Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and ASU Gammage, Arizona State University's performing-arts presenter, commissioned Empire at Sea, a 22-minute interactive mixed-reality drama created, directed and produced by Peter Flaherty. Up to ten audience members at a time wear Apple Vision Pro headsets and gather around a custom-built interactive LED table; volumetrically captured actors, including Orlando Jones, Ayelet Zurer, Geoffrey Arend and Beth Grant, appear on the tabletop in passthrough mixed reality. Participants choose which of several simultaneous conversations to follow by moving around the table, and a vote near the end feeds a branching narrative set on an oil rig called Aurora, where climate scientists built a sustainable community at sea after a mainland disaster five years earlier cut them off.
Flaherty Pictures, 4DV.ai and NightLight Labs developed the piece; 4DV.ai supplied the volumetric capture. Agog: The Immersive Media Institute, the Schwarzman Center at Yale University and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation supported the production.
Empire at Sea premiered in competition at Venice Immersive, part of the 83rd Venice International Film Festival (2-12 September 2026), and won the festival's Achievement Prize, announced 12 September 2026. Lincoln Center has scheduled the work for January 2027, and ASU Gammage has scheduled it for 8-20 March 2027 at the Tempe Center for the Arts as part of its 2026-2027 Beyond season. Versions for VR headsets and mobile phones are planned for home audiences, according to the production's press notes.
