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27 September 2026, at 8:00 p.m., Weavers’ Bastion, Brașov city

Transilvania University of Brașov, as a partner in Hybrid Extended Reality (HEAT), a European-wide project, hereby announces its participation in the XRBlues pilot, which will be released on 27 September 2026, during the last evening of Transilvania Blues Festival (8^th edition). This pilot will integrate extended reality technologies in a live performance, thus offering the audience the opportunity to experience the concert in a both physical and virtual space.

The show chosen for this experience is Bluesferatu – Eine Symphonie des Blues, a cine-concert produced by Transilvania Arts & Events Association. The silent movie Nosferatu (F. W. Murnau, 1922), one of the milestones of German Expressionism, will be screened against the musical background of its original soundtrack, performed live by six musicians of Brașov.

As part of the XRBlues pilot, the concert hosted in the generous yard of the Weavers’ Bastion will display a virtual component. The musicians will be volumetrically captured and three-dimensionally reconstructed, so that the remotely connected participants can watch them in a virtual replica of the space where the performance takes place.

To achieve this experience, each musician will be captured through a volumetric video camera rig, and the audio signal will be taken directly from the sound system of the concert. The Weavers’ Bastion was, in its turn, scanned by means of a drone and photogrammetry techniques. The resulting 3D model was integrated into the Unity graphics engine, which eventually generated a virtual space where the users can move around and enjoy the concert from several perspectives.

The pilot, introduced within the Transilvania Blues Festival, is the result of multiple testing phases conducted in real-world contexts. Since November 2024, during the Transilvania Blues Nights, a series of concerts have been performed to test various components of the system, including remote participation and 5G streaming. At this stage, volumetric capture, 3D space modelling, spatial sound and data transmission have already been integrated into a unified XR experience.

The event attendees will also have the opportunity to discover the virtual component of the concert, through VR headsets.

Hybrid Extended Reality (HEAT) is an EU funded project under Horizon Europe research and innovation actions, Next Generation eXtended Reality, which aims at setting the stage for next-generation distributed experiences. The project explores the use of XR technologies in contexts such as musical shows, theatre, opera and education, combining 3D capture and reconstruction, holographic content, spatialised sound and communications technologies.

The successful development and implementation of XRBlues was contributed by Transilvania Arts & Events, Transilvania University of Brașov, i2CAT, Università degli Studi di Cagliari, HSLU Luzern, Dublin City University and Orange Romania.

Detailed information about the project is available on https://heat-xr.eu