INTERFACE: Mixed Reality

Can a group of people occupy the same imagined world at the same time, in the same physical space? How can we share experience through mixed reality?

Multidisciplinary artist Lars Jan and Talis Reks, who is the lab manager of MIT.nano Immersion Lab and a CEO/founder of DreaMR Labs, discuss the possibilities of combining mixed reality, narrative, and live performance—at stadium-sized scale.

In their individual work, they each integrate physical and imagined worlds through emerging technologies. Currently, they are collaborating on ROAM, a large-scale, outdoor, immersive performance in development at EMPAC. Jan’s directing and writing builds narratives for live audiences actively moving through events rather than seated outside them. Improvisation and failure are part of the process for testing Reks’s XR system architecture: untethered headsets, networking, tracking, and synchronization for forty bodies in motion across a stadium field. ROAM’s combination of live performance and immersive virtual layers generates a unique metaphysical experience.

Stay afterward for refreshments and informal conversation at Evelyn’s Café.