Big Screens: brainsprinkles (part 1)
(The following are my notes from last semester):
Challenges/unique characteristics
- width and lack of viewing depth means partial view of screen at any given time (really meant to be seen from the street)
- columns block view
- no rehearsal time at night
- kinda crazy time deadline
- camera tracking super difficult
- sound quality? don’t remembering it being that great
What I remember from last year’s 2009 performances:
- ladder successful insofar as everyone in the audience could see the physical controller
- repetition was a way of dealing with width (i.e. splitting into 3 separate screens), but it undercut the uniqueness of the big screen itself
- big screen used as a way of directing the audience to do things. not terribly interesting to me, appeals more to the fact of having a huge crowd rather than using the uniqueness of screen&space
Talk w Shiffman:
- don’t do camera tracking; almost impossible and asking for trouble
- foot switches and similar simple physical controllers are the way to go
- don’t know why people haven’t partnered up beyond pairs
- disadvantage of physical performance devices (like we saw last year) is that it’s small, limited to one person, and not everyone can see it
- classes meet on-site
Some Ideas
- Chinese Scroll narrative (calligraphy): take advantage of the width, which can either be traversed physically via people’s physical walking or digitally via what’s displayed
- controlled by floor switches?
- created by a group of “writing instruments”
- Sound Wave principle: have the aesthetic be based on movement across the screen; the width be traversed digitally
- Use the columns: braille graffiti controllers? mirrors?
- Spacial sensitivity: use the space around it, contextualize or extend the big screen (maybe beauty of little screens (such as on the iPhone) lies partially in its context of a phone in your hand; other examples, outdoor movie screens framed thru car window
- “Play”: what if we gave a production as a group instead of individual shorts? much more of a headache perhaps (or different sorts of headaches) and people would have to compromise individual moments of stardom, altho that might not be necessarily true. maybe a production of the space itself as a platform for individual shorts?
- Zoetrope variation: mix of sound and visuals, using fragmented mirrors to reflect motion on screen and audio to direct where audience looks (those plastic speakers? how reflective can they be?)
- Body Xrays
- Labyrinth: mix of big screens and projections on the transparent mesh that would take an animation of the 2D into 3D
- Lamp light switches all over, pull and turns on spotlight on-screen: a combo of individual vignettes and overall mood; relationship between micro and macro
- Cartography: a physical and on-screen mapping system
Questions:
- How many columns are there? 3
- What are the dimensions of the screen and the space? 120 x 12ft
- Can we hang things from the ceiling? from column to column? NO
- Can we build an indoor bridge? NO
- Can we have bubbles? NO
- Can we adhere things to the columns? drilling allowed? NO
- If we have projectors, how can we place them?
- Can the screen be touched? NO
- If big collaboration/production can we get funding from the department for materials?
- Can we have access to building other than Friday classes? ha, yeah right.
- What were the technical glitches from last year?
http://itp.nyu.edu/bigscreens2009/