Golem-Labor was an international workshop series organized by the Goethe-Institut in 2020 and 2021, combining contemporary dance and mixed-reality technologies. The project explored the interfaces of art and technology, human and machine, physical and virtual reality in an interdisciplinary and transnational manner. Dancers and choreographers worked together with XR artists and VR experts on research tasks and a performance.

The goal was to determine how the physical movements of the dancers could be captured by the capture suit and transferred into the digital space. Where are the boundaries of transformation? How do speed, type, and quality of movements affect the digital avatar? What interactions are possible with the avatar? And how does the recording change the quality of movement?
Golem-Labor is the follow-up project to Golem, where for the first time performances could be experienced simultaneously in the physical space and in the virtual space through avatars.

The workshops of Golem-Labor took place in 2020 and 2021 with four dancers each in Prague, Riga, Tel Aviv, and Bogotá. Each workshop built upon the research results of the previous workshop. Movements were continuously developed, resulting in a repertoire that could be used for the performances. The results of the workshops in Bogotá and Riga can be seen in Mozilla Hubs rooms, where the captured movement sequences are performed by avatars and the dancers reflect on their experiences.