Hybrid Sensation

“…seductive, color-fluctuating VR performance…”
– Anne Liisberg, Iscene

Produced by Jakob la Cour Studio

“Jakob la Cour Studio’s HYBRID SENSATION is insanely beautifully produced…”
– Casper Koeller, Sceneblog

“Hybrid Sensation must be praised for creating a fully integrated total experience.”
– Morten Kildebæk, Den 4. Væg

“Jakob la Cour Studio’s HYBRID SENSATION is a wild, beautiful, and dream-like experience that will surely blow the legs away from anyone experiencing Virtual Reality at a high level for the first time.”
– Casper Koeller, Sceneblog

Hybrid Sensation is an immersive VR performing arts experience in mixed reality, in which the audience experiences completely new sensory perceptions.

Hybrid Sensation challenges and transforms the audience’s perception of reality, body, and identity through a sensory and participatory approach. It prophesies a societal paradigm shift in which digital and physical hybridity becomes a fundamental condition with all its magic, quirks, and glitches.

The audience wears a VR headset and gets access to a sensory mixed-reality environment – a mini-cosmos with an interaction system. Here, the physical merges with the meta-real in an atmospheric and otherworldly light and sound bath that functions as a futuristic initiation ritual for the hybrid reality body.

Hybrid Sensation
Mixed-reality performance
40 mins

‘Hybrid Sensation’
KSelekt at The Royal Theatre
Produced by Jakob la Cour Studio

Premiered October 30, 2023 at The Royal Danish Theatre.

Advisor
16+, multisensory interaction, virtual reality, smoke/haze, darkness, participation, trance state, nonverbal, strong smells, strobe lights, physical contact, ceremonial drink

Cast
Iza Mortag Freund (Liminator)
Jakob la Cour (Void)
Frederik la Cour (Synchronizer)

Aritstic Direction and Concept
Jakob la Cour

Set Designer and Costume Designer
Frederikke Krogh

Composer and Sound designer
Julie Østengaard

VR Artists
Matias Brunacci and Jakob la Cour

VR Technician and Tone Master
Frederik la Cour

Light Design
Frederikke Krogh and Jakob la Cour

Costumier
Siri Viola Nysom Sandhagen

Production Assistant
Nadia Mamchyts

Producer, Production Manager, and PR
Anne Mai Slot Vilmann

Dramaturgial Consulting
Kirsten Dehlholm and Marie Dahl

Caretaker
Dreeas Vilas Nicolai Asmussen

Graphics and Poster Design
Jakob la Cour

Documentary and Videographer
Jacob Hesselberg

Video trailer
Søren Meisner

Thanks to Peter Bandsholm for construction help, Jørn Thostrup for lighting consultation, Dreeas Vilas Nicolai Asmussen for technical help, Carl Emil Carlsen for IR light, Joachim Dittman for VR support and Cenk Güzelis for VR support.

Iza Mortag Freund’s participation included a choreographic adaptation of ‘Liminator’.

AI systems included in the production: OpenAI GPT-4 AI text, Eleven Labs Generative AI text for speech, and MidJourney AI text for image.

Jakob la Cour Studio’s ‘Hybrid Sensation’ was selected for KSelekt signature performance by The Danish Arts Foundation and Udviklingsplatformen. The work was made possible with support from the Statens Kunstfond and VR equipment from Wonder Studios.

Reviews
★★★★ Hybrid Sensation – colorful, sensual VR initiation, Anne Liisberg, Iscene – LINK

“Jakob la Cour Studio’s seductive, color-fluctuating VR performance, Hybrid Sensation.”
– Anne Liisberg, Iscene

“Carefully we move between each other’s bodies. Miraculously without clashing. We fall into a fluid movement flow initiated by sound and sight and become more courageous.”
– Anne Liisberg, Iscene

“The experience is shared and individual at the same time. Hybrid sensation binds together while at the same time exploring the meeting between the human and the digital in a seductive and consciousness-expanding mini-cosmos that you – or at least I – did not want to leave.”
– Anne Liisberg, Iscene

★★★★ HYBRID SENSATION // Jakob la Cour Studio, KSelekt in the Play House, The Royal Theatre, Sceneblog, LINK

“Jakob la Cour Studio’s HYBRID SENSATION is insanely beautifully produced…”
– Casper Koeller, Sceneblog

“Jakob la Cour Studio’s HYBRID SENSATION is a wild, beautiful, and dream-like experience that will surely blow the legs away from anyone experiencing Virtual Reality at a high level for the first time.”
– Casper Koeller, Sceneblog

“Jakob la Cour Studio is close to the perfect Virtual Reality universe in HYBRID SENSATION, where the participants – those we used to call the audience – no longer just sit still and receive visuals through their VR headsets but can now both move and touch virtual objects.”
– Casper Koeller, Sceneblog

Hybrid Sensation, Morten Kildebæk, Den 4. Væg, LINK

Hybrid Sensation bears little resemblance to a play in the classical sense. Most of all, the new virtual reality performance feels like a 40-minute long performance – or like a ritual for a separate sci-fi cult.
– Morten Kildebæk, Den 4. Væg

“Hybrid Sensation must be praised for creating a fully integrated total experience.”
– Morten Kildebæk, Den 4. Væg

HYBRID SENSATION – virtual reality og scenekunst, Bastard.blog, LINK

“In interaction with the other audience members, after an audio instruction in the room, we created a digital installation, and when we were surrounded by the digital planet, I almost felt that my own body disappeared in a sensuous color universe. My body trembled with surprise.”
– Stina Strange Thue, Bastard.blog

In the meeting between virtual reality and performing arts, a completely unique and futuristic experience unfolds in this hybrid work.
– Stina Strange Thue + ChatGPT, Bastard.blog

All in all, this avant-garde work presents an impressive and provocative fusion of virtual reality and performing arts. It is a bold experiment that explores the limits of what is possible in the fusion of the digital and the physical.
– Stina Strange Thue + ChatGPT, Bastard.blog