Only Acting

Only Acting questions what it means to perform in a space with no audience — and no body. The piece places a fragmented digital figure inside an architectural void, cycling through choreographed gestures drawn from theatre and motion capture. The title is both instruction and provocation: every movement in the piece is scripted, yet the system leaves room for it to feel otherwise.

Built in Unity with custom character rigs and procedural animation blending. Motion sequences were authored in Blender, then imported into Unity's Animator for real-time layering and reactive state transitions. Lighting is fully dynamic — responding to the character's position and motion intensity — giving each loop a slightly different quality of light.

Designed for both screen and head-mounted display. In XR mode, the viewer occupies the same physical space as the performer, collapsing the distance between observer and observed. Spatial audio cues shift with the viewer's head position, reinforcing the illusion that the figure is aware — only acting as though it is not.