Single Thread has announced the launch of Single Thread XR, a small strike team of artists and technologists who will explore the emerging medium of XR (augmented, virtual and mixed reality) as a means of telling stories to a broader audience.

"Single Thread has found a theatre the size of a seashell yet as fathomless as the ocean in the XR space”, says Alex Dault, Associate Artistic Director and head of Single Thread XR. “Our XR team wants to explore how immersive creation processes can be applied within three- dimensional digital space. It is a celebration of innovation, collaboration, and community held where Single Thread believes live performance and extended reality can meet.”

Dault has led the initiative with a pivot in his own training, dedicating the last two years to studying Unity and Unreal game engine technology as well as studying modelling and programming. Because of these new skills, he was able to design a meeting space in virtual reality for the company when COVID threatened to result in postponement or cancellation of the PXR conference.

Single Thread XR presented Collider at the rEvolver festival, May 28-June 5, 2021, hosted by Upintheair Theatre and the Festival of Live Digital Art (FOLDA). More information on Collider can be found here.

“Collider lays the foundation of all Single Thread XR work to come”, says Dault. It develops a language, pedagogy, and way of working that is uniquely virtual. Everything that we discover in Collider can be applied to all VR work developed in the future.”

“We are pushing the limits of audience immersion”, adds Chloe Payne, Co-Artistic Lead for Collider. “What can be more immersive than putting on a headset and being in a completely new setting? Or logging in via 2D and engaging in something with the same sophistication as a video game, but with live actors?”

Find out more about Single Thread XR’s work by clicking the buttons below!