photo credit: libraryman

As promised in my post on Tuesday, today I’m going to give you a look behind the scenes at the technology that I used to create the projections for The Planets.

This basically breaks down into two sections, creating the media to be projected, and actually running the show.

Creating The Media

On Tuesday I mentioned the DigitalSky 2 software which I used to create the 3-D space visualization sequences. The system is extremely sophisticated, and in fact has its own scripting language. By writing scripts I’m able to “fly” the camera through the 3-D model of the universe. It can also manipulate what objects are visible, and increasing or decreasing their size. In order to create the effect that I was looking for, I often had to increase the size of the planets and moons in view. This is because the distances in space are so gigantic, compared to the size of even the largest planets and moons.

The other major elements in the piece are mostly NASA images. There is a tremendous amount of maturity are available here, which was a great blessing, though as you can imagine, it could complicate the process of selecting material. In general I was looking for a combination of the most spectacular, beautiful and highest resolution images available. Fortunately, many images were available at far above HD resolution. The higher the resolution of the image, the more choices I have in how to use it. With the largest images, I’m able to show a small portion of the image, and then slowly move across it. This is the so-called “Ken Burns effect.” This effect allows me to take a static image, and give it motion.

Projecting The Show

When I set out to do projections for any piece were I’m collaborating as a part of a live performance, one of my primary goals is to not do anything to get in the way of the performers. One of the things that this means, is that I don’t want to create projections as a movie. It would’ve been very easy to create the projections and burn them onto DVD, and then just hit play at the beginning of each movement. The problem with that, is that then the conductor would have to follow the timing of the projections in order to stay synchronized. To my mind, that’s an unacceptable compromise to ask for in most cases.

My answer is a software package called  QLab. This amazing Macintosh software allows me to create each “visual event” of the show as a separate cue. By doing that, I’m able to essentially “edit” the projections in real time, during the performance. I read the score as the orchestra performs, and trigger each cue at the appropriate moment in music. This allows the conductor the flexibility to adjust the tempo as it feels right, and I’m still able to keep everything in perfect synchronization.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this peek behind-the-scenes of The Planets. Do you have questions? Please ask in the comments, I’d be happy to do my very best to answer them for you.

So in my last post, which now feels like ages ago, I mentioned that I was going to be creating a gigantic projection design for Holst’s suite The Planets, to be performed with The Portsmouth Symphony Orchestra.

It had been my intention to blog about the creative process as I was creating the piece. As you may have determined by now, that didn’t happen. Instead, I ended up putting virtually every free moment I had into creating the projections. It was worth it.

The performance was really extraordinary, and received an extended standing ovation with the conductor being called back for additional bows three times.

More importantly, the audience was truly engaged by the combination of music and imagery. I was able to talk to a number of members of the audience after the show, and was really blown away by the response.

At some point, I will have some extended excerpts from the piece to share with you, I am dealing with some technical issues about how to convert them into a format that I can upload.

What I do have, that I can share with you now, is the trailer that I created as a preview for the orchestra’s website.

I’d also like to share with you my program notes, which I think will give you some idea of my thought process and creative process.

Creating imagery for “The Planets” is a daunting task for a projection designer. Holst’s amazing music was written about the astrological planets, that is to say, the significance that the planets have in classical astrology. In Holst’s time, the beauty of the astronomical planets
(the actual objects in space) was just beginning to be discovered through powerful telescopes, and was not widely known.

Today, we are fortunate to have an amazing and almost endless catalogue of images of the universe. Images, from ground-based telescopes  and spacecraft such as Hubble and the Mars Rovers provide an incredible wealth of scientific knowledge and also of visual texture and beauty. It is in this second capacity, as artistic images, that I draw on them for this piece. I also draw heavily on the 3-D space visualizations which it is possible to create using modern computers and the amazing DigitalSky 2 software. This software was created here in New Hampshire by Sky-Skan, and is used in
planetariums all over the world.

Each movement begins with imagery of the planet that it is named for, from there we go wherever the music and the visual rhythm of the
imagery lead. In some movements we explore the planet and its moons, in others we fly to the very edge of the visible universe. I’ve made a choice not to be bound by the science of what these objects are, but simply to allow the music to lead my eye wherever in the universe it is drawn. So I invite you to approach experiencing this
piece as I do, as a feast for the ears and the eyes, and let your heart take flight.

I’ll have another post going up on Thursday where I’ll talk about some of the technology behind the show.

