The Pearl Diver's Daughter — Visual Design

Graphics and animation rendered in Unreal Engine 5 for a Company E production, staged at the Cultural Foundation in Abu Dhabi and the Museum of the Future in Dubai.

Company E dancers performing in front of a wide rendered desert-and-sea environment at the Museum of the Future — The Pearl Diver's Daughter — Museum of the Future, Dubai.

Year 2023Disciplines Real-time / Unreal, Interactive Performance, Video

Visual design for Company E. Most scenes were built inside Unreal Engine 5 — lighting, post-processing, assembled environments — then rendered to video and run live through Resolume Arena. Working in a game engine made scenes far easier to revise and extend than fixed video would allow. Presented at the Cultural Foundation, Abu Dhabi and the Museum of the Future, Dubai.

Four dancers kneeling before an open-ocean horizon rendered in Unreal Engine — An open-ocean horizon built in Unreal Engine.

Dancers rehearsing in street clothes in front of the rendered desert scene — Rehearsing into the rendered world.

A single dancer on the Museum of the Future stage during a tech run — Tech in the Museum of the Future theater.

Unreal Engine Movie Render Queue rendering an underwater sequence at 87 percent — Rendering the underwater sequence out of Unreal Engine.

The underwater coral environment open on a laptop — The underwater environment in progress.

The Pearl Diver composition open in Resolume Arena — Cueing the scenes in Resolume Arena.

Boris Willis in the auditorium before a starfield scene on the stage screen — Before a starfield scene in the theater.

The Museum of the Future in Dubai, its torus form covered in Arabic calligraphy — The Museum of the Future, Dubai.