Photo: Darragh Dandurand

Weston Gaylord ’11

Independent Writer and Director | Intersection of Technology and Storytelling

July 2020

by Jim Collins

The Spring/Summer 2020 issue of Lakeside magazine featured "The Futurists," a gallery of forward-looking alums who, unconstrained by current assumptions, offer a view from outside the box.

BACKGROUND // Theater training, play-writing, degree in symbolic systems, with a focus in human-computer interaction.

HIS QUESTION // How can augmented and virtual reality help deepen the emotional experience of live performance?

THE WORK // Writes, directs, and designs immersive staged productions. Recently co-wrote and developed Chained: A Victorian Nightmare, which blended real-time motion capture, room-scale VR, and live theater in an inventive adaptation of the classic Dickens ghost story.

THE FUTURE // Technologically, VR today is an isolating experience. VR needs to overcome its current inability to comfortably put people into the same virtual space. When that gets figured out, there will be a flowering of powerful, shared artistic experiences.

IN HIS WORDS // “It’s a dead-end trying to digitally recreate the fidelity of the natural world. But used as a tool — the way a microphone, or good lighting, or live music is a tool — virtual reality can deepen people’s connection through art.”