And by the way,  I’d love to bring The Planets to a performance hall near you!  If you know of a local performance of The Planets that might be interested in projections, please let me know!

A couple of weeks ago I spend 4 days in a local elementary school with an inflatable planetarium.  I did shows during the day for all of the classes in the school (20 shows in all) and then did brief, 12 minute public shows in the evenings(18 of those).  In all, 600+ people saw a show in the dome.

After a couple of the public shows, I gave the audiences a peek behind the scenes. Here's my Mac desktop on the dome, warped by the mirror.

I have to say, I had an amazingly good time – the teachers and students were wonderful – and the kids had amazing questions.  But I’ll talk about that another time…  What I want to talk about today is the geeky end of the whole thing – and how it’s possible to set up a portable, inflatable digital planetarium.

The Dome

The dome, made by Go-Dome, is inflated much like a bounce house at a fair, except that it has no floor – it just sits on the floor of the room it is set up in.  You roll it out on the floor and it inflates in a couple of minutes.  The kids (and adults) really enjoy squeezing through the airlock to get inside.

The dome set up and ready for an audience.

The Projection and the Mirror

The projection technology I used is very cool.  It was originally developed by Paul Bourke, an Australian academic who works on 3d, dome projection and related ideas. The problem with digital projection in domes traditionally is that it either requires many projectors, blended together, or a very very expensive custom fisheye lens.  Paul realized that a single projector aimed at a 1/2 hemisphere mirror would cover almost the entire dome.  He then figured out the warping process that’s necessary to pre-distort the images to be projected, so when the are distorted by the curvature of the mirror, they come out right on the dome.   If you’d like to know more about this process in detail, check out Paul’s pages on spherical mirror dome projection.

I used a commercial implementation of Paul’s technology from Discovery Dome.  It encloses the  (fragile) mirror in a case which opens up.  The projector goes under the mirror facing forward, the light bounces off a flat mirror, and then off the spherical mirror on to the dome.  This keeps the projector out of the way….

Here's a look at the back of the dome - the funny looking thing towards the upper right is the spherical mirror setup. I'm to the right behind the computers.

The Computers

All of the images were generated from my MacbookPro, and I used a Macbook for control of certain things on the projection computer – more on that later.

The software I ran is an open source project called Nightshade, which is a fork of Stellarium specifically for use in domes.  By using a combination of live keyboard commands in Nightshade and running scripts written in Nightshades scripting language that I wrote, I had a very powerful and flexible planetarium that I could use interactively to take the shows where ever the kids questions lead.

That interactivity is where the 2nd computer came in – running scripts in Nightshade requires going several levels deep in a menu and taking more time the I wanted.  That is for all the scripts except the demo which runs from a keyboard shortcut.  So I wrote a shell script to give me a menu of my scripts and rename whichever one I wanted to run “demo.sts.” so I could run it with the hotkey.

The only problem is that when Nighshade is running, it takes over the displays completely – no way to have a terminal open to run my script in.  So I brought the Macbook – I used it to SSH into the Nightshade computer and run my shell script.  So I used the Macbook to select scripts, and the MacbookPro right in Nightshade to do everything else.

It’s kind of a hack, but it worked great.

Try it yourself

By the way – If I’ve gotten you interested in trying to do something like this on your own, you can home build your own planetarium.  I particularly like the instructions on the Microsoft WorldWide Telescope site. You can use this with Nightshade, or with the MS WorldWide Telescope – which I highly recommend.  In fact I would have used it in my shows if I had known about it at the time – it’s not a replacement for Nightshade (in my view) but a great compliment to it, and an amazing piece of work.  Lots of fun on your desktop to – you don’t need to run it in a planetarium.

Here I am in front of the dome at the end of a long day of shows.

On to the Planets

Now I’m moving on to another astronomically related projection project – I’m creating giant projections that will accompany the Portsmouth Symphony Orchestra’s performance of Holst’s suite The Planets.  The Performance will be on June 6th at The Music Hall in Portsmouth, NH.  I’m going to be blogging about my design process along the way, so keep an eye out for that, coming up soon.

Planetariums are magical places for many of us – I’d love to hear stories about your first or most memorable planetarium visit in the comments!

A couple of years ago, I was fortunate to be invited to do a massive projection design for The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace when it was performed by The Community Church of Durham.

This is a massive choral work by composer Karl Jenkins, and is the single most powerful piece of music I have ever experienced.

