Nelly Lewis & VR Creative Arts

In the beginning of 2022, Nelly Lewis submitted a proposal to OnBoardXR: Port of Registry as a first exploration of her mime practice in virtual reality. At her intake session, Nelly described the importance of the audience being able to see her real-life face and body to convey her craft. Her proposal for Here and There aimed to explore a simultaneous performance where she pupetted a laughing, male-presenting avatar using a vr headset while appearing as a distressed female-presenting performer on her 2D webcam feed.

HERE AND THERE

The OnBoardXR community was intrigued by this exploration of simultaneous dual performance presented to the audience as a purposeful provocation about power, gender, and expression. Nelly disclosed she had little-to-no access or experience for 3D modeling, programming, or performing in-headset and the OnBoaredXR community designers and developers assisted in creating a 3D environment with a central stage for her avatar to perform in front of a media frame to display her 2D webcam feed. Nelly dressed her virtual avatar in a similar costume to the one she wore in real life and rehearsed “peaking” out from her headset to suggest an “awareness” of her virtual self.

Controversial Content

Working with Nelly Lewis also gave us an opportunity to challenge and examine our programming guidelines and protocols when an early rehearsal included unexpected imagery of divisive sexual and political content as well as infringement of third-party copyright.

The OnBoardXR community calmly and constructively expressed concerns about their safety and comfort to leadership who were able to flag and adjust the content to meet all guidelines and invite the artist’s continued participation in the festival and monetization.

The Cyber Performance Institute

Following the collaboration with OnBoardXR, Nelly’s company VR Creative Arts began holding monthly Roundtables, funded by a grant from Arts Council England to “invite Dance, Theatre and Digital Arts practitioners to have an open discussion about what we want for the future of VR Theatre / Dance Performance” as a springboard initiative for a training program called The Cyber Performance Institute.

This case-study demonstrates how swiftly the OnBoardXR community can educate and empower individual artists to explore web-based virtual reality for the first time and bring our learnings and creative culture to new communities and institutions.