I met Dustin for the first time in late 2023, whilst in the gym at Hafnarhaus (our wonderful co-working space in downtown Reykjavík), a notable encounter not just because I'm so rarely anywhere near a gym, but also because it resulted in him asking me to create a visual piece to accompany a track on his new album, 1 0 0 1.

'Harmonic Dream Sequence', in his words, is a psychedelic depiction of the current naive desire to experiment with technology, with a lack of concern for some possible future where it gains autonomy from its creators and users.

This really resonated with me, and so I set about trying to create a visual system that would capture both the complexity and scale of this AI-driven future, hinting at the anxiety-inducing speed, the unknowable biases buried deep within it, and also look kinda cool.

The resulting video is intended to be a poetic visualisation of both the wonder and anxiety produced by our collective ability to develop technology that not only reflects our own world back at us in unsettling, distorted and disruptive ways, but how it can also - through modern neural networks and 'AI' systems - appear to create new worlds for us to explore.

Created in TouchDesigner, and using a mix of real LIDAR scans and simulated (hallucinated?) depth scans, millions of particles represent the raw data we feed into these ever-hungry machines. At first they form strange, uncomfortable shapes which periodically resolve into recognisable forms before collapsing again into chaos. Then structure emerges, as we train the system to recognise connections, patterns and layers in the data, before we dive into it, triggering chaotic lightning flashes of connection between disparate pieces of data, and producing unexpected outputs at incredible speed.

But despite having access to an entire Internet's representation of reality and the results of incredible computing power, we're left with a uneasy feeling at the results, the ghostly, dreamlike sensations it leaves us with making us ask uncomfortable questions about our own minds, and the future it beckons us towards.

• Dustin O'Halloran: 🔗

Nine looping 4K video artworks, as part of a group show inspired by Vilém Flusser's 1985 work of the same name.

I was thrilled to be invited to participate in Reykjavík Design March 2023 as part of one of Iceland's first group shows exhibiting digital artists on 9 huge 4K displays.

Curated by Nils Wiberg, the theme of the exhibition comes from Vilém Flusser's philosophical work which describes the concept of Technical Images, an abstraction above film, video, text and drawings, that describe and convey concepts in ways that the previous mediums cannot.

He goes on to describe a possible future in which we're all co-creating these images together in 'darkened rooms' - a chamber orchestra that jointly maps reality, and that distribution of the means of production of these images could help lead us to a utopic understanding of the world, but also warns that centralised control and censorship of these images would lead to deep repression and a dystopic future. For me the text, if you squint a bit, gives a really poetic and prescient way of visualising our current media landscape, from the co-created, mass-consumed reality of Instagram and TikTok, to the state-level media control in countries such as China and Russia.

The pieces were inspired by the LIDAR work I've been doing with Volta and Aristokrasia, made in Unity, with big thanks to Parik Ontkovic for camerawork, Liam Cobb, Uta Reichardt, Íris Erlings René Boonekamp and Hafnarhaus for the recording test process.

• Exhibition at Design March: 🔗

A fantastical journey into the Icelandic highlands and beyond with two escaped convicts and their driver.

Performed by circus artists during lockdown, recorded using full-body motion capture.

This short film in VR is an spin-off project from Huldufugl and Hikapee's (equally ambitious) stage show, The Hidden People, after that project was delayed by a year due to the pandemic.

We've been collaborating with UK aerial circus company Hikapee since 2018 on a large-scale stage production - but when it became apparent that we were going to have to pause work on it for at least a year, we came up with the idea of producing an animated VR short film using the same performers, set in the same world, but with a brand new storyline.

The first step was to find a motion capture company brave enough to work with tumbling, spinning circus performers using silks, trapeze and counterbalancing equipment - a real challenge for the tracking system - and then do the entire thing on location, whilst adhering to strict COVID-19 safety measures.

We were extremely lucky to find a partner in Target3D, who sent an incredible crew to join our artists in isolation at 101 Outdoor Arts in Newbury for a week. Under Bryony from Hikapee's direction, they recorded an entire narrative of aerial circus-infused action.

