CanonBase - User contributions [en]

Learning to Say No

2023-02-18T20:03:31Z

LouisR:

''The Love Parade disaster in Duisburg, Germany led to the deaths of 21 people. Many factors contributed to this tragedy, and the many other like it; how do technicians and other theatre professionals learn to say ‘no’ when it is necessary?''

[[File:IO2 J.10 01.jpeg|400px|thumb|left|The Love Parade, Duisburg, 2010]]

The Love Parade was a popular electronic dance music (EDM) festival and ‘technoparade’ that originated in 1989 in West Berlin, Germany. It was held annually in Berlin from 1989 to 2003 and in 2006, then from 2007 to 2010 in the Ruhr region, sometimes attracting over 1 million people. The event was not without problems: in some years the organisers failed to get the necessary permits, there were complaints about the behaviour of people attending, and the lack of proper facilities for them, such as toilets.

The 2010 The Love Parade in Duisburg took place on 24 July, with between 200,000 and 1.4 million people reported to be attending the event. Admittance to the festival grounds was supposed to begin at 11am but was deferred until around 12 noon. There was only one main entrance to the festival area, a ramp reached from a 240m long tunnel and several underpasses. The crowd, unable to enter the festival, kept pushing into the confined space, despite being told by the police by loudspeaker they should turn back. The result was a crush in which 21 people died from suffocation, and a further 652 people were injured.

None of the organisations or officials involved took any blame for the disaster. The organiser of the festival, Rainer Schaller, said the police had not managed the crowd control correctly, while the interior minister of North Rhine-Westphalia said the blame lay with Schaller and his company Lopavent and its staff, for not putting in place the right security measures. Later, the mayor of Duisburg, Adolf Sauerland, admitted he had misled the public regarding the number of people expected to attend the event – the claimed 1.4m turned out to be less than 250,000.

[[File:Loveparade-Unglück-2010-CN, Ostrampe.jpg|400px|thumb|right|Memorials to those who died at the Love Parade, Duisburg, 2010]]

Criminal charges were brought against ten employees of the city of Duisburg and of the company that organized the event, but they were eventually rejected by the court due to the prosecutors’ failure to establish evidence for the alleged acts of negligence and their causal connection to the deaths. After years of investigation and many days of trial, the proceedings were dropped in May 2020. The court found the area was not suitable for the Love Parade 2010; none of the ten defendants were sentenced.

The Love Parade disaster is just one of many occasions where safety planning has failed, and these incidents are not new: more than a century before the Love Parade disaster, a similarly large-scale tragedy occurred, the fire at the Vienna Ringtheater in 1881, claiming 384 lives. A gas light failed to ignite, and when it was relit there was an explosion, spreading fire rapidly backstage, then to the stage and auditorium (J.05). The following year, the so-called Ringtheater trial took place. All accused municipal employees were acquitted, while three theatre employees, the theatre director and two technicians, were sentenced to prison terms of between four and eight months and partial payment of damages. The director was released by imperial pardon after only a few weeks in prison, but the stage technicians remained in jail.

Beyond the specific failures that led to each of these disasters, they can teach us something else. Technicians, production managers, designers, and all those who are involved in planning and delivering an event or show are the ‘yes’ people – the people who make things happen. When there is not enough time, not enough money, not enough people, they do the apparently impossible to delight, amaze and move an audience. This is their professional identity: that they quietly and without fuss produce the magic, night after night. It is what audiences, directors, producers, city officials, and many others want and expect. And yet this identity, as the ‘yes’ people, sometimes comes into conflict with another identity, as the people with the knowledge and expertise to know when it is necessary to say ‘no’.

Saying ‘no’ can be hard. It is doubly hard when your whole identity is about saying yes. How can we learn to do better, perhaps even to prevent the next tragedy? Firstly, we must continue to vindicate the figure of the professional by learning to say no when you yourself, as a professional, know that the safety processes are not being complied with. Secondly, we must recognise that saying ‘yes’ comes with a lot more than we perhaps are able to see – the reason we say ‘yes’ may be because we want to perform well, please the people we work with, and avoid conflict, rather than because it is the right answer.

Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, we need to recognise that it is not our responsibility to carry alone. The people we are saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to, also carry responsibility, especially when they have more power than us. They have a responsibility to listen, to recognise the ‘no’ that they may not want to hear, that may lead to great difficulties, is still the correct answer and must be listened to. We must try to teach them this truth.

The identity of technicians arises from a long history of practice within the theatre industry. By understanding that history better, we can perhaps strive for a professional identity that is able to say both ‘yes’ and ‘no’ at the right times, and for our voice to be listened to by those who need to hear it.

File:IO2 J.10 01.jpeg

2023-02-18T20:02:31Z

LouisR:

Sharing Safe Practices

2023-02-18T20:01:26Z

LouisR:

''Building a culture of safety requires a shared understanding of safe working practices. In the highly international theatre and live event industries, the ETTEC safety passport provides a way to test and certify a common standard for safe working.''

[[File:IO2 I.10 2.png|400px|thumb|left|training assessors in Cologne.]]

The [[Item:Q30573|ETTEC]] (Q30573) safety passport is a certificate that proves that a professional can work safely on stage or in an event environment. The Passport reflects the vision that safety is a way of life. Everyone on stage, from stagehand to project manager, should be able to behave safely, understand the mechanics behind working safely and develop a critical safety mindset. Unlike other safety courses, the ETTEC safety passport focuses not on legislation but on competence, on mastering safe working practices. It is about ‘being able’ rather than ‘knowing’.

The origin of the project lay in an informal meeting in the side-lines of an [[Item:Q30470|OISTAT]] (Q30470) gathering during the Prague Quadrennial. During the discussion the people present came to the conclusion that it was hard to prove that a worker, coming from another country, was able to work safely. To their surprise, they realised there was a lot of information on high level safety and safety management, but hardly any definition or concrete text on what it means to work safely on a basic level. And so the project was born.

The passport was developed in a Erasmus+ European project (September 2014 to August 2017), led by [[Item:Q19499|DTHG]] (Q19499) and with [[Item:Q30569|VPT]] (Q30569), [[Item:Q30570|OSAT]] (Q30570), [[Item:Q30571|STTF]] (Q30571), [[Item:Q92|STEPP]] (Q92) and [[Item:Q13001|RITCS]] (Q13001) as partners. The passport indicates that the employee has demonstrated that he can work safely, tested through a practical standardised international assessment. Based on the input of a wide group of stakeholders, the partners wrote a set of ten competences that were later proposed to the European ESCO ([[Item:Q30572|Q30572]]) database:
* Working with respect for your own safety.
* Contributing to a safe and sustainable working environment.
* Working ergonomically.
* Use personal protective equipment.
* Fire prevention in a performance environment.
* Safe working at height.
* Working safely with mobile electrical systems under supervision.
* Working safely with tools.
* Working safely with chemicals.
* Fitting up and rigging stage equipment.
These competences were further described in a sectoral layer, with detailed description of skills knowledge and attitudes that can be used for education, training and assessment. The project went on to develop a [[Item:Q30577|student’s handbook and an extensive teacher’s manual]] in English, German, Dutch and Swedish (Q30577).

[[File:IO2 I.10 3.png|400px|thumb|demonstration of the European safety certificate during Stage Set Scenery, Berlin.]]

Finally, the partners also developed a practice-based assessment procedure that guarantees objective and independent measurement of candidates for the passport in different countries. It consists of a practical test in a simulated environment. A candidate is led through a series of real-life situations that contain typical risks that occur in an event or theatre context. Two assessors observe the candidate’s behaviour and decide at the end if they are able to work safely on stage.

The assessors are trained, certified and accredited to carry out the tests by an international consortium. They work independently from the assessment centres to ensure their objectivity and independence in judging the candidate. The validity of the certificate is based on mutual recognition, each assessment centre recognises the certificates of the other centres, making it, de facto, an international certificate. The assessment centres all use the same occupational standards and quality procedures, and safeguard collectively the quality of assessment. In this way they can be sure that a certificate delivered by another member of the scheme has the same value as their own.

