Insights

I’ve been working on bringing clarity to my digital structure. It’s not the first time – and probably won’t be the last. My practice has outgrown older systems. The way I organise things hasn’t kept up with the way I work.

My work spans many fields. I move between performance, coding, sound, ritual, XR, robotics, and visual design. Each piece I create is a hybrid structure – a convergence of multiple technological and artistic layers. This makes the need for a system that doesn’t just store files, but reflects the way I create.

I’ve been mapping the actual components that go into production. Here’s an example of what that looks like right now:

# PERFORMANCE & CONCEPT
~/performance/scripts/         # Miro, Google Docs
~/performance/sessions/        # Induction forms, session flows

# AI & GENERATIVE MEDIA
~/ai/video/                    # LumaLabs, Sora, Runway, Kling, Kaliber, Hailu
~/ai/audio/                    # ElevenLabs, voice FX, etc
~/ai/text/                     # Prompts, realtime generation, ChatGPT, etc

# COSTUME & ARTEFACTS
~/costume/                     # Arduino setups, mask, cape, hat, headpiece 
~/instruments/                 # Drum, flute, bowl 
~/artefacts/                   # Senory objects, ASMR, shamanic tools, crystals

# CONTROL & INPUT
~/midi/gyroscope/              # Glover, Arduino, Bella, MicroBit
~/midi/controllers/            # RC-505, Millumin, Midi, DMX

# VISUALS & AUDIO
~/visuals/                     # Resolume, TouchDesigner, Premiere Pro etc 
~/audio/                       # Ableton Suite 12, Max for Live

# XR & VIRTUAL
~/xr/unity/                    # Quest builds, virtual stage, Blender etc
~/xr/assets/                   # LiDAR, 3D scans, environments, 3D-models

# SPECIAL FX
~/fx/                          # Scents, smoke, light, relay, wind, heat etc

# DOCUMENTATION
~/doc/video/                   # Cinema camera, livestream, ATEM Mini
~/doc/SoMe/                    # Behind-the-scenes, drawings, reflections

This is not a finished structure – it’s a snapshot. An evolving system that helps me stay oriented in the complexity. I’m still working to strike a balance between clarity and openness, building something that can adapt and evolve with the work without becoming rigid.

Right now, I’m organising my core directories like this:

00_PRODUCTIONS  → active and archived works (named with date and title)
01_EXPLORATIONS → experiments, prototypes, Unity, AI, sound sketches
02_MEDIA        → photos, video footage, sound, 3D assets, scans
03_ASSETS       → video clips, sound bits, renders, AI material
04_EXPORTS      → final exports (video, sound, stills, posters)

Most are named using _YYMMDD-Name

It helps me understand where something belongs in time and where it is in its process.

This journal entry is primarily for the benefit of remembering how I approached this at this particular moment. What worked. What was still being figured out? What patterns were emerging? What needed to change?

It’s a living structure – technospheric in nature – and it will continue to evolve.

Since the world began to lockdown in response to the pandemic I’ve been pondering the question: How to make resilient performing arts? As a result, I’ve developed a new format in collaboration with Mille Maria Dalsgaard from Sydhavn Teater for the piece Luna Seconda.

Luna Seconda is a cinematic theater play where the audience gets wireless radiofrequency earphones and enters an immersive setting to be engulfed in a cinematic performing arts piece that revolves around them and with video recorded from the setting and projected onto a bobbinet. Simultaneous the content is being streamed to an online audience that sits with earphones and watches the same on the theatre’s digital stage.

It creates interesting cross-overs between various artistic fields: Cinematic, TV broadcasting, internet transmission, and the performing arts. For Luna Seconda, this means that the piece is having live performers, being live broadcasted with a switcher board, done in one take, having close-ups, binaural audio because of earphones, performers whispering into your ear through the earphones, and triple-image exposure on the bobbinet.

There is more info about the piece here:
https://www.sydhavnteater.dk/luna-seconda/ (in Danish)

JAKOB LA COUR STUDIO has been working hard in collaboration with Makropol on building the foundation for immersive XR performance. So we are thrilled to announce the project XR BLACK BOX that is made possible with support from The Danish Arts Foundation.

XR BLACK BOX is initiated to expand the reality of the performing arts through the use of XR-media. During the next 6 months we will do this through industry networking, experimental performing arts production, technical and methodical development, knowledge sharing, audience involvement, and other things that can make XR performing arts a bubbling and exciting field to be a part of for both the industry and the audience.

XR BLACK BOX is here to explore and develop a foundation for the performing arts of the future, in which we embrace the use of XR.

XR stands for extended reality and includes virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, and other related technologies and mediums.

Learn more about the project here: www.xrblackbox.com

Each time you add a layer of sensory involvement the immersion deepens and the intensity of the experience increase.

This realization became very clear when I experienced the same content showed in different ways.

As an example let us go through these hypothetical layers: 1.) Imagine a person watching a video of a situation where there is a person sitting at a chair by a table with a plate, knife, and fork and eating a lovely dinner. 2.) The next layer could be seeing the same situation from a first-person perspective. 3.) Now we see it as a 360 video with a head-mounted display. 4.) We ask the person to follow the movements of the arms in the video. 5.) We add the scenography – a chair and table with a plate, knife, and fork. 6.) Now we add actual food to the plate.

Through these layers the immersion becomes deeper and deeper.