Outside The Memorex
What defines reality and constitutes consciousness? If reality is based on what we can perceive and consciousness is the ability to perceive one's own existence; what happens then if our perceptions are a systematic construct outside the scope of our own comprehension?
Meet The Team
Sarah Jack
Choreographer
Natalie Broussard
Lighting Designer
Chris Conard
Visual Programmer
Chris Clark
Visual Programmer
Brianna Flynn
Composer
Kelsey Bacic
Lindsay Ball
Mackenzie Lawrence
Carolina Sirias
Sarah Wales
Reflection
May 15th, 2019
It actually happened! We put on two performances of our piece and all of the technology worked!
It has been a great experience working on this project in this position and with these people. Although communication was difficult in the beginning, we eventually got our feet on the ground and were able to come together for our final performances. I can't say I'll miss it, but I am really proud of the product we turned out and you can watch our full performance from our Tech Rehearsal below!
Dress Rehearsal and Final Dress
May 5th and 8th, 2019
It has been a busy week getting everything ready for Evolution with a weekend full of rehearsals! At our Act I Dress Rehearsal on Sunday, the LED tape bars were out of the way of the projector! I also think that my entire group would agree that we actually ended up like the current orientation of the LED bars bette than before.
Here was when we were able to set trim height on the LED bars and set the haze. We had issues with the haze, however, obscuring the media and also the camera that Conard and Clark were using for their live generative media and picking up the Projector beam. It unfortunately, wasn't only our group that ran into this issue as it was a comment from many of the groups. Some even opted out of the use of Haze. Our group ended up keeping the haze, but at a lower setting than normal so not to overpower camera on stage.
At final dress rehearsal, all of the groups were present to run through the entire show. This was the first time I was able to see my classmates performances and they have all done such wonderful work! I really enjoyed sitting in the audience and watching their pieces.
We open tomorrow at B. Iden Payne Theatre! It's almost surreal that we have finally gotten to this point!
Tech Rehearsal
May 4th, 2019
Today was a stressful but very productive day I was able to finish programming the show and it was also the first time we were able to see everything come together! I was on the RoadHog4 programming the lights, Media was troubleshooting their video in and making sure they got the right angle of the camera and our wonderful Stage Manager, Helen Hetrick was calling the show with Sarah taking notes.
We unfortunately discovered that the two
innermost LED tape bars were just in the path
of the projector beam. Unfortunately we can't
leave it like that so we decided that by having
the bars be symmetrical on each side and
moved offstage a bit would be the best and
most effective fix while still retaining a look
that we could all agree on and liked.
After rehearsal was done, it was back to the
fly-system to bring down the LED bars and
re-hang them so they were out of the way of
the projector. To the right is what it ended up
looking like after!
Only a week left to final performances!
Spacing
April 27th, 2019
This morning I was worked on creating a show file for our performance in Hog4PC using Light Converse as a visualizer. Unfortunately, the conventional lights were not working and since I had not made the file, I was unsure of how to trouble shoot this problem. I wasn't able to do a lot of programming of cues, but was able to make my groups, color palettes, and a few effects I thought I might want to use.
At 2PM I headed across the street to the Theatre to meet Sarah and dancers for their spacing rehearsal. Even though I was able to watch the choreography through video, I really wanted to see it in the space. This also gave me a chance to review the groups, color palettes, and focus palettes that I had made and make any edits as necessary.
I was also able to experiment with some of the effects and even programmed the first 2 minutes of the performance. I was also able to see how the LED bars looked from the audience and get confirmation from Sarah that they were spaced well and hung in the right places.
A short clip from Spacing rehearsal.
Load In
April 26th, 2019
After a very long day of classes, I still had to put up our groups LED bars. So I met with Conard at the B. Iden Payne theatre where our performances are being held and he quickly showed me how to rig them up before he had to leave.
