An Isreali startup, AR Show, seeks to augment live events.<\/b>
\nTel Aviv’s Gersher Theater Is Using AR Show to augment its production of «Gulliver.» Gerhser Theater
A new company based in Tel Aviv, ARShow, has developed a low cost way to use mobile AR technology to augment live theater, concerts, sporting and special events, allowing hundreds of local participants to share precisely anchored images and special effects combined in real time with live performances. I sat down with co-founder and CEO Sasha Kreindlin last month on his swing through New York, where he showed me how the company had augmented The Gesher Theater production of Gulliver.
Gulliver is a children\u2019s theater production. When the audience enters they find a Merge soft headset with a pre-configured smartphone placed in each seat. They don\u2019t wear the Merge the whole show, only when instructed to for special scenes. For some productions, audience members can tune into ARShow\u2019s proprietary wifi network using their own smartphone and download the software. It\u2019s easy to break the fourth wall in a kids show, but much more complex to weave it into an adult theater experience. ARShow integrates with the ubiquitous stage management system Abelton, which means once it is set up, no additional operator or technical knowledge is required. All its cues are in front of the stage manager along with the lights, music, and other time-based events the SM must cue.
Every audience member finds an a Merge soft headset with an AR capable smart phone already installed. AR Show
Kreindlin was in New York to meet theater companies and producers who have shows that lend themselves to special effects, like Marshall Pailet and Drew Fornorola\u2019s Claudio Quest, a love letter to video games. \u201cThis is perfect for us,\u201d director Pailet told me, \u201cbecause the story literally takes place inside a video game, where the characters have gained self-awareness, but are trapped in the narrow confines of an immutable repeating world.\u201d
My demo included a swarm of bees and wasps from Gulliver. While it was exciting to have wasps all around me, I did experience some latency. That doesn\u2019t happen in a theater where everyone is seated, Kreindlin told me. \u201cIt\u2019s not a 2D projection behind the actor, but it\u2019s 3D objects in the virtual space. The entire venue is my platform.\u201d
AR Shows adds swarms of bees and other stage magic to The Gersher Theater’s production of Gulliver using AR Show. AR Show
As someone with a theater-arts background, Kreindlin needed help from the tech community to make ARShow a reality. His co-founders include Simon Litsyn, a computer science, and electronics professor at Tel Aviv University; Isaac Barel, a digital designer and the company\u2019s CTO; and Elena Litsyn, a theoretical mathematician. Kreindlin says the company completed a seed round of funding for the theatrical operating system and is now seeking to raise $8 million dollars in expansion funding that would allow ARShow to create its own headsets, among other things. In the interim, Kreindlin says he hopes sponsorships from companies will underwrite the cost of hardware.
ARShow has bigger ambitions than children\u2019s shows. The company says it\u2019s in talks with U. S. theaters and production companies in \u201cmajor markets,\u201d although it declined to name them. Kreindlin says he\u2019d like to debut the system on a mid-size stage off-Broadway, and would then like to move to a larger Broadway venue. That might prove to be tougher than it sounds. Broadway producers are notoriously risk-averse, and most shows already don\u2019t earn a profit, even without the added production expense of retrofitting a theater with unfamiliar technology. Kreindlin points out that ARShow offers a creative solution to production design that can cost millions. A stage show like Claudio Quest can be done a lot of ways.
ARShow founders Sasha Kreindlin (top left), Dr. Elena Litsyn (top right), Isaac Barel(lower left), and Prof. Simon Litsyn (lower right) AR Show
\u201cWe want producers to think of us as an option,\u201d Kreindlin said. \u201cIt\u2019s not a solution for every show, but it is transformative for the right show.\u201d There is one danger of which the CEO and director is clear: \u201cIf you get carried away with the technology, you\u2019ll have a bad production.\u201d
Charlie Fink is an AR\/VR consultant, columnist, speaker, and author. As a 27-year-old junior executive at Disney, Fink created «The Lion King». For this sin, he was promoted to VP of Story Development for feature animation. In the 90s he oversaw the expansion of Virtual Worl…
Charlie Fink is a former Disney & AOL exec and Forbes columnist. In the 90s, he ran VR pioneer Virtual World. He’s the author of Charlie Fink’s Metaverse, An AR Enabled Guide to VR & AR.<\/p>\n

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