Active Replica

For OnBoardXR: Cruise, a Canadian immersive company, Active Replica, was introduced to the team via performer Xriel Tarr to offer Technical support to deploy a custom client of Mozilla Hubs at XRTHEATER.LIVE and design suppport for 3D assets.

Sponsorship

Active Replica’s Jacob Ervin and Valerian supported OnBoardXR with In-Kind Sponsorship for OnBoardXR: Cruise, OnBoardXR: Below Deck, and OnBoardXR: Mythos & Monsters. This "soft support" included maintaining XRtheater.live as a test-server for deploying webVR features or prototypes that may have disrupted Active Replica’s primary business on their company server and limited staff support by Anais Ron to help enhance and optimize certain visual assets, Stephen Flach for early stage management and Paola for livestreaming the events to a secondary streaming partner.

During OnBoardXR: Mythos & Monsters, Active Replica provided a 3D Lobby-Aquarium Scene, which became known as The Sponsor Lobby and showcased the company’s standout design capability.

During OnBoardXR: Port of Registry, Active Replica offered to include a modest fiscal sponsorship to help OnBoardXR’s overhead costs and allow ticket sales to continue to be split amoung OnBoardXR participants.

MozFest: A Case-Study in Interoperable Metaverses

Serendipitously, OnBoardXR: Port of Registry applied and was accepted into Mozilla Festival (known as ‘MozFest’) as Active Replica was tapped to design and host the Festival’s virtual campus.

This campus aimed to connect multiple custom clients of Mozilla Hubs so users could “portal” between different experiences. As a case study for interoperable metaverses, MozFest granted Active Replica permission to incorporate OnBoardXR’s lobby directly into the virtual conference itself as a dedicated “wing.” Participants of the conferece could visit the OnBoardXR lobby by clicking on a doorway which linked to a Room url on OnBoardXR’s separate server. This mirrored the exact mechanic of portaling into breakout rooms within the virtual conference itself, with a minor inconvenience of requiring the user to repeat the sign-in menu process.

During showtimes, participants could join the live performance by navigating the to theater wing and clicking on the doorway. After the performance, attendees could return to the conference via the original portal. When shows were not in progress, Sage Freeman designed a stunning port environment where visitors could explore and learn more information about the performances.

OnBoardXR premiered six live performance prototypes in OnBoardXR: Port of Registry on March 10, 2022 for MozFest passholders before embarking on a run of shows for the general public. At this time, the portal was disabled to prevent non-ticketed attendees from entering. This successful handshake between three separate ecosystems (OnBoardXR, MozFest and Active Replica) running their own clients on their own servers provided a compeling framework for a web of disconnected 3D virtual communities chosing to allow occasional traffic to each others users and content.

The Constellation Project Pilot

When Active Replica launched a pilot of ‘The Constellation Project’ to connect multiple private communities using their own Mozilla Hubs Cloud instances to share each other’s live events/experiences, they asked OnBoardXR to serve as their “theater wing.” This opportunity allowd us to test an “OnBoardXR presents…” model of supporting asynchronous creatorship in the immersive web beyond the protoype or hackathon stage, providing support for a repertory of singular “Mainstage” productions from previous OnBoardXR participants. These encore events highlighted the innagural year of OnBoardXR with more formal support to elevate the run-time, visulas, marketing and attendance of these original prototypes.

Productions

Active Replica was often listed as a producer on one of the OnBoardXR acts each season. These prototypes recieved additional internal support from Active Replica’s broader staff, often prototyping an application of live events the company wished to offer to its own client base. OnBoardXR’s community and team offered equal support and services to this performances, leading to a familiar group of recurring participants.

This Land Is Island

Xriel Tarr and Dasha Kittredge were approached by Brendan Bradley to join OnBoardXR: Cruise. The team partnered with Active Replica to devise an immersive performance taking places on a deserted island with a marooned couple. The audience was prompted to choose which character they wished to follow and offer relationship advice before teaming up to defeat a Kraken, puppetted by Kevin Laibson.

Haroun Desert / Magid

Xriel Tarr, Dasha Kittredge, and Tyler Graham submitted a proposal to OnBoardXR: Below Deck to expand upon a concept developed at PXR Conference, hosted by Single Thread and Electric Company Theatre. In Haroun Desert audiences encountered an unreliable protagonist avatar riding an animated horse model to obscure Mozilla’s half-body avatars without legs. Participants were instructed to convince another actor to give them a potion, which would ultimately give the villain-protagonist magic powers to alter his scale, summon creatures and unlock the audiences ability to ‘fly.’

Haroun Desert was invited and included in the "OnBoardXR presents..." Charting The Stars season for Active Replica’s Constellation Project. The team re-workshopped and re-branded the story under the new name 'Magid', drawing from the creators’ own culture and history.

Jazz Organ

Xriel Tarr submitted a proposal to OnBoardXR: Port of Registry to explore the potential for collaboration to repurpose a 3D artist’s existing assets into an original narrative experience. Dax Norman’s animated models were re-imagined as a cabaret inside the chest of the Emcee avatar, building upon earlier prototypes from Non-Player Character for animation tables and shape keys that could be triggered by the cue system or the performer’s vr controller.

Parable of the Sower

MozFest engaged Active Replica to host composer and librettist, Toshi Reagon at for a short work and conversation inspired by Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower - An Opera with technical and managerial support from Valencia James and Michael Morran. MozFest participants could join multiple breakout rooms as a “watch party” of the live event to maximize the number of concurrent viewers in-world. After the festival, the team continued to host conversations and workshops with Toshi Reagon as low impact events to scale room capacity and multi-room broadcasting.

Seikuken

In the Summer of 2022, Active Replica offered its first ‘Artist In Residency’ program to Xriel Tarr on the heels of his multiple OnBoardXR prototypes and his adjunct teaching at New York University's Lab. The resulting performance Seikuken synthesized music, 3d animation, and user interactions with “ceremony” design by Joost Eggermont and technical and managerial operation by Michael Morran. Proximity triggers similar to Strings: Prisoner and Pier to Peer altered avatars and environment. Animation tables built on the earlier prototypes from Jazz Organ and Non-Player Character.

Staffing and Tools

OnBoardXR’s community and showcases were an opportunity for Active Replica’s team to train and test live event coordination and development in a low stakes environment. Many early interns or part-time employees went on to join the company full time after a few seasons of OnBoardXR, becoming proficient in asset design, stage management, ticketing, and livestreaming. During OnBoardXR: Port of Registry, OnBoardXR organized “office hours” for Staff to unpack their process and best practices with the community, which laid a foundation for Active Replica’s Summer Immersive Bootcamp to teach other creator communities.

Active Replica also sources talent for both their staffing and content needs directly from the success stories of OnBoardXR. Clemence Debaig was engaged to perform her OnBoardXR: Mythos & Monsters prototype Unwanted Waters at Active Replica’s official launch event. Meanwhile Roman Miletich and Michael Morran were offered full-time employment based on their experience developing cue system customizations and event coordation with OnBoardXR.