I was able to lay them out onstage and run the cables needed to make them work. The LED DMX Dimmer was attached to the pipe along with its power supply and hooked up. It took a while to figure out the most effective way to run the RGBW wire due to the varying lengths they were in. I was definitely a learning curve, to hook up them up but after a few minutes, they were all hooked up and ready to be tested! Chris Muenchow, our Visiting Professor for Concert and Event Lighting, was working on the board, patching the lights, so he was able to patch them and fire them up for me while I was on the stage rigging.
At first go, all but one worked. I looked at why he wasn't working and the connections seemed to a bit loose. After fiddling with it for a while and switching cords, I was finally able to get it to light up like the rest. However, I noticed that when they were all white, two of them were different shades of white. One LED Bar was missing its Red value and another was missing Blue. I think this was due to the connectors that connected the wire to the tape itself. They were very finicky to close and didn't provide the cleanest connection points. I was able to fix the first by simply redoing its connection, but the second one proved to be more of a hassle. Once I would get the red value to read, another value wouldn't want to connect anymore. After about an hour of trying to troubleshoot this single strip of LED, I was just about ready to pull my hair out. I had redone the connections (twice) on both ends and switched out the wire. After about an hour and a half or so, I finally got it to connect and discovered that the LED tape itself wasn't that great. When I would bend the tube at a 45 degree angle to the wire, the Red value would become unconnected, but once it was hanging vertically, it would be fine.I think this small factor cause me to do a few unneeded changes, but I was just happy that it was finally working and ready for Spacing and Tech Week.
The Third Meeting
April 25th, 2019
Today, we had our last meeting before we go into spacing tomorrow and into tech on Monday. We discussed our costumes and everything that would we will need to accomplish this week. I am slowly working on the Light Converse file we have been given, but it has proven very difficult to juggle the multiple projects for my classes as we are approaching finals week and final due dates.
It was a very productive meeting with Sarah showing videos of the choreography with the music that Brianna created for our performance. Conard and Clark also showed up with some examples of the media that they were creating. This media utilized a Kinect to read the dancers positions and movement onstage. Using the Kinect as a video in, they were able to show us a sampling of the media that followed our inspiration of cause and effect by using an RGB Split chop within TouchDesigner, the program that is being used to create the visuals.
We also finalized the availability of Conard's LED bars and drafted up a simple layout (shown below). This will be our plan going into Load in and Tech week. This will be my first time actually setting up LED tape by myself so I am excited to see how it works out!
The Second Meeting
April 12th, 2019
Today, we had our second full group meeting, and Laura Gonzalez joined our Team as Costume Designer! We are now three weeks out from performance week and we are all busy with final projects.
We discussed our music further, and Sarah showed us videos of her choreography and Laura showed us what she was thinking for costumes and how it would tie in to our overall design. Conard, unfortunately was unable to make it but Clark was able to discuss what they were working on and provide examples of what they've done! Unfortunately for me, most of my work will come later when the plot is confirmed and a Light Converse file is made. Most of the programming, however, will most likely be done when we move into the space itself.
Foundry Presentations
March 28th, 2019
Today are our Foundry presentations to all our classes, our professors, and some of the Department and Fine Art Heads and Directors. No pressure, right?
Over the past two weeks, I have been doing more research and finding more images that would be able to get my design ideas across to a larger group of people, all of whom are not as familiar with the design process as my small class.
After Sarah spoke first to introduce everyone to our team and concept idea, Brianna introduced everyone to her style of compositions and where she found her inspiration. She discussed what she was hoping this piece would sound like with includes a synth aspect.
Next, Sarah expanded on our Butterfly Effect concept discussing what she, herself found inspiration in as a choreographer. She showcased images of the type of movement which involves a lot of partner work and playing off of each other.
I decided to focus on Sidelight to highlight the dancers and incorporate harsh beams of light to contrast with the color gradations. This heavy use of sidelight will be used to highlight the dancers bodies. I decided to stick with and expand on the inspiration images for texture, this time showing the starry night lamp next to a night sky to show that it could be achieved. I inserted my color scheme onto every slide that I covered to remind myself and the audience I was presenting to that these wold be the main colors of the performance.
