"Suddenly it was just me and Hamlet, alone in the early dawn. I felt what Hamlet must have been thinking: Was it all a dream? Am I losing my mind?"
A conversation hosted by Lincoln Center and Hearst that reimagines the possibilities of the concert hall experience with Soledad O'Brien and guests from National Sawdust, SoundBox, and Hamlet VR
In April 2017, we presented To Be With Hamlet at the Tribeca Film Festival. Four audience members watched simultaneously in the VR Arcade at the festival, while our actors performed live in our mocap studio in Brooklyn. We performed for nearly 400 audience members over the course of four days.
Adario Strange wrote in Mashable, “I felt like I was taking part in something from the future.”
Read it here: https://mashable.com/2017/04/26/tribeca-film-fest-virtual-reality-experiences
A conversation hosted by Lincoln Center and Hearst that reimagines the possibilities of the concert hall experience with Soledad O'Brien and guests from National Sawdust, SoundBox, and Hamlet VR
Javier Molina and David Gochfeld have made a contribution to IETM.org in its publication Fresh Perspectives/6.
Mixed Reality and Theater of the Future is written by Joris Weijdom, a researcher from HKU University of the Arts, and its focused on innovative processes for contemporary performance.
Read about the timeline and the process to create "To Be With Hamlet," the motivations behind the project and the results of a innovative approach to theater.
Shanghai, Amsterdam, New York, San Francisco and many other cities in the world have found a smart way to monetize from the recent boom of virtual reality. Just like in the 90's, small business owners like Kishore Doddi from VR bar, are offering places for players to use the latest consumer VR systems in dedicated facilities. Hamlet will make it to your nearest VR arcade to offer you a chance to be with the Prince of Denmark in this incredible production. Check out this article published by Technical.ly here
In China they are sometimes called VR Parks, this model will mean more and more people are exposed to VR experiences. When we presented To Be With Hamlet in Shenzhen last year, we saw the potential of this model of distribution are we are excited to create more content for you.
To Be With Hamlet was invited to participate at the VR Jubilee, a showcase of Virtual Reality projects conceived and produced at NYU, with the sponsorship of Time Inc. and Oculus. Timewave festival and its organizers are part of a transatlantic collective that focuses on the intersection of arts/media and technology. Their mission was to bridge the transatlantic divide between the US and UK as well as the chasm between NYC theater and the LA TV/film world via digital technology.
Michael Hicks from WEARABLE wrote a whimsical article describing the experience of the event.
check it out HERE
This week, the prominent Dutch Newspaper Het Financielle Dagblad, published "Participating is Important Again," a small informational bio on To Be With Hamlet!
For all of the latest news about the Prince, make sure to follow him on Facebook and Twitter!
FuturePerfectMachine, a San Francisco based VR and geospatial technology blog, wrote an article giving a broad and somewhat technical overview of the Prince's production.
Recently, NYU Shanghai's "Innovative Scholarhship" blog posted, "To Be or Not Be: Staging Hamlet in Virtual Reality," a short interview with Christian Grewell, the creative lead of our M3diate VR platform.
Group Photo Courtesy of NYU Tandon (Camila Ryder)
NYU's Tandon School of Engineering wrote an article on To Be With Hamlet which detailed our production's technical breakthroughs and challenges, including our effort to track the faces of our actors during the performance in the same way that we track their bodies.
This week, our team received a great deal of attention from the press and revealed a new feature!
The past few weeks, our team has been working on a new teleportation feature which would allow our participants to teleport around Castle Elsinore so that they can see the Prince and the Ghost from new angles quickly. This feature will now be in all of our exhibits of the production!
Group Photo Courtesy of NYU Tandon (Camila Ryder)
NYU's Tandon School of Engineering wrote an article on To Be With Hamlet which detailed our production's technical breakthroughs and challenges, including our effort to track the faces of our actors during the performance in the same way that we track their bodies.
Recently, NYU Shanghai's "Innovative Scholarhship" blog posted, "To Be or Not Be: Staging Hamlet in Virtual Reality," a short interview with Christian Grewell, the creative lead of our M3diate VR platform.
Two weeks ago, our team exhibited To Be With Hamlet at the New York City Media Lab's Exploring Future Reality conference. During that conference, Javier Molina, our producer, gave a six-minute pitch for the project. You can hear it by clicking on our audio player below. Stay tuned for more videos and pictures from that conference!
FuturePerfectMachine, a San Francisco based VR and geospatial technology blog, wrote an article about the Prince as well.
For all the latest updates about the Prince, follow our Twitter and Facebook below!
