Scene from 74 Years

Cassandra Rousseau
Cassandra Rousseau (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist practicing graphic and performing arts. Rousseau has a DEC in Visual Arts, completing her Specialization in Computation Arts, started a minor in Theatre and is currently a member of the Latin and heels dance crew, Fierce MTL. Her work focuses mostly on exploration and storytelling. She combines various elements from different practices in her work to create unique and authentic pieces. She developed an interest in immersive experiences. She wants to push the limits of immersive technologies by exploring the merge between traditional or performative disciplines with digital tools and techniques.

Scene from 74 Years

Scenes from 74 Years is a virtual reality adaptation of the play Scenes from 68* years by Hannah Khalil. This project is a collaboration between the 4th-year student, Nawash Masri, and the 3rd-year Computation Arts student, Cassandra Rousseau. The play narrates Palestinians’ daily lives since the Israeli government's occupation. Palestinian himself, Masri wanted to tell the story of his community by reinterpreting the piece, but not through the influence of biases. The purpose is to show factually what is happening between the two countries through a narrative. The research-creation in question is to find how we can bring empathy from the users during an immersive experience. The artists tried to define a role for the user by making them play a character without falling into the trap of gamification. They wanted to find a balance between an active and passive spectator to make users identify and relate to the play's characters. Rousseau worked on a prototype focusing on the technical and interactive functions of the experience. VR was chosen as the medium for this prototype because it challenges the barrier between the stage and the public and has tremendous emotional and learning benefits. The users have an insight into the Palestine-Israeli conflict through a conversation with a taxi driver. The conservation comes from two scenes of the original play that were adapted to the experience. The VR play was made through the game engine Unity and used the Steam VR plugin.

External Links

Documentation

All media are the property of the artists, reproduction and distribution is prohibited.

2021