**The Intersection of Technology and Theater: A New Era of Immersive Experience**

In recent years, there has been a growing trend towards incorporating technology into traditional theater performances. This shift has not only enhanced the overall experience but also opened up new possibilities for creativity and interaction between the audience and the performers. Our team was excited to explore this intersection of technology and theater, particularly in terms of creating an immersive experience that would engage children at a critical age group.

As part of our project, we created a 50-strip LED light installation attached to a microcontroller made by Adafruit, which is programmed using Arduino programming language. This setup allowed us to create a dynamic display that could be controlled and manipulated through various inputs, including voice commands and sensor-activated movement. The lights were then enclosed in a tree constructed with cello tape, a combination of aesthetics and technology that aimed to avoid compromising the visual appeal while incorporating interactivity.

We are interested in both the aesthetic and technological aspects of this project, as it represents a natural progression from traditional theater performances to more immersive experiences. With the increasing use of apps by children at this age group, there is a growing need for interactive elements in theaters that can cater to their love of technology and engagement with digital tools. By incorporating technology into our performance, we aimed to create an experience that would appeal to both parents and children.

The concept behind our show was centered around the idea of a journey through a meadow where children could interact with various objects to uncover clues about the location of a hidden rabbit. This was achieved by using pressure sensors at the bottom of each item in the meadow, which reacted to even light touch, allowing three-year-olds and 18-month-olds to trigger sound effects. The rabbit itself was hidden within a giant flower on the floor, where stroke sensors made from conductive tread mixed with furry fabric were integrated into the design.

The stroke sensors allowed children to tickle the "flower" and trigger a comical laugh from the rabbit at the bottom, creating an interactive experience that delighted the young audience. By incorporating soft senses and tactile interaction, we aimed to provide children with a multisensory experience that would engage their curiosity and imagination. The use of these stroke sensors was also a custom solution, as they are not commercially available in larger sizes.

In addition to creating an immersive experience for children, our project explored the potential applications of technology in theater settings. One area of interest was using Bluetooth devices to track audience movements and identify specific individuals. However, due to cost considerations, we opted for a more feasible approach that utilized sensor-activated movement instead.

The growth of immersive theater has been steadily increasing over the past few decades, with many theaters now incorporating interactive elements into their performances. As technology advances, we can expect to see even more innovative and engaging experiences emerge in this field. Our project represents an exciting development in this area, as it demonstrates how technology can be harnessed to create a unique and captivating experience for both children and adults.

**Author's Background**

As the author of this article, I am proud to share my personal background, which has influenced the development of our project. Born in the UK, I grew up in Trinidad, where my accent reflects my cultural heritage. My experiences as an artist and technologist have shaped my approach to incorporating technology into traditional performances, and I believe that this intersection of art and science holds great promise for creating innovative and engaging experiences.

Throughout my career, I have been passionate about exploring the potential of technology to enhance creative expressions. From developing interactive installations to collaborating with artists and designers on various projects, my work has focused on pushing the boundaries of what is possible in terms of audience engagement and participation. By embracing this intersection of technology and theater, we can create experiences that are not only entertaining but also thought-provoking and memorable.

