Augmented Reality Theatre



In this work, we look to create an immersive mixed reality theatre experience that involves the integration of augmented reality images with live actors.  The live actors will interact with the augmented reality effects as they perform in a fully produced theatrical production involving a set, costumes, lights and sound effects play. 

Four productions that explored this concept were produced in 2019.  AI-Pollo, a new science-fiction thriller that takes place in a dystopian future presented at ImagineRIT 2019 and S.M.O.O.C.H, a Dashboard Drama, produced for the 2019 Rochester Fringe Festival.

In 2021, we produced AR Fantasia, which combined AR effects for a live musical performance.  In 2023, we produced Singring and the Glass Guitar, an 18 minute AR dance interpretation of the classic rock opus by Utopia.

Collaborators
  • Yunn-Shan Ma, Department of Performing Arts, Rochester Institute of Technology
  • David Munnell, Department of Performing Arts and Visual Culture, Rochester Institute of Technology 
  • Marla Schweppe, 3D Digital Design, Rochester Institute of Technology
  • Kunal Shitut, Department of Computer Science, Rochester Institute of Technology
  • Jietong Chen, Department of Computer Science, Rochester Institute of Technology
  • Thomas Warfield, Dance @ RIT, Rochester Institute of Technology
  • Dan Roach, DJR Design
  • Shaun Foster, 3D Digital Design, Rochester Institute of Technology

  • Publications

  • Joe Geigel, Thomas Warfield, Yunn-Shan Ma, Dan Roach, and Shaun Foster. 2023. Music, Motion, and Mixed Reality: An Interdisciplinary, Problem-Based Educational Experience. In ACM SIGGRAPH 2023 Educator's Forum (SIGGRAPH '23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 7, 1–2. 
  • Yunn-Shan Ma, and Joe Geigel, Implementing New Live Music Experiences - A Non-Music Majors’ AR Fantasia Collaboration, The College Music Society Annual COnference 2022, Long Beach, CA, 2022
  • Jietong Chen,  Kunal Shailesh Shitut,  Joe Geigel,  David Munnell, and  Marla Schweppe, Building the Virtual Stage: A System for Enabling Mixed Reality Theatre, 2020 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces Abstracts and Workshops (VRW), Atlanta, GA, USA, 2020

  • Videos
    Singring and the Glass Guitar -- ImagineRIT 2023, Rochester, NY.
    AR Fantasia -- Frameless Symposium 2021, Rochester, NY.
    Test of AR Theatre Cueing system and framework - December 2020
    highlights from S.M.O.O.C.H., a Dashboard Drama -- 2019 FRINGE Festival, Rochester, NY.
    AR effects for AI-Pollo -- Imagine RIT 2019, Rochester Institute of Technology.