World news
🎭 Theatre Becomes an IT Product
At The Shed arts center in New York, performances of An Ark have begun — the first theatre project in the world that can be scaled like a mobile app.
Audience members put on augmented-reality glasses and see a photorealistic volumetric double of the actor. This is not cinema: Ian McKellen walks around you, sits down next to you, and looks you straight in the eye.
To achieve this effect, 52 cameras recorded every micro-movement of the performer, and terabytes of data were stitched together into a single digital model over the course of several months.
A ticket costs $50. Producers no longer need to pay for flights, hotels, and insurance for stars — the digital performance can be screened simultaneously in hundreds of venues around the world.
Some of the “magic of the moment” disappears: the actor cannot improvise or respond to laughter in the hall. Still, experts are convinced that we are standing on the threshold of an era of “digital tours” and, in the future, even posthumous performances by great actors.
