New creative festival showcases the future of immersive performance

Nottingham will be unveiling FACETS:21 – series of performance and interactive events taking place at Lakeside Arts and Broadway Cinema during November. The festival will give artists, performers and audiences the chance to experience and explore new creative technologies first hand, and to give feedback to the experts who develop them.

Throughout the series, the skills of world-leading contemporary dance and theatre practitioners will use and engage with the latest immersive digital technology tools offered by the BBC R&D’s Maker Box.

The University of Nottingham (Mixed Reality Lab, Horizon & Horizon CDT) has a long relationship with BBC R&D, including Steve Benford’s visiting professorship, the User Experience Research Partnership, key projects including Databox and Living Room of the Future and co-supervised PhD research at the Horizon Centre for Doctoral Training. These shared interests are reflected in the new suite of digital tools that MakerBox offers to creatives.

To complement the series of events, Dr Sarah Martindale, Research Fellow in the Department of Cultural, Media and Visual Studies and Co-Investigator, Horizon Digital Economy Research, will be hosting an immersive storytelling symposium on the 2nd & 3rd of November. The symposium will enable creatives to try out new ways of sharing narrative experiences and will provide the opportunity to try out immersive digital platforms.