A Technique and Method for Mixed Reality Performance with Digital Augments, Gestural Data, and Living Plants

Abstract

We propose a new method, technique, and practices for performing with mixed reality environments and technologies, informed by embodiment and electro acoustics, and critically underscored by new materialism and posthumanism. Through the Contact projects, Wright and Howden explore a practice-based approach to live performance in mixed reality, through a novel method that combines gestural controllers, living plants and digital augments. This research investigates potential for multimodal performance in mixed reality (MR), using a novel technical set-up that combines of the HTC Vive with a Leap Motion mount, the MIDI Sprout interface for sensing the bio-electrical signals of plants, transposed to visual data in Touch Designer, and Unity 3D for generating digital augments.