Dr.Dodgy's Intergalactic Auto-Mechanical Circus

Dr.Dodgy’s Intergalactic-Auto Mechanical Circus blends Big-top tricks with 21st century tech. It's a family-friendly, one-man, variety show recounting the adventures of Dr.Dodgy and his search for the meaning of life. The performance transforms the theater space, through Augmented Reality(AR), adding interactable elements, and transports the audience through story, spectacle, and participation. The show consists of six vignettes: three skill acts (juggling, contact juggling, and 8-rings) and three volunteer bits (magic, spinning plates, and human slackline/tightrope). Each act contains an aspect of AR interactivity, environment, or character. Originally created as an experiment for the 2019 Honolulu Fringe festival the show is being reworked as a thesis for a Masters in Art and Technology from the University of Oklahoma with the goal of touring nationally and internationally.
Using a free cross-platform (IOS/Android) application downloaded on personal hand-held devices before the show, audience members can interact with AR elements collectively and individually, helping immerse them in Dr.Dodgy's tale. Triggered using a web application by the performer and anchored to the stage via an image target (large backdrop), AR Asteroids, robots, alien creatures, and environmental elements hover in and around the audience, anchoring the impossible in reality.
Dr.Dodgy begins his tale after his ship flies over the audience, crash-landing behind the backdrop used as an AR target. After his introduction, he informs the audience of his discovery of quantonium, a substance that allows his ship to traverse time and space. The stage set, he again takes off into the stars, this time audience in tow. His first stop, a planet streaked with bioluminescent clouds, lightning, and floating whale-like creatures, he finds life, but no meaning. Here, the story takes a turn for the worse when through a miscalculation he lands in an asteroid field. Through deft and daring, he weaves his way through icy boulders speckled with glowing minerals, collecting samples on his way to safety. The danger passed, he finds himself lost in the darkest corner of the universe, but a good scientist always looks towards discovery. And discover he does: an ancient alien planet, long abandoned, but well-documented by the artificial intelligence they left behind. With this new companion he plots his way home, stopping on a watery planet of sentient musical bubbles - again, life, but no meaning. Frustrated but not undone, he heads for home, only to face near-death once more at the edge of a black hole. With the audience's help, he recounts the harrowing event and his return to our beloved blue dot, only to find that what he went searching for - the meaning of life - was here all along.
The application is being built using the Unity3D game engine. New music was written, recorded, and arranged in Ableton Live, excluding two songs: the intro, written by William Bellew and used with permission, and Strauss’ “Also Sprach Zarathustra”, which is in the public domain and was rearranged and re-recorded for this performance.
Designed for a quick transition the show uses a single 8ft X 8ft free standing backdrop and trunk as set pieces. The rest of the stage set is created through Augmented Reality. Minimum physical dimensions needed for the performances are a stage/performance space 20ft X 10ft with a ceiling height of 12ft or more for juggling. Flat lighting is best to ensure an optimal AR experience, with a minimal sound system to run audio from a laptop and an outlet nearby. To ensure the performer can control the audience’s experience, either a dedicated high-speed wifi for the audience or sufficient mobile data signal in the performance space is required.
The show uses the immersive power of app-based AR to enhance stage performance and connect with the audience individually and collectively. In doing this it seeks to subvert conventions of art and theater that exclude recording devices by not only explicitly inviting them into the space but requiring them to experience the performance to its fullest. It also seeks to eschew the conception that hand held devices in a public space are isolating by utilizing audience participation through their device, changing a phone from a solo experience to a communal one in a social setting. The goal is to bring people together in a state of joy using art and technology by embracing the escapism of entertainment and irreverence of Dada in an artistic space through spectacle and interactivity.