You can listen to the opening movement here:

And just to give you a peak behind the curtains:

Here’s a photo of all of the computers and the main projections that made everything happen.

I sat down at my compute tonight, and something promoted insisted that I look at Twitter.  I knew somehow I had to listen.  Almost immediately, my eyes fell on a retweet by Natalie Christie (The Tiny Soprano) which had a link to the video below.  I don’t want to say anything about it, other then to ask you to take the time to watch it.  It’s 9 minutes long, and so worth it.  Don’t miss the surprise at the end.

I have so much I want to say about this, and at the same time, I don’t want to say anything quite yet.

So I’ll do something different, and ask you to begin the conversation in the comments, then I’ll chime in there as well. There is so much here to talk about!

Today, particularly in this economy, it seems to be very popular among the “art” crowd to moan about the financial problems of orchestras, opera, and particularly more avant-garde forms of art and performance. To these folks, losing these institutions is a great tragedy, and I agree with them, but maybe not for the same reason.

This was brought into focus for me by Nathalie Christie, “The Tiny Soprano,” in her post Can Art Afford To Ignore An Audience.

I think it’s really an important question, particularly for those of us who are artists and performers, to consider what is it that makes a piece of art or performance “good” or “important”? Is it the opinion of a small group of experts: other artists, reviewers, etc.? Is it only the opinion of the creator of the piece that actually matters? Is it a matter of the audiences opinion? Or is it even something to be discussed? Something left to be determined by the divine (if the artist believes in such a thing)?

I have a very strong opinion about this, and it’s one that’s not currently popular in many circles. I believe that the quality and the importance of a given work can only be determined by the audience who is experiencing that work. Yes, I really do think it’s up to the audience. Now, does that mean that we should all program to the lowest common denominator, of course not. We, as the creators get to define who we are creating for. However, if we’re creating a piece that is difficult to grok, we need to be prepared when people who don’t like difficult work don’t like it. That’s okay.

But there’s more to it, if we’re not happy with the size of our current audience (symphony orchestras and opera companies, are you listening?) It’s up to us to reach out in some way. I see two basic ways of doing this, either find stuff to perform which more people will like, or find more people who like the stuff we perform. I want to talk about both of these.

Finding stuff to perform which more people will like, is often a very unpopular thing to do. It’s seen as programming to the lowest common denominator, and somehow that’s bad. I think it can be bad if it’s the only thing that we’re doing. On the other hand, it can be a way of extending a hand and welcome to people who might not otherwise come. It also generates needed funds from people purchasing tickets. So, it can be one important part of building a larger audience.

Finding more people who like the stuff we do can also be hard, often many of them are already coming, and it takes a lot of work to find a few more.

I actually think, the most important thing to do is a third thing. Help people who don’t know that they love our stuff, even the difficult, not so accessible stuff, to discover that they can love it. Let me tell you a story:

When I was in college, I joined a coed professional performing arts fraternity called Kappa Gamma Psi. One of the things about this group which was really amazing is the variety of backgrounds, and performance styles which members came from. This is a great thing for me to be exposed to, and that was illustrated by one particular experience that I want to share with you. Early in my association with the group, it might even have been while I was pledging, although I don’t remember, my big sister Ruth called me one night and asked me to come down to one of the practice rooms in the music school. She was working on a piece for her recital, and wanted to play it for somebody.

I went, and sat in this tiny practice room, maybe 3 feet from her cello as she played a suite for solo cello by George Crumb. Crumb is a modern composer, who writes some very strange stuff, which was not at all my taste at the time. As I listened, I found the piece very, very strange, but I also found it captivating and powerful. A number of things happened that night, one of them was that I fell in love with the cello, and another one was that my mind was opened to a new kind of music.

As I was putting my thoughts together for this post, I searched YouTube for a performance of this piece, and when I found it I was surprised that it didn’t seem as strange as I remembered. I find that fascinating, but I have been stretched in what I listen to by experiences like this.

So what was it that allowed me to expand my definition of “interesting and good” music? Well, part of it is an invitation, if I hadn’t been invited to hear it I would’ve never had the opportunity to like it. But there’s more to it than that, it’s also being able to experience it at full power, at close range. That’s a different experience than listening from the back of a concert hall. And there’s also learning about it, discussing it with people who know, so that I can listen in a way that it feels less foreign.