It's a unique challenge to produce animated work for VR - where almost anything is possible in terms of angles, lighting, sound and set design. For our piece, we're taking a lot of cues from theatre over film in terms of set layout and the audience's relationship to the performers - but this still leaves us a huge possibility space to play with, which is extremely exciting!

We're also aiming for a unique art style that represents the Icelandic nature - acheived through procedural modelling in Houdini, taking the rough outlines of landscapes, and 'shredding' them into thousands of small, individually coloured polygons. This approach retains sharp edges in VR even up-close, without using textures, whilst also giving us fine control over colour, pre-baked static lighting, and vertex shader effects like wind movement in trees, water and moss.

Work in progress! Upon release, the piece will be available for Oculus Quest and other major VR platforms.

• Hikapee Circus Theatre : 🔗
• Target3D : 🔗

• Director : Owen Hindley (Huldufugl)
• Producer : Nanna Gunnars (Huldufugl)
• Co-Production : GunHil
• Script : Owen Hindley, Nanna Gunnars, Bryony Livesey-Casey, Edd Livesey-Casey
• Co-director, Movement director : Bryony Livesey-Casey (Hikapee)
• Co-director, Performer : Edd Livesey-Casey (Hikapee)
• Aerial Performer : Jen Robinson
• Aerial Performer : Katie Hardwick
• 3D Designer, Art Director : Simone Tranchina
• Composer : Iris Thorarins
• Sound Designer : Almut Schwacke
• Music Editor : Þorsteinn Eyfjörð Þórarinsson
• Concept & Storyboard Artist : Liam Cobb
• Additional 3D Design : Svala Leaman
• Motion Capture : Target 3D
• Motion Capture Technician : Petros De Doncker
• Motion Capture Cleanup : Hannah Burfield
• Motion Capture Producer : Sarah Polak
• Character Artist : Sam Lawrence

We're very fortunate to have been supported in this project by the following :

Minningarsjóður Ingvars Lundberg

A live audio-visual band with sound artist Þorsteinn Eyfjörð Þórarinsson.

Þorsteinn and I started MOTET with the idea of producing audio-visual work in the same way a band produces music, with both elements being influenced by each other, produced and then performed simultaneously.

As a live act, we perform together as live as possible, with everything running real-time and being controlled by actual fingers on controllers as much as humanly possible (although sometimes I run out of fingers).

We make pieces that are at times aggressive and dystopic, but at the same time with a note of hope, and sometimes beautiful, with a note of despair. We're inspired by literature, nature, late-night YouTube rabbitholes, and the artists that have shaped our audio-visual sensibilities over the years.

Our first EP is being released via our good friends at INNI Music.

• MOTET on Instagram: 🔗
• Þorsteinn Eyfjörð Þórarinsson: 🔗

A live interactive social theatre experience about trust, communication and questioning your sources of information.

Nominated for Best Immersive Performance at Raindance Immersive 2022.

One day, you wake up and find yourself trapped in a transparent box in a hostile, barren landscape - but it appears you're not alone.

There is the Caretaker, who says they just want to keep you safe inside this box, promising to show you wonders beyond imagining.

There are the Others, individuals trapped in boxes just as you are - some of whom are acting strangely.

And the Voice in your head - together all of them are talking, acting, behaving at odds with one another - so who will you believe?

Based on my theatre company Huldufugl's international award-winning VR experience 'Kassinn / A Box In The Desert' (one of the world's first experiences of its kind), this show expands the narrative to allow five audience members to determine their own story against a barrage of conflicting voices.

My role on this project was lead developer, director and live show operator, with the concept and script co-created by the whole amazing team.

The show takes place entirely in VR using the Oculus Quest headset.

• Performances:
• Þjóðleikhúsið (The National Theatre of Iceland) - April 2022 (Sold out run)
• Raindance Immersive 2022 - November 2022 (Nominated for Best Immersive Performance)

• Created by Huldufugl 🔗
• Performers - Nanna Gunnars & Ástþór Ágústsson
• Design, development & Direction - Owen Hindley, Torfi Ásgeirsson, Steingerður Lóa Gunnars
• Composer - Íris Thorarins

A collaboration between Hikapee Theatre and Huldufugl, a show for medium to large stages that combines Icelandic folklore, circus arts, theatre and creative technology.

