Participatory movement and virtual reality experience

Soma is an hour-long participatory experience that takes participants on a sensory journey and offers them the opportunity to explore different ways of ‘seeing’ and ‘feeling’ across physical, virtual and imagined realities.

Bringing together an experienced team of professional dancers whose individual practices contribute to the delivery of the work, the Soma VR experience combines the skills of creative technologists Clarice Hilton and All Seeing Eye, with interactive sound and composition from Tom Mitchell and Joseph Hyde. The project is funded by Arts Council England and The Brigstow Institute at the University of Bristol.

Soma presents a new way of experiencing and integrating VR technologies into performance by going beyond the common use of VR as a form of escapism, and instead showing how technologies can be used as tools that enhance our connection with our bodies, each other and the world around us.

“I think there was something happening within me - it’s like I was waking up.”

– Participant

An important focus within the piece is exploring the perception gap between seeing and feeling; typically, when a participant steps into a virtual environment using VR technologies, there is a discrepancy between the seen visual virtual world and the felt physical exchanges between bodies and the environment.

VR artists and technologists often try to hide this gap to align all sensory information under the visual, as a single reality – in contrast, Soma invites participants to explore the felt as a parallel mode for being in the world alongside the seen.

During unprecedented times of climate emergency, persistent individualism and increasingly divisive politics, Soma provides the space and time for us to listen to our own bodies. A vital opportunity for us to experience new ways of being together, heightening our awareness of the environments around us in a way that feels urgent and refreshing.

Soma is available for touring, please get in touch:

“The entire time, given the complexity and sort of possibility of it, there was no doubt from me at any stage that we were held and looked after and the risks were understood and being borne by the team.”

– Participant

Upcoming

Soma performances, installation and VR demos at the Bloomsbury Theatre for the Performance Lab programme, May 2022

Previous

Soma workshops and performances at Kaleider Studios in Exeter on March 5th and 6th 2020

Participate

If you would like to participate in the Soma Project, we would love to hear from you.

“I think the huge sense of my own body was so present throughout in so many different ways”

– Participant

Engage

If you feel there are connections between your programme and the themes and questions this project raises, we would welcome further conversations.

Similarly, if you are a business or organisation that would like to book Soma as an interactive experience within your own space

Soma Promo Video

Play Video