DPI:

How long have you been doing video for theatre?

Hal Eagar:

Since 1995 however long that makes it today, 13 years. My senior thesis project at Purchase College is where I finally got to put two of the things I was excited about and seemed to be good at together, theatre and computers. It was "multi-media" back then, and the web was very new, we had to use UNIX systems to run Mosaic in X. I mean I was doing CD-ROM stuff, but that was not "live" enough for me. I figured the internet and VR were way more appropriate for theatrical use. We did use a little 3D VR in that show too.
I have a list of the theatre work I've done on my website that update speratically.

Mallory and I have reached our first checkpoint in the Oh What War video system development. To the anachronistic surveillance system, I have added the following features:

-Detritus selector: This is a jpg player that inserts 'detritus' jpgs (pre-selected war themed paraphenalia; and sometimes not*) into the interchannel distortion. The idea is that like a 'radio tooth' our system is picking up some not-necessarily-random static. The selectors flash each detritus image for 1/10th of a second- however the detritus (when it is on) lasts for a full second- so while you might not be able to name/recognize/remember all the images (they appear on top of a wobbly scramble) you certainly realize that you saw something. Not like we need any more subliminal garbage!

HOWEVER I read somewhere recently that narcissists are more likely to read meaning into random symbols in their lives... Is our system a narcissist? (Just like mommy?) Before we get totally way off course- I am just injecting the words from the script as images in the interstices. There are: tanks, scribbles, sausages, ribcages... sometimes thematically: severed arms, severed heads, severed legs, severed torsos. And then liguistically (homo-nyms/phones) a spade, a spade, a spade... an idea stolen from more than one poet.

Since there are so many landscapes in the monitors/ afterall, the system is keeping an eye on the landscapes in the four directions, therefore there must be an instrument for digging into them.

stay tuned to hear about the unfortunate

-Singing/talking faceless man: our World War I pacman

Zbigniew

I'm the assistant director
on S.O.S. and high-tech staging is new to me. S.O.S. is the first production I've worked on that privileges video and still requires
a lot of movement from the actors. It's amazing to see them
exercise multiple acting muscles at once. The Big Art actors are
filmic and theatrical at the same time. How do they do it?

Caden either has a specific
physical structure in mind, or he lets improvisations inspire the staging.
As I have discovered in furiously scribbling it all down, the blocking
is two-fold. It includes the spatial relationships on stage and
the positions that produce images on screen. In each scene the
actor establishes a distance from the camera that will produce the desired
picture – close-up, mid-shot, or far shot. He steps in front
of the camera and arranges himself dynamically within the frame, using
the viewfinder that's been flipped back towards the lens. Neutral
images are met with Caden's direction to "make it interesting."
A prop held in the foreground looks better than one on the same plane
as the actor; an upshot is menacing; the more varied and interesting
the shape an actor's body makes in the frame, the better.

The camera is hard on the actor. On a huge proscenium stage, an actor in tableau can blink and breathe
– but projected video brings the audience closer, giving them much
more room to scrutinize. A "frozen" pose has to be totally
frozen or it doesn't work; the wobbles and shakes may take up the
whole stage. The actor's rigor and physical control become important
in the extreme.

Because the screens are what
feel closest to the audience, Caden often asks actors to relate to the
others through the screens.
For example, in one scene, the character Raccoon is following an argument
between Deer and Wolf. Instead of looking towards the speaking
actor, Racoon has to turn his head in the opposite direction - because
Deer and Wolf are flipped on the screens behind Raccoon's screen.
This counterintuitive direction makes for some funny moments in rehearsal
as the actor trains himself to turn the right way. He's denying
not only a lifelong instinct but a basic theatrical assumption - we
watch the person who speaks. It's not easy! I filled in for
Deer one day in rehearsal, and trying to relate to the others via screens
made me feel really spastic and uncoordinated, like a kid learning to
pat her head and rub her stomach at the same time.

Luckily all the actors in S.O.S
are longtime collaborators.

by: Kathleen Amshoff

DEADLINE: 1 May

ArtBots : 2008 Call for Works

I think I'm going to miss it once again.

ReSiDeNt @ LEMUR: New Works, New Instruments, New Artists
PERFORMANCE: May 2nd 8PM $5

Robots and theater make us all excited here!
And we hear that this show will include plenty of mechanical thespians from Andrew Schneider, Dafna Naphtali, and Simon Morris.

Simon Morris SensorSkate, a skateboard custom-wired with sensors and
programmed to control the LEMUR robots.

Dafna Naphtali has been
brewing up a soundstorm of dynamically controlled algorithmic
improvisation and live audio processing, using Wiimotes and vocal cues
to trigger and manipulate the bots.

Andrew Schneider will be
doing musical theater, presenting a dance number and interfacing his
movements with the robots via custom-built wearable controllers. This
promises to be an exotic, entertaining evening.

http://www.makenyc2.org/
April 30, 2008 - 7PM
71-69 46 Ave (meeting hosted by Big Apple Hobbies)

oops I didn't hear about this untill today, a bit late but I'll try and make it.

http://3leggeddog.org/mt/
PERFORMANCE: April 11 - May 3
3LD
80 Greenwich St

Sadly the descriptions give me no idea what in particular it is they are up to, but from what I saw during development it's a very impressive installation/theater piece. That ought to wow. I can't wait to get my fill of the spectacle.