So I think that there is some important lessons here about how to build an audience:

1. You have to invite them in
2. Create opportunities to have optimal, full power experiences of the material
3. Give audience members an opportunity to learn more about what they are going to hear or have just heard

I think that Benjamin Zander, in his work with the Boston Philharmonic has demonstrated the power of this. He gives brilliant pre-concert lectures about the music that is about to be performed, typically 75% of the concert audience comes to the lecture, and they sell out virtually every concert that they give. I think this is a really good model.

It’s also helpful to mix the familiar and the unfamiliar, this was Arthur Fiedler‘s great innovation as the conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra. He would create a program in three parts, the first part was selections of the recently popular favorites and light classics that the orchestra was known for. Then, having made the audience comfortable, he would present a “heavier or more difficult” major piece, then in the third segment of the program he would play timeless, favorite music. It gave people in his audiences a gentle introduction to stretching their palette. I think this is also a really good model.

So what do you think? What makes good art? How do we build the audience for the art that we think is important?

A few days ago someone on Twitter (I wish I could remember who) mentioned cellist, Zoe Keating. I was not at all familiar with her or her music, though I’m a great fan of the cello ever since a college friend asking to be the test audience for a piece she was working on for her recital. Sitting in a little tiny practice room, maybe 3 feet from her instrument, was an incredibly powerful, visceral experience, that left me with a great love of this instrument.

Zoe takes an extremely unusual approach to the cello, or rather to what can be done with the sounds that the cello makes. She creates her music by playing segments, and using electronics to record them and loop them so they play over and over again. By doing this, she creates amazing layers of sound, and creates an entire orchestra from her cello alone.

Listen to this:

Now here’s a short interview with Zoe where she talks about how she makes this amazing stuff:

If you like this music, check out her website at http://www.zoekeating.com.

So of course when I discovered how cool Zoe’s music is a naturally followed her on Twitter. She is @Zoecello.

Then today she tweeted about a new band that she just found out about called The Finches.

You’ve got to see this:

Pretty amazing, isn’t it. And by the way, if you’re thinking that this is faked, I’m quite confident that it isn’t.

This was done as a part of an art installation called “Rhythms of Life,” at the Barbican Art Gallery in London. It’s an installation piece done by the French artist Céleste Boursier-Mougenot.

I know these are far from the typical music most of us listen to on a daily basis (me included.) I’ll be interested to hear what you think of them.

I’ve decided to take on a new challenge in 2010. I am challenging myself to be creative in some way, each and every day.

I’m doing this in a way that is slightly formalized.  Recently, I found the blog of Leah Piken Kolidas  – Create Every Day. I found her through http://www.sankofasong.com/blog/ which is also cool.

For the past few years Leah has presented this challenge. It’s a very informal thing, if you want to participate, you sign-up on the Creative Every Day Challenge page on her blog, or not. She provides suggested monthly themes on which you can create, or not. She provides a variety of ways to participate with other folks who are taking the challenge, or not. I think the best thing is, that she makes it very clear that it’s up to each person to decide how they want to participate, to what extent, and how publicly.

Some people may choose to blog every day about their creativity, I am choosing not to. I will post about it from time to time, but certainly not everyday. I actually think that unless writing a blog is a primary creative outlet for you, that posting every day about this challenge doesn’t make a lot of sense. The idea of the challenge, the way Leah describes it, is to do something creative. That may be working on a painting, or piece of music, but it’s just as legitimately cooking dinner, finding a cool way to play with your cat, or anything else that involves creativity. As I think about it, I think I probably am creative every day in one way or another. I do lots of creative stuff.

My goal in participating in this challenge, is to notice my creativity more, to be more mindful, and grateful of what I create. See, I think for many of us, we’re already creative every day in many ways. One of the best ways I know to amplify creative output is to notice the creativity that I’m already engaged in. Once I’m in that headspace of creating, often ideas just flow about lots of things, some related to what I’m doing, others not. So I am choosing in 2010 to honor my creativity by paying more attention to it.

Tonight, I saw Avatar.

I have heard quite a bit of buzz about this film, I think it’s pretty hard to avoid. From what my sister occurred (and she’s my super plugged in secret movie expert,) people were saying that the film is visually stunning, and had no plot. Some other friends who I saw it with had heard similar things. I have to say, I disagree totally and completely.

