dance while listening to the sounds of the surrounding area as Bita puts the focus on listening. If we want to create, we need to listen. That is as true for dancing, as it is for virtual reality. We experience ourselves within the dancing as individuals but also as part of a bigger entity. And again, that is what VR is about too.
Day 3 of the workshop we already start building our worlds in unity. Paula has a template she uses for each one of our worlds, helping to bring to life what was only a electric signal in each of our brains a few days ago. We get to think about the sounds we want to record and are released to do so. Originally the idea was to create sounds with our body, but some of the members find additional interesting ways to collect and record their sounds.
My days now are these beautiful sequences of training the senses and the body on an awareness for itself but the environment too and creating out of this awareness a joint piece of VR dancing art with visual and audio elements.
We use the first part of day 4 to prepare the five worlds we created; this part mostly is done by Paula herself, as a basic knowledge of unity is needed and she knows her own template the best. Bita returns and we add to our dancing sensations more awareness and curiosity for the upcoming performance of our piece. And a performance it is. In the afternoon we do dive into it, all together heads on and hands first. As Paula created this workshop for the Valve each of one us becomes one tracker to a body part of their choice and connects it with certain movements they might have gotten inspired by during the dancing. As the trackers are active throughout the whole of the experience, we need to move clearly and wisely during the whole performance. One of us starts putting on the VR googles and exploring the world that was created by this person. While we watch we interact too, whenever we believe it is time for it, based on our listening skills to what is happening. That way our own tracker sounds become a part of the world of someone else in VR but also a part of the whole performance that people now can watch.
It is this multi-layered moment, where even if you don’t know or see everything, those parts you do see and observe already start to build pictures and ideas in your mind and give inspiration. That is also how I would characterize the work of Paula Strunden in general. We do record the performance to not lose it in the end.
If you want to see more about us, the workshop and the performance go here:
For me this was an incredible week to encounter how playful and inspirational the work in VR is, how easy and fast one can create something powerful and how beautiful the exchange with other like-minded people can be. Thank you to Paula Strunden, Bita Bell, VAS and my 4 members of this amazing workshop experience in the city of Vienna.
