This bilateral research project investigates how embodied sounding practices can be transmitted, experienced, and critically re-activated within immersive digital environments. Focusing on the vocal and performance traditions of LUME Teatro (UNICAMP, Brazil), the project brings together researchers in performance studies, dramaturgy, music cognition, extended reality (XR), artificial intelligence, and digital heritage to develop a series of interactive “living archive” prototypes that move beyond static documentation.
Through community-based participatory research, practice-based experimentation, and intercultural exchange between Brazil and Belgium, the project explores how virtual environments can foster intracultural dialogue while supporting plural and decolonial epistemologies within archival practice. Motion capture, spatial audio, and networked XR platforms are combined with dramaturgical navigation strategies to investigate how users might move through, compose with, and respond to embodied archives rather than merely observe them.
The research unfolds across iterative cycles of artistic laboratories, technological development, and empirical testing in both countries, supported by international research networks in digital humanities, performance research, and critical heritage studies. By positioning dramaturgy as a central mediating force between technology, embodiment, and cultural memory, the project proposes new methods for engaging with intangible cultural heritage in virtual space, offering transferable models for artistic research, digital archiving, and socially embedded technological innovation.