Hyper reality opera [technology - arts

Abstract

Opera is no longer just the fat lady singing. New technologies are bringing an old art to new audiences. The author describes her experiences in the world's first hyper-reality opera, `Current, Rising', opening at the Royal Opera House, London, in spring 2021. Your journey begins in a room called the House of Subconscious. You're wearing headphones, a small backpack containing a computer, and a VR headset. As you move freely through a dream-like virtual world, from twilight to dawn, the wind blows in your face, you drift over the sea, a city emerges from under your feet. Somewhere on the imaginary horizon, an orchestra plays while a soprano wanders around you singing. You're inside the Linbury Theatre at the Royal Opera House, London, listening to - or rather experiencing visually, aurally, and viscerally - a newly composed operatic work. The developers relied upon a readily available Windows Mixed Reality system developed by Microsoft to create this new world. The system uses computer vision to process two camera feeds from the headset, builds a model of the world around that person, and estimates their position and orientation in that world.