“Hello, World!” is an immersive performance for very young children Featuring a performing trio ensemble, 360* projection and a custom ambisonic soundscape composed by Shomit Barua. the story of “hello, world!” follows three adventuring friends who awaken in a garden, then climb trees, fly through the sky, swim in the deep ocean and float through outer space to say “Hello!” to the fantastic world around them.
Produced in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, “Hello, World!” intentionally centers very young children and their families within a 360* environment of sound, sight and moments of playful interaction with performers. While making exclusive use of Google’s Tiltbrush VR painting software and Unity Game Engine to present technology-driven visuals to young people free of the restraints of a cumbersome headset or 2D monitor, "Hello, World!" can be experienced communally and inclusive by audiences of all ages.
The choreography of “Hello, World!” is devised in response to research sessions which observed how children aged 2-6 play amongst custom-designed interactive installations made specifically for this age range, corresponding to motifs like earth, water and sky. “Hello, World!” debuted in March 2022 as a multi-channel 360* experience at the i.d.e.a. Museum’s sound dome in Mesa, AZ, followed by an excerpted single-channel performance at The National Sawdust in Brooklyn, NYC with DBR Lab II. In this way, “Hello, World!” is an adaptive experience that can be reformatted for children and their families depending on the constraints of any venue, although it is preferred to view in as close to 360 as possible.
“Hello, World!” is a means of inclusively presenting high-quality performance art to audiences of all ages. By re-presenting choreography inspired by the movements of very young children through non-verbal performance techniques in the context of a sophisticated audio-visual landscape, “Hello, World!” is a worthy example of inclusive, media-driven performance art for the 21st century, intergenerational audience.
“Hello, World!” was generously funded by Arizona State University’s Graduate and Professional Association, the Herberger Institute Design & the Arts Polaris grant award, and the School of Music, Dance, & Theatre.
“Hello, World!” show reel
“Hello, World!” MULti-channel FULL SHOW | Performed at THE I.D.E.A. MUSEUM, APRIL 2022
“Hello, World!” single-channel EXCERPT | Performed at the nATIONAL SAWDUST, APRIL 2022
Photo by Keegan Carlson
“hELLO, WORLD!” VR SCENIC DESIGN EXCERPT
Meet the HELLO, WORLD! Team
Olivia Hernandez (ONOH)
Director, Media Designer, Producer | Olivia/ONOH is an interdisciplinary artist who takes many forms - animator, educator, performer and creative coder. A Theatre MFA candidate at Arizona State University with a focus on Digital Media & Performance, she is deeply curious about the ways in computer-driven technologies and non-traditional collaborators (from chatbots to very young children) enable her to build worlds, tell stories, and consider our relationships within these fantastic spaces. A multicultural Latinx woman, she calls both Miami, FL and Lawrence, KS home, and spent many years in the Lawrence community teaching various intergenerational workshops focused on either digital and analog craft art making. Olivia is an ASU Gammage Teaching Artist trained in the Kennedy Center Arts Integration method, with a BFA in Expanded Media from the University of Kansas and a BA from Baker University double-majoring in Political Science and International Studies. She currently lives in Tempe with her incredible partner, Bryce, and their two fur-babies. Olivia doesn’t want you to leave this space without feeling a profound sense of joy, delight, wonder and awe.
Shomit Barua
Sound Design & Original Score | Shomit Barua is an intermedia artist specializing in ecoacoustics, responsive environments, and emergent narratives. His work is rooted in poetry and architecture, reflecting their shared tenets of contained space, economy of materials, and movement that is both physical and emotional. Combining novel technologies with esoteric programming languages, he blurs the line between installation and performance by employing sound, object, and image. Digital and analog techniques are fused to investigate his core subject: the presence of the mind and body in physical space. Shomit is a doctoral researcher at ASU’s School of Arts, Media, and Engineering. He also holds an MFA in Poetry from Bennington College and teaches writing at Arizona State University. More of his work can be found at shomitbarua.com
Alejandro Bastien
Performer | Alejandro Bastien is a Playback Theater conductor, theater facilitator, and performer. He designs creative processes where participants can build agency about their own narratives and emotions using theater and creative tools to express, connect and create. He studied a BFA in Theater UNAM, in Mexico City, where he is originally from. He studied Theater Philosophy in an academic exchange at the University of Buenos Aires. Afterward, he worked as a teaching artist, voice teacher, and co-created Memorias a la deriva a Playback Theater group. Alejandro is currently an MFA student in Theatre for Youth & Communities at ASU. His research focuses on theater for queer communities. In the future, he wants to continue to develop community theater programs for queer populations, collaborate in physical theater plays and co-create theater for social change projects. I don´t want you to leave without feeling that nature can be wild and so are we.
