Classical music and projection

[crystalhorizon]

I am not sure if this is the right category @Michel feel free to change that if necessary.

I was searching for videos of performances in the classical music field where video projection, maybe with mapping and interaction is involved. I didn't found a lot. So I ask the community to share something what they know looks interesting. All kinds of idas are welcome.

One I found was this https://youtu.be/qWUDu1FpSIU

Here I was thinking how to map the shape of the instrument. Any ideas?

So there are actually two questions here. Approaches to classical music with projection and the technical question of mapping a moving instrument.

[dbini]

Hi Alex - I did half the projections for this project a few years ago. The brief was to find ways to attract new audiences for classical music.

[crystalhorizon]

Dear John,

 Thank you, looks fantastic. 

[kdobbe]

Hi Alex:

This is one of my central focus points with Izzy.  Here is a Vimeo URL of a performance a year ago where multiple live cameras, six projectors with mapping, DMX controlled lights were all controlled by one MIDI keyboardist in the orchestra triggering planned cues to the music under the direction of the conductor.

I am also currently using a program that controls 6 PTZ cameras for live streaming of predetermined cues and presets as determined by the conductor.

[crystalhorizon]

@kdobbe dear Kevin, thank you for sharing your work. How are the reactions from the public? From the musicians? Are they not distracted from the visuals? That is my fear when implementing projections. Also what about the noise of projectors? In classical music  where is a lot of silence, or quiet parts you had issues with buzzing projectors?

[Skulpture]

A fellow Isadora user called Netia Jones, based in London, does a lot of nice work in and around this area; a lot of opera and classical stuff. 

http://www.netiajones.com/

[crystalhorizon]

@Skulpture hei Graham, thank you. I really like his aesthetics and style. Very inspiring. In opera you can find a lot with projection nowadays, of course also a cost effective way to save money for scenario.

Maybe the transition from opera to pure classical concert could be the missing link that was missing for me. Great community here as always and big help for my research to integrate Isadora with my classical concerts

[kdobbe]

Hi Alex:

This concert was booked to be a combo visual/music event.  As anticipated, the younger people in the audience loved the interpretive synchronization with the music.  The traditional audience member were not used to visuals being so integrated.  This was a full "bells and whistles" event.  I believe that subtle synchronized media can enhance even the most traditional audience member.  Even the traditionalist enjoyed seeing the conductor from the front... 

[crystalhorizon]

It is actually strange that the conductor turns his back to the public. That was not always the case: I was told in the beginning, when the conductor "was invented" he conducted in the direction of the audience. Your video reminded me of that origin somehow. Back to the roots))

[A Former User]

hello.

but there is still the question how map a moving cello so presice. any ideas. or is it a post prduction fake? rh.

[crystalhorizon]

Here the visuals didn´t distracted me from the music.

[mark_m]

I'd be curious to know what you think of this: there's quite a story behind it, but I'll get your opinions first :-)

[bonemap]

@mark_m,

I am often reminded how important ‘storytelling’ is for conveying creative works. Perhaps because storyline is given some kind of cognitive or linier bias as it enters the memory of most people?  But what about those of us that are compelled by the abstract and ambiguous? Classical and instrumental music is generally abstract and often ambiguous, so it has the potential to compliment visual manifestations that are ambiguous and appear to indulge the visual senses beyond a need for a coherent narrative.

I love the playfulness and deftness of the particles in the projection work. I can recognize Isadora’s 3D Particles in this (am I right?). Great control and realization of a very abstract visual combination. Well done.

Cheers,

Bonemap

[mark_m]

@bonemap said:

@mark_m,
I am often reminded how important ‘storytelling’ is for conveying creative works. Perhaps because storyline is given some kind of cognitive or linier bias as it enters the memory of most people?  But what about those of us that are compelled by the abstract and ambiguous? Classical and instrumental music is generally abstract and often ambiguous, so it has the potential to compliment visual manifestations that are ambiguous and appear to indulge the visual senses beyond a need for a coherent narrative.
I love the playfulness and deftness of the particles in the projection work. I can recognize Isadora’s 3D Particles in this (am I right?). Great control and realization of a very abstract visual combination. Well done.
Cheers,
Bonemap

I have to say, not my work! I'm close friends with the pianist. (We've been best friends since the age of three, that'll be 54 years now!) And it was her husband who made the visuals.

