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BALDO VERDÚ: PERFORMANCE FROM MILKIT STUDIO A London-based artist joins forces with milkit studio to explore the creative parameters of extended reality (XR) technology and live performance. TPi’s Stew Hume reports…
This time last year, the idea of an artist preforming on an extended reality (XR) stage would certainly be out of the norm, but with the usual method of live performance currently out of the question, artists are looking at novel ways to create visually stimulating moments for their fans across the globe. While many studios now offer this state-of-the-art technology, most are quick to explain that the solution is still in the early stages of development and a great deal of trial and error is required before it is perfected. This curiosity to play with technology is exactly what has been happening since May 2020 at a studio tucked away in a corner of North London. The brainchild of Pod Bluman of Bluman Associates, milkit studio has been established to act as, in the words of Bluman, “an XR Lab”. While Bluman Associates had already been experimenting with disguise’s xR technology long before the lockdown – most notably with Dave’s critically acclaimed performance at the BRITS last year [featured in
TPi March 2020] – it wasn’t until the then tenants of the Bluman Associates studio handed in their notice to vacate in May that the idea for a dedicated XR studio began to take shape. “We suddenly had an empty studio and we wondered what we were going to do with it,” reflected Bluman. With demand for XR technology increasing rapidly, the team opted to create its own studio space. “We were very methodical while pulling together the pieces of this space,” stated Bluman. “Filming a project using disguise xR is a completely different process to filming in a regular studio in terms of workflow and process.” So, rather than putting the studio on the commercial market, Bluman decided to bring in creatives to collaborate in the space and, over a period of four months, put on three different shoots. “The goal of these collaborations was to really understand not only how the technology works but more importantly to understand the production process in a studio like this,” he explained. Bluman was pleased to report 10