Help Rebuild the Magic Stage
Donation protected
My name is David Beaver, and in the mid-90’s I invented, built, and patented what many experts called the first commercially viable virtual reality theatre technology - The Magic Stage. The documents needed to rebuild it have been in storage for decades. Fees built up (reasons below), and The Stage WOULD HAVE BEEN AUCTIONED OFF ON MARCH 5th.
I started this $2500 Go Fun Me to SAVE THE MAGIC STAGE.
With just over 24 hours left, and only about 1/3rd of the money raised, a friend stepped in with a bridge-loan and covered the storage. Now that loan needs to be quickly repaid, hopefully this month. If repaid, he may help again as we move to the obvious next step, REBUILDING THE MAGIC STAGE.
The Magic Stage
On a stage the size of one in a medium-sized night club, we created full-size, full-motion, full-color virtual worlds immersing performers interactively inside the virtual worlds, as well as controlling their images much like the digital ones; all without putting headgear or glasses on the audience. The Stage was lost in late 2000 after the dot.com bubble burst, drying up tech funding overnight.
My goal was, and is, to create a new medium of artistic expression, a cross between film, theater, virtual reality, and stage magic - the Magic Theater Project.
Three videos of stage demos can be seen here on my DropBox , one by a professional video house as a demo tape, and one by local network affiliate broadcast on their local TV station. The third one was to document later effects created after we went to “full power” with new projection and effects gear, but without the same editing and production values. Remember if you watch them that even “full-power” was using mid-90’s projectors and computers. Today, we would use my friend Douglas Trumbull’s MAGI technology ; taking it to another level.
The Critical Need and Timing
For months, I have been seeking funding for the Stage in the socially conscious investment field (so-called “triple bottom-line” investors supporting “People, Planet, Profit”). I have a first call with a leader in the field scheduled for March 20th, but finding the right investors will take time, hence the need to keep all the documentation for new presentations and the rebuild.
The videos were widely circulated, bringing representatives from Peter Gabriel, Michael Jackson, Paramount, Disney and more to our studio. No one had ever seen anything like it, and to our knowledge, no one has done it since. They had great difficulty telling the real from the virtual, even though they knew they were seeing live performers. The picture below doesn’t capture the Stage's sense of reality. The videos are better, but everyone who saw it said that though the videos brought them to us, even they couldn’t begin to do The Stage justice. It’s one of those things you have to see for yourself.
The technology allowed performers to pick up virtual objects, open virtual doors and walk into other VR worlds. Our control of the visual images of the performers allowed us to turn parts of their bodies into digital images, such as replacing a performer’s head with an animated animal head, or causing their entire body to appear or disappear in the middle of a brightly lit stage. The possibilities were nearly as limitless as in a special effect movie, but we did it all on a live stage with a live audience, all without headgear or glasses; thus -
A NEW MEDIUM.
Where We Were Going When the Bubble Burst
Pilobolus , the legendary Modern Dance Collective, who were as excited as I was at creating a new live/virtual medium, worked with me for nearly a year to create the first VR modern dances for the live stage. We were booked into the Joyce Theater in NY (the so-called “Mecca of Modern Dance,”) for late August 2000, to make our world debut. Peter Gabriel was going to meet us there.
Unfortunately, just as we were about to demonstrate this new art form and its enabling technology; in the Spring of 2000 the dot.com bubble burst, and investment money, which we were operating on, dried up overnight, and were out of business by the end of the year. All that remained were the videos, the office computer, and all the structural and wiring instructions for the amazing build; all of which I put in storage as I lost nearly all I owned in the crash. I had raised nearly $1M to get to that point, and it would likely have taken nearly that much to weather the dot.com slide and recovery.
