Portfolio Research
Most of the artists working in similar areas to me have very stripped back, minimalist portfolios using a lot of whitespace, allowing the content to speak for itself. (eg Wen Chin Fu, Erfan Abdi, Karl Salzmann) I much prefer his style over the other common format of a fairly standard wordpress template (eg. Mariska Degroot).
This minimalistic style allows the necessary information to be easily conveyed. I like Salzmann’s portfolio best of these, as it uses simple formatting to turn a minimal text-based design into an eye catching arrangement, I am therefore going to take this approach in my design.
Bianco
Last night I went to see Bianco, NoFit State‘s Current show. The whole thing was stunningly choreographed, with some exceptional performance, mostly focussing on arial work. The music stood out particularly, with score that wondered between many styles, all played by a live band. At times the music outshone the circus performance, drawing attention away from it, but this was no bad thing. Phenomenal!
Beach filming
I’ve spent the last 2 days filming on the beach in the sun – it’s a hard life!
Not much time for lying around though, sadly!
Have another sneaky frame from the filming…
Filming Fire!
Just back from a nice location shoot for my video, today’s footage documenting some of my fire work. Have a sneaky preview frame!
All looking pretty exciting!
Bath UpChuck
Arriving too late (after last night’s evening out to see Facade) to do many workshops, I settled in to watch the evening show.
Amidst a lot of fantastic acts, there was a performance by one of the Gandinis that utilised glow juggling clubs along with electronic music. While the juggling was technically very good, it didn’t flow amazingly well with the music, and the lights were far too jittery and unrelated to the music for the performance to hold together well as an overall experience.
Facade
Last night, I saw the Crashmat Collective perform Facade at Newport Riverfront Theatre. It was a fantastic show set in a fictional restaurant, with the performers serving a three course meal to the audience. Music and lights were brilliantly implemented – a ‘waiter’ would be half way through serving something to a table when the lights and music would change, and suddenly all the performers would be doing some strange repetitive motion, while one of them performed a circus piece before everything switching back to how it was before, with neutral lighting and relaxed double bass led music.
I like the idea of lighting and sound unexpectedly changing dramatically together, and am hoping to implement this in my work – perhaps using a DMX controller that is also controlled with the circus performance.
Fishing Rods and Ideas
Not much to say here really.
I had the dance studio booked out to refilm what I have currently, but the lights and sound system weren’t usable, so I had some experiments with what I had with me, which included a fishing rod. So hey.
Definitely some usable ideas here, I like the idea of using a pendulum to keep time, and if the rod was black, I could get some good ‘magical’ effects with getting balls to fly out in unexpected directions.
The rod also gives me a far greater range of movement to control than I would otherwise have with the balls as I have been using them.
Live – A halfway-there summary.
Ok, so we’re half way through the year, and half way through this project, from an academic point of view, at least.
I’ve done 3 live performances ([1], [2], [3]) and stepped forward hugely in both the presentation of the piece and the underlying code. Allowing the tracking to work around stage lights has opened up the scope for performance massively, and general software improvement has opened possibilities in how sounds are effected, with a lot more aspects of movement being used and translated into sonic elements.
Aside from the performances, I’ve done large amounts of technical and performative development, moving from tracking with with webcam, through trying to use a webcam and wiimote together to make a faux kinect (to some success, but I eventually decided it wasn’t worth the hassle) and then on to using a playstation eye. I’ve also done a lot of visual experimentation with lights and juggling props to explore the deep sea theme that is running through this piece. I’ve also been discussing my work with various people in regards to getting them involved with the project.
So… where am I going?
I have a lot more ideas in a technical sense that I would like to explore, though with the performance working well in it’s current state these will have to be implemented if and when i feel the inclination and have the time – as with any programming project adding new elements to a project often takes a huge amount of time and there may be more important things to focus on.
As a tourable modern circus performance, the project is really too short currently to stand on it’s own. The types of venue that it would suite in it’s current form as part of a bigger show would be medium sized theater stages (Newport’s Riverfront Theatre, or Cardiff’s Chapter Arts to name a couple of local ones).
To be able to perform in such venues, I would need to either obtain funding to develop the project into a full-length show, or find a company which will include my project as part of it’s show. I have started talking to NoFit State circus in cardiff to this regard, but we’ll have to see how that goes.
I could also quite feasibly tour with a circus festival stage such as Bassline Circus, or Big Top Mania, and I have already had an offer to join Basstrology which is an example of such a stage (though one that is still in fairly early stages of development). being festival format shows, the acts can be more varied, and less cohesive as a whole than theatre shows have to be, making it more feasible to start touring the performance in its current state.
As it is, my project could easily stand up on its own performing at circus festivals and conventions, though this is not financially viable in the long run. I will also try and perform in a few scratch sessions in Cardiff (The Forge) and Bristol (Volt, Ausform)
As it is a performance of spectacle, the audience for circus performance is interesting – it is very varied, with a wide range of people going, but not very often. Modern theatre based circus is a little more narrow, however, but definitely supported, with Newport’s Riverfront putting on regular circus shows (both NoFit State and Crashmat Collective are performing in February). I think, however, that the real audience I’m aiming this project to at the moment is the bigger circus companies or funding sources, as I realistically need those connections for this project to really take off.
Once the project is performable in a larger scale, promotion should be relatively easy, as I have already been working sporadically as a walkabout performer in south wales handing out fliers (usually on stilts), which has proven very successful. This approach combined with posters and an online presence should be easily sufficient to draw a crowd.
Schedule
Jan – migrate system to new laptop, confirm which additional performers I am having involved with the the project at this stage.
Feb – march – musical and visual development
April-may rehearsals & any performances I can organise.
Tech development will have to continue throughout, as any visual or sonic changes will undoubtably cause the necessity for changes to keep it all working.