This project began as a simple question: What would be lost if we were to bring circus arts into virtual reality?
Dominique Vyborna taught and performed Aerial Silks in Austin Texas in the the early 2010s. She then took a decade away from her practice to go through a “business woman” phase after getting a degree in Supply Chain Management at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin. In Autumn of 2022, Dominique began taking adult recreational classes for aerial silks through Circomedia Academy for contemporary circus and physical theatre based in Bristol, England, while attending her final term of a MA in Virtual and Extended Realities.
Almost immediately, she was curious how circus arts could intersect with these new embodied technologies, and began considering the limitations of existing motion capture systems, and the ability of technology to understand the wide range of non-standard movements that circus bodies regularly inhabit.
Aerial instructor, Aimee Bennett put Dominique in touch with Jonathan Priest, and the conversation that became this project began.
The project has grown into a proposal for a full production, which is in the process of applying for funding to run experiments with Motion Capture, Volumetric Capture, and publish a publicly accessible world to VRChat for global user testing.
