Opera on Brainwaves

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Digital Prize 2021
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Opera on Brainwaves

Belgium
Muzi a Zeny

Crowdfunding Results

€100
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€76,250
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donations closed

Opera on Brainwaves © Kyky Kong Kong i

Opera on Brainwaves is a unique augmented opera experience that will take you on a journey of exploration into the self and the other, into emotions and technology through Smart Fashion.

About the Project

Opera on Brainwaves combines the beauty of opera; a highly regarded and established artform, with cutting edge technology. Through a process of research and prototyping, we will create a unique piece that will link the emotions of the opera singer and audience through neuroscience and heartbeats. Opera is a highly emotional experience for an audience as well as for performers. It offers a singular moment in time to reconnect with ourselves and travel to an alternate, magical reality where we can connect with the innermost feelings of ourselves and the performer. It’s an intimate experience. We have the ambition to visualize this through an interactive dress the opera singer will wear during the performance. It will show real-time emotions and states of mind with scientific data generated by an EEG sensor. The audience will be able to see these emotions reflected in the dress and will thus have an augmented empathetic experience, by feeling empathy and identifying with the “real” emotions of the performer, e.g. stress, concentration, joy, etc and at the same time, they will feel the emotions reflected in and generated by the music.

By creating this one of a kind experience they want to create an impact and share their bigger vision with a larger audience. Covid-19 showed us how important this brand new dimension of interaction is. Imagine the audience having a wearable that triggers lights and vibrations in direct connection with the performer. It would not only make a virtual concert more vibrant and life-like but also an analog concert would benefit from it. We believe people will be looking forward to multi-sensory experiences like this. The world has never needed emotional intelligence and empathy more than now.

Why should you support us?

The experience will become a reference in interdisciplinary art. It will travel the world. It will appear in classic opera settings as well as innovation festivals and interdisciplinary museums. The beauty of this interdisciplinary collaboration is that it will not only travel to the usual internationally known opera houses and festivals, but it will go to many more different types of conferences and festivals in the field of technology, science, media, entertainment, and cross-industry innovation with Jasna Rok Labs or via one of our partners.

We strive to inspire more people and reframe the classic idea of opera by bringing this experience to different parts of the world, young and old, and across multiple industries and locations. It will demonstrate the power of interdisciplinary collaboration and the ingenuity of artists when they are willing to step outside of their own discipline. The press and media attention generated by the project will be significant because of the already existing interest in both artists.

Due to covid-19 partners, festivals, conferences, museums and operas can not provide us with exact dates yet. We provided the knowledge we have today. We don’t want to take responsibility for plans that might change due to cultural partners that will be affected by the financial crisis so we are very careful with this question, however we experience great interest from the cultural and artistic world, so we assume that, once the world is back on its feet, this project will become a huge success. In normal circumstances, Jasna and Elise receive proposals for performing their work worldwide on a daily basis. This will pick up again after the covid-19. We can assure that this will travel worldwide and for a long time (3-5 years minimum) but we can not give the exact names and dates.

Who are we?

Opera on Brainwaves is a groundbreaking artistic collaboration between 2 Belgian pioneers; opera singer Elise Caluwaerts and fashion tech designer Jasna Rok. Both known far beyond the borders of their country.

Elise Caluwaerts is a renowned soloist both in Belgium and abroad. She began her singing career as a baroque singer, and later expanded her repertoire to the romantic and contemporary genre. Her love for challenging repertoire – ranging from opera to multidisciplinary projects – led to various creations and remarkable collaborations with internationally renowned composers and ensembles.

Jasna Rokegem is an award-winning pioneer combining innovative fashion and cutting-edge technology. She founded Jasna Rok, the first FashionTech design lab in Belgium, which was created to reconcile advanced technologies with interactive fashion and does so by collaborating with technology partners globally. The goal of her Lab is to combine different disciplines and to come up with groundbreaking new concepts to inspire new futures.

Opera on Brainwaves gets support of the City of Antwerp, the University of Antwerp, Flanders, Artes law, Starsky, Imec, Flyinggroup, Manley, Glassroots and the Port of Antwerp.

Elise Caluwaerts

Singer

Jasna Rokegem

FashionTech designer

Partners

Jasna Rok Labs

Belgium

Supporters

Sebastian Schoemann donated 3 years ago

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