Difference between revisions of "Architectures of Space and Image"

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''Experimental performance-makers in the late 20th century responded to the advent of new media (television, video, computers, the internet) with many innovations in how they made performances, and by making work about the impact of those technologies.''  
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''The Czech designer Josef Svoboda developed an anti-illusionist approach to stage design, placing light, projection and film at the centre of his designs. He co-founded the Laterna Magika multimedia theatre, and devised the multiscreen Diapolyekran.''
  
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In the 1960s and 1970s – decades of great artistic, social and political upheaval and change – telecommunications and media technology were rapidly advancing. Television, video and early computer equipment became more accessible, creating a climate for artists to turn this ‘dead’ technology and data into something living, and to address the impact of these new technologies, both freeing and overwhelming.  
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[[File:IO2 B.08 1a.jpg|300px|thumb|left|DiaPolyekran, EXPO 67, Montreal]]
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By the middle of the 20th century, the technologies of electric stage lighting and projection were well developed, and those of video images (television) were emerging. The technical means were available for a radical new approach to the staging of performances, fulfilling the ambitions of earlier theatre theorists and practitioners such as [[Item:Q249|Adolphe Appia]] (Q249) and [[Item:Q325|Edward Gordon Craig]] (Q325) – a theatre of light, space and image.  
  
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Between 1975 and 1977 artists Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz created a series of projects under the heading ''Aesthetic Research in Telecommunications'', seeking to investigate how the new technologies could be used to create telecollaborative arts. ''A Space with No Geographical Boundaries'' embodied this new age of satellite telecommunications by allowing several performing artists from different geographical locations to perform, communicate and to appear as though they were occupying the same physical space. The artists explored the transmission delays over long distance networks, and performed several telecollaborative dance, music, and performance scores to determine what traditional genres could be supported, while exploring new genres intrinsic to these new ways of being-in-the-world. It was thought that by integrating multiple-media telecollaborative technologies with the culturally diverse creative communities throughout Los Angeles, a powerful new context for cultural sharing would emerge to facilitate a creative conversation between people even if they didn’t speak the same language.  
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The Czech stage designer [[Item:Q91|Josef Svoboda]] (Q91) joined the [[Item:Q12648|National Theatre in Prague]] (Q12648) in 1948, where he developed his rigorous approach to scenography. For Svoboda, each production was a unique puzzle to solve, to find the ideal solution to the staging of the performance. He worked closely with technicians to find unique solutions to his design requirements – even to the point of having a member of the stage staff collect eggshells from the breakfast serving at a nearby hotel, as the shells provided the ideal texture to light onto, on a piece of scenery.  
  
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The Wooster Group’s 1984 production ''LSD…Just the High Points'', based on Arthur Miller’s ''The Crucible'', placed multiple television screens on the stage, displaying pre-recorded video sequences and live feeds from cameras on stage, giving close-up images of the actors, showing point-of-view walking, and so on. Sections of the text of ''The Crucible'' were skipped by ‘rewinding’ and ‘fast-forwarding’ on the screens, and dialogue could take place between an actor on stage and an actor on screen. ''LSD…Just the High Points'' was innovative in many ways, but perhaps most crucially it established that media images on stage could be fully integrated into the dramaturgy, rather than being something contextual as a background or environment.  
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Svoboda developed techniques of using narrow beams of light to create spatial architectures in the air – the curtains of backlight creating Mediterranean heat for Verdi’s ''Sicilian Vespers'', and the spiral of rising beams for Wagner’s ''Tristan and Isolde''. [[Item:Q13146|Lighting fixtures]] were created specially to make these effects, but were soon put in production for commercial sale, such was their success (Q13146). Svoboda developed his use of physical materials on stage with light in mind – gauzes, steel mesh, tensioned cords, mirrors and transparent plastics were surfaces to take light and projected images. [[Item:Q3189|Beamlights]] (Q3189), using intense, low-voltage lamps provided soft-edged follow-spots that could highlight the performers anywhere on stage, without compromising the remainder of the lighting and the projection.  
  
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Troika Ranch is a dance/theatre/media (the troika) company founded by Dawn Stoppiello and Mark Coniglio. They aim to produce work that values live interaction between viewer and viewed, performer and image, movement and sound, people and technology. The works may be presented as performances, installations, or in portable formats, drawing on contemporary technologies and innovations. Like Galloway and Rabinowitz, they have created networked performances utilised online networks to deliver a performance from a distance, known as ‘telepresence’. Their 1990 production ''Tactile Diaries'' explored the ways we touch one another: emotionally, physically and virtually. The piece was performed simultaneously at The Electronic Cafe in Los Angeles and The NYU Television Studios, New York City, with images gradually transmitted over ordinary phone lines between each location. In 1996, only 5 years after the world wide web was made available to the public, Troika Ranch created ''Yearbody'', a year-long dance piece in which an image of a dancer was posted to a website each day, and then made into an animation of the dance at the end of the year.  
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In the National Theatre in Prague, there was enough dust in the air to make the beams of light visible, but when productions transferred to other, cleaner theatres, Svoboda worked with technologists to develop a system that sprayed very fine water droplets. The droplets were statically charged, and so remained suspended in the air, until the charge was reversed and the droplets fell to the stage, ‘magically’ clearing the air.
  
