Since the 1990s, the CREW collective, a prominent figure within digital creation in Belgium, has been interrogating our relationships with technologies through powerful performances mixing body and mind. Their XR experiences (augmented, virtual and mixed realities) form an authentic artistic plea with a pioneering idea: everyone must be able to live their own virtuality. A contrarian approach to current trends.

The works imagined by CREW constitute genuine markers of the technological developments and the uses made of them over the last three decades. Eric Joris, the CREW’s founder, speaks to the appearance of VR appliances 15 years ago: ‘those who tried out virtual reality were shocked. Some people, wearing headsets, lost their balance and fell over. Others were completely blown away and needed a few minutes to return to reality. Today, we are living with digital technology all the time and our understanding of the world is in part constructed through these media,’ he explains. ‘Digital uses are evolving, and along with that so are the ways of creating and perceiving the world.’ And that is how the CREW’s mantra was established:  How does technology change us? A principle adopted by the whole team (3 to 10 people, depending on the project, including creative technologists, authors and directors) and one which drives a methodology rooted in research and experimentation. 

Imagination, observation, iteration 

‘When we presented the show  Kaufhaus Inferno, an art critic called this transmedia project an interesting failure,’ Eric Joris shares with us, smiling. As early as 1998, therefore, the date when this performance, based on Dante’s Divine Comedy, was created, the CREW had imagined an immersive environment in which the audience, cast into a shopping centre, was confronted with the abundance of stimuli and asked to make consumer choices to live their own experience. This (relative) ‘failure’ would enable the CREW to more deeply explore the role and the involvement of audiences and performers in virtual spaces. ‘From then on, we started to wonder about the relevance of the digital on the stage. Over time, that led us to develop Philoctetes (2002), a work in which technology is an indispensable part of the experience.’ Here, the digital is considered as the artificial limb of a human being. The audience members, seated or standing in a kind of cage, observe, as they would a public dissection in an anatomical theatre, the body of a person with disabilities. The body in question extends into the virtual space, surpasses its physical limits, and even takes control of the environment. Is technology the prosthesis of the body? And, more generally, where does technological ascendancy begin? 

‘Our method is primarily imagination, observation, iteration,’ for her part explains Isjtar Vandebroeck, a CREW artist who very happily works on co-projects with the world of research.  One example being Soulhacker (2020-2022) , in which CREW artists joined forces with the teachers and students at the Royal Institute for Theatre, Cinema & Sound to develop virtual environments in which  neurologists and psychologists guide and treat patients. A project which focuses on of the empowerment of the participants and places them at the centre as the main actor of their own healing process. 

Empowerment and virtuality

This focus on empowerment is however far from being customary in the domain of digital creation and virtual worlds. ‘Up until 2015, in all the XR works you could see, the audience was static, always seated, and had no direct involvement. We very quickly decided that we wanted an interaction which was natural, spontaneous, physical,’ explains Eric Joris. After several initial works in VR (including Crash in 2004), Terra Nova (2011)  went further by giving body to a new reflection on movement by enabling the mobility of 55 participants simultaneously. This immersive theatrical experience throws the audience into the polar expedition carried out by R. F. Scott at the beginning of the twentieth century. Unveiling the steps and the thoughts of the British captain, the work immerses the audience members in the expedition’s tragedy and in other baffling realities. Their senses are stretched, their emotions and their concentration put to the test. ‘What is reality if it is so easily manipulated? What is this reality of seeing, hearing, moving around in space, if my body so easily allows itself to be entertained?’ asks Eric Joris, philosophically. 

Delirious Departures (2021-2022) also stands out in the CREW’s corpus. Scans and 3D images of railway stations are transformed into VR environments and enhanced by AI bots. The installation-performance is populated with visitors, spectators and performers, even if one never really knows if the latter are human or artificial. In fact, groups of active avatars crowd the social spaces of the train station and interact with the participants. The actions and reactions are never inconsequential but always trigger a response. In this work, the train station is no longer a neutral crossroads but a site where you are confronted with the other.  Anxious Arrivals (2024) takes this idea further in establishing an analogy between the liberation of spaces post-COVID and the freedom of movement in virtual spaces. ‘These two performances raise questions about our ability to engage the real and virtual worlds. What I love about these works, is that not everything is explained. We sometimes deliberately remove signposts so that the participants can construct their own story,’ analyses Isjtar Vandebroeck.

Maintaining spaces of liberty

All these works have one thing in common: they incorporate the body and emotions as the guiding storyline of experiences.  ‘More technology is not to say less human. Often the opposite is even true,’ argues Eric Joris. ‘In most XR works nowadays, the human emotional palette is reduced to positive emotions.  Entertainment has prevailed over the experimental, yet a well-rounded experience is incompatible with this form of censorship,’ adds Isjtar Vandebroeck.

An assessment which highlights a firm belief: ‘the XR model will not be manufactured by the cinema or the video game industry, but instead by the experimental approach adopted by artists,’ thereby restating the singular nature of the CREW’s work and its impact. In fact, one of the most riveting aspects of the CREW’s virtual worlds lies in the liberty they offer the participants: the freedom to enter and to exit the experience, to choose to be themselves or somebody else. Isjtar Vandebroeck concludes on an apt point: ‘in recent years it has often been claimed that VR has failed. But by what criteria can one speak of a failure?’ An invitation to rethink the role of VR above and beyond hasty verdicts.

Call for projects

A story, projects or an idea to share?

Suggest your content on kingkong.

send your ideas