For Coup de Ville 2020, CREW_lab showcases research inspired by the work of neuropsychiatrist Dr. Georges Otte and neurosurgeon/scientist Dr. Dirk De Ridder. Together with CREW they developed an environment where art, VR and biofeedback can be used to treat certain psychopathologies, especially depressions.
To create more than just impressive environments in VR and to fulfil our mission of blending performing arts with digital technologies, CREW is constantly investigating ways to integrate digital characters or avatars. It is the topic of our Horizon 2020 research project PRESENT. PRESENT aims for photorealism, but also realism in a more general sense, which entails many other aspects, aspects that are often underestimated or even ignored.
Which role can art and VR play in the treatment of psychiatric patients?
This is the premise of the Soulhacker research project. The artists of CREW, in collaboration with teachers and students of RITCS, will develop virtual environments in which neurologists and psychologists (represented by Brai3n, Dr. Georges Otte, Dr. Dirk De Ridder and Dr. Sven Vanneste) will guide and treat patients.
When I arrived at CREW, Eric kept stressing the importance of free body movement in VR, to roam around in large spaces. I didn’t quite pick up on it immediately. Sure large spaces are nice, but in the end VR is about visuals and sound, no matter how you move about. After a while, I realized he was on to something. You see the point is not the space, but the movement. Our mind constructs space by means of our own movement.
More on technical concept Delirious Departures.
In a time when traveling abroad is no longer evident and the nearness of others feels destabilising, CREW revisits the boundaries of substance and illusion with the installation Delirious Departures, transforming the Royal Museums of Fine Arts into a train departure hall. The place where travellers cross, say goodbye, make haste, wait. Where fragments of conversation, foreign languages, service announcements, a chilly draught, closing doors, footsteps, coffee slurping travellers and many other (inter)actions and sounds mingle.
Back in the days of Hamlet the seven celestial spheres and their planets still revolved around the earth and the murder on the king –the Minister of God- made nature revolt.
By combining historical sources and technology in a futuristic theatre production, Eric Joris (CREW) and Mesut Arslan (0090) give new insights into Hamlet's conflict.
In Straptrack, an immersant, (a visitor equipped with video glasses, PC and headphones), strolls through a virtual sculpture. Meryem Bayram designs and activates the geometric objects of this sculpture, while Eric Joris intervenes in different combinations with drawings and recordings via so-called Motion Capture.
For three years, Urland researched the internet under the wings of the Theater Rotterdam Production House. The most important development of this modern era took shape in three successive performances. EXPLORER / Prometheus unleashed, the second part of this Trilogy, is a joint creation of Urland and CREW and is central to this performance.
Hands-On Hamlet is CREW’s long-term pursuit that addresses key Hamlet- questions on how to be a moral subject and how one is determined by his or her cultural mind-sets.
The performance was created in 2017 in cooperation with the Dutch performance company Urland and partly integrated in the later plays Hamlet’s Lunacy, 2019 (with Mesut Arslan, Keez Duyves and Jerry Killick) and Hamlet’s Playground, 2021 (with Thomas Dudkiewicz, Jerry Killick and Nick Chambers).
Hands-On Hamlet & Hamlet Encounters (prototype of Hamlet's Lunacy) are the last steps towards the final production Hamlet's Lunacy. In this long-term pursuit art takes the lead again pushing the experiential potential of immersive media with an artistic project which addresses questions on how to be a moral subject and how one is determined by his/her cultural mind-sets.
Collateral Rooms is an immersive live-art installation developed by CREW for the Frankfurter Buchmesse 2016.
EXPLORER/Prometheus unchained is a staged performance by CREW and Urland, a collective of young makers, in collaboration with Productiehuis Rotterdam and premiered at Krijn Boon Studio, Rotterdamse Schouwburg (NL). EXPLORER/Prometheus unchained is the centerpiece of The Internet Trilogy, a series on the rise, expansion and limitless promise of the internet. The World Wide Web. The point of no return. We are ON. Unchained. We are FREE.
Absence is a dance creation inspired by the tsunami in Japan (2011). The idea is simple: a woman and a man meet. There is a trauma. They move, they talk.
A scenic performance made by Eric Joris and writer Peter Verhelst, in collaboration with NTGent.
Can complex matters like the historical explanations of the solar system be more easily understood on an “experiential” immersive base? Is it i.e. possible to collaboratively walk around in a solar system while embodying planets and making gravitational forces understood in terms of experience?
Celestial Bodies is a concept for using immersion and virtual production tools in education and arts.
Two installations, two audio-visual spaces focus on the connection between viewer and image and play with our perception, our sense of perspective... In aXes, it is the observer who affects the image by moving.
Voor de expo SuperBodies tijdens de Kunsttriënnale in Hasselt selecteerde Pieter T'Jonck beeldend werk dat focust op de manier waarop ons lichaam onbewust vormgeeft aan onze ervaringen. De installatie NOHORIZON onthult een nieuw perspectief in de zoektocht van Eric Joris en CREW naar de vluchtlijnen van onze ervaring.
