I included this slide in my pitch presentation to reflect the Opera research I conducted and which I will need to develop further.
It forms part of a discussion about where the project lies in relation to the cross-section between opera/videogames/immersive Theatre/VR.
Ethical auditing for automated decision making
https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/research/projects/ethical-auditing-for-automated-decision-making/
Extract from pitch:
I have chosen some examples from Opera and Videogames as well as Virtual and Immersive experiences to think about this cross section while also considering how the app will add value to the Operas outreach provision.
Opera
Halloween’ themes in opera include frightening, ghostly scenes, magical mystical worlds and suspenseful music. Such examples include Don Giovanni.
Immersive Theatre
Scarefest Immersive Theatre Maze: Halloween Experience
Merlin Entertainment: Alton Towers Theme Park
Demographic: Teenage and Adult
Reported 17% of annual revenue taken during the Halloween Event.
Virtual Reality and the located experience.
Magic Butterfly VR Opera Experience
Offers a unique Interactive engagement with Operatic Theatrical Narrative & features Characters through encounters with virtual game characters and environments, before both during and after the event.
Videogames
The use of traditional operatic ‘symphonic orchestration’ is commonly used to create suspense and emotion in videogames. This is either used directly or altered with a more modern twist to appeal to modern audiences for example the use of Tosca In Hitman: Blood Money.
Summers, T (2017) opera in video games, Royal Holloway.
Available: https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/schools/lcahm/departments/music/events/2017/summers-seminar.aspx
‘The paper argues that the staged opera challenges a supposed ‘great divide’ (Huyssen) of high/low culture by claiming similar pleasures in games and opera: the visceral bloodthirstiness of Tosca and Hitman, and the criminal exoticism of The Beggar’s Opera and Assassin’s Creed III. Secondly and similarly, the arias sung in Final Fantasy VI and Parasite Eve allow games to adopt a melodramatic
aesthetic register (Hibberd, Singer), and yet paradoxically claim opera (and games) as sites of authentic emotional expression. Finally, Gabriel Knight 2’s staging of a fictional Wagner opera illustrates how opera sequences advance the game medium’s agenda for engaging and enrapturing players through Adornian phantasmagoria’.
https://www.alluvium-journal.org/2013/03/26/explorations-in-the-ergodic/
https://www.avinteractive.com/news/virtual-augmented-mixed/blockbuster-theme-park-features-vr-big-screen-attractions-21-08-2019/
Springer: A network of frames Theory
https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-Network-of-Reference-Frames-Theory%3A-A-Synthesis-Meilinger/7ab7cddd7dc84739156aa4f6d11cc6694341fb62
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-540-87601-4_25
GDC: Player Spatialisation
https://schedule2019.gdconf.com/session/the-schema-is-still-mightier-than-the-sword-how-cognition-predicts-player-spatial-coding-systems/862456
aesthetic register (Hibberd, Singer), and yet paradoxically claim opera (and games) as sites of authentic emotional expression. Finally, Gabriel Knight 2’s staging of a fictional Wagner opera illustrates how opera sequences advance the game medium’s agenda for engaging and enrapturing players through Adornian phantasmagoria’.
https://www.alluvium-journal.org/2013/03/26/explorations-in-the-ergodic/
https://www.avinteractive.com/news/virtual-augmented-mixed/blockbuster-theme-park-features-vr-big-screen-attractions-21-08-2019/
Springer: A network of frames Theory
https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-Network-of-Reference-Frames-Theory%3A-A-Synthesis-Meilinger/7ab7cddd7dc84739156aa4f6d11cc6694341fb62
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-540-87601-4_25
GDC: Player Spatialisation
https://schedule2019.gdconf.com/session/the-schema-is-still-mightier-than-the-sword-how-cognition-predicts-player-spatial-coding-systems/862456
GDC:Integrating Live Actors
https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1025650/Integrating-Live-Actors-into-Non
https://blooloop.com/features/halloween-horror-nights-29/<
https://entertainmentdesigner.com/news-category/experience-category/breaking-the-fourth-wallunderground/
https://www.nevillholtopera.co.uk/education/work-in-schools#
https://rewind.co/portfolio/magic-butterfly-experiencing-opera-in-vr/
https://sinistredestre.wordpress.com/2013/11/24/reading-adorno-in-search-of-wagner-6-phantasmagoria/
