Spectator invited to the II edition of the Congress. Director of Flatland.
Bio
“Flatland was the second-generation haptic theater performance conceived by Extant, which is the leading professional theater company in the UK for visually impaired artists. It was led by blind artists and involved a collaboration between robotic engineers, artists and academics to create a large-scale immersive production in 2015 on which Punchdrunk were the project consultants. It welcomed audiences to navigate through a dark environment of tactile set design using a hand-held shape shifting navigation device, which guided the audience from one location to another in the world of Flatland.
The experience was inspired by the 1884 novella by A.E. Abbott of the same name, which described a 2D world where the geometric citizens are distinguished using the art of feeling and the art of hearing. We used this as a base to construct a tactile drama in the dark which represented the 3rd missing dimension. It was funded by the NESTA Digital R/D fund and offered lots of useful lessons for creating immersive performance from a disability aesthetic. This project was unique in its ambition and execution and will be a very valuable case-study to contribute to the conference”.