LOVELIKE
lovelike is a mixed-reality musical performance about loneliness and longing. The project uses motion capture and VR as part of an interface that allows Jenna's avatars to interact with virtual objects that control effects and instruments in audio software.
Throughout the 30-minute performance, Jenna rearranges the features of her avatar and liminal virtual world, and leans into desperation that feels like love. Reflecting on the dissociative experience of seeking approval from an absent lover, the duo weaves an experimental narrative and fragmented musical composition, weaving a melancholic composition in eight acts.
Jenna performs in motion capture gear and VR HMD as an embodied avatar, interacting with virtual objects as proxies for audio effects and digital instruments while Celia monitors and organizes incoming clips in live audio software. Projected behind them is a view of the virtual world Jenna uses to improvise with Celia, both always visible in their roles as composer and virtual puppeteer.


"lovelike [is] Jenna Caravello's kinetic, colorful, intimate and slightly melancholy VR episodic folk opera, in musical collaboration with Celia Hollander. Felt novel and emergent, but also evocative of the electric vulnerability of Songs for Waves/Big Science era Laurie Anderson."
– 2220 Arts + Archives in Los Angeles
lovelike is a project by Jenna Caravello
with Celia Hollander
composer / performer
+ John Brumley
programming / technical advisor
+ Henrik Soederstroem
research assistant
This project was made possible with generous support from the Society of Hellman Fellows and the UCLA School of Arts + Architecture.



