Remote Control

For their first major project in three years, Northern Ireland’s Big Telly collaborated with Office of Everyone to develop a new hybrid immersive show titled 'Department Story', which combined a novel mix of live and digital performance. The show premiered at the Belfast International Arts Festival in a retail unit in the centre of Belfast.

The production served as a testbed for 'Remote Control', a web platform developed by Office of Everyone and afew that revolutionises digital audience engagement by forging new relationships between physical and remote live audiences and performers. Using the platform, remote audiences can select their own narrative journey from a series of live and pre-recorded ‘CCTV’ feeds. They can also communicate directly with physical audiences and live actors.

The most significant innovation is a series of interactive elements that allow online audiences to influence the route, action, and outcome of the story. A virtual control panel enables remote viewers to change the lighting and audio in the space, as well as trigger smoke and kinetic objects - all of which relate to the story - via a direct link between the app and the DMX system in the physical space.

The past few years have begun to unlock new possibilities for online performance viewing, offering us the chance to shape an exciting new hybrid chapter for theatre and the arts.