About

About

"The projections are manifestations of desires and nightmares
that leap into the audience."
Jordan Beth Vincent
The Age

Parallax

Parallax is a contemporary dance performance that integrates human movement, animation and 3D illusions. In Parallax, you will experience the intersection of 3D imaginary worlds with live performance. During the show the audience wears 3D glasses that give the illusion that the animation hovers in space. Watch as a woman drinks a green liquid and the hallway she is standing in becomes a portal to new worlds. She is transported through a series of abstract environments where 3D animations appear to dance with her. Each world she enters is different, sometimes foreboding, sometimes wondrous.

# Please note this video:

The above video is a 2D video documentation of a live stereoscopic 3D performance. The 3D illusion can not be documented for viewing on a standard screen as it can only be experienced live with the use of 3D audience glasses.

In the live performance: the projected imagery appears to fall away from the performer into infinity, move with the performer on the stage and push forward into the auditorium where the audience feels like the imagery is just in front of their eyes. The experience is very similar to viewing a 3D film at the cinema.

 
“Beckwith is something of a trailblazer then, as she employs
game-style navigation for her digital world”
Chloe Smethurst
The Age
© Beckwith

The Creators

Dr Megan Beckwith

BECKWITH is a transmedia artist who combines dance and digital media. Her practice explores the intersection of physicality and technology through the figure of the post-human cyborg. Beckwith combines her dance performance with technologies such as stereoscopic 3D illusions, motion capture, virtual and augmented reality. She creates performance installations that combine the body and 3D animation in a process that layers one over the other, re-working the human figure into new forms that both fascinate and horrify. The Melbourne Age described Beckwith as a ‘trailblazer’ and in a review of her performance work ‘Parallax’ described how ‘the projections are manifestations of desires and nightmares that leap into the audience’. Her work has been presented in Shanghai, New York, Paris, Berlin, Bristol, Montreal, Bonn, Seattle, London, Los Angeles, Seoul and San Francisco, featured on the uber-cool UK based blog Prosthetic Knowledge, and picked up by the Tumblr Radar. The computer game culture magazine KILLSCREEN wrote that her work ‘opens a rabbit hole of accelerating conceptual possibilities’. In 2016 she won the Australia Post Art Prize for her animated dance installation Torso. In 2018 she was commissioned by the Gasworks Theater Consortium to further develop and perform her 3D dance work Parallax, in 2019 she was awarded a Punctum Inc. Seedpod residency. Internationally, in early 2019, Virtual Drag, was part of the Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin at the Luve Auditoriam, Pompidou Centre, Paris. In 2023 her work motion capture dance work Chuthulsene was presented in the Frame Festival, Melbourne.

Dr Jacques Soddell

Jacques is a French born Australian electroacoustic sound artist based in regional city of Bendigo. He creates computer-based music, with a particular interest in deconstructing natural sounds and field recordings to create new sounds and textures that captive his audiences. His work 'Frozen Moment' was described by audio field reporter John McEnroe, he wrote "Every sound seems to occur in a complete different space: every layer of sound is isolated from the next one creating an impressive sense of parallel simultaneity on every given moment, ‘Frozen Moment’ is a compelling release”. Jacques has been experimenting with sounds since the early 1980s, but it was not until the late 1990s that he pursued sound art professionally resulting in his first live performance in 2000. During this time he also created experimental video art and investigated music based on Lindenmayer system models of fungal growth with scientist Dr Fran Soddell. His sound art label, Cajid media produces his and other artists experimental sound work. He currently creates sound and video for theatre, dance, live performance and installations. Jacques is passionate about promoting experimental art, with involvement with many community based sound organisations such as the Bendigo Film Society movement, the Old Fire Station, the 'Possible Musics' a local radio program, the Undue Noise Concert series, Allan’s Walk Artist Run Space and the live arts organization Punctum Inc. His sound has been presented locally, nationally and internationally and transports his audiences to new textural environments through layering of sound architecture.

Parallax Performances and Presentations

  • Phee Broadway Theatre, Fringe, Castlemaine State Festival 2023, March 25, 2023
  • Drum Theatre, Dandenong, 21 May, 2021
  • Punctum Inc. Seedpod Artist Residency, Phee Broadway Theatre, Castlemaine, 9 – 18 April 2019
  • Gasworks Arts Park, Moving Parts Season, South Melbourne, Australia, 1- 3 March, 2018
  • Moving Parts Season Opening, Gasworks Arts Park, Australia, January, 2018
  • The Pop Up Bar, Kingston Arts Centre, Moorabbin, Australia, February, 2018
  • Burrinja Arts Centre, Upway, Australia, February, 2018
  • Culture Tracks Season Opening, Memo Theater, Healesville, January, 2018
  • Augmenting Live Performance with Stereoscopic 3D, DiGRA Conference, Swinburne University, July, 2017
  • Parallax, PhD presentation, Deakin Motion.Lab, Deakin University, Burwood, Australia, July, 2016
  • Parallax: work in progress, MOCO: the International Workshop on Moving and Computing, Coldcorp Centre for the Arts, Vancouver, Canada, 2015
  • Parallax: Development One, The Newport Substation, Melbourne Fringe Festival, Newport, Australia, 2014
  • Parallax: Work in Progress, The National Dance Forum, Deakin University, Burwood, Australia, 2013
 
 

Parallax, where the real
and virtual collide