Naomi Smyth
Naomi is is one of Watershed's Fellows in Residence based at The Sheds as part of MyWorld Ideas programme. She is an artist and researcher working with performance and tech
Naomi Smyth
Worked on
MyWorld - Strength in Places
Watershed is excited to be a partner in MyWorld, a project led by the University of Bristol that will celebrate the West of England's reputation as an international trailblazer in creative technology and screen-based media.Naomi is an artist and researcher working with performance and tech.
Her PhD researched how immersive theatre tools were transposed to ‘remote live’ digital performance during the pandemic and beyond. She views liveness as an exchange of feeling between audience and performer bodies. Physically engaging the audience is vital for live performance, especially in digital space. This makes it particularly exciting for her to be exploring and prototyping tools for that with the MyWorld Fellowship.
Naomi will spend five months as a Watershed MyWorld Fellow as part of the MyWorld Ideas programme. Within this Fellowship she will be exploring effective real time interactions in hybrid (digital and live) performance environments with different audiences. This Fellowship aligns with an R&D project seeking to develop a scalable, interactive streaming platform that leverages the advanced audio and visual technical capabilities at The Sheds to facilitate accessible, distributed audience engagement, in real time.
For three years she was a creative technologist, supporting artists to use immersive technologies like motion capture, volumetric capture and virtual reality at The Studio in Bath and as part of MyWorld.
She is a theatre artist, and has written and directed at least two new theatre shows most years since 2008, with companies like The Invisible Circus, Beyond The Ridiculous, Shangri La at Glastonbury Festival and Boomtown Fair. She works with absurd dystopian comedy based on improvisation and playful audience interaction. She is writing a new digitally augmented show with her company Smish Theatre.