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Troika Ranch developed MidiDancer in 1989: a system with eight flex sensors fitted on the elbow, wrist, hip and knee of a dancer, which send data wirelessly to a computer about the flexion and extension of the dancer’s joints. This data was used in various performances, including In Plane, a duet for a dancer and her video image representation. MidiDancer allowed the performer to control the generation of music, the recall of video images, the theatrical lighting, and the movements of a robotically controlled video projector. Coniglio also created the software [[Item:Q30634|Isadora]] (Q30634) to make incorporating digital technologies and multimedia into performances easily accessible to other artists; the software is now widely used by performance-makers who want to use rich media and interaction in their work. The creation of custom-designed technologies is a characteristic feature not just of Troika Ranch, but of many experimental and avant garde performance arts groups, especially in the field of dance. As well as meeting the specific needs that may not be addressed by commercial products, many artists see the creation of the technologies they use as an integral part of the creative process – their work is often about the technology, our relationship with it, and its social, cultural and political impact.  
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[[File:IO2 B.08 4.jpg|300px|thumb|right|Sicilian Vespers, Metropolitan Opera, New York, 1974]]
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For Svoboda, the scenography must function dramatically, as a part of the evolving action. Dynamics were therefore very important to his work, sometimes involving complex stage mechanics. The fluidity of light and image, however, were vital to delivering this philosophy.  
  
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For the last decades of the 20th century, with the growing availability and potential of various kinds of media technology, performance-makers have experimented in a wide variety of ways with the use of media on stage. The performing arts became a mode of investigating the possibilities and limitations of various technologies to create new contexts for art, including: the emergence of telecollaborative arts reaching across cities, countries and continents; the use of sensors to capture the movement of performers and integrate them into a hybrid human-technology performance system; presenting performances on the web in unexpected ways; and combining visual media with live stage action as part of a holistic dramaturgy. These, and many other innovations were creative strategies for embracing apparently ‘dead’ media technology, making it into a rich hybrid with the established live performance forms of theatre, dance, and music: a breathing expression of life which can now be seen as an accepted element of mainstream performances in the 21st century.
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In 1958 Svoboda worked with the theatre director [[Item:Q30556|Alfréd Radok]] (Q30556), his brother [[Item:Q30557|Emil]] (Q30557), and scriptwriter [[Item:Q30558|Miloš Forman]] (Q30558) to create [[Item:Q16340|Laterna Magika]] (Q16340) to promote Czechoslovakian culture at the international exhibition Expo 58. The project combined film with live stage action on a multi-screen projection system, and has been claimed as the first multimedia theatre. From its start in 1958, Laterna Magika developed into a permanent theatre company, with Svoboda taking the role of artistic director in 1973. The company is still operating today, making new productions as well as performing older works.
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The concept of Laterna Magika was to find ways to create a theatre that synthesises all the elements, able to tell a story using a greater variety of means, especially through multimedia projection combined with the work of live performers on stage. The basic principle, the interactive integration of film projection with movement and acting, has gradually been complemented by new technologies such as digital projection or new media including real-time programmable software. Since the beginning, Laterna Magika’s productions have combined genres: drama, dance, pantomime and [[Item:Q3165|black-light theatre]] (Q3165). Each performance has a different way of combining stage and image, but the fundamental principle remains: the projection is not just a moving backdrop, nor does it merely create the appearance of reality. The action on the stage is always closely linked to the action on the screen.
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Svoboda also created other multimedia systems. These technological experiments were developed for exhibitions, but the results were often subsequently used in the field of theatre. These systems used multiple screens or three-dimensional objects as projection surfaces for still and moving images; combined with a recorded musical score, the result was an audio-visual composition without live performers. Polyekran (literally, ‘multi-screen’) was presented at the EXPO 58 in Brussels at the same time as Laterna Magika, and had eight projection screens. Polyvision and Diapolyekran were both created for the 1967 EXPO in Montreal. Polyvision used three-dimensional, moving scenic elements on which the images were projected, while the Diapolyekran system had 112 independently rotating screens. These installations made a lasting impact on narrative cinema, video art and interactivity.
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Svoboda led the development of an approach to both scenography and dramaturgy that uses architectures of space, light and image as its primary medium. Building on the theories and experiments of earlier 20th century innovators, he demonstrated how the newest theatre technologies could be harnessed in the service of the arts of performance.