The Time is Right for the Magic Stage
Today, virtual reality is enjoying a sudden resurgence, with many major players such as Alphabet, Sony, Facebook, Microsoft, etc. The recent focus has been on head-mounted monitors (or VR headsets), though VR researchers have used other platforms, such as C.A.V.E.S, and other lesser known systems. Indeed, many VR researchers often cite the Star Trek Holodeck as the ideal VR system. The Magic Stage might be thought of as an “audience viewed Holodeck,” something which had not been done before, and not done since.
Help me repay my generous friend’s loan while I find investors, excited about the new age of virtual reality, and show them a unique VR platform that has already been built and demonstrated. It will allow many talented artists in multiple fields to create a new art form –Magic Theatre. I will keep all donors apprised of our next steps through updates.
_______________________________________
Addendum – The Intervening Years
A natural question is, especially with the recent reemergence of virtual reality; why did I wait this long to attempt to resurrect the Magic Stage? While this next material is not necessary to understand the nature or value of the Stage, it will show that I did not just sit around for two decades with this amazing technology in storage.
When the Magic Stage company went under around the end of 2000, I was left penniless. I spent the next three years writing the last three of my four book manuscripts documenting my research and cognitive/media theories that had led to the Stage. Circulated to academics, they got me invited lectures from deans or department heads at major university graduate schools in Design, Psychology, Virtual Reality, Theater, Filmmaking, and Cognitive Science. The last two, in 2003 at the Duke University Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, got a glowing letter of endorsement of my findings and theoretical models. (Letter available on request)
Later that year, I began putting together a new project, which a few years later became the Overview Institute , which is the only organization in the new space community that researches, educates, and consults on the Overview Effect , the most common term used to describe the unusual personal shifts in perspective experienced by astronauts for decades, about many aspects of life on earth. I am the initiator, co-founder, and chief cognitive researcher. My most comprehensive published report was in the Spring 2016 issue of the authorities Space Times Magazine (reader-friendly version here , as well as link to Space Times issue)
These shifts curiously correspond closely to many of the major areas of challenge and crises facing the world today; climate change, international relations and conflict, and a host of humanitarian crises. Many astronauts and those who research them have said that bringing the Overview Effect to the world could have multiple positive benefits to efforts to mitigate these same crises. But many “world-change” leaders, those working to mitigate these challenges, especially global climate change, stress that the next decade is crucial.
While over the next couple of decades, New Space companies will bring tangible benefits to the world that will aid in these very world-change efforts, in the next decade, especially the next few years, where changes must begin to accomplish real benefits in this decade, the only thing that can be brought from space is the space experience itself, the Overview Effect.
In late 1999, as we were working with Pilobolus preparing for our debut at the Joyce, I was approached by a leader of what is now called the New Space Industry, the folks who are creating a New Space Age. I was taken to a meeting in the House Caucus Chamber in D.C, where I met Eric Anderson, Buzz Aldrin, Peter Diamandis, and Robert Bigelow. I maintained contacts with these folks for several months, even as I was immersed in preparing for the Joyce.
I was stunned to see this group planning to jump-start a new space age. But, from my cognitive-media background, I was equally stunned that they all seemed to think that the world would quickly turn its attention back to space, as it happened in the first space age of the 60’s, if they just kept building their rockets and other technology, and accomplishing one milestone after another; a sort of “build it and they will come” philosophy.
To me, they needed a cognitive and media strategy to bring space back into cultural relevance and media attention, but almost to a person they seem to think that space is so naturally fascinating and exciting (as it is to them!) that just building ships and hitting space milestones would be sufficient to get the whole world excited about space again.
While that will certainly happen in the long run, it’s unlikely to happen in the time-frame needed to help with the next decade of world challenges and crises. It needs a cognitive-media strategy to bring the worldview/paradigm shifting Overview Effect of the space experience into world culture and media. I thought I could help, but was still focused on bringing the Magic Stage to the world, so it went on a back burner until the dot.com slide changed my options.
I then finished the manuscripts, did the lectures, called astronaut Edgar Mitchell, Douglas Trumbull, and Space Philosopher Frank White who all joined me, and together we began the Overview Project. Shortly after, I received an inheritance of $100K. I put it all into funding the Institute conferences, websites, posters, publications, etc. It cost every penny, but we did it.
