Instruments Overview

Visual Instruments for Performing with Virtual Worlds is a series of custom-built devices for filming, animating, and performing inside real-time virtual environments.

The instruments translate cinematic and bodily gestures into live control systems for game engines. They are functional interfaces, but also sculptural stage objects: tools that make virtual production visible, physical, and performative.

This page currently focuses on two instruments: SIGHTLINE, a cinema instrument for live virtual camera work, and SOMA, an animation instrument for embodied interaction with virtual bodies.

SIGHTLINE - Cinema Instrument

SIGHTLINE is a camera instrument for live cinema performance. Developed through my performance work Passage, it allows the artist to navigate and film an Unreal Engine environment in real time.

The instrument uses accessible sensors, microcontrollers, 3D-printed components, camera hardware, and modular mounting systems to create a live virtual camera. Physical actions such as tilt, drift, height, rotation, and calibration become visible parts of the performance.

In Passage, SIGHTLINE is used to perform an unbroken journey through a speculative cybernetic forest. The camera movement, live score, and virtual environment shape one another in real time.

A musician live scores the piece while I improvise the camera movement, lighting, and virtual world in real time. We continuously respond to one another, forming a live feedback loop.

SIGHTLINE uses accessible components to adapt virtual production techniques often associated with Hollywood film and television for a live performance context. Pictured below: Set of The Mandalorian

SIGHTLINE’s second iteration is built on a modular camera-cage system, allowing the instrument to be reconfigured and customized for different performance needs. The design will be open sourced later in 2026, allowing other artists to build their own rigs for live cinema performance.

SOMA - Animation Instrument

SOMA is an animation instrument developed through my dance-theatre work Vestige. It allows a performer to interact with a virtual body through touch, gesture, and mechanical extension.

In Vestige, a dancer uses SOMA to partner with the screen: making contact with a digital figure, summoning its presence, and gradually shifting between puppetry, remote embodiment, and duet. The instrument asks how a performer might connect with a body that is not physically present, and how an apparatus can reshape intimacy, control, and movement.

A series of sensors translates the movement of the armature into the spine of the virtual body, while layered inputs introduce subtle motion nuances.

SOMA’s form is inspired by puppet rigs, armatures, and prosthetic extensions, both a performance object and control interface.

Closing

These instruments sit between interface and performance object. They need to be precise enough to control complex systems, but unstable enough to invite timing, interpretation, resistance, and style.

Rather than hiding the technical process behind a final image, SIGHTLINE and SOMA bring the process onstage. They make virtual cinematography and animation visible as live acts: something performed by bodies, objects, and machines together.