Latest revision as of 18:28, 18 February 2023

The Czech designer Josef Svoboda developed an anti-illusionist approach to stage design, placing light, projection and film at the centre of his designs. He co-founded the Laterna Magika multimedia theatre, and devised the multiscreen Diapolyekran.

DiaPolyekran, EXPO 67, Montreal

By the middle of the 20th century, the technologies of electric stage lighting and projection were well developed, and those of video images (television) were emerging. The technical means were available for a radical new approach to the staging of performances, fulfilling the ambitions of earlier theatre theorists and practitioners such as Adolphe Appia (Q249) and Edward Gordon Craig (Q325) – a theatre of light, space and image.

The Czech stage designer Josef Svoboda (Q91) joined the National Theatre in Prague (Q12648) in 1948, where he developed his rigorous approach to scenography. For Svoboda, each production was a unique puzzle to solve, to find the ideal solution to the staging of the performance. He worked closely with technicians to find unique solutions to his design requirements – even to the point of having a member of the stage staff collect eggshells from the breakfast serving at a nearby hotel, as the shells provided the ideal texture to light onto, on a piece of scenery.

Svoboda developed techniques of using narrow beams of light to create spatial architectures in the air – the curtains of backlight creating Mediterranean heat for Verdi’s Sicilian Vespers, and the spiral of rising beams for Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde. Lighting fixtures were created specially to make these effects, but were soon put in production for commercial sale, such was their success (Q13146). Svoboda developed his use of physical materials on stage with light in mind – gauzes, steel mesh, tensioned cords, mirrors and transparent plastics were surfaces to take light and projected images. Beamlights (Q3189), using intense, low-voltage lamps provided soft-edged follow-spots that could highlight the performers anywhere on stage, without compromising the remainder of the lighting and the projection.

In the National Theatre in Prague, there was enough dust in the air to make the beams of light visible, but when productions transferred to other, cleaner theatres, Svoboda worked with technologists to develop a system that sprayed very fine water droplets. The droplets were statically charged, and so remained suspended in the air, until the charge was reversed and the droplets fell to the stage, ‘magically’ clearing the air.

Sicilian Vespers, Metropolitan Opera, New York, 1974

For Svoboda, the scenography must function dramatically, as a part of the evolving action. Dynamics were therefore very important to his work, sometimes involving complex stage mechanics. The fluidity of light and image, however, were vital to delivering this philosophy.

In 1958 Svoboda worked with the theatre director Alfréd Radok (Q30556), his brother Emil (Q30557), and scriptwriter Miloš Forman (Q30558) to create Laterna Magika (Q16340) to promote Czechoslovakian culture at the international exhibition Expo 58. The project combined film with live stage action on a multi-screen projection system, and has been claimed as the first multimedia theatre. From its start in 1958, Laterna Magika developed into a permanent theatre company, with Svoboda taking the role of artistic director in 1973. The company is still operating today, making new productions as well as performing older works.

The concept of Laterna Magika was to find ways to create a theatre that synthesises all the elements, able to tell a story using a greater variety of means, especially through multimedia projection combined with the work of live performers on stage. The basic principle, the interactive integration of film projection with movement and acting, has gradually been complemented by new technologies such as digital projection or new media including real-time programmable software. Since the beginning, Laterna Magika’s productions have combined genres: drama, dance, pantomime and black-light theatre (Q3165). Each performance has a different way of combining stage and image, but the fundamental principle remains: the projection is not just a moving backdrop, nor does it merely create the appearance of reality. The action on the stage is always closely linked to the action on the screen.

Svoboda also created other multimedia systems. These technological experiments were developed for exhibitions, but the results were often subsequently used in the field of theatre. These systems used multiple screens or three-dimensional objects as projection surfaces for still and moving images; combined with a recorded musical score, the result was an audio-visual composition without live performers. Polyekran (literally, ‘multi-screen’) was presented at the EXPO 58 in Brussels at the same time as Laterna Magika, and had eight projection screens. Polyvision and Diapolyekran were both created for the 1967 EXPO in Montreal. Polyvision used three-dimensional, moving scenic elements on which the images were projected, while the Diapolyekran system had 112 independently rotating screens. These installations made a lasting impact on narrative cinema, video art and interactivity.

Svoboda led the development of an approach to both scenography and dramaturgy that uses architectures of space, light and image as its primary medium. Building on the theories and experiments of earlier 20th century innovators, he demonstrated how the newest theatre technologies could be harnessed in the service of the arts of performance.

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