[crystalhorizon]

A new approach for me at the moment is to project in the gaps. The routine of Classic concert behaviors is quite boring. So before entering the stage, between movements, applause, in the break.

So like that you make an accent on the parts where the music is played. The eye is taking all the awareness if it gets to much to look at. A good dosis of light where over the eye you help the ear to perceive the music more intense. That is what I am looking for. Which doesn’t mean you can not have an accent in the video once in a while the music plays. I just get tired of something moving all the time, which in the end doesn’t feel like moving. Actually more like stagnation

[bonemap]

@crystalhorizon

I love what music can do, however I do not perceive a clear distinction at the edges between sound and vision. And I assume that there is a strong synaesthetic perception for many creative people, considering the shared vocabulary used to describe both sound and vision. 

Rather than definitions of form through discipline or medium, I prefer to work within a matrix of intermedial impulses that immerse the human sensorium. Otherwise, it is just too frustrating to deprive certain sense perceptions for the benefit of prioritizing one - medium specificity is an ideal that is very rarely reached.

Cross modal blending of the senses as a synaesthetic experience is what I feel when immersed in the wildness of natural spaces. And it appears to be an aspiration for many trans-disciplinary works of art.

The sensitive integration of sonic, visual and kinesthetic expression has greater chance of embodiment within human perception, in my experience.

But, I am also deprived of any virtuosity.

Regards,

Bonemap

[crystalhorizon]

What comes a lot to my mind is what Stravinsky answered when he was asked about his composing process. If he knows before he starts what he wants. He answered, that he actually can not say that he knows what he wants, but he can definitely say what he does not want. 

So while researching, I just try a lot of things and filter out what does not work for me. I also have the feeling that some compositions work better  and others less with the type of visuals I like. 

In august I did a project with the music of Hans Eisler. He was a pupil of Schönberg and presented him to his 60 birthday a composition called "Vierzehn Arten den Regen zu beschreiben". Which means 14 ways to describe the rain. It is for violin, piano, flute, cello, viola and clarinet. The same instrumentation like Pierrot lunaire. There was a visual artist that did a really nice video with water and rain (black and white). As the piece is only about 14 Minutes, but very dense, we played it 2 times: once without visuals and the 2nd time with. It worked really good. Unfortunately I think there is no video of the performance. But I will ask, maybe there is something.

J.S. Bach is also something that somehow works very good. Maybe because both - Bach and the twelve-tone technique of Eisler - have a strong mathematical, structural background? I don´t know.

This is something what comes out while I work on that topic. Still too rough, cheesy and monotonic. But the important thing for me is the researching/searching/finding/doubting process

[bonemap]

@crystalhorizon said:

Still too rough, cheesy and monotonic

Your musicianship and the score are the hero in that video. Thanks for the privilege. I started to think about resonance, because of the way you are framed by the image of your room and the frame of the webcam. How sound is reflected against surfaces and how that reflection as a resonance appears to describe physical space. I thought if I was blind would I see you sitting in your room as a mental picture? If I was blind would I ‘see’ physical space through the resonances of the music? Would a picture of you develop that goes beyond the framed image of the webcam? Like echolocation...

Best wishes

Bonemap 

[crystalhorizon]

@bonemap said:

Your musicianship and the score are the hero in that video. Thanks for the privilege.  

Thank you very much.

Interesting that there seems to be an impulse of closing the eyes, in a research about video and sound. I like that. Never thought of that, how visuals leeds to the wish of closing the eye, but in a positive way. Could be perceived as a bad critic for the visuals, haha...

[crystalhorizon]

@bonemap

Here another one. Maybe also for closing the eyes))

Recorded this improvisation with my dear friend and incredible cellist Franz Ortner in 2003. One and only take. The visuals I made now in Isadora during a short train journey. I used mainly the 3D Lines actor.