Dear theater: thanks but no thanks

Posted on May 29, 2008

First, let me start this blog with the obligatory, “Surprise, I’m still alive!” It’s been over two months since my last blog post, and I’m doing well.

Since my last post over two months ago, I’ve come to a number of startling revelations. First, I don’t really like New York City. Second, I don’t really like theater. And lastly, I don’t really like installation art.

If I were the next Wooster Group, if I got a piece into the Guggenheim, if I got a good writeup in the Times for all my work, I’d be unhappy. Why? These creative goals don’t really appeal to me.

I close my eyes and imagine the happiest I could be in the theater world. I’m opening a show at BAM that did phenomenally in previews. I really believe in the work, I am proud of my cast, crew, and all the collaborators on the project. I can already taste the stagelight.

And in this perfect world, I can’t help but see myself as bored, exhausted, and overworked. My collar and shoes are uncomfortable as I shuffle around awkwardly and politely talk to patrons about things that bore me – the future of the theater company, where the ideas came from, how who met who.

Same thing happens when I think about installation art. The curators and the clout, the people who are dumbfounded by your work and have nothing to talk about and the people who immediately “get it” and walk away unimpressed.

Please don’t misinterpret this to mean that I think curators, patrons, theater artists, or installation artists are boring people. They’re fascinating and they generate a wealth of culture. They also happen to be fortunate enough to enjoy that part of the art world that I dread.

So yeah, right now theater and I are on a little break. Also, save for this upcoming event at HOPE (I’ll be posting about that in a coupla hours or so just to keep posts separate), I won’t be actively pursuing the installation art career.

This doesn’t mean I won’t be doing cool stuff still.

: )

I’ve got a pot full of interesting ideas, a few regarding liquid dancing, and a few regarding augmented reality. So do continue to check in.

Leave a comment

Imhotep Project

Posted on January 13, 2008

Hi Everybody!

So remember those videos I made a while back about those phantom images and whatnot? Well, I decided to go ahead and stage a theater piece related based on this technology. So, if you are in the NY area, or if you’re in the area this weekend, come check out our show:

The Imhotep Project

The show runs at 8pm from the 16th to the 19th. There’s also a matinee performance on the 19th at 2pm.

Also, if you’re into the technology part of it (well, you probably are because you’re reading this blog), then come a day where I do a tech demo after the show! Those will happen Thursday the 17th and for the 2pm matinee performance on Saturday. The tech demo will probably involve transforming an audience member into a shadow character.

Hope to see ya there!

Leave a comment

Vapor Phantoms

Posted on November 6, 2007

On the 1st of November I turned in a residency application to Harvestworks – an organization in Soho whose “mission is to encourage the creation and expand the dissemination of digital media artwork.”The residency is tied to a project. Here’s the concept of the project in video form:

YouTube Preview Image

Cool, no?

The idea behind the installation is that your image is volumetrically rendered live, right in front of your eyes. If you’re at the exhibit with your friends, they could walk into the rendering chamber and interact with your vapor phantom, and you could possibly even walk through one another.

Because the signals are entirely digital – this project could be set up to work on the other side of the globe. I could step into a capture chamber in New York and create a vapor phantom in Tokyo.

Well, right now this is all in the concept phase, and it’s difficult to come up with any ideas that have much traction w/out a real setup. Regardless, some questions that I think only real testing can answer: Would color work? Could you record and capture in the same chamber, or would the volumetric lighting create a nasty feedback loop? How many projector/camera systems do you need? What kind of detail in objects work and what kind don’t? Will it look better up close or far away?

I can’t answer these questions now, but I can render some more virtual 3d mockups. Closeups, with color, more systems, etc…

Unfortunately, these animations render very slowly. For parts of the video above, my machine rendered at about a half an hour for a second worth of footage. So I guess this just means I’m going to be learning about this idea very… very…… slowly.

3 Comments

The Imhotep Project

Posted on October 17, 2007

I’m heading up a project that’s about phantom people – ghosts, imaginary friends, memories of our past. The idea is to put a real character on stage (played by a real actor) next to a phantom character (played by nobody), and to use these two elements to create an emotionally charged relationship.

In aid of creating a phantom character that the audience can take a part of, we’re using projectors to cast the phantom character’s shadow in absence of a real body. If you’re interested, check out the website. It goes over the ideas and goals of the project, and it has a couple videos and a handful of images:

imhotepproject.com

Here’s an image that sort of illustrates the idea:

Imhotep Handshake

Enjoy.

2 Comments

LED Painting: Hat Trick

Posted on October 2, 2007

Hey all – here’s the latest:

YouTube Preview Image

I think I first came into contact with the idea of light painting from this Digg article – although apparently Picasso was doing it in the 20s. The idea is that you set your camera for a long exposure and draw an image w/ an LED (or light source significantly brighter than the environment). The result is that the image burns into the film over the duration of the exposure.

Coming from a performance and movement background, I’ve always been captivated by imagining what the drawing process must have been like. How many long-exposure shots do these people have to go through? How much practice does it take? Do these people come from a background in liquid, graffiti, photography, any combination of these?

I ask this because precise miming is tough. Try this: in the empty space in front of you, draw a rectangle. Then, put your hand down, bring it back up, and draw the exact same rectangle. It might ‘feel’ right to you, but try it w/ a camera and you’ll likely be off. Now write the word “imagine” in cursive and try to dot your I’s.

It’s hard! At least for me it is. To assist me, I picked words that has no I’s or T’s. I also used a hat as an anchor – this gave me a sense of absolute position instead of relative position. I was able to do this whole thing in my first shot.

The video was made using the echo effect in After Effects, basically burning the brightness of the previous frames into the current one. After this, I cranked the brightness and contrast, added a color pass, and plopped it on top of the vanilla regular footage of me moving around.

I’m real happy w/ the result and expect to do more of it soon. Also, I still got the source files on my philty new computer – an upgrade from my 40 gig laptop, where I had to scrap the source for every project I worked on to free up extra space. So, lemme know if you want a peek.

3 Comments