AI and Theatre
This event is part of the Artful Intelligence Season and is brought to you by the Humanities Cultural Programme, one of the founding stones for the future Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities.
A discussion of the current and future uses of AI and immersive technology in theatre and performance with Sarah Ellis, RSC Director of Digital, Alison Humphrey, PhD candidate in mixed-reality media arts, Ruthie Doyle, multidisciplinary artist and filmmaker, Dan Tucker, Immersive Producer & Curator and David Taylor Associate Professor of English, Chaired by TORCH Director, Prof Wes Williams. This event will take place from 5pm at the Old Fire Station, Oxford, OX1 2AQ.
Speakers
Sarah Ellis is an award-winning producer currently working as Director of Digital Development for the Royal Shakespeare Company to explore new artistic initiatives and partnerships.
The latest partnership for the RSC is the Audience of the Future Live Performance Demonstrator funded by Innovate UK - a consortium consisting of arts organisations, research partners and technology companies to explore the future of performances and real-time immersive experiences.
Alison Humphrey plays with story across drama, digital media, and education. Since starting out as an intern at Marvel Comics, she has directed classical and live-mocapped interactive theatre, produced alternate reality games, and written transmedia television. A PhD candidate (ABD) based at York University’s Immersive Storytelling Lab, her research-creation project Shadowpox: The Cytokine Storm is a "citizen science fiction" mixed-reality storyworld co-created with young people on three continents, imagining immunization through a superhero metaphor.
Ruthie Doyle is an artist and filmmaker based in Los Angeles.
Since 2013 they have worked with the Sundance Institute’s New Frontier program team, which supports and exhibits artists working at the convergence of film, art, media and technology at the Sundance Film Festival, as well as year-round via Labs and residencies.
Dan Tucker - Immersive Curator & Executive Producer
Dan is an award winning digital producer and curator with over 25 years of experience of working with broadcasters, digital agencies, startups and international artists. Passionate about interaction and story, Dan works in the intersection between multiple screen industries, from television documentary to virtual reality.
David Taylor is associate professor of English at Oxford, where he's also a fellow at St. Hugh's College. He specializes in theatre of the 17th and 18th centuries and is currently working on a book that charts the history of spectacle from Shakespeare to the mid nineteenth century. He is part of the R/18 Collective, a group of scholars who work with theatre makers to revive forgotten plays of the Restoration and 18th centuries. He's recently collaborated with Arcade Ltd to develop a smartphone app - "A Stage in Time" - that allows users to experience spectacular pantomime sets of the 18th century using augmented reality.
Chair
Wes Williams is the Director of TORCH, Professor of French Literature at the University of Oxford, and also a Fellow in Modern Languages at St Edmund Hall.
His main research interests are in the field of Renaissance studies; the critical study of genre and subjectivity; and the intersection of theory and practice in the literary, political, religious, and professional cultures of the early modern period. He also works on contemporary theory and film.
