Book - Prelude - Characters - Scenes - Music - Highway
Team - Jobs - Visual - Virtual Worlds - Gallery - Fund - Links
VISUALSpace on screen - Filmosophy - Live Theatre - Virtual World - Real v Virtual - Audience - Set You can download a list of influences/inspirations here (this is the same as the Music list) '40
years of chat-rooms, and blogs; With a story that's so centred around technology, it might be easy to let the technology used to produce the show become the end to the means rather than the means to the end. It's important to me to use the technology to tell the story, not just for the sake of it. One of the most recent and relevant operas which has been/ is a model for WAKTM is Space on screenTV and Film and provide much inspiration for various aspects of WAKTM, such as the computer characters in 2001; A Space Odyssey (WarnerBros) and Red Dwarf, the designs of Star Trek® and Star Wars®.
The 2009 Duncan jones film Moon starring Sam Rockwell re-ignited my excitement for the project. Jones was himself inspired by Stanley Kubricks masterpiece 2001. Alien features spaceships and planets James Cameron's Avatar (2009) differs from WAKTM in that in WAKTM the 'others bodies' of the characters are Virtual whereas in Avatar, they are a physical biological body. Cameron wanted his audience to imagine that "...human technology in the future is capable of injecting a human's intelligence into a remotely located body, a biological body. It's not an avatar in the sense of just existing as ones and zeroes in cyberspace. It's actually a physical body. The lead character, Jake, ..., has his human existence and his avatar existence. He'll be shown using live-action photography in 3-D and computer-generated imagery." 'Filmosophy'The Matrix "depicts a future in which reality as perceived by most humans is actually a simulated reality created by sentient machines to pacify and subdue the human population, while their bodies' heat and electrical activity are used as an energy source" Wikipedia "Descartes concludes that he can be certain that he exists because he thinks. But in what form? He perceives his body through the use of the senses; however, these have previously been unreliable. So Descartes determines that the only indubitable knowledge is that he is a thinking thing." Total Recall similarly deals with the "question of reality versus delusion" and asks "whether the character’s experience is real or being fed directly to his mind" (wikipedia) Live TheatreThoughts from Bella Rose about senses All our senses are linked to our memory pathways.
|
| Stage 'left' | Real | Now |
| Stage 'right' | Virtual | Flashback |
I then started to research the History of Theatre to look for ideas; my first port of call was Wikipedia
"BURSTvisual is a collective of multimedia artists [...who...] specialise in the production and direction of original video and photography, in particular for use in live settings such as theatre and opera. Our content is a lively mixture of original 3d and 2d animation, filmed material, video archive and live mixed sources."
Burst also work with/as New Opera Hero, "a live act who compose music, story, visuals and technology simultaneously within the structure of a band." and are interested in creating "an on stage multimedia collage in which every element influences and changes the overall performance. The production process is not built around a finished script or score; instead it is the combination of various building blocks. Musical themes, story characters, images, technology, and acrobatics are shuffled around like a painter moving parts of a collage around a canvas until they fall into place and reveal the final picture.
Some of BURSTvisuals' work reminds me of Alkamie digital theatre, combining live performance with projected digital virtual sets. I met alkamie though my involvement with transit station, and spent some time rehearsing with them, accompanying them as a pianist/improviser/composer.
"alKamie’s Virtual Reality Theatre coalesces the alive tangibility of real performers with 3D animation technology to create a hallucinogenic theatre through which onstage characters and audiences tumble alike... uses front projection over an entire white stage space to immerse live performers in the virtual space of computer models. Imagine performers onstage inhabiting the world of a computer game. They appear to move within the world and you can follow their actions in the same way a viewer of a film follows the actions of the character."
I found something along similar lines in the work of Joachim Sauter via The Creators Project.
"For a performance of "The Jew of Malta", Joachim Sauter did elaborate projection mapping. He projected virtual architecture onto the stage [as alkamie does], and the actors costumes were camera tracked so when they moved, the image being projected would move as well."
Sauter explained that "The goal of the project was the enhancement of the traditional static stage setting into a reactive and dynamic stage design that plays its own vital role in the narration."
Exploring Sauter's site, I found what might perhaps be a more relevant application of the technology "grammar" he is helping to develop; a virtual garden of sorts.
I also found a "Futuristic Animated Opera" in progress called Liberteria (facebook, blogspot) by composer Sabrina Pena Young. Although more of a film than a live performance, it does share a few concepts with WAKTM; post-apocalypse and death.
A video I chanced upon of an advert for the LG Optimus mobile phone
showed me further possibilities of 3D projection .