I started this $2500 Go Fun Me to SAVE THE MAGIC STAGE.
With just over 24 hours left, and only about 1/3rd of the money raised, a friend stepped in with a bridge-loan and covered the storage. Now that loan needs to be quickly repaid, hopefully this month. If repaid, he may help again as we move to the obvious next step, REBUILDING THE MAGIC STAGE.
The Magic Stage
On a stage the size of one in a medium-sized night club, we created full-size, full-motion, full-color virtual worlds immersing performers interactively inside the virtual worlds, as well as controlling their images much like the digital ones; all without putting headgear or glasses on the audience. The Stage was lost in late 2000 after the dot.com bubble burst, drying up tech funding overnight.
My goal was, and is, to create a new medium of artistic expression, a cross between film, theater, virtual reality, and stage magic - the Magic Theater Project.
Three videos of stage demos can be seen here on my DropBox , one by a professional video house as a demo tape, and one by local network affiliate broadcast on their local TV station. The third one was to document later effects created after we went to “full power” with new projection and effects gear, but without the same editing and production values. Remember if you watch them that even “full-power” was using mid-90’s projectors and computers. Today, we would use my friend Douglas Trumbull’s MAGI technology ; taking it to another level.
The Critical Need and Timing
For months, I have been seeking funding for the Stage in the socially conscious investment field (so-called “triple bottom-line” investors supporting “People, Planet, Profit”). I have a first call with a leader in the field scheduled for March 20th, but finding the right investors will take time, hence the need to keep all the documentation for new presentations and the rebuild.
The videos were widely circulated, bringing representatives from Peter Gabriel, Michael Jackson, Paramount, Disney and more to our studio. No one had ever seen anything like it, and to our knowledge, no one has done it since. They had great difficulty telling the real from the virtual, even though they knew they were seeing live performers. The picture below doesn’t capture the Stage's sense of reality. The videos are better, but everyone who saw it said that though the videos brought them to us, even they couldn’t begin to do The Stage justice. It’s one of those things you have to see for yourself.
The technology allowed performers to pick up virtual objects, open virtual doors and walk into other VR worlds. Our control of the visual images of the performers allowed us to turn parts of their bodies into digital images, such as replacing a performer’s head with an animated animal head, or causing their entire body to appear or disappear in the middle of a brightly lit stage. The possibilities were nearly as limitless as in a special effect movie, but we did it all on a live stage with a live audience, all without headgear or glasses; thus -
A NEW MEDIUM.
Where We Were Going When the Bubble Burst
Pilobolus , the legendary Modern Dance Collective, who were as excited as I was at creating a new live/virtual medium, worked with me for nearly a year to create the first VR modern dances for the live stage. We were booked into the Joyce Theater in NY (the so-called “Mecca of Modern Dance,”) for late August 2000, to make our world debut. Peter Gabriel was going to meet us there.
Unfortunately, just as we were about to demonstrate this new art form and its enabling technology; in the Spring of 2000 the dot.com bubble burst, and investment money, which we were operating on, dried up overnight, and were out of business by the end of the year. All that remained were the videos, the office computer, and all the structural and wiring instructions for the amazing build; all of which I put in storage as I lost nearly all I owned in the crash. I had raised nearly $1M to get to that point, and it would likely have taken nearly that much to weather the dot.com slide and recovery.
The Time is Right for the Magic Stage
Today, virtual reality is enjoying a sudden resurgence, with many major players such as Alphabet, Sony, Facebook, Microsoft, etc. The recent focus has been on head-mounted monitors (or VR headsets), though VR researchers have used other platforms, such as C.A.V.E.S, and other lesser known systems. Indeed, many VR researchers often cite the Star Trek Holodeck as the ideal VR system. The Magic Stage might be thought of as an “audience viewed Holodeck,” something which had not been done before, and not done since.
