TORONTO—It's the age-old (or year-old, at least) question: How do you break through the noise of a crowded virtual event landscape and get your attendees feeling engaged, immersed and excited? For next month's Women From Space music festival, organizers have come up with an innovative, low-tech solution: homemade hologram devices.
The three-year-old, Toronto-based festival is going virtual this year from March 6-8, timed to International Women's Day. It features a lineup of local artists from the experimental, jazz and improv music scenes, including Thanya Iyer, Laura Barrett, Eve Egoyan and Tania Gill. But attendees won't just be watching performances on their computer screens (though that's an option): For $10 plus shipping, they can get a 3D device called the "Holobox Theatre" delivered directly to their homes, along with instructions on how to put it together.
Organizers call the device a "miniature tabletop stage where performances come to life as holograms"—think Princess Leia's iconic hologram message, "but in miniature and with better acting," boasts the company's website. It's made from recycled cardstock, pins, mini string lights and reflective plastic sheet; recipients use their phone, tablet or laptop to angle the video and project it against a plexiglass screen. There are even backgrounds of planets and constellations to choose from—an appropriate choice for the futuristic Women From Space festival, where Holobox Theatre is making its debut. Performers will be filmed in black box theaters to ensure a clean, crisp image.
The team wanted to offer a low-tech take on a high-tech idea, notes co-founder Raphael Roter. While Women From Space is Holobox Theatre's first outing, Roter hopes other virtual festivals and events will use the product.Photo: Courtesy of Holobox Theatre
Holobox Theatre is the brainchild of Bea Labikova, a visual artist and saxophonist who also co-founded the Women From Space festival, along with musician Raphael Roter. "This year obviously was going to look very different from past festivals, but Bea wanted to keep the forward-looking energy of the festival going and not let it be passed by, as other online events struggle with," explains Roter. "So we brainstormed how we can make this online experience pop out and be unique."
Inspired by the festival's space theme, the duo started brainstorming ways to make something "fun and futuristic, so that's when we started thinking about holograms," he continues. "Neither of us is an engineer or anything, but we did a lot of tinkering and prototyping and found something simple that worked." While Women From Space is Holobox Theatre's first outing, the team hopes other virtual festivals and events will use the product, too. "We'd love other creators to make content for it," says Roter. "It looks great with dance, it could be used with animation, possibly even theater. We designed it so that people can insert their own stage and background images."
And while the experience is rooted in futuristic technology, Roter says he and Labikova were particularly drawn to the low-tech, arts-and-crafts-style aspect. "In April when the COVID situation was new, there was this monumental shift going on towards everything high-tech and online," he notes. "In the tech world, there are many more advanced mediums like AR—but that's sort of what appealed to us about this Holobox, that it is referencing the high-tech but it's totally low-tech."
While Roter is eager to return to live, in-person concerts soon, he hopes the hologram experience will draw more engaged viewers for Women From Space. "We felt we had to do something to stand out, be interactive, be immersive and be novel," he says. "But mostly we just wanted to do something fun."
