Visualisation, 3D
Because the Night
Because the Night was an immersive theatre production housed at the Malthouse Theatre where audience members were embedded inside the performance location alongside props that could be interacted with, rooms that they could move between at their own pace, and actors' performances where audiences could follow through the location of the theatre. Archiving such immersive live performances is a challenge that this project addressed.
Because the Night is a finalist in the Victorian Premier's Design Awards.
Due to covid restrictions, an opportunity presented itself for this performance to be recreated as a game. My part in this project was to create digital avatars that resemble the performers in a digital realm and design the theatre space as an interactive map where audiences could interact and navigate through the various scenes.
My initial design for the map was assessed by the project team, where we decided the design of the map should resemble a generic board game map, adopting the fish-eye perspective added to each room. This team decision was based on the successes of other game boards and the need to represent the whole game world in one truncated map. This was by design to make sure all walls, doors, entrances, and exits were clearly defined to not confuse the user.
To help ground users in the 3D space, 6 avatars were designed that resembled the actors from the original theatre production. Covid made it difficult to acquire front and side imagery of the actors, which led me to find another solution to recreate them. I opted to use artificial intelligence to create a 3D model of each actor, based on a provided image. This worked with any image, as long as the full body of the actor was in frame.