Help me repay my generous friend’s loan while I find investors, excited about the new age of virtual reality, and show them a unique VR platform that has already been built and demonstrated. It will allow many talented artists in multiple fields to create a new art form –Magic Theatre. I will keep all donors apprised of our next steps through updates.
_______________________________________
Addendum – The Intervening Years
A natural question is, especially with the recent reemergence of virtual reality; why did I wait this long to attempt to resurrect the Magic Stage? While this next material is not necessary to understand the nature or value of the Stage, it will show that I did not just sit around for two decades with this amazing technology in storage.
When the Magic Stage company went under around the end of 2000, I was left penniless. I spent the next three years writing the last three of my four book manuscripts documenting my research and cognitive/media theories that had led to the Stage. Circulated to academics, they got me invited lectures from deans or department heads at major university graduate schools in Design, Psychology, Virtual Reality, Theater, Filmmaking, and Cognitive Science. The last two, in 2003 at the Duke University Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, got a glowing letter of endorsement of my findings and theoretical models. (Letter available on request)
Later that year, I began putting together a new project, which a few years later became the Overview Institute , which is the only organization in the new space community that researches, educates, and consults on the Overview Effect , the most common term used to describe the unusual personal shifts in perspective experienced by astronauts for decades, about many aspects of life on earth. I am the initiator, co-founder, and chief cognitive researcher. My most comprehensive published report was in the Spring 2016 issue of the authorities Space Times Magazine (reader-friendly version here , as well as link to Space Times issue)
These shifts curiously correspond closely to many of the major areas of challenge and crises facing the world today; climate change, international relations and conflict, and a host of humanitarian crises. Many astronauts and those who research them have said that bringing the Overview Effect to the world could have multiple positive benefits to efforts to mitigate these same crises. But many “world-change” leaders, those working to mitigate these challenges, especially global climate change, stress that the next decade is crucial.
While over the next couple of decades, New Space companies will bring tangible benefits to the world that will aid in these very world-change efforts, in the next decade, especially the next few years, where changes must begin to accomplish real benefits in this decade, the only thing that can be brought from space is the space experience itself, the Overview Effect.
In late 1999, as we were working with Pilobolus preparing for our debut at the Joyce, I was approached by a leader of what is now called the New Space Industry, the folks who are creating a New Space Age. I was taken to a meeting in the House Caucus Chamber in D.C, where I met Eric Anderson, Buzz Aldrin, Peter Diamandis, and Robert Bigelow. I maintained contacts with these folks for several months, even as I was immersed in preparing for the Joyce.
I was stunned to see this group planning to jump-start a new space age. But, from my cognitive-media background, I was equally stunned that they all seemed to think that the world would quickly turn its attention back to space, as it happened in the first space age of the 60’s, if they just kept building their rockets and other technology, and accomplishing one milestone after another; a sort of “build it and they will come” philosophy.
To me, they needed a cognitive and media strategy to bring space back into cultural relevance and media attention, but almost to a person they seem to think that space is so naturally fascinating and exciting (as it is to them!) that just building ships and hitting space milestones would be sufficient to get the whole world excited about space again.
While that will certainly happen in the long run, it’s unlikely to happen in the time-frame needed to help with the next decade of world challenges and crises. It needs a cognitive-media strategy to bring the worldview/paradigm shifting Overview Effect of the space experience into world culture and media. I thought I could help, but was still focused on bringing the Magic Stage to the world, so it went on a back burner until the dot.com slide changed my options.
I then finished the manuscripts, did the lectures, called astronaut Edgar Mitchell, Douglas Trumbull, and Space Philosopher Frank White who all joined me, and together we began the Overview Project. Shortly after, I received an inheritance of $100K. I put it all into funding the Institute conferences, websites, posters, publications, etc. It cost every penny, but we did it.
Organizer and beneficiary
David Beaver
Organizer
Raleigh, NC
Anthony Howard
Beneficiary