Sunday, November 5, 2023

Dream-e-scape at the Film Criticism Conference, Riyadh, KSA

Film Criticism Conference - "Beyond the Frame" - Nov 8-15, 2023 - The Cultural Palace, DQ, Riyadh, KSA

Artist Talk: From Moving Images to Immersive Cinema - November 10, 2023 - 7:30pm - The Cultural Palace, DQ, Riyadh, KSA

Conceived and Directed by Laia Cabrera & Isabelle Duverger
Interactive Design by Aniol Saurina Masó and Jianhao Ma
Original music composition by Nana Simopoulos
Cinematography and Editing by Laia Cabrera & Isabelle Duverger

"Dream-e-scape" is an interactive projection art installation about lucid dreams, created by filmmaker Laia Cabrera and multimedia artist Isabelle Duverger, in collaboration with interactive designer Aniol Saurina Masó and Jianhao Ma, and composer and instrumentalist Nana Simopoulos.

The piece is an immersive and interactive 360º installation about the mind and the search for awareness in which the public experiences a sensory voyage that captures the surreal nature of dreams, where the line is blurred between the physical and the digital world, between the real and the imaginary.

“Dream-e-scape” is based on the state of sleep, an imaginary journey one can experience with the eyes wide open. The piece explores the concept of lucid dreaming, the sleep state in which we become aware we are dreaming and have the ability to control the dream and gain agency over our thoughts and desires. We are testing reality: Are we awake?

We wanted to play with the surreal nature of dreams and explore concepts and ideas related to our notion of a digital self in a collective environment. Being awake, conscious… agency. The installation uses the language of escape rooms to explore the dreamworld, opening doors to mirrored landscapes, waterfalls, a Daliesque world or hidden pathways, creating connection between allegories of tales, micro and macro, nature, body, mind and universe, all connected by chance and sometimes astonishing clarity. Dreams are the starting point of the imagination. The original score takes you to interactive soundscapes created specifically for the piece.

Using cutting-edge multimedia technology to produce creative environments, through mapping, infinite space, augmented reality, interactivity, video art, music and animation, the audience is invited to actively participate as actors and not just as mere spectators. The video installation art becomes a theatrical stage where things appear, move across, and then disappear, where awareness becomes attention and action, and your brain fantasizes your conscious reality. Original music uses textures, pads, pulses and drum rhythms to move the audience through the space and at times influence the music by their physical movement.

Conceived as a seamless projection mapping design with full gesture responsive interactivity, “Dream-e-escape” invites the audience to actively enter the heart of the piece creating and choosing dreamlands that unfold across a series of immersive interactive scenarios, capturing the surreal nature of dreams and giving the audience agency. Dream-e-scape plays as a fictional dimension, whose terrain of forests, cities, galaxies, mountains, and an underworld can be visited only through a process of thinking creatively, Lucid dreaming.








OTHER VENUES
Flutter Art Gallery - 2022-2023 - Los Angeles
Microwave Media Arts Festival - Oct 28, 2022 - Nov 6, 2022 - Hong Kong City Hall

AWARDS: #Hybrid Vision - Panasonic Digital Art Competition 2022 - Interactive Digital Art Nominee

Friday, October 6, 2023

QUALIA - You Matter to Me, 2023

An Immersive Cinematic Art Installation directed by Laia Cabrera & Isabelle Duverger
Music and Sound design by Nana Simopoulos and Erica Glyn | Performing artist: Catherine Correa

Qualia: the properties of experience, and experiences, referred to as being phenomenally conscious

"Qualia" is an immersive video and sound installation about our longing for connection to nature,
through consciousness, awareness, and agency.


Presented at Jersey City Theater Center October 13-15, 2023
as part of JCAST 2023 and Prelude Festival 2023 - Segal Center CUNY
October 13 6-9pm, the 14th & 15th 12-6pm
165 Newark Avenue (entrance on Barrow), Jersey City, NJ
Get ticket (Free Admission)



“Qualia” is a sensory voyage where the line is blurred between the physical and the digital world, between the real and the imaginary. The gaze is a visual poem, gravitational Qualia: anxiety shaped into Surrealism, mythology, a nightmare turned fantasy, spontaneous solidarity, feelings of solitude, suspension, an embrace, the beginning of a smile, a hand falling and rising again, time and the fates.

