Augmenting the Aesthetic: XR in Festival Arts
Details
We invite you to an engaging evening featuring talks by Kate Jessop, Director of the Brighton International Animation Festival, and Dr. Donatella Barbieri, Senior Researcher and acclaimed scenographer. Together, they will explore the integration of Extended Reality (XR) technologies in aesthetic practices and curated festival programmes.
AR and Animation
Kate Jessop will share her experience of curating Augmented Reality content for the Brighton International Animation Festival, including an AR exhibition that featured projects shortlisted for the Best AR Award. The showcase attracted animators from around the world, highlighting the growing interest in AR as a new form of artistic expression. She will also share insights on how to utilise AR artworks within the festivall, such as costumes, and will also introduce plans to expand into Virtual Reality for the next edition of the festival, offering a preview of upcoming programmes and details on how creators can apply to take part.
Kate is an award-winning animation director and the founder of the Brighton International Animation Festival, a BAFTA-qualifying event that embraces international collaboration and promotes accessible learning opportunities for audiences to engage with and learn about animation as a medium.
Brighton International Animation Festival Home Page
The Whispering Forest
Dr. Donatella Barbieri will present Whispering Forest, the Yoruba Tales collective’s mixed reality experience that blends myth, motion and performing matter. This immersive work features magical characters brought to life through dance and rich, textile-based costumes, rooted in eco-critical Yoruba mythologies. Donatella will offer a behind-the-scenes look at the creative process, merging cloth textures, storytelling, and live performance with cutting-edge XR technology.
Donatella is a costume-based scenographer, educator, and author of Costume in Performance: Materiality, Culture and the Body (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017), winner of the PQ19 Best Publication Award. She is also the founding editor of Studies in Costume and Performance, a biannual research journal, and the co-producer of the Whispering Forest