With projected visuals for the entire duration of the show (90 minutes), I used Houdini and Unity to design and render the scenes, working in realtime during rehearsals, then rendering out high-resolution HAP video.

Playback was handled using a custom-made TouchDesigner app, receiving cues via OSC from Qlab, running realtime effects on top of the video, and handling the projection mapping.

Whilst most of the scenes are purely video playback in most cases, with a few scenes are exported as live Unity apps, controlled with an Xbox gamepad live during shows, which just to keep things exciting!

Finally, after several years of rehearsals, covid-induced delays and fundraising, the world premiere took place at Worthing Pavilion Theatre in March 2022. The show plans to be touring worldwide from August 2022.

• Show information: 🔗
• Hikapee Circus Theatre : 🔗

An audio-visual collaboration with one of Iceland's most established electronic musicians, Úlfur Eldjárn

Premiering at Extreme Chill Festival, Reykjavík, 2022, and ongoing into 2023.

More images + info coming soon.

Out Of Sync was a slightly mad, experimental performance idea formed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and climate crisis.

As we all remember, in 2020 many artists across the world were unable to perform to audiences of more than a handful of people (at best), and those countries where audiences can gather in numbers have achieved this largely through (sensibly) strict border restrictions, meaning they are unable to invite international artists to come and play. In addition to this, the global climate crisis remained – albeit backgrounded a bit by the pandemic.

The idea is that a performer in Iceland (at the time gatherings were limited to 10 people or fewer) would live-stream to a club in Taipei, Taiwan. There, a full audience of dancing people (Taiwan had no gathering restrictions at the time) would enjoy the party. However, we had two dancers, or “eyes” inside the club, using mobile phones to provide a two-way video stream back to Reykjavik, where two people at a time would experience the party on the other side of the world inside large wooden booths specially built for the purpose.

Full performance :

• Event Production : Uta Reichardt, René Boonekamp, Aephie Chen
• AR Graphics : Owen Hindley & Yuli Levtov (Volta)
• Performer : Hermigervill / Sveinbjörn Thorarensen
• Camera : Yuli Levtov, Uta Reichardt
• Video Editing & Titles : Owen Hindley

Now a 90 minute performance, regardless of how great the music is or colourful the artist's onesie is, might not be the most visually interesting experience if it was a simple camera setup. Luckily, I had been working for several months with my long-suffering collaborator Yuli Levtov on an exciting new project called Volta, which aims to make it easy for performing artists to create visually engaging livestream experiences, either for 2d video streaming or in VR.

Even more luckily, the month before, we had integrated Keijiro Takahashi’s outstanding Rcam2 system into Volta’s existing visual system, allowing us to do a full AR performance using only an iPad Pro and a laptop running Unity + Touch Designer.

We're super happy with the results, which you can watch above. Since then we’ve incorporated a user-facing editor into the Volta product, which you can read more about below. In addition, this same team has applied to produce several more events during 2021 to investigate alternate means of performance and audience experience – both as the world recovers from the pandemic, and as we look forwards to ways to reduce the burden of extensive travel on artists wanting to perform outside of their home countries, whilst still making it a party!

• Project page : 🔗
• Volta : 🔗
• Rcam2 page : 🔗

A cloaked figure makes her way through a pitch black world, filled with invisible obstacles. When the wind blows, the negative space reveals their shape and form so she can progress.

Download:

Game can be downloaded from itch.io : 🔗

The installation version was for two people to cooperate, one using a joystick to control the character, the other using rotating lava rock + button to control the wind. The downloadable version is controlled using the keyboard.

Created for the Isle of Games 002 (see isleofgames.is) exhibition on the theme of “The Tempest”.

Credits:

• Design & Music by Owen Hindley
• Character controller magic by @torfias
• Feedback and general advice from @joonturbo, Steingerður Lóa Gunnarsdóttir and the rest of the Isle of Games team.