Conceived as an immersive projection mapping design using cinematographic language and interactive dramaturgy, “Qualia” explores concepts of mental states, symbolism, and hope, creating a story that unfolds across a series of immersive scenarios drawing from the body, faces, urban patterns, nature and remains of activity. Underneath these mirrored imageries lie many stories about limits, freedom and self-perception.

An ordinary tableau becomes a dreamscape, the brain is an airport, a train rail. The mind is a magician, the body is the self, giving audience an alternative experience where they are no longer passive spectators and actively enter the very heart of the piece where ‘universal time’ continues to exist in parallel with an inner perception of time — a back door — intimately associated with our sense of personal identity and unshakable condition that the future is still open to our chosen actions.

The brain is an alchemist where memories are the bedrock of consciousness.

The piece uses choreographic language, fragmentation, bioart, color, motion, music, drama, humor, light and darkness to confound expectations, dream-like scenes and symbolic images, flattening space through animation and abstraction, or heightening the illusion of three dimensions.

The immersive experience - environmental video sculpture - is designed as a large wall with white canvases spread across, seemingly in random positions creating video spaces. Using the concept of ideasthesia, a bridge that metaphorically links rational abstractions, we open a dialogue between the different film streams - within the canvases and throughout the wall - with an original music score and sound design, extending the installation in time and space.

With the support of the Individual Artist Fellowship program provided by the Jersey City Arts Council and the Jersey City Arts & Culture Trust Fund, and the Jersey City Theater Center. Produced by Laia Cabrera & Co.



Tuesday, July 25, 2023

Projection Design and Mapping for Lachi's "Lift Me Up" music video

"Lift Me Up" is a tribute to late disability rights activist Judy Heumann, aimed at spotlighting
high-quality accessible art and Disability within a pop culture narrative. 

Lachi: RAMPD Records: www.rampd.org
Executive Producer: Lachi Music LLC www.lachimusic.com
Music Production: Lachi and Michael Herrick
Mixing/Mastering: The Pear Entertainment
Video Directors: Catriona Rubenis-Stevens and Day Al-Mohamed
Co Stars: Nell Russell, Otis Jones and Amber Galloway, Ali Stroker

Producers: Arthur Gwynne, Catriona Rubenis-Stevens, Lachi Music Music
Performers: Gaelynn Lea, James Ian, Lachi Music
ASL Performers: Amber Galloway, Aurnell Russell, Otis Jones
Audio Description Narrator: Ali Stroker
Director of Photography: Caroline Mariko Stucky
1st Assistant Camera: Eric Richardson
Editor: Jake Primmerman
Director of Artistic ASL: Amber Galloway
Projection Design: Laia Cabrera & Isabelle Duverger (Laia Cabrera & Co.)
Production Designer: JD Caesar
Special thanks to: RAMPD, Gymnopedie, Quad Studios
Audio Descriptions Sponsored by Google, maker of Lookout
ASL Sponsored by Amber G Productions
Sponsored by Google, maker of Live Caption and Live Transcribe

  

Thursday, March 9, 2023

Projection Design and Artwork for "Allerleirauh, The Musical" by Angela Masi and by Dillon Feldman, 2023​

    

   

A compassionate and witty take on the classic Grimm fairytale, Allerleirauh is the story of a genius architect who is forced to flee her homeland to protect her blind daughter. Disguised as beggars, they find work in the kitchens of a neighboring castle. With the help of a grumpy cook, a vegetarian king and an outrageous cast of characters, The Builder finds within herself the strength to face the cost of her mistakes and become the mother and queen she was always meant to be.

Directed by Catriona Stevens
Projection design and artwork by Laia Cabrera and Isabelle Duverger
Light design by Matt Steinberg - Choreography by Michael Scannelli
Cast: Adam Barr, Camber Carpenter, Paul Gary, Jeffrey Grover, Zoila N. Pinto, Sean Quigley, Yasmin Ranz-Lind, Chase Wolfe, Claire E. Dempsey, Shari Gill, Veronica Depauli, Sofia Ales
Band: Natasha Gonzalez music direction; Blair Hamrick, Katya Barmotina, Alice Levine, Vince Novellino, Dave D’aranjo, Andy Buslovich, Emma Reinhart, Steve Plesnarski

March 10-11, 2023 - Alvin Ailey Dance Theater - 405 W 55th St, New York, NY

Friday, November 11, 2022

Welcome to Sloomooverse - Web-AR Interactive Experience

Created by Laia Cabrera and Isabelle Duverger
Development by Marcos Boero - Devenred
3D by Jordan Gantier and Lucas Ordoñez

Sloomoo Institute, 475 Broadway, SoHo, New York, NY 10013, Starting September 22, 2022
November 2022 in Chicago and Atlanta, December 2023 in Houston.


