I have just finished 2 weeks of workshop in Oslo together with Ståle Stenslie, where we have been working on a theatrepiece Ståle is doing in september in Oslo. The play is going to have 5 stories the audience can listen to, and at the same time the audience will (one at the time) have a speciel suit on with 64 vibrators (like the ones in mobile phones), and some sensors. And it is this suit i have been working on. First of all making the electronics (controlled by a Arduinio) work, and secondly making a application (in Processing) to design the “animations” that are going to run on the suit together with the recordings of the stories.
Later we are going to add interactive elements to the timelines that are created with this application. But for now the people in Oslo will work with this and the test suits we got until i come back.
Winter 2009, Teater CampX, Copenhagen The past 5 weeks i’ve been working on a theatre play on theatre CampX called Hush Little Baby as video/image designer. And last week we had opening night after a pretty tuff period. The play is about Filipino au-pairs that travel abroad to earn money, leaving family and children behind in the Philippines. And here in the west they live without any legal protection from their homeland, and earn money under a system that was intended for something completely different. In the play we got some philipin women telling us these stories, together with 3 danish actors that tell the danish story about getting a girl into the house.
So the next 4 weeks i’m going to control sound and video every night at CampX together with these wonderfull people.
Fall 2008, Halmtorvet Copenhagen Tue Biering and Jeppe Kristensen created a theatre play which was based on the well known movie called Pretty Woman, but this time performed in 3 containers put together on halmtorvet in copenhagen with room for 50 audience and with a real prostitute from copenhagen on stage every evening. The play was probably the most discussed cultural event in copenhagen this fall. Many politicians went out without knowing anything about the play and taking distance from the project. Even though the organizations that are supporting the prostitutes where supporting the project. The discussion resulted that we had fully booked already before the premiere.
We wanted to create a film-like feeling in the play, so the whole play was recorded with cameras and shown on monitors above the small stage live edited by me. So the audience could look into the hotelroom that we had build (with a glasswall between the audience and the actors) and at the same time look up and see our cut of the movie. To make the delay between the real actors and the tv-monitors as short as possible, i had to buy a old videomixer (Panasonic WJ-MX50) with all the oldschool effects and sit live and cut between the cameras. And have lots and lots of BNC video cables.
The stage seen from the audience with the monitors in the top.
My videosetup backstage from where i was live editing
Tosca is flying in the air with wings. She is actually lying on the floor under the eyeliner
Vision4, summer 2008, Kopparberg Sweden Vision4 was asked by Opera på Skäret to do the visual work for Tosca, and i was hired to do the video programming and assisting on creating the material. Opera på Skäret is a old big sawmill in the middle of nowhere that now is used by a private opera company that makes one to two plays each year, getting people from far away with special train to see it.
We builded 3 small eyeliners in this beautiful room hanging in long wires from the roof, and created virtual walls in the room. A mac pro running isadora was the core of the system creating the 3 projections, and in one scene i had Eyesweb running to track the opera singer and make blood float out of the body reacting on the movement of the singer. It was accomplished with a custom programmed addon for isadora i did myself. The material was otherwise primary prerendered video made by Arthur Steijn and me, and a couple of times live cams places around on the stage.
Hotel Pro Forma, spring 2008 I assisted Andreas Buhl on video and light on Hotel Pro Forma’s performance called Relief, and assisted on animating several of the videos. Hotel Pro Forma is a copenhagen based performance group that creates very non-traditional plays in different theatres all over the world. Many of the plays are shown touring around, including this that has been shown around in europe and in Copenhagen.
Vision4, winter 2008, Damascus Syria
Vision4 was invited to Damascus to open it as Arab Capital of Culture 2008 in the big opera of Damascus, and i was hired to do the video technics and assisting on animation. It was a crazy eyeliner project with very limited time far away from our usual workplace. I was there in 3 weeks, the first two weeks we builded the eyeliner (12×8m), produced all the video material together with the video designer (Arthur Steijn) and a photographer and the concept developer Mikael Fock. And the last i was there alone with Mikael putting all the bits together for the show. The result was a big show shown on Syrian tv and seen by the president of Syria and Turkey and lots of other important people. The evening with most nerves in my live! A really crazy trip.
The technical setup was one big front 20.000 ansilumen projector for the eyeliner (we got it from Denmark by plane), one smaller back-projector and a mac pro running Isadora controlling both screens.
Vision4, fall 2007
I helped Vision4 doing the re-performance of The Third Tango in Svalegangen i Århus. The Third Tango (or Den 3. Tango in danish) is about the storyteller Carl Quist Møllers journey into his dreams about a girl. The play had live music by a tango orchestra, and used the eyeliner technic for visually taking the audience into a unreal journey filled with movie effects live on stage.
My job was to make the technical video setup, but we chose to remake the setup from last time and convert all the video into Isadora on a Mac Pro.
CampX, fall 2007
I helped do the video on the play called QUEER on CampX Aveny. It was a big performance with lots of televisions we had to control individually, and 3 projectors. I ended up helping on the techicnical side of the setup, doing some of the video material and running all the video every evening.
Photo from technical setup where you see the frame that was going to hold the eyeliner foil. Photo by me
Vision4, summer 2007
This was my first theatre project. I assisted light designer Andreas Buhl on the play called The Miracle (Miraklet in danish) by Mikael Fock and Vision4. This was a big eyeliner production on Kaleidoskop K2 in Copenhagen about a man that became pregnant – a true miracle. The eyeliner was used to make real film effects live on stage (like slowmotion bullets and 3d mazes the actors got stuck into).
My job was to help setting the eyeliner foil up, setting up the technical part of projectors and computers, and help a little bit producing some of the video material. The setup consisted of 2 front projectors, and 1 back projector all controlled with Pandora.