The Prince was featured on Technical.ly, a prominent online technology magazine. April Joyner, who wrote the article on Hamlet, had this to say about the experience:
"For my part, after being dazzled by the VR technology, especially the ability to “teleport” among different perspectives of the action using video game controllers, I found it intriguing to see the ghost of Hamlet’s father up close, as Casey delivered a rousing monologue, and imagine what encountering such an imposing presence might feel like."
Check back next week for more news about the Prince!
It was a great week for the Prince! Last Thursday, he visited the New York City Media Lab's Future Reality conference, where he was presented side-by-side with VR superstars like Ken Perlin of NYU and Resh Sidhu of Framestore! Check back soon for more photos!
A poster from New York City Media Lab's website.
The Prince was also featured on Technical.ly, a prominent online technology magazine. April Joyner, who wrote the article on Hamlet, had this to say about the experience:
"For my part, after being dazzled by the VR technology, especially the ability to “teleport” among different perspectives of the action using video game controllers, I found it intriguing to see the ghost of Hamlet’s father up close, as Casey delivered a rousing monologue, and imagine what encountering such an imposing presence might feel like."
Check back next week for more news about the Prince!
This week, Javier Molina, our producer, and David Gochfeld, our director, gave a talk on To Be With Hamlet at the prestigious VR Days Conference in Amsterdam! Bas in het Veld, the technical director for M3diate, showed off To Be With Hamlet in person at the festival as well. Stay tuned for more pictures and videos from the event!
The To Be With Hamlet team wishes you a Happy Halloween!
Here's a photo of the 3D model of our Ghost!
You can catch another glimpse of our ghost in this preview video from earlier in the year:
We're also excited to bring Noah Harrsion Kellman into our team as a Composer and Mix Engineer!
Noah is a music composer and producer for film and multimedia based in New York City. He is working as both a composer and mixing engineer on To Be With Hamlet. A lover of narrative music, he creates cinematic soundscapes that intersect the acoustic and electronic worlds. This compositional blend has garnered him attention across numerous media, including a feature on Indie Shuffle when he released his song Just Let It Go under his stage name, “Nozart.” Noah has won numerous awards for his ability as a pianist and as a composer. From 2009 to 2010, he was selected as the pianist for the Brubeck Institute, and also received two ASCAP Young Jazz Composer awards, including one in 2009 for his composition The Piemaker. He has also been awarded eight Downbeat Student Music Awards. In 2015, Kellman toured the country as keyboardist/synthesist for Elliot Moss as they opened for the Cold War Kids on their winter national tour. Often inspired by the story-like musical nature of music, some important influences are classical music and soundtrack composers, including greats such as John Williams, Danny Elfman, Stravinsky and Ravel.
Have a great time trick-or-treating!
Watch out! In the coming weeks, the To Be With Hamlet team will be launching a GoFundme campaign in order to fund a complete production of Hamlet in Virtual Reality!
or Click Here
Our initial prototype of Hamlet’s Act I, Scene V has been hugely successful at technology and arts festivals such as The New York City Media Lab’s Media Summit and Kaleidoscope VR’s Summer Showcase, so we’re excited to expand this project to encompass the full dramatic arc of the Prince. Now that we have a better idea of how this new fusion of live performance and virtual reality works, we’re going to apply those lessons to make an even more dramatically compelling experience. We intend to add interactive environments, additional characters, and opportunities for audience members to interact with other (or not) during the experience.
This past week, we’ve set up new presentations of To Be With Hamlet, recruited new team members, and submitted to new festival programs!
Check out the Prince at the grand opening of VR Bar, one of Brooklyn’s first VR-enabled pubs! You can apply for an invitation to the grand opening here!
We’re excited to introduce Alba Torremocha, a former resident composer for the NYU Symphony, to the To Be With Hamlet team as a Sound Designer and Composer! Check out her full bio at our About Page.
In the past week, our team has made huge leaps in sharing To Be With Hamlet across the globe. In Shenzen, China, M3diate, our social VR platform and content partner, presented M3diate and Hamlet at the global Cre8 Summit, one of the world’s largest technology and innovation festivals . Check out the Cre8 profiles for both Hamlet and M3diate here.
Attendees Trying Out To Be With Hamlet
Both Hamlet and M3diate were big successes at the festival; Christian Grewell, M3diate’s technical lead, gave an extended interview to a Chinese news station covering the event. Check out this video of Christian discussing Hamlet on Chinese TV here. Look for the section between 1:30 and 2:30.
Cre8 Attendees Lining Up to Try To Be With Hamlet
On another side of the world in Amsterdam, VR Days, Europe's Biggest VR Convention, accepted To Be With Hamlet into their lineup! Hamlet will be shown alongside some of the world's hottest VR works on November 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th.
