I interviewed Craig Quintero & Phoebe Greenberg about Blur on Friday, August 29, 2025 at Venice Immersive in Venice, Italy.
Here is the story synopsis for Blur:
- “Blur presents a new myth for the modern age, where science has changed how we think about life and death. With cloning and advances in resurrection biology, we have obscured the boundaries between the living and the dead — the natural and the artificial. This extended reality theatrical production unfolds as a dreamscape, shifting between real and virtual, taking participants on a journey of reflection on grief and eternality.”
Here are the contextual domains that are explored:
- Some fundamental questions around LIFE [1] and DEATH [8]. Blur born out of a “desire to explore the emotional and ethical terrain where science, loss and imagination collide.” Philosophical and ethical implications [9] of the science human cloning [9] as explored through the main story of a mother [4] who’s child [5] has died [8]. Explores a speculative and imaginal space of scienced-based possibilities [9] with imagery reflecting these moral and ethical dilemmas [9] around these hybrid entities [Combination of [1] Self with [7] ]. Also the implications of taking extinct animals [8] like the Wooley Mammoth or Dire Wolf, and resurrecting them through science [9], and bringing them back to life [1].
Here is the Elemental Center of Gravity:
1st Center of Gravity of Earth Element / Environmental and Embodied Presence: Blend of Immersive VR, CGI, Cinematic 360 video, 180 video, Mixed Reality. With specific architectural modulations, live performance, and integrations of your embodiment. Some Generative AI around your representations of embodied identity. There’s also a LOT of invisible spatial choreography that is happening behind the scenes in order to move a number of human bodies through a physical space without colliding into each other, whilst also creating a seamless virtually-mediate spatial journey that is also A LOT MORE VAST than the constraints of the physical space. So it really feels like being taken on an expansive journey through space and time within this piece. |
2nd Center of Gravity of Air Element / Mental and Social Presence: Constant perversion of expectations and experience of having the “rug pulled out from underneath you.” Symbolic Dream Logic, and Theatre of the Absurd. There’s a lot of abstract and semiotic associative linking that Quintero describes as a “Rauschenberg-like collage” blending and blurring together lots of various archetypal forms to communicate their message. There’s definitely a narrative to be parsed, but you have to sort of piece it together as there’s a lot of symbolic communication, as well as expectation-perversion that either creates a deep sense of awe and wonder, or it can also be confusion for some where the overall plausibilty throughline and suspension of disbelief results more in a break in presence from a “I don’t get it” experience rather than a deepening of awe from an unbounded possibility space. Overall feels a bit like waking from a dream, and then trying to parse it. There is also a moment of a theatre-for-one encounter, and then later more of a collective experience. |
3rd Center of Gravity of Fire Element / Active Presence: LIVE PERFORMANCE of theatrical actors. There’s some constructed locomotive agency within bounds to replicate wandering. Some more interactive parts near the end. No real agency to change the flow of the narrative |
4th Center of Gravity of Water Element / Emotional Presence: Cinematic VR, but also a specific cadence and pacing of the narrative. |
Archetypal Themes and Character Explored:
- Blur explores “fundamental questions of identity and selfhood, and what makes ‘me’ me?” The strurctures of our society and science mashed up against the dissolving and dissolution of the boundaries between the science and humanity bringing questions around the archetypal qualities that make us uniquely human. The idealized image of the human form from evolution, then gets dissolved through hybrid combinations, that is also amplified by the actual blending and blurring of communication media from MR to VR to Invidual and Collective Theatrical Performances to Architecture with bit of magic thrown in. It’s a seamless use of the forms of immersive and experiential to amplify the overall themes of the piece. What is Imaginal / Virtual / Synthetic / Artificial / Eternal? vs What is Real and Mortal? Life vs Death in the context of Scientific Truths and Technological Advance. “With cloning and advances in resurrection biology, we have obscured the boundaries between the living and the dead — the natural and the artificial.”
Artist Statement:
- “Blur was born from a shared desire to explore the emotional and ethical terrain where science, loss and imagination collide.Meeting in Venice, we recognised a deep alignment in poetic storytelling and a fascination with questions raised by cloning, bioengineering and de-extinction. The work examines the human urge to transcend death and the consequences of reshaping life. Combining immersive theatre, motion capture, passthrough, VR and AR, we invite audiences into a sensorial and surreal journey — where AI, myth and grief intersect. Blur is both a cautionary tale and a meditation on fragile humanity: a boundary-pushing experience that challenges perception while grounded in universal emotions.”
This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.
Music: Fatality
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