Playthroughs / Coverage :

• Cianny / Youtube
• jellythecube / Youtube

Imagine one day, you wake up inside an invisible box, unable to escape.

An engaging, but playful, interactive theatre performance with a live actor in virtual reality.

Will you trust this mysterious stranger? Or listen to the voice in your head, trying to get you out?

• WINNER : Most Amazing Game Award 2019, A MAZE. Festival 2019
• WINNER : Best Interactive Narrative Experience Raindance Film Festival 2019
• WINNER : Outstanding USA Premiere, San Diego International Fringe Festival 2019
• WINNER : Innovation in Performance, Stockholm International Fringe Festival 2018
• NOMINATED : Sproti Ársins, Gríman (Icelandic Theatre Awards)
• NOMINATED : GRAND PRIX, Stockholm International Fringe Festival 2018
• NOMINATED : GRAND PRIX, Stockholm International Fringe Festival 2018
• SOLD OUT SHOW : Reykjavík Fringe Festival 2018

One of the world's first pieces of its kind, the show explores what happens by smashing together future-thinking theatre forms with technology.

Created by Huldufugl (an Icelandic / British events company co-founded by myself and writer, actress & producer Nanna Gunnars), the piece is a mix of Virtual Reality, multiplayer gaming and interactive theatre.

The concept initially began as a short play by Nanna, written and performed in a conventional theatre in 2016 – after which I put forward the idea to re-create this piece in VR. We premiered the first version in Reykjavík in August 2017, and developed it for a longer run in July 2018, before taking the show to the Stockholm Fringe Festival in September 2018, and with more international dates planned for 2019!

One person at a time experiences the piece inside of a 2 x 2m physical space, whilst the actor performs in a separate physical space. For our first outing, we used the Xsens motion capture suit (expertly handled by PuppIT), but currently the show involves two Oculus Rift setups, sharing the same virtual space using multiplayer networking.

Show control is handled by an operator, who can observe and control both events in the world and the ‘voice in your head’ via a Qlab interface, and we have a beautiful LED box created by Swedish engineering magicians Svartljus

After touring the piece throughout Europe and to the USA, we went back into the rehearsal room to re-create the experience for more than one audience member at a time. The result is Hliðstætt Fólk / Parallel People, which you can read more about above.

• Performers : Nanna Gunnars, Ástþór Ágústsson
• Music : Iris Thorarins
• Sound : Ragnar Hrafnkelsson
• Concept Development : Alexander Dan Vilhjálmsson
• Additional 3D design, build : Jacob Andersson

• Behind the scenes at STOFF 2018 : 🔗
• Kassinn at Menningarnótt 2017 (first iteration) : 🔗

A series of interactive VR music journeys with music from Bonobo, My Panda Shall Fly, and Reuben Cainer.

Press / Exhibitions :

• Raindance VR Arcade 2017
• Create Digital Music
• Tech Radar
• Daydream District Playthrough
• Reddit

After a chance introduction in Iceland via the wonderful people at Bedroom Community, I was invited to submit a proposal for a launch title for Google’s new VR headset, Daydream.

I contacted my long-term collaborator Yuli Levtov and together with our friends David Li and Leif Podhajsky, we laid out plans to create the first music-focused title for this new platform.

After launch, in collaboration with Ninja Tune heavyweight artist Bonobo, the Horizons team (Yuli Levtov, David Li, Leif Podhajsky and myself) saddled up again to create a brand new psychedelic interactive music journey for the Horizons platform on Google Daydream.

The new scene features the track Outlier from his latest album Migration, and allows you to deeply interact with the music, which in turn has an effect on the landscape you fly through. Flocks of birds join you on your journey through sand dunes, towering mountains and beneath the waves.

After the sad demise of the Google Daydream platform, we were approached by HTC to port the title to their range of devices, and it is now available on HTC Viveport for HTC Vive, Focus and Flow.

Created by:

• Owen Hindley
• David Li
• Leif Podhajsky
• Reactify

With incredible support from:

• Peter Cardwell-Gardner
• Richard E Flanagan