Julio-Cesar Sauceda
Performer | Julio-Cesar Sauceda is a second year MFA in Dramatic Writing student at ASU. He is originally from Belton, Texas. Currently, He also works for Rising Youth Theatre. He doesn’t want to leave this space without saying that he is incredibly grateful to be a part of a production that is geared towards young people.
ABOUT THIS PROJECT
Prior to this project, my practice was rooted in an interdisciplinary worldview that was valued working with non-traditional partners and materials, one that also views humans and computers as equally viable partners in art making. For example, I collaborated with AI chatbots as narrative partners to devise magical realism texts that I illustrate using digital collage, stop motion and 3D animation techniques. I explored how interactive programming can create dynamic landscapes that are user customizable for palliative effects. And, I engaged what I call networked performance, where I engaged in a kind of techno-puppetry where my corporeal body is networked to animate aspects of the larger audio-visual body at play.
The idea for HW came in March 2021; enrolled as an apprentice through ASU Gammage's Molly Blank Teaching Artist Program, I clearly remember our guest speaker, Melanie Rick, declaring that “children today are traumatized and bored. They need art now more than ever. They need creative play.” And she was right, anecdotally and statically. According to a study published in Pediatrics last October, researchers found that over 140,000 children in the US lost a parent or caregiver who provided their basic needs, daily care, security and love. Any child under the age of 5 in 2021 has experienced one fifth of their social development isolated and sequestered from the outside world. Melanie's statement that day became an instant call to action.
what is play?
Responding to this call meant using the creative skills at my disposal to foster creative play for the benefit of a traumatized population. But what is play? Definitions of play, like the experience itself, is varied, but research abounds in its benefits socio-culturally, physiologically and developmentally. Dr. Stuart Brown, Founder of the National Institute for Play, asserts that play is a primal activity that is preconscious and pre-verbal, and an important sticking point for me. Scott Eberly, a historian of play, assumes that most people experience a six-step process when playing: anticipation, surprise, pleasure, understanding, strength and poise. Play crafts the developing brain by creating flexible cognitive spaces for developing minds to test the limits of their reality, assume new roles, make new connections. Animal scholar John Byers speculates that the brain is making sense of itself through simulation and testing during play. Studies indicate that the amount of play is correlated to the development of the brain's frontal cortex, which regulates our cognition. Play is present in nearly every species in the animal kingdom, including adult humans though we may like to forget that.
the aesthetics of joy
In “Joyful: the surprising power of ordinary things to create extraordinary happiness”, author Ingrid Fetell Lee charmingly identifies ten aesthetics of joy: energy, abundance, freedom, harmony, play, surprise, transcendence, magic, celebration and renewal. My design processes were heavily informed by Lee's aesthetics of joy, particularly Energy through color and light, the Magic of invisible forces and illusions, Freedom's wild nature and desire for open space, and Play marked by circles, spheres and bubbly forms.
why the world?
Whenever in doubt, I always start with a prompt offered to me in class by Max Bernstein in 2019: “build three worlds”. My response for that assignment was to visually represent my fantastic visions for land, sea and air. Organizing the world into these elemental realms is always a rich starting point for me, but the pandemic milieu gave this structure greater urgency and meaning. I wanted to bring the world to children who have spent a significant portion of their young lives indoors and through screens. So, these were the ingredients that swirled in the cauldron of my mind: one, to intentionally center very young children in the creative process in response to the trauma of the pandemic. Two, to create a worldview of joy for and with very young people, guided by their playful autonomous gestures and, third, to achieve this worldview by collaborating with the technologies I am most fond of: interactive software, electronic sound design, 360* projection design, virtual reality as a design space, and, we must not forget the embodied technology that is a body moving through time and space.