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Bedroom scene from Ordinary Gesture, avatar walks across the room

Ordinary Gesture

  • VR / 360 Video
Ordinary Gesture is a Virtual Reality Theatrical experience that intersects theatre, meditation, and movement.
  • Raja Feather Kelly
  • Illya Szilak
  • Cyril Tsiboulski
  • Christoph Mateka
Access with
  • Venue (in-person)
  • VR Headset
  • Web
November 4 – 30

Ordinary Gesture is a Virtual Reality Theatrical experience that intersects theatre, meditation, and movement. The experience seeks to surrealize the experience of empathy by situating the player in 5 scenes that expand from their body to space-time (the universe) and back again. Inspired by the movies Magnolia, Melancholia, Waking Life, the poem You Are Never Ready by Nicole Blackman, and the writing of cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker, Ordinary Gesture asks the player to contemplate existence, suffering, compassion, and gesture as both ingredients to create theatre and a means to perhaps better understand empathy.

 

 

Lead Artist, Writer, Co-Director
Raja Feather Kelly

Co-Director, Creative Producer
Illya Szilak

Art Director, Technical Director, Lead Developer
Cyril Tsiboulski

Sound Design & Score Composition
Christoph Mateka

Performer
Alexandria Giroux

Producer
Allen Yee

Voice Actor Credits:
Jordan King
Alexandria Giroux
Chris Bell
Collin Kelly
Amy Hoang
Ashley Chavonne
Raja Feather Kelly

NYU Motion Capture Studio Lead
Todd Bryant

Motion Capture Technicians
Derek Chan
Christopher Strawley

During the 2022 Quills Fest, a 2D video playthrough version of this project was available to all ticket holders.

Watch 2D Video Playthrough

Project Images

Bedroom scene from Ordinary Gesture, avatar walks across the room
interrogation room scene from ordinary gesture—a darkly lit room with a table, a chair and a one way mirror
house scene from ordinary gesture. a couch is seen against the wall along with a dining room set. a long hallway with a window at the end beacons users to explore
mist pines forest

Artists

Raja Feather Kelly

Raja Feather Kelly is an American dancer and choreographer based in Brooklyn who is notable for his “radical downtown surrealist” productions which combine “pop and queer culture”. He has choreographed numerous theatrical productions, including Fairview and A Strange Loop

Illya Szilak

Dr. Illya Szilak is a writer, director, interactive story-teller and transdisciplinary artist. Shaped by her experience as a physician, her artistic practice explores mortality, embodiment, identity and belief in a media inundated by an increasingly virtual world. Her long-time creative partner is Cyril Tsiboulski. They are the recipients of grants from The Sundance Institute, The Tribeca Film Institute and the Jerome Foundation and were awarded a Peabody Futures of Media award for their VR experience Queerskins: a love story.

 

Cyril Tsiboulski

Cyril Tsiboulski is co-founder and creative director at Cloudred, a digital design practice that is both an independent content-producing creative studio and a service-based agency with global clientele across corporate, government, civic and cultural domains. He is also a faculty member at New York University where he teaches in the Digital Communications and Media Program.