DOME TOUR: ARTIST HIGHLIGHT
Great to be featured at DOME TOUR, a project envisioned by Monica Bolles and Ben Gondrez to help connect, inspire, and promote the use of fulldome spaces for artistic expression and other innovative experiential purposes.
When it comes to creating fulldome art the rules are still being written, and it is artists like the ones with 4Pi Productions who are doing that writing. Since 2012 Matt Wright and Janire Najera have been developing 360º immersive art experiences through their interactive arts organization, Urban Reaction Research Lab (URRL). Through URRL, they started The Dance Dome, a mobile projection dome platform. Touring to different locations, events, and festivals, they showcase their 360° films which utilize dance and choreography to tell vivid and imaginative stories. The Dance Dome project has led to two short fulldome films, The Sublime and The Beautiful, as well as a long format film, Pal o’ Me Heart. Currently they are expanding their expertise in 360º media production with their company, 4Pi Productions. Most recently they have created yet another defining fulldome dance film called Liminality. This film was a collaborative exploration of contemporary dance between Wales and India, developed as part of 2017’s UK / INDIA Year of Culture. Liminality was also the recipient of the JANUS Award for the “Best Fulldome Short Film” at the 12th FullDome Festival in Jena, Germany this year (2018).
In this artist highlight, we’ll hear from Matt Wright about what inspires himself and Janire Najera to create art for the fulldome, how the collaborations that have led to their films came about, what they believe the future of fulldome art is, and more!