Maquette
Maquette is a live physical-virtual performance combining motion capture, contemporary circus and gaming technology to push the boundaries of what “human” looks like to both the physical and the programmed eye. Orchestrated, captured and rendered in real time, each performance is unique, providing Maquette’s audience with a never-before-seen experience.
Drawing on research into figurative sculpture, and design and algorithmic bias, Maquette is particularly inspired by Norma, a 1940s statue based on averaged women’s measurements that was exalted through prominent scientific and cultural institutions.
Maquette Part 1 creatively explores Norma’s unsettling story, and how art, science and technology can work together to create false ideals and social bias when left unchecked. Maquette Part 2 draws on contemporary research into embodied and situated cognition to model how virtual representation can reflect and extend the nuance of physiology.
Featuring immersive projection and spatial audio, Maquette unfolds over six scenes simultaneously in physical and virtual space. Four performers marry ballet, circus, martial arts, bboying, yoga asana, and competitive dance together in a new movement style, displaying extreme feats of flexibility and strength.
High-performance optical tracking creates shapes and avatar manipulations never before seen in a gaming engine, or live performance. Leaving walking, jumping and sitting behind, Maquette features contortion handstands, backflips, and kaleidoscopic shapes formed by many contorted bodies coming together.
Stepping away from the pedestrian reveals the depth of human physicality, and exemplifying how cellular depth can ripple across cores, pins, and bytes.
Project Status
After four successful work-in-progress showings in the United States and Europe, LAB7 at the Tony Award winning contemporary circus company, The 7 Fingers (les 7 doigts de la main), has invited Maquette for a 2025 residency and international premiere in Montreal.
The Maquette team is currently fundraising to support the LAB7 engagement, which will include nine months of creative and technical development with the following priorities:
- Cutting edge, immersive projection and set design with new team member, projection designer Wladimiro A. Woyno R. to further blur the line between physical and virtual.
- Technical and inspired costume creation with LAB7 researchers to make performance costumes that work with the marker-based OptiTrack system, are dramaturgically appropriate, and priotitize performer safety and comfort.
- Next-level choreography that takes advantage of LAB7’s 30+ foot rigged ceilings and 24-camera OptiTrack system to create new spectacular acts using apparatuses such as hair hanging, harness, straps, and canes.
- Live Circus Mocap to Unreal Engine workflow development alongside LAB7, who have been working in parallel (until now) through the same creative and technical issues over the past two years. Our combined expertise will be under one roof during the residency period, allowing us to share our learnings with the broader “phygital,” movement-arts, and interactive performance communities as we work to inspire the international public with a breathtaking, thought-provoking spectacle.
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Unreal Engine development for stunning, immersive graphics and sound. Our female-led team of UE developers will have an elongated opportunity to work with our unique contemporary circus movement data in UE to create visual and audio effects and graphics that are as novel as they are provocative.
MAXlive 2023, Onassis ONX, New York
DEMO 2023, Onassis ONX,
New York
ONX + IDFA DocLab MoCap Stage 2022, De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam (Maquette Alpha)
Xtensions 2022, Onassis ONX, New York (Maquette Alpha)
Press
Kent Bye, Voices of VR #1163: Live XR Performance Experiments with ONX Studios and DocLab Motion Capture Stage at IDFA, Dec. 22, 2022
Lance Weiler, 2022 list of 50+ Immersive Things that mix storytelling, performance, play, design & code, Columbia DSL, Dec. 28, 2022
Supporters
EY Metaverse Lab
Media Art Xploration
NEW INC / New Museum
Onassis ONX
OptiTrack
Special Thanks
Eddie Berg
Todd Bryant / NYU IDM
Becky Schutt
Additional Credits (2025)
Projection and Set Design
Wladimiro A. Woyno R.
Producer
Natasha
Katerinopoulos
Created by
Lisa Jamhoury
Choreography and PerformanceHybrid Movement Company
Françoise Voranger, Grasshopper Mitch, Andrea Nikki Ortiz, Graham Reese
3D ModelingWoraya Boonyapanachoti, Lisa Jamhoury, Rongyu Li, Guðjón Örn Lárusson, NYCAP3D
Unreal Engine DevelopmentSneha Belkhale, Kevin Peter He, Lisa Jamhoury, Matt Romein, Yilin Zhang
Unreal Engine Development and Technician
Christopher Strawley
Motion capture technician, animation
Lisa Jamhoury, Isabella Heron (MAXlive)
Audio concept and script
Lisa Jamhoury
Audio Effects
Nicholas de la Motte
Audio Engineer
Matt McCorkle
DramaturgEmily Reilly
Storyboard IllustrationJessica Hearn
Producer (MAXlive)Mary John Frank
Photography Alycia Kravitz
Luis Suarez
Maquette 2023 MAXlive Showing
Maquette 2023 DEMO Showing
Additional Resources
Maquette is generously supported by
Contact Lisa