In conclusion, our project represents an exciting step towards creating immersive theater performances that engage both children and adults. By incorporating cutting-edge technology into traditional performance art, we aim to create experiences that are not only captivating but also meaningful and memorable. As the field of immersive theater continues to evolve, I am confident that this intersection of art and science will lead to even more innovative and engaging productions in the future.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: eni designed theater shows and my interests in the last few years have been looking at more tactile technology especially for very young children my particular area is is to look at the way children interact with objects and whether we can add some digital technologies to those objects when you say interactive so we're not talking about just clapping and booing and hissing when the pantomime body comes on right no because you're looking at very very young children and they like to touch everything so you're making things within the uh the world of of theater um where you might interact with something like through your voice so you might shout or talk or or clap again like in pantomime but this way not only the actors are interacting with you but the objects are interacting with you should we do some claps to try and make the tree wake so for example in the show i recently did the runaway here we had a tree and in the interaction of the tree you talk through funnels and the tree will begin to light up now that that tree lights up according to your voice if you whisper you'll get lower interaction if you speak louder you'll get the lights moving much faster the microphones are attached to a microcontroller which is a small flora made by adafruit and we program it using arduino programming a 50 strip of led lights are then attached to the microcontroller this is then enclosed in a tree which we made with cello tape so we are interested in both the aesthetics and the use of technology so we do not want to compromise the aesthetics within theater but also include some level of interaction do you think that we need to sort of tech for children we find that more and more children at this age group are using apps so therefore they're growing up with this sort of level of interaction on on the screen some parents are wary about it others and and so you find that um that they're already touching toys and playing toys and looking for that sort of interaction um uh having that in theater i think it's a natural for me it's a sort of natural um progression to making that interactive it allows i i find it allows the parent and the child to maybe interact and play but it adds an additional layer we took them along a pathway to a meadow now the idea of this entire show was that they were looking for hair so each item um in some way they were going to interact to it and maybe give them clues of where this hair might be this is like the rabbit style hair right it is so he's hidden somewhere in the piece and so they're they're after looking for him and so they enter onto this meadow which has been recreated with pressure sensors at the bottom of them the pressure sensors react to very very light touch so a three-year-old's weight a 18-month old weight will allow the pressure sensor to trigger sound so the rabbit was hidden in the giant flower on the bottom of the flower we had stroke sensors now stroke sensors are made with kind of conductive tread mixed with any other tread but here we use the kind of furry fabric and we mixed in the conductive tread with the fury fabric at the back of the fabric you need to have two strips of conductive material and then you stitch in the conductive treads in it that then again is attached through either conductive threads or wires to a board another microprocessor board because what happened is that the children tickled the flower and the flower laughed and this is where they discovered the hair so it was the hair it was doing a sort of comical laugh at the bottom so we had five of those and there were five children and so they can all sort of tickle the senses we were interested in kind of soft senses and this the soft senses you kind of hand made to give that tactile interaction so part of this is that children at that age love tactile interaction and so we were really interested in in how we can use different ways and different senses for for that sort of um interaction so these stroke sensors is this something you've kind of come up with this is custom if you go onto the on to the web you will you will find different types of stroke sensors uh small stroke sensors here i've integrated it with a normal fabric that already has fur on to it so it's something i've adapted from stroke sensors that are much smaller so we were looking at increasing the size of things for theater technically we were looking at bluetooth devices that we can look at um in terms of if you had a lot of audience that were running around in a space and you wanted to then identify that particular audience we wanted them to come together as a group um you might then use a sort of bluetooth wearables and so on they're not as all cost effective and having about five or ten bluetooth devices in one place it's rather difficult so part of the research was looking at a wider area i suppose with more and more experiments we'd be able to develop better and better interaction there's lots more theater theaters that are looking at immersive theater it's been growing it's been around since the 70s but it's been growing recently lots people want to do more and a lot of theater companies find that a lot more people find it's more interesting to come to a theater where they can move around the space rather than just sit on a seat and so i think more and more theaters due to that um if people are interacting with different things maybe that more northeast companies would be interested in in this technology as it allows um it allows almost the technology to become like the actor in in some way the technology