Conceptual Virtual Reality Performance

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The Concept

Extrema is part of the Partitions series of works, which also includes the album release Defragmentation, and continues the artist’s exploration of the self and mental health.

The performance explores the state of burnout and working beyond the beyond of one’s own limits, into a space of ether that is further than this known physical plane and pushing into an unknown space of emotions and multidimensional selves. This performance is reserved for when I am feeling these emotions myself, to give the most transparent performance possible.

The Process

Similar to past VR performances of the artist, the piece is controlled entirely from within a VR headset, including both the audio and visual elements of the performance. Through unique software and networking, the artist has created a live-generative tool for depicting this story in real-time in a cinematic performance style of his own, all the while sharing a portal into his behind-the-scenes view of his virtual control center.

In multiple iterations of the performance over the years the visual content and UI has been modified and improved. It has been adapted to different screen sizes, as well as immersive spaces to envelop an audience in the story being communicated.

The Poem

Stretched, from our cores
To the poles
The fading edges
Fold in holes
The everything of the everyday
Pulling wildly as we turn
The ripping tin of the skin we’re in
an unknown tone turned firm
We’ve gone too far there’s nothing left,
Only geometric storms
Of broken time, in tesseracts
Made from lives we left unborn

We reach inside to find a mess,
Bleeding out with ripe soul sweat
A kind of mind with kind inside
Give us that let’s drink it wet
Let’s slurp its swirls and ride its waves
higher than nostalgia peaks
And when we slip into tomorrow’s cracks
Let’s drink the gooeys that it leaks
A foreign fold, a patterned fabric,
Fragmented as it lands
Looking out and looking up
Are these even our own hands?