Viva Q&A
What was your process for this project?
Since the moment we first got into groups we all had strong ideas for the performance. Although we all had different ideas we managed to work together as a unit, which was harder to do with some people over others. We always knew that we wanted to create an installation rather then a performance so more emphasis could be given to the technical and visual side of the experience. We also quickly developed the idea of creating a visual representation of the psyche of Macbeth’s mind.
The first thing we did as a group was make a list of all our separate ideas and pick or discard them as a production team. My two main inputs of ideas were pepper’s ghost and the Samoiloff effect. Due to the difficulty of the technical demands for pepper’s ghost we were unable to effectively recreate the effect in rehearsal and performance.
My idea for the Samoiloff effect was to create appearing and disappearing lights using the tricks of admitted and reflected light. The idea was, assuming Lady Macbeth was going to appear in the space, to have Lady Macbeth’s dress seemingly appear to have black splats on it but as the lights change the black areas would turn red, therefore Lady Macbeth would look as if she was splattered with blood which represents her mad night-time speech.
Each time my group met we worked on more and more ideas. Our final presentation was merely a result of hours of workshops, a unpolished experimentation.
Which practitioners and/or performance artists influenced you?
The Samoiloff Effect was discovered in the 1920s by an electric technician called Adrian V Samoiloff. He developed the use of colour to change a stage picture in the theatre, sets, costumes, and more. Samoiloff also discovered a visual trick that caused things to disappear, the most effective combination being red light onto a green cloth; the green cloth absorbs the red light, which absorbs the green, therefore creating a black hole effect due to all light colours being absorbed rather then reflected.
We knew we couldn’t use the traditional colour combination because we didn’t want the whole dress to become red. After experimenting with different colours and shades we discovered to get red to disappear we could use green or a strong blue light. We decided on blue because it was better for creating and eerie cold effect then an envious, jealous green. Another way we could of done this would be to illuminate a white dress with red lights. A disadvantage to this technique is the difficulty in lighting specific sections of the dress, whereas with the Samoiloff Effect we could pinpoint certain areas via additions of red fabric.
Loie Fuller was a strong inspiration for J**** and her participation towards the final performance. J**** wanted to create a spectacle wearing a dress and manipulating it through movement. In the end we decided to concentrate on lighting the dress correctly while J**** danced, but the dress itself wasn’t very easy to manipulate due to its fit and fabric. If we had the money and time we would of sourced or made a specific dress for this performance.
A lot of the performances and installations our tutor H.Newall herself has been in and created influenced us in different aspects of our performance. The soundscapes she showed us greatly helped me to create ours using many layers of sourced sound.
What did you learn?
I have learnt a lot in creating this installation.
I have further advanced my ability to work with group members. I have always been an easy group member to get along with but when everyone has strong ideas that are so close and similar to each other it was hard to pick different aspects of each other’s ideas without upsetting anyone. Thankfully from the off set, although we all had our differences in personality and passion, we did work well as a team; sometimes it was more difficult then others.
Throughout this whole module I have learnt so much more about lighting and effects that can be created to better performances. I have previously completed a lighting and sound course but during this module I have enjoyed regaining some of my previous knowledge as well as bettering it. Whilst preparing for our installation I experimented more and more with lighting, especially where concerning the Samoiloff effect.
Projection skills are the main thing I have learnt from this topic and performance. I had never previously worked with projection and had never really considered for anything in performance other than a flat image that usually displayed narrative text such as where and when the scene takes place. I have learnt that there is so much more you can do with projection within performance and some of the ways you can manipulate it is spell bounding for an audience.
What would you now do differently?
There was an obvious lack of success in some areas of our final installation. The audience was too large for our performance space since we had created pathways within the room specifically for the audience. Our idea was to get the audience moving around the space and exploring. Due to the sheer number of spectators we unfortunately found it hard to direct their eyesight to main observation points.
The reflection of projected images also got lost due to a last minute bad decision. We decided to reflect the projection rather then the live feed. The final position of the projector we used didn’t have easy access for K******* to reflect with the mirror without getting in the way of the projected video itself.
I would also double check that all of the technical appliances were ready for performance. Unfortunately when we went to use the second projector we found it had turned itself off during the time span between the first group’s performance and ours.
What advice would you now give to others working with similar methods?
I would tell them to always consider the size of their audience, even if they don’t know the quantity. They need to be able to know to split the audience if necessary.
I would also say to double-check all technical equipment throughout the rehearsals close to the final installation.
Finally I would tell them to go into the module with an open mind ready to experiment, have fun, and be astonished at how lighting can change a the feel of a place or scene so quickly.