is acting at that point because it's triggering the sound or triggering the light or triggering vibrations and i'm going to have to ask the question because computer file viewers will be wondering about your accent so please go and tell us where is your accent from it's a trinidadian accent um i was born in the uk but uh grew up in trinidad been here for a whilei designed theater shows and my interests in the last few years have been looking at more tactile technology especially for very young children my particular area is is to look at the way children interact with objects and whether we can add some digital technologies to those objects when you say interactive so we're not talking about just clapping and booing and hissing when the pantomime body comes on right no because you're looking at very very young children and they like to touch everything so you're making things within the uh the world of of theater um where you might interact with something like through your voice so you might shout or talk or or clap again like in pantomime but this way not only the actors are interacting with you but the objects are interacting with you should we do some claps to try and make the tree wake so for example in the show i recently did the runaway here we had a tree and in the interaction of the tree you talk through funnels and the tree will begin to light up now that that tree lights up according to your voice if you whisper you'll get lower interaction if you speak louder you'll get the lights moving much faster the microphones are attached to a microcontroller which is a small flora made by adafruit and we program it using arduino programming a 50 strip of led lights are then attached to the microcontroller this is then enclosed in a tree which we made with cello tape so we are interested in both the aesthetics and the use of technology so we do not want to compromise the aesthetics within theater but also include some level of interaction do you think that we need to sort of tech for children we find that more and more children at this age group are using apps so therefore they're growing up with this sort of level of interaction on on the screen some parents are wary about it others and and so you find that um that they're already touching toys and playing toys and looking for that sort of interaction um uh having that in theater i think it's a natural for me it's a sort of natural um progression to making that interactive it allows i i find it allows the parent and the child to maybe interact and play but it adds an additional layer we took them along a pathway to a meadow now the idea of this entire show was that they were looking for hair so each item um in some way they were going to interact to it and maybe give them clues of where this hair might be this is like the rabbit style hair right it is so he's hidden somewhere in the piece and so they're they're after looking for him and so they enter onto this meadow which has been recreated with pressure sensors at the bottom of them the pressure sensors react to very very light touch so a three-year-old's weight a 18-month old weight will allow the pressure sensor to trigger sound so the rabbit was hidden in the giant flower on the bottom of the flower we had stroke sensors now stroke sensors are made with kind of conductive tread mixed with any other tread but here we use the kind of furry fabric and we mixed in the conductive tread with the fury fabric at the back of the fabric you need to have two strips of conductive material and then you stitch in the conductive treads in it that then again is attached through either conductive threads or wires to a board another microprocessor board because what happened is that the children tickled the flower and the flower laughed and this is where they discovered the hair so it was the hair it was doing a sort of comical laugh at the bottom so we had five of those and there were five children and so they can all sort of tickle the senses we were interested in kind of soft senses and this the soft senses you kind of hand made to give that tactile interaction so part of this is that children at that age love tactile interaction and so we were really interested in in how we can use different ways and different senses for for that sort of um interaction so these stroke sensors is this something you've kind of come up with this is custom if you go onto the on to the web you will you will find different types of stroke sensors uh small stroke sensors here i've integrated it with a normal fabric that already has fur on to it so it's something i've adapted from stroke sensors that are much smaller so we were looking at increasing the size of things for theater technically we were looking at bluetooth devices that we can look at um in terms of if you had a lot of audience that were running around in a space and you wanted to then identify that particular audience we wanted them to come together as a group um you might then use a sort of bluetooth wearables and so on they're not as all cost effective and having about five or ten bluetooth devices in one place it's rather difficult so part of the research was looking at a wider area i suppose with more and more experiments we'd be able to develop better and better interaction there's lots more theater theaters that are looking at immersive theater it's been growing it's been around since the 70s but it's been growing recently lots people want to do more and a lot of theater companies find that a lot more people find it's more interesting to come to a theater where they can move around the space rather than just sit on a seat and so i think more and more theaters due to that um if people are interacting with different things maybe that more northeast companies would be interested in in this technology as it allows um it allows almost the technology to become like the actor in in some way the technology is acting at that point because it's triggering the sound or triggering the light or triggering vibrations and i'm going to have to ask the question because computer file viewers will