Teleport yourself into a deeply poetic experience. Connect and interact in a shared virtual space with people across the world.
A deeply immersive experience consisting of separate connected portals, presented in 2012 between London, Paris, Istanbul and Brussels, me and my shadow is an international telepresence experience that connects participants through a shared online environment. Equipped with 3D motion capture devices, each portal features interactive life-size projections and immersive soundscapes. Participants are represented as live digital shadows and can communicate with each other in the real-time digital environment.
me and my shadow invites you to interact and perform with other remote users in an endless dream. In a richly aesthetic experience, the installation enables you to project your full body into a virtual world, to play with your shadow representation and to sculpt 3D shapes.
‘me and my shadow’ was presented in 2012 @ National Theatre Foyer, London
Dance with strangers, virtually feel and touch and breathe, meet your friends or family in Brussels, Istanbul or Paris.
Intuitive, experiential and visionary, the work questions the way we communicate with others online and the traces we leave in virtual space. me and my shadow invites you to re-imagine identity and self-representation in an increasingly blended virtual/physical reality: How does it feel to see yourself and perform as an avatar? Who is who in the virtual world?
In the UK, me and my shadow has been co-produced through an innovative partnership between pioneer East London collective body>data>space and National Theatre in London.
Listen BBC Click on ‘me and my shadow’on BBC iPlayer. Asi Burak discusses how video games can bring about social change. He talks to the creator, Joseph Hyde and Ghislaine Boddington from body>data>space about the simple and relatively cheap tools that are allowing for this telepresence and teleportation. (Broadcast 19 June 2012)
“me and my shadow points to a much more interesting future where the boundaries between the real and the virtual disappear (…) sometimes you are in the virtual space and sometimes.” Bill Thompson on BBC WORLD CLICK
Watch BBC Arabic/4 Tech episode dedicated to ‘me and my shadow’ here, from 07:55 to 13:10
Check out ‘me and my shadow’ PR coverage and marketing:
Co-produced by in the UK by body>data>space and National Theatre as part of the EU project MADE, and connecting real-time audiences between London, Paris, Brussels and Istanbul, me and my shadow, by UK artist Joseph Hyde in collaboration with Phill Tew and Ghislaine Boddington premiered at the National Theatre from 10 – 26 June 2012 as part of National Theatre Inside Out.
Read more about the residency/development process and the Residency in London.
me and my shadow is commissioned by MADE, a co-operation project between lead organiser centre des arts d’Enghien-les-Bains (Paris, France) and partners body>data>space (London, UK), Transcultures (Mons, Belgium) and boDig (Istanbul, Turkey), with the support of the Culture programme of the European Union (2007-2013). UK co-producers are body>data>space and National Theatre in association with Bath Spa University. Supported using public funding by the Arts Council of England.
Read more on the process on Jo Hyde’s dedicated blog: http://madeshadow.wordpress.com/