The VR Days Icon
On yet another side of the globe, To Be With Hamlet was accepted into New York City Media Labs's Future Reality conference. Hamlet will be shown at the conference and Javier Molina, the project's producer, will give a speech at the event as well. The event will be held in Viacom New York's White Box Theatre on Thursday, November 10th from 8 AM to 6 PM.
The Poster for the Future Reality Conference
While Hamlet has grown more popular around the globe, the production team has continued to make improvements to the experience. Last week, our team hired two musicians to help score and sound design the experience. Check out their first samples below!
The prince is making quite a noise around the world. Follow our Twitter and like our Facebook page for more updates on the Prince's exploits!
This week, most of our work was behind the scenes. We submitted exhibition applications to MIT’s Hacking Arts Conference, Amsterdam’s VR Days Conference, and Santa Fe's Currents New Media Conference. Hopefully, the Prince will find a home in each city!
The To Be With Hamlet team has also continued to cement its partnership with the M3diate team since our successful joint presentation at the New York City Media Lab. For more about the creative and managerial minds behind M3diate, check out the bottom of our about page.
Christian Grewell - M3diate Creative Lead
We've also begun to chart out our next steps. In the last week, we’ve made rough plans to redo our prerecorded version of the experience with our new actor Roger Casey, add ambient SFX, improve our audio synchronization, and much more! Stay tuned for further updates about the project!
Roger Casey - To Be With Hamlet's New Ghost
To help our team, skip to the heading reading "AT THIS POINT" below.
This last week, our team had an incredible time presenting To Be With Hamlet at the New York City Media Lab at Columbia University!
Early on the 22nd, our team headed North from our Brookyln headquarters at NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering to Columbia’s illustrious Lerner Hall.
Once inside, we began to set up a seventeen by twenty-four square foot performance space in a black box theatre dedicated to the production. To enable our audience members to see our actors performing in our motion capture lab in Brooklyn, we projected a live feed from the studio on one of the black box’s screens.
Once all the equipment was in place, Bas in het Veld, our technical director, connected our five Vives to the M3diate platform, which enabled five audience members and our performers to exist in the virtual space simultaneously; at any one time, every audience member wearing a Vive could see the Prince, the ghost, the castle, and the other audience members. As the funding for our project grows, ten or more audience members could experience the virtual space simultaneously. We also set up a monitor so that the audience members not wearing the Vives could watch the play.
Throughout our exhibit time, NYC’s top media executives, technologists, academics, and futurists poured into the black box to be with Hamlet by putting on the Vive or watching our live feeds of the performance. The crowd’s incredibly positive response to our exhibit has confirmed our belief that To Be With Hamlet and, more generally, this new fusion of live theatre and VR, is more than the novel sum of its parts; To Be With Hamlet gives audience members a new kind of an dramatic experience and the audience wants more of it.
AT THIS POINT, our production has reached a critical juncture. While we have had huge successes at festivals such Kaleidoscope's Summer Showcase and the New York City Media Lab, we have unfortunately not raised enough money to support this production indefinitely. When we began this project, we aimed to create a new kind of dramatic experience by fusing live performance, motion capture, and virtual reality in a innovative new way without any expectation of financial return.
Now that we have polished the project and have seen the incredible dramatic power of this new form, we want to bring it to a larger audience; we want to bring it to you. Unfortunately, since we have been working on this project for several months without pay, we cannot continue to do so without endangering our livelihoods for ourselves and our families. So why don't we sell it? At this point, we have assembled a team of actors, motion capture artists, technologists, and dramaturgists that is uniquely trained and accustomed to this new form, so there is no one better, in our estimation, to continue developing and exploring this form.
But for us to continue to explore and expand this form, we need your help.
Are you an individual interested in preserving and expanding upon this new form of theatre and virtual reality?
Donate to our project directly through our website here.
Do you represent a company that endorses innovation and creative risk-taking, whether that be in the arts, in technology, or on the stage?
Email javier.molina@nyu.edu or Help@hamletvr.org directly with the subject line: "Sponsorship." See page four of our Press Kit to see the numerous benefits our Sponsors enjoy.
Still on the fence about donating our sponsoring the project? Check out our new Press Kit.
Over the past several months, this project, which started in part as a riff on the title of one of our favorite books, has grown into a living breathing experience. Like most projects, it matters to us in part because we have poured our blood, sweat, and tears into it. But more than anything, it matters to us because we have seen incredibly positive responses to it and we believe it can matter to you.
The glowworm may show the matin to be near, but that does mean this must be adieu.