be wondering about your accent so please go and tell us where is your accent from it's a trinidadian accent um i was born in the uk but uh grew up in trinidad been here for a whilei designed theater shows and my interests in the last few years have been looking at more tactile technology especially for very young children my particular area is is to look at the way children interact with objects and whether we can add some digital technologies to those objects when you say interactive so we're not talking about just clapping and booing and hissing when the pantomime body comes on right no because you're looking at very very young children and they like to touch everything so you're making things within the uh the world of of theater um where you might interact with something like through your voice so you might shout or talk or or clap again like in pantomime but this way not only the actors are interacting with you but the objects are interacting with you should we do some claps to try and make the tree wake so for example in the show i recently did the runaway here we had a tree and in the interaction of the tree you talk through funnels and the tree will begin to light up now that that tree lights up according to your voice if you whisper you'll get lower interaction if you speak louder you'll get the lights moving much faster the microphones are attached to a microcontroller which is a small flora made by adafruit and we program it using arduino programming a 50 strip of led lights are then attached to the microcontroller this is then enclosed in a tree which we made with cello tape so we are interested in both the aesthetics and the use of technology so we do not want to compromise the aesthetics within theater but also include some level of interaction do you think that we need to sort of tech for children we find that more and more children at this age group are using apps so therefore they're growing up with this sort of level of interaction on on the screen some parents are wary about it others and and so you find that um that they're already touching toys and playing toys and looking for that sort of interaction um uh having that in theater i think it's a natural for me it's a sort of natural um progression to making that interactive it allows i i find it allows the parent and the child to maybe interact and play but it adds an additional layer we took them along a pathway to a meadow now the idea of this entire show was that they were looking for hair so each item um in some way they were going to interact to it and maybe give them clues of where this hair might be this is like the rabbit style hair right it is so he's hidden somewhere in the piece and so they're they're after looking for him and so they enter onto this meadow which has been recreated with pressure sensors at the bottom of them the pressure sensors react to very very light touch so a three-year-old's weight a 18-month old weight will allow the pressure sensor to trigger sound so the rabbit was hidden in the giant flower on the bottom of the flower we had stroke sensors now stroke sensors are made with kind of conductive tread mixed with any other tread but here we use the kind of furry fabric and we mixed in the conductive tread with the fury fabric at the back of the fabric you need to have two strips of conductive material and then you stitch in the conductive treads in it that then again is attached through either conductive threads or wires to a board another microprocessor board because what happened is that the children tickled the flower and the flower laughed and this is where they discovered the hair so it was the hair it was doing a sort of comical laugh at the bottom so we had five of those and there were five children and so they can all sort of tickle the senses we were interested in kind of soft senses and this the soft senses you kind of hand made to give that tactile interaction so part of this is that children at that age love tactile interaction and so we were really interested in in how we can use different ways and different senses for for that sort of um interaction so these stroke sensors is this something you've kind of come up with this is custom if you go onto the on to the web you will you will find different types of stroke sensors uh small stroke sensors here i've integrated it with a normal fabric that already has fur on to it so it's something i've adapted from stroke sensors that are much smaller so we were looking at increasing the size of things for theater technically we were looking at bluetooth devices that we can look at um in terms of if you had a lot of audience that were running around in a space and you wanted to then identify that particular audience we wanted them to come together as a group um you might then use a sort of bluetooth wearables and so on they're not as all cost effective and having about five or ten bluetooth devices in one place it's rather difficult so part of the research was looking at a wider area i suppose with more and more experiments we'd be able to develop better and better interaction there's lots more theater theaters that are looking at immersive theater it's been growing it's been around since the 70s but it's been growing recently lots people want to do more and a lot of theater companies find that a lot more people find it's more interesting to come to a theater where they can move around the space rather than just sit on a seat and so i think more and more theaters due to that um if people are interacting with different things maybe that more northeast companies would be interested in in this technology as it allows um it allows almost the technology to become like the actor in in some way the technology is acting at that point because it's triggering the sound or triggering the light or triggering vibrations and i'm going to have to ask the question because computer file viewers will be wondering about your accent so please go and tell us where is your accent from it's a trinidadian accent um i was born in the uk but uh grew up in trinidad been here for a while\n"