"Real-time animation evolves with 3D Video FX, motion paths, HDR ... iClone4 combines real-time filmmaking & video production inside one powerful engine. The result is a streamlined production tool for motion graphics, 3D animation, video compositing and 3D stereo creation
Another possible way of realising the virtual world section(s) of the production would be to create machinima, which 'uses real time interactive online 3D engines', often Second Life (PookyMedia - YouTube). Perhaps Reaction Grid, who have offered their support for the opera by building a 3D space, could assist in this department.
'Machinima (muh-sheen-eh-mah) is filmmaking within a real-time, interactive, 3D virtual environment, often using 3D video-game technologies, the convergence of filmmaking, animation & game development.' (www.machinima.org)
Audience Participation
aka 'User Generated Content'
The Blue Man Group show in London raised the question of the possibility of audience participation, to support the Internets trend towards User Created Content.
Blue Man Group
"Please yell if you're paying attention"
"Stomp your feet / clap your hands"
For WAKTM, this might involve audience members sending in media (text, images, audio, video) - perhaps using their mobile phones, but this would necessitate making sure that W@K2M had permission to use such submitted media which may cause a problem. It may involve audience 'performance' e.g. clapping, singing...
"I love the idea of the audience being able to "text" or "email" things during the play, which would appear on screens and images as part of the set... But, this would need to be monitored/screened to prevent profanity ... Perhaps someone backstage could receive & check the messages, and include the better ones within the screens/imagery.... It does leave open the danger that everyone will be on their phones rather than watching the play, so perhaps this "interactive" function should only be made available to the audience at certain (appropriate) times....?" (Eales @ Facebook Group)
Partly inspired by this comment, I wondered if it would be possible to have some kind of live stream of blogs somewhere within the staging/set of WAKTM. I wondered how fast the stream could/should be - i.e. how fast could the audience read? Would they need to be able to read the actual words or would it be sufficient for them simply to be able to recognise that it was a blog-stream? If we used actual blogs, we would need to get permission from authors/publishers to use their content.
Can we get the audience to sing?
'The recent developments in mobile Augmented Reality (the addition of a virtual layer to reality) allows Sander Veenhof to explore ways to open up the virtual public space for anyone to contribute to.'
(YouTube)
Set Design/Production
What does The Highway look like?
How can we create (the illusion of) a space shuttle?
How might film/video, lighting and sound combine to create a storm?
How might we suggest that a scene was a flashback?
For John Adams'/Peter Sellars' opera Dr Atomic, the set(s) 'intentional sparseness is beautiful unto itself' and "funnels the viewer's attention to the compelling content of the opera - the powerful words and music...."
I met Anthony Doherty on LinkedIn when he commented on a post about WAKTM. He shared some insight he'd gained into opera and music in general with me via email; I thank him for giving me permission to publish what he shared. He is a composer, arranger, voice teacher, tutor and editor as well and sometimes dusts off his stage manager clothes
"The director David Belasco was famous for reproducing exactly any actual setting, such as a real restaurant, down to the smallest detail. Another writer pointed out the effect this has: the curtain goes up, and the audience recognizes the interior of the restaurant and starts checking out the all the details. Meanwhile the play is going on. Better to have just a few tables or whatever without more details than necessary for the action. The audience accepts what it represents and pays attention to the play itself. Good designers know how to deal with that. I was musical director/conductor for a production of [Puccini's] La Boheme, in which the designer, working with the director, came up with a basic structure that worked for all three different scenes, just by moving some things around. Doing things like that can also have a unifying effect. Opera is symbolic. After all, people don't go around singing at each other in real life, and especially suddenly all singing the same thing as a chorus." (Anthony Doherty)
"In our opera the action takes place either on a dock by the sea or on the patio deck of a house. That's from my librettist's original short story, and it's brilliant. A deck and a dock are similar structures. It's almost the same word. but in this story they represent two opposites. The sea is lonely. From the dock you can't look out and see where you came from or where you're going. For the main character the dock is the gateway to nowhere. The deck, on the other hand, is attached to a home (not just a house). It's a warm, safe place. It can have a railing to keep you from falling off, which the dock doesn't. So we realized that for the set the same structure had to be used for both deck and dock, because it's a powerful symbol of the two paths in the main character's life. (It also lowers costs, since only one structure needs to be built instead of two. Producers like that.) I sketched a possible way that could be done. That helps us picture the action as we write and compose. But it will be up to the designer to make it work." (Anthony Doherty)
Would it be possible to have just 1 set in WAKTM?
Google Image Swirl™; internet - network - space shuttle
If you are interested in being involved with the project
Email me / Facebook Group / Flickr® / YouTube®** / Twitter
Text © Chris Eales & Rupert Cheek 2006 - 2011.
Music © Rupert Cheek 2009-2011.
Images remain © of respective owners @ Flickr®.
All rights reserved. 2011.
"WAKTM" & "W@K2M" are trademarks of WAKTM