The Owl, The Fish, The Maiden and He

An interactive poem — a downloadable iPoem for Windows, built in Unreal Engine and released by Black Russian Games.

Studio Black Russian GamesPlatform Windows (name your own price)Built with Unreal Engine

The Owl, The Fish, The Maiden and He is an interactive poem: a short, downloadable work for Windows in which the reader moves through a rendered world while the verse unfolds around them. It weaves real-time scenes built in Unreal Engine with recorded voice, photography, and video of the dancing body — an experiment in reading a poem as something you move through rather than simply see on a page.

A rendered suburban house at golden hour with 'Black Lives Matter' lettering on the garage door

A rendered night street with a red sports car and a police car, washed in deep blue

A rendered street of parked cars tinted in teal and violet

A dancer with hands raised, double-exposed over a graffiti wall

Autumn leaves resting in shallow water with the words 'a beautiful sight'

Handwritten poem words on black: 'To young a maiden find'

Poem words on black: 'they changed that very day'

Artist-in-Residence — Watermill Center

This interactive poem grew out of my 2018 Artist-in-Residence at Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center on Long Island, where I worked in motion capture — recording live movement and translating it into digital actors. Surrounded by the Center’s art collection and library, it was a chance to push choreographic thinking across the line between the dancing body and the captured one. The residency led directly to The Owl, The Fish, The Maiden and He, and to several performances of the work — including at the Atlas Performing Arts Center and TEDx Tyson’s.

Erin Roy seated on the floor with a laptop, recording audio in the Watermill Center gallery — Erin Roy recording audio for The Owl at the Watermill Center.

Erin Roy in headphones recording audio at a speaker in the Watermill Center — Erin Roy recording audio for The Owl at the Watermill Center.

Dancer standing in a motion-capture calibration pose beside African sculptures and tall windows — A dancer holds a calibration pose among the Center’s sculpture collection.

Boris Willis and dancers working with cameras and tripods in a studio surrounded by sculptures — Capturing movement in the studio.

A collaborator adjusts motion-capture markers on a performer dressed in black — Placing motion-capture markers.

A laptop screen showing a motion-capture skeleton of a dancer — A captured phrase becomes a digital actor.

Boris Willis and two collaborators seated at a table in the Watermill Center library — Working in the Watermill library.

A figure silhouetted against the bookshelves of the Watermill Center library — The library.

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