Big digital plans for the Kleintheater

At the Kleintheater Luzern, theatre people learned from digital artists and IT experts from the HSLU how to integrate virtual reality into their work. At the beginning of April, they let their audience immerse themselves in a virtual stage world for the first time.

16 years ago, an avalanche buried Claudia Tolusso. For ten minutes, the Lucerne-born artist was buried under one and a half metres of fresh snow. Since then, the theatre designer and spatial artist has been thinking about how she can make the traumatic experience tangible as art. How and with what means do you convey the feeling of lying under snow and not knowing whether you will be rescued?

Tolusso found the answer in autumn 2021 at a virtual reality workshop at the Kleintheater Luzern. Here, a research team from the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts offered an overview of the state of the art and how to use it. "I wanted to get to know the technology that appeals to so many young people," says Tolusso, who teaches scenography at the Kunstschule Liechtenstein. "For me, it was particularly interesting to learn how virtual reality can be used for artistic works."

Immerse yourself in the avalanche with VR goggles

In the workshop, Claudia Tolusso developed the idea of narrating her avalanche experience in a 360° film in which the viewers - equipped with VR goggles - lie virtually in the snow. "They experience a mixture of being cut off from the outside world and being connected to the space I show them," she says, "that seemed perfect for my case."

Together with other artists, Tolusso learned how to use the technology for a production in a VR lab after the workshop. Her 360° film and the rest of her work will now be shown to the public at the "Umprogrammiert" festival in the Kleintheater at the beginning of April. In addition to the film, there will be VR installations that play with the mix of real and virtual objects; one group will incorporate elements of performance, sound design and computer science into their work.

The virtual stage is different

The workshop and laboratory are part of the research project "Virtual Reality in Theatre" by the HSLU and the Kleintheater Luzern, which the federal government is supporting with an "Inno-Check" in the amount of CHF 15,000. The research team led by virtual reality researcher Dario Lanfranconi and digital artist Simon de Diesbach, both from the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, offers artists an insight into the potential of the technology. The researchers have also recreated the spaces of the Kleintheater as 3D models so that they can be played in virtual reality.

Lanfranconi and de Diesbach accompany the process of creating the plays scientifically. The goal is to develop a toolbox in the longer term that will provide theatre people with the necessary knowledge so that they can use VR as a matter of course when it seems artistically appropriate. The artists they supervise have learned a lot in recent months, "for example, that not all project ideas can be realised in the way the participants imagined at the beginning," says Dario Lanfranconi. As their knowledge of the technology has grown, so has their understanding of its possible applications.

Flowers for the buried

Claudia Tolusso also needed several attempts in the VR Lab before she found the right concept for her 360° film. "At first she wanted to include a realistic scene with a snowboarder in the mountains," recalls Simon De Diesbach, who coaches Tolusso's work. The researcher was able to convince her that an abstract artistic approach was more suitable than a realistic one: after the first big scare, Claudia Tolusso experienced a deep calm and silence in the snow. Feelings she almost missed after her rescue, as she says, and which she is now determined to convey to the audience with her film.

Together with De Diesbach, she finally found a solution: she placed a 360° camera in a small transparent plastic sphere. Soft, pleasant materials such as fabric, pieces of fur or flowers swirl around inside the sphere and contrast with the claustrophobic space. Looking at the footage through the VR glasses, you get the feeling that you are surrounded by flowers and feathers. "The plastic sphere was Tolusso's idea," says Simon De Diesbach, "I was sceptical at first, but she was right: it conveys the serenity she describes very well."