This April, the Performing Arts x Tech Lab (Lab) will launch an Industry Sharing at the Esplanade Annexe Studio till 13 April 2024 for the public, potential partners and adopters to experience new possibilities in performance creation. This marks the completion of the nine-month long incubation, organised by the National Arts Council (NAC) in partnership with Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay (Esplanade). 

The Industry Sharing will feature six projects by arts practitioners and technologists that explore the integration of technology and performing arts such as theatre, dance and music, as well as inter or cross-disciplinary forms. Audiences will be able to experience and encounter the prototypes and works-in-progress that push boundaries of artistic practice, developed via the Lab with guidance from industry experts. 

With a line-up of guided tours of the exhibition, prototype demos, playtests, and sharing sessions, audiences will hear from the project teams about the motivations behind their projects. Teams will also share insights about the various technologies explored such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine learning and neural audio synthesis to name a few, in their continuous journey of innovating, building capabilities and deepening artistic practice. 

Victor Ang, Director, Technology & Innovation, NAC, said: “NAC believes in the power of technology and innovation as a catalyst, to drive a creative economy and the growth of the arts in Singapore. This second edition of the Arts x Tech Lab was developed in partnership with the Esplanade to foster innovative cross-sector collaborations. Throughout this nine-month incubation, we have witnessed the creativity and passion of the project teams as they continued to push the boundaries of artmaking and audience experience. We encourage the public to be part of the Industry Sharing and be inspired by their projects.”

Shireen Abdullah, Senior Producer, The Esplanade Co Ltd, said: “It has been exciting and heartening for the team at Esplanade to see how the participants have grown through the course of the Lab, making key adjustments in their ideas and work processes, as well as clarifying their artistic inquiries. We are also grateful to the advisory panel for their generous and invaluable guidance. Thinking about technology as a tool for artmaking or as part of performance creation involves a mindset shift from more conventional ways of working, and an openness to consider different roles and methodologies within a creation process. We appreciate how the Lab’s advisory panel, through individual team consultations and the panellists’ own participation in Conference-Unconference at Esplanade in October 2023, has brought in ideas and suggestions which had great impact on the Lab teams on both a practical as well as philosophical levels. This Lab has been a tremendous learning journey for us all and we look forward to seeing the progress of the Lab projects beyond this Industry Sharing.”

In addition to technology consultant Keio-NUS CUTE Center that provided guidance from project ideation to prototyping, this year’s participants also benefited from consultations with an esteemed local and international advisory panel of experts in performance, arts and technology including Head of Immersive Storytelling Studio, National Theatre Toby Coffey (UK), Founding Member and Co-Artistic Director of Zuni Icosahedron Danny Yung (HK),  Singaporean artist Ho Tzu Nyen (SG) and Production Project Manager, Clarence Ng, Performing Arts Producer, Akiko Takeshita and Artist and Video Engineer, Mitsuru Tokisato from Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media (JPN).

Participants have pushed the boundaries of artmaking through technology to enhance arts experiences for artists and audiences alike. Taking physicality to another level, Theories of Motion by Alina Ling and Andy Lim explores the use of interactive sensor-systems that give autonomy to performers in affecting spatial elements (i.e. light, sound, projection, etc) in an immersive environment. In the long run, this affects performative expressions with greater audience engagement. Similarly, Verge 2.0 by James Lye, Soultari Amin Farid, Norisham Osman and Eugene Soh explores the convergence of dance and interactive technologies to provide dancers with the agency to control and manipulate sounds, light and visuals.

Technology also increases the accessibility of arts experiences and brings audiences of different ages, languages, and backgrounds together. DOTS 2.0 by Issy x Cher combines live theatre performance with visual art and interactive projection to engage young audiences through a multi-disciplinary experience. The Sound of Stories by Kamini Ramachandran, Syafiq Halid & Chen Enjiao also seek to deliver transformative and immersive storytelling performances that leverage on AI and neural audio synthesis. 

perfor.ml by artist collective Feelers adopted machine learning to develop a performance methodology that explores the idea of a machine as an equal to a human performer in a live performance setting. Over time, the machine performer will be capable of generating its own choices that affect the performance sequence and trigger scenes by executing cues with its physical body, such as a sonic utterance or kinetic gesture, which the human performer will respond to. Exploring the intersections between dance and technology, Dancing the Algorithm by Dapheny Chen and Serial Co transforms movement scores into an ever-evolving interactive digital platform, a project developed with the aim to preserve, explore and share dance repertoire in the digital world.  

Photos Courtesy of Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay

The Industry Sharing takes place at the Esplanade Annexe Studio from 5th to 6th and 11th to 13th April 2024. More information can be found here. Following the Industry Sharing, the Performing Arts x Tech Lab e-publication sharing insights and learnings by participants is set to be released in May this year.