2021 was an eventful year for virtual performance as artists persevered through 2020’s ongoing lockdowns. In the UK we witnessed award winning productions like Current, Rising and Dream as part of UK Research and innovation’s Audiences of the Future Challenge as well as the BFI’s London Film Festival immersive showcase. Internationally festivals like Düsseldorf’s AR Biennale and Athens Biennale took renewed interest in virtual story worlds as opportunities for audiences and artists. 

At the same time, tech companies further pursued Metaverse/s and Web 3.0 territories as audiences’ appetites and fluency with virtual worlds continues to grow - but what does this mean in the context of art making, and how do we respond to future possibilities for immersion and simulation within performance? And if we want to build our own virtual worlds, what tools are needed to support a multiplicity of virtual opportunities across art and performance?

Join us for a live conversation with Annette Mees, Artistic Director Audience Labs & Visiting Senior Research Fellow in Culture and Creative Industries at King’s College London, Jo Scotcher Production Designer and CG Director and Designer of hyper-reality opera Current Rising, Theo Triantafyllidis,  Artist and Director of mixed-reality performance Anti-Gone, and Kay Watson, Head of Arts Technologies at Serpentine. 

The event will stream live on Twitch (@serpentineuk) on Thursday 17 March from 19:30 GMT/21:30 EET.