Following the premiere of “Hummingbird” as part of the Chicago’s Tony Award-winning Goodman Theatre New Stages Festival in December 2021, the virtual reality theatrical experience was exhibited at the SIGGRAPH 2022 Conference Immersive Pavilion held in Vancouver, CA, August 8-11th. Team members enhanced the existing experience to allow for a stand-alone version running consecutively for 4 days to sell-out audiences/participants - augmenting interactivity, animations, videography as well as upgrades to the underlying software and VR systems. By all accounts the exhibition was extremely well received and a success.

“Hummingbird: Multi-User Virtual Reality Theater for Collaborative Tele-Immersive Exploration” is a modern, innovative performance, merging live theater and interactive virtual reality by bringing a group of active participants into a shared space for a live performance. This project bridges art, science and live theater through a collaborative research effort between computer science and design faculty and students at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) and Chicago theater directors, actors, videographers and producers. “Hummingbird” is developed by Daria Tsoupikova (Professor, School of Design); Andrew Johnson (Professor, EVL, Computer Science); Jo Cattell (Goodman Theatre); Lance Long (Senior Research Programmer, EVL, Computer Science); Arthur Nishimoto (PhD Candidate, EVL, Computer Science); Sai Jyothula Priya (PhD Candidate, EVL, Computer Science).

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