Sloomooverse is an interactive web-AR experience. Sloomoo is entering your real world environment (SLAM), and spreading mini-sloomoo in their path. When detecting a sloomooverse (image targets), Sloomoo enters a 3D world which is VR or AR based, where they can interact in different way, swimming their way through an underwater mysterious world of treasures, jumping on the moon surrounded by a magical sky and planets, become an 8bit version of themselves, and poping on tap, in a very 80s videogamish way, enter a psychedelic world where giant mushrooms grow and Sloomoo dances under a kaleidoscopic sky and floor, or enjoys a rain of french fries.
The web-AR contains therefore six experiences in one, and because it is a web-Based AR experience, people don't need to download anything to start experiencing it.
As an added feature, the experience can be photographed or recorded.

SLIMEY MIRROR - Sloomoo Institute - New York, Chicago, Atlanta

Created by Laia Cabrera and Isabelle Duverger
Interactive Design by Aniol Saurina Masó
3D Design by Lucas Ordoñez
Music by Pei Pei Music

Sloomoo Institute, 475 Broadway, SoHo, New York, NY 10013, Starting September 22, 2022
Opening November 19, 2022 in Chicago and Atlanta
Opening December 7, 2023 in Houston

Slimey Mirror is an immersive interactive installation which reflect on the self, our identity, and how do we relate to our inner child, when exposed to a different environment where one can see an image of themselves but not quite themselves.
When entering, the interactivity allows for people to see their self as an avatar of slime, responding to one's movement in a mirrored manner, and at the same time responding to the laws of motion of slime. The environment is a cave also made of slime, and it can interact with people by spilling slime of different textures. When prompted by a ball of slime, people can also throw slime at the mirror and at one another.
The experience of reflecting oneself onto a mirror is always a learning experience, here we want people to free themselves from their self-reflection and discover the possibilities of being in a slime body.
The installation works with a full body tracking sensor, and therefor allows to move freely in the space without having to wear any technology. We are looking to create an experience in which people can instinctively interact, with technology invisible.



Tuesday, November 1, 2022

Dream-e-scape at Microwave Media Art Festival, Hong Kong

An Immersive Interactive Cinematic Art Installation by Laia Cabrera and Isabelle Duverger

"Blend make-believe with reality in “Dream-e-scape,” by Laia Cabrera & Isabelle Duverger. A room that manages to feel intimate and limitless at the same time.
As the walls shift into countless scenes ranging from the familiar (a tranquil coral reef) to the fantastical (a vortex of swirling cosmos), you’ll feel like you’ve tumbled down the rabbit hole into Wonderland.
Your every movement and action in Dream-e-scape will unlock different scenarios and dreams.
Keep your eyes wide open as you make the art come alive!"
— Secret Los Angeles, June 29, 2022

Flutter Experience Art Gallery, 217 S La Brea, Los Angeles, CA - 2022-2023
Dream-e-scape at Microwave Media Arts Festival - Oct 28, 2022 - Nov 6, 2022 - Hong Kong City Hall
#Hybrid Vision - Panasonic Digital Art Competition 2022 - Interactive Digital Art Nominee

"Dream-e-scape" is an interactive projection art installation about lucid dreams, created by filmmaker Laia Cabrera and multimedia artist Isabelle Duverger, in collaboration with interactive designer Aniol Saurina Masó and composer and instrumentalist Nana Simopoulos.

The piece is an immersive and interactive 360º installation about the mind and the search for awareness in which the public experiences a sensory voyage that captures the surreal nature of dreams, where the line is blurred between the physical and the digital world, between the real and the imaginary.

“Dream-e-scape” is based on the state of sleep, an imaginary journey one can experience with the eyes wide open. The piece explores the concept of Lucid Dream, the state in which we are asleep and become aware we are dreaming, and the ability we have to control the dreams, the agency we have over our thoughts and desires. We are testing reality, are we awake?

Conceived and Directed by Laia Cabrera and Isabelle Duverger
Interactive Design by Aniol Saurina Masó
Original music composition by Nana Simopoulos
Cinematography and Editing by Laia Cabrera and Isabelle Duverger