I also mentioned the possibility of using the LED bars Conard had mentioned at our last meeting but left it out of my source imagery since it was not yet confirmed that we would use them as we had yet to receive a light plot of the space and rig.
After I presented, it was Conard's and Clark's turn to discuss their inspiration, ideas, and concepts to our audience. They each formed their own mood board to depict what they want to accomplish. Both of them presented images and gifs inspired by glitches, pop art, static, and light.
Unfortunately, due to lack of conversation between programers and because they presented separately, we got a few questions about the cohesiveness of the media and how we would resolve this. This is something to talk about at our next meeting!
The First Meeting
March 15th, 2019
Today we were finally all able to meet together as a group. Organizing one time where 5 full-time college students who work to meet together is a lot harder than it seems!
We were finally all met and I was able to meet our Composer for the first time. We started our meeting by going through the slideshow I had made and discussing the concept I had formed to present my class. We collectively decided that this was the right direction to go in and were able to expand on the concepts as well.
We ended up drawing a lot of new inspiration from the Butterfly Effect which expanded on our original cause and effect concept, but gave us a concrete idea and theory to draw from.
Conard introduced the idea of adding a couple LED lights to the Evolution plot specifically for our team and performance. He mentioned that he owns some homemade LED tubes that are light and easy to hang and use, and asked if I would be interested in working with something like that. I really like this idea of adding an extra element that can perhaps help to tell our story of cause and effect.
With a more evolved concept and agreed direction to take, we disbanded to enjoy our Spring Breaks!
Preliminaries
February 26th, 2019
Before we could do anything to prepare, we had to create our teams between the multiple collaborating classes. Even though I was unable to go to the event to meet some of the other choreographers, programmers, and musicians, I was lucky enough to team up with a good group of a few home I had the pleasure of working with previously. The team is as follows...
Choreographer - Sarah Jack
Lighting Design - Myself
Visual Programmers - Christopher Conard and Christopher Clark
Composer - Brianna Flynn
For my Lighting Design class, Concert and Event Lighting taught by Matt Smith, we were to prepare a slideshow depicting our inspiration and that represented what we, as a group, wanted to accomplish with our looks for the performance. Since my group was unable to meet before this deadline, I drew my inspiration for this performance from what our Choreographer (Sarah Jack) and Composer (Brianna Flynn) originally wrote in the shared spreadsheet between the collaborating classes.
Below is what each of these women were interested in exploring with this project and what they drew inspiration from.
I struggled for a bit as to what could we use as an overall concept to tie our piece together and make it one, cohesive performance, but I decided to go in a direction that I felt as though it fit. Below is the main image that I have chosen to draw inspiration from and what became my title slide to introduce my classmates to my concept for the lighting.
Below are a few more images and slides that I chose to depict my preliminary ideas.
My color scheme was inspired by the Aurora Borealis and the gradation and blend of different hues. The color scheme was to be primarily blues, purples, and greens.
This color scheme, while although natural in some cases, also can be artificial, as seen in the blue light of electronics.
I decided on amber to provide contrast to these rich colors.
In addition to this gradation of color, i wanted to cut it with a patterns that verged on naturalistic and artificial. I found the top left image of the slide to the right resembled the glare of the sun and could also be interpreted as a glare from electronics. The blue and green color scheme presented in the image also reinforced my color scheme.
The image to the right of that was more realistic in depicting the stars in the night sky, however we can see the source of light is a lamp, artificially made. These were the main to images where I drew my inspiration for texture in my design.
In summary, I found inspiration from Sarah's mention of cause and effect and use of gravity and Brianna's mention of Virtual Reality, human perception, and synth to create a concept that played with the idea of the unnatural coming in a taking over the natural world.