The content of the project is published under a Creative Commons ‘Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike’ licence. This means that everyone is allowed to use or translate it for free. It has been translated in Finnish, Russian and Chinese. In 2021 the Flemish social fund for the performing arts developed an online training based on the passport content.

In 2019 the partners founded a new organisation called [[Item:Q30573|ETTEC]] (Q30573) to coordinate the continued activities. The mission of this association is the mutual recognition of certificates and qualifications in the field of live performance and entertainment between the member organisations. Aside from the founding members, [[Item:Q30574|IGVW]] (Q30574) and [[Item:Q30576|Metropolia]] (Q30576) have also joined. The organisation wants to extend the mutual recognition to other certificates. To reach this goal, they are working together with different projects and organisations in the field(s) of event and technical theatre.

Sharing Safe Practices

2023-02-18T19:59:58Z

LouisR:

''Building a culture of safety requires a shared understanding of safe working practices. In the highly international theatre and live event industries, the ETTEC safety passport provides a way to test and certify a common standard for safe working.''

[[File:IO2 I.10 2.png|400px|thumb|left|training assessors in Cologne.]]

The [[Item:Q30573|ETTEC]] (Q30573) safety passport is a certificate that proves that a professional can work safely on stage or in an event environment. The Passport reflects the vision that safety is a way of life. Everyone on stage, from stagehand to project manager, should be able to behave safely, understand the mechanics behind working safely and develop a critical safety mindset. Unlike other safety courses, the ETTEC safety passport focuses not on legislation but on competence, on mastering safe working practices. It is about ‘being able’ rather than ‘knowing’.

The origin of the project lay in an informal meeting in the side-lines of an [[Item:Q30470|OISTAT]] (Q30470) gathering during the Prague Quadrennial. During the discussion the people present came to the conclusion that it was hard to prove that a worker, coming from another country, was able to work safely. To their surprise, they realised there was a lot of information on high level safety and safety management, but hardly any definition or concrete text on what it means to work safely on a basic level. And so the project was born.

[[File:IO2 I.10 3.png|400px|thumb|demonstration of the European safety certificate during Stage Set Scenery, Berlin.]]

The passport was developed in a Erasmus+ European project (September 2014 to August 2017), led by [[Item:Q19499|DTHG]] (Q19499) and with [[Item:Q30569|VPT]] (Q30569), [[Item:Q30570|OSAT]] (Q30570), [[Item:Q30571|STTF]] (Q30571), [[Item:Q92|STEPP]] (Q92) and [[Item:Q13001|RITCS]] (Q13001) as partners. The passport indicates that the employee has demonstrated that he can work safely, tested through a practical standardised international assessment. Based on the input of a wide group of stakeholders, the partners wrote a set of ten competences that were later proposed to the European ESCO ([[Item:Q30572|Q30572]]) database:
* Working with respect for your own safety.
* Contributing to a safe and sustainable working environment.
* Working ergonomically.
* Use personal protective equipment.
* Fire prevention in a performance environment.
* Safe working at height.
* Working safely with mobile electrical systems under supervision.
* Working safely with tools.
* Working safely with chemicals.
* Fitting up and rigging stage equipment.
These competences were further described in a sectoral layer, with detailed description of skills knowledge and attitudes that can be used for education, training and assessment. The project went on to develop a [[Item:Q30577|student’s handbook and an extensive teacher’s manual]] in English, German, Dutch and Swedish (Q30577).

Finally, the partners also developed a practice-based assessment procedure that guarantees objective and independent measurement of candidates for the passport in different countries. It consists of a practical test in a simulated environment. A candidate is led through a series of real-life situations that contain typical risks that occur in an event or theatre context. Two assessors observe the candidate’s behaviour and decide at the end if they are able to work safely on stage.

The assessors are trained, certified and accredited to carry out the tests by an international consortium. They work independently from the assessment centres to ensure their objectivity and independence in judging the candidate. The validity of the certificate is based on mutual recognition, each assessment centre recognises the certificates of the other centres, making it, de facto, an international certificate. The assessment centres all use the same occupational standards and quality procedures, and safeguard collectively the