“A Vixen’s Tale” is a combined physical and augmented reality experience inspired by Leoš Janáček’s opera, The Cunning Little Vixen, created by Arcade for Welsh National Opera (WNO). The free experience runs from Saturday 5th October to Sunday 3rd November at Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff, with plans for national and international tours to follow. Tickets to the opera are available here.
We started Arcade in London in 2017, and, after some early high-profile work with the likes of Merlin (SEA LIFE, Madame Tussauds) and the Roald Dahl Museum, we were accepted onto Digital Catapult’s Augmentor programme, which brought us to the attention of WNO. When we got WNO’s call inviting us to pitch for their latest immersive installation, we were thrilled.
An AR Tunnel Book
We had a lot of fun coming up with concepts for the pitch (some of the weirder and wackier ones were quickly locked away!) but settled on an idea that borrows from the world of set design: the ‘tunnel book’.
Tunnel books were used extensively in the 18th and 19th centuries as a set design tool — three-dimensional mock-ups that show how a set would work. They can typically be folded flat but when extended offer an illusion of perspective and depth. Traditional tunnel books are constructed in miniature, but what would something like this be like at human scale? We were excited by the idea of “stepping in” to a tunnel book and augmenting the journey through the arches with all kinds of playful interactions in AR. Fortunately for us, the WNO team were equally intrigued.
The centrepiece(s) of the experience would, therefore, be a series of five beautiful wooden arches, each one 8ft high and 16ft wide. This approach of merging a physical installation with an immersive digital experience gave us the chance to flex both our architecture and digital muscles.
A walk in the woods
The Cunning Little Vixen follows the titular character through her life and the experiences that define her, largely set in and around a forest. We took the themes from these experiences — from the playfulness of youth through to rebellion, love, joy and, ultimately, grief — and mapped them across the arches, which also came to represent the seasons from spring through to winter. This concept gave us a rich canvas on which to build the physical and digital experiences, walking alongside the Vixen as she journeys through her tale.
To make the experience as visually impactful as possible we commissioned the illustrator Xavier Segers, whose work brought the narrative and emotion of each arch stunningly to life. Suddenly these five arches and their associated season and phase in the Vixen’s story, became incredible works in their own right.
Cardiff Theatrical Services (CTS), WNO’s wholly-owned set design & construction team, were tasked with the challenge of turning our designs into full-scale reality.
An augmented experience
To augment the physical experience and respond to the objective of engaging new opera audiences of all ages, we introduced an extensive range of playful interactions, immersive illustrations, animations, and soundscapes using location-specific AR, set across the five arches. Accessed via mobile devices and headphones, visitors can walk with the opera’s titular Vixen, seeing, hearing and participating in her narrative for themselves.
We built the Vixen and all other dynamic elements from scratch, rigging, animating and texturing the models to align with Xavier’s designs. To make the experience as intuitive and accessible as possible, we also cast the Vixen herself as your guide, indicating what she wants you to do as you progress through the arches.
The delight on people’s faces (of all ages) as they discovered the Vixen and cracked the various challenges was incredibly rewarding.
Emotional impact
Throughout A Vixen’s Tale, the audience is immersed into the emotions the Vixen herself experiences through the course of her journey.
Sound, therefore, has a huge role. As with the visual assets, the audio is also augmented. Working with sound designer Owen Peters, we developed a series of ambient soundscapes, each reflecting the themes and emotions of each arch and responding to visitors’ movement through the installation.
The final, critical piece of the emotional experience is the way A Vixen’s Tale echoes the overarching theme of The Cunning Little Vixen itself: the natural circle of life. We’ve hidden a few extra surprises to reward those who complete the journey through the arches. As in the opera, the end of A Vixen’s Tale has its own tragedy, but it also becomes a whole new beginning. (Hint: when you get to the end, turn around.)
A multi-layered experience
The experience is inherently multi-layered, with both physical and immersive components. We loved the way this caters for different types of audience and levels of engagement, and wanted to push it even further.
To this end we introduced two complementary experiences, accessed via Snapchat. These Snap lenses could give casual or remote audiences their own immersive Vixen experiences and open A Vixen’s Tale up even more.
We embedded the first in a poster campaign that invited people in and around the Cardiff area to meet the Vixen and get a sneak peek of the arches.
We also added a second fun lens that could be experienced anywhere in the world, turning people into the Vixen (and her foxy friend, if there is more than one person in view). By accessing the rear camera, users could also place the Vixen wherever they happened to be, and let her run around.
A Vixen’s Tale runs until November 3rd in Cardiff, and there are plans for the experience to tour nationally and overseas. With any luck this is just the beginning for our cunning little Vixen…
Arcade makes augmented reality experiences that are all about creating connections for people: to place, to stories, to emotions and to each other. Visit arcade.ltd or contact Alex Book on alex@arcade.ltd.
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