Graduate Studies

Digital Futures (MA, MDes and MFA)

Nick Alexander

Playtime for Punctum

Playtime for Punctum is an extended reality immersive performance, in which the participant is drawn into the experience as they create the narrative along with a performer. The player takes the role of an imaginary friend, named Punctum, who has been made real again after being forgotten for years. Punctum and their friend, portrayed by a human performer, play games augmented by imagination as they rekindle the spark of friendship that brought them together.Production of Playtime for Punctum was interrupted by the COVID-19 crisis. Below, cut together from test and rehearsal footage, is a walkthrough of the narrative of Playtime for Punctum when rehearsal was forced to stop.

“Augmented Role-Playis the term given to the technologically-augmented participatory performance located at the junction of theatre, games, and augmented reality. A technology stack allows the player's body to interact with virtual elements overlaid on real-world architecture, allowing performances to interrogate the relationship between the player, the performer, the virtual, and the actual. By allowing an improvisational flexibility in the performer's spoken words and the technological structure, the experience becomes one that is generous and generative, flexible and permeable, unique based on the participant’s choices, both social and structural.Augmented Role-Play is the result of a research-creation process inspired by devised theatre and game design practices. By interrogating tools and technologies, and by undertaking play-based experimentation with theatre performers and improvisers, two augmented installations were created.”