The film is gorgeous — more on that in a minute, but the reason that I enjoyed it so much was because I was drawn into the story and the characters. It is not a revolutionary story, in fact, the basic story is a mythic journey of a type that’s been told for thousands of years. There is nothing wrong with that, and it’s told in a new and interesting way. So, probably the single most important thing I can say is that as a whole film worked beautifully for me, and I loved it.

As a projection designer I’ve done quite a bit of graphics work of various sorts over the years, including some 3-D modeling and rendering — so I was very interested to see what the “breakthrough 3-D technology” in this film did. Well I have to say it is an absolute breakthrough — for the first time in a heavily computer-generated film, I didn’t spend most of the film analyzing what was computer generated and what was photographed. I just believed. It was magic.

It’s also hard for me to overstate how beautiful the film is, there is so many moments which are just absolutely gorgeous. There’s so much art, care and beauty in this film — it’s wonderful.

We saw the film in a new IMAX digital 3-D theater. The digital IMAX is a new kind of theater, typically found in multiplex cinemas. The screen is not as big as in the traditional film-based IMAX theaters, however the digital picture is absolutely stunning — extremely bright with beautiful color, and none of the flickering or instability which can happen with traditional film projectors. Due to the show being sold out, we were forced to sit extremely close to the screen — maybe four or five rows back from the front. I would not have chosen to sit this close if there had been a better choice, however I have to say the experience was excellent. By being so close to the screen, it really filled my field of vision creating a very immersive experience. The seats were comfortable and structured in a way that it was natural to look up at the screen. The whole thing worked out very well. I should also note that the theater had an excellent sound system, and as somebody who spends a lot of time working with audio, it’s something am rather sensitive to. I really appreciated a sound system that was good enough that even I didn’t notice it — I have to say that that’s both rare and surprising.

For the most part the 3-D was done beautifully, it’s as if the screen disappears and you’re looking through a portal into a real three-dimensional world — just beautiful and amazing. The only real negative I had about the film involved the 3-D however. In photography and filmmaking it’s very common to use depth of field effects to lead the attention of the audience; that is to say having the foreground and background slightly out of focus so that only the subject is sharp. In traditional photography and filmmaking this works very well, I found it a little bit distracting in the 3-D however, when there was something floating in the air between me and the main subject, and it was out of focus, it felt unnatural because everything else was so real. It may be that as more and more filmmaking is done in extremely realistic 3-D that this sort of technique needs to be rethought.

Overall though, even I have to admit that that’s a pretty nitpicky detail. If you haven’t seen Avatar, and has even the slightest sense that you might enjoy it go see it in a good 3-D theater. This is a film that should be seen on the big screen and in 3-D.

Have you seen Avatar? I’d love to hear your opinion of it!

What is it that makes great art great? I’ve often seen people try to answer this question in a technical way, and have even been guilty of doing that myself on occasion; but I really think that it’s not about anything technical. Great art speaks to you in an intangible way that reaches to your very core. It may bring a deep sense of peace, or a sense of discomfort in the unsettled — but it moves you in a way that’s profoundly real. So as someone who creates art, the question becomes how do you do that?

Great art is in the eye and heart of the audience. (photo by Peasap)

There’re a number of things that have been helpful to me in my work, I’ve found that either technical mastery or technical inexperience tend to be good starting points — one end of the spectrum the technique is so natural that it’s not in the way, at the other end of the spectrum there is no sense of technique or how it should be to get in the way. I’m reminded of Prof. Peter Rothbart who I studied electroacoustic music with at Ithaca College. In one of the first intro classes he suggested that those of us who were not really accomplished keyboard players not try to play the synthesizer like a piano but rather treat the keyboard like a row of buttons so that our creativity was not stifled by lack of technical ability.

I’ve also found that for me it’s important to “empty the cup,” that is to stay to start from a position of no expectation about what the outcome will be. When I begin a new design, I do my very best to set aside any preconceived notions and simply read the script and/or score and see what it has to say. Only then, am I ready to talk to the director, with my initial impressions firmly in my mind to ground me.

But I still don’t think that these are the things that make for great art, I believe they can certainly help to facilitate it, but there’s something else. Whenever I do what I later looked back on as some of my best work, I home to a critical point where I am getting out of my way, and letting the work “do,” rather than me doing the work. I really don’t know how else to explain this, in a way it’s very strange, and in a way it’s very natural. It really is about letting go and letting the music, or the imagery, or the stage picture, or the talk comes through me. When I’m able to do that, that’s where the real magic is.