OnBoardXR presents…‘It’s Pronounced Gybe’
Our sixth seasonal showcase premiered May 12, 2023 under the playful title It’s Pronounced Gybe as a nod to OnBoardXR’s pivot after the recent metaverse hype cycle, some duck-ing drama, and the think-tank’s love of nautical and internet culture. Prototypes include Brendan Bradley and Maurice Soque Jr’s latest musical concert where the audience generates AI art around a live, singing performer; Avin Shah’s playable story about immigration; Michael Morran’s parody of “a certain fast food chain’s branded activation in an unnamed meta-company’s world”; Failed To Render alumni, Andy North brings VR comedy clubs to your web browser; and a narrative escape room from Jason Wang, Candace Hudert, Elaina Chung and Dylin Cassidy Taylor. The showcase is overseen by OnBoardXR’s Creative Technology Strategist, Clemence Debaig.
Production & Sponsors
The Jigsaw Ensemble absorbed overhead costs while leading volunteers rebranded and reorganized OnBoardXR into a think-tank and rejuevinated its popular seasonal showcase receiving open-submissions from six participating artists.
Creative Technical Strategist: CLEMENCE DEBAIG
WebXR Technical Architect: MICHAEL MORRAN
Immersive Creative Producer BRENDAN BRADLEY
Production Dramaturgs L. NICOLE CABE
OSCURE NERD COMEDY
Failed To Render alumni, Andy North, reimagines the Future Stages as a web-accessible comedy club to prototype stable showcases of worldwide comedians without VR equipment.
THIS IS YOUR COUNTRY TOO
Avin Shah returns to OnBoardXR with a playable story about immigration to an unwelcoming country. The prototype is a first-look for his intended game on the FlipSideXR platform. Shah explored the migration of elements from a Unity3D package into web-based VR and a new cue to replace the navigation mesh of a 3D world to control the walkability of specific areas.
DEGENERATE: I Can Build It
A live musical performance where the audience is provided an in-world keyboard to type prompts that genearte real-time A.I. art around the performer as a prototype for a fully user-generated story. Conceived and performed by Brendan Bradley with music by Bradley and Maurice Soque Jr. Clemence Debaig joined the project to integrate OpenAI’s API for DALL-E and then send images to Remove.AI for background removal to display audience prompts as cut-out scenic elements.
GROVE: Goldfish
Jason Wang, Candace Hudert, Elaina Chung and Dylin Cassidy Taylor present a first-look at a narrative escape room where audience members must help a coy fish explore the environment inside and around their lonley tank to help them escape.
WENDYS v GODZILLA
Michael Morran creates and performs a satirical solo work as both “the” burnt out developer and famous monster responsible for a certain fast-food brand’s activation in the metaverse. The prototype celebrates and explores the cuture of the metaverse hypecycle and real-time generative A.I. art. Morran’s integration of OpenAI’s API for DALL-E allows the performer to take a customer’s fast food order/prompt and generate an image material to skin the mesh of food shaped objects. The work also showcases Morran’s unrivaled comfort and experience with grouped cueing for object and avatar manipulation in web-based virtual reality.
Cue System
This season, OnBoardXR explored an early fork in its cue system to allow participants to develop, stage and deploy theatrical cues in-world from the usual ui buttons, a third party client (qLAb) or clickable buttons at the Scene level. Michael Morran and Brendan Bradley released a sample experience The Great Avocado Adventure that stepped users through the types of cues available for OnBoardXR participants, with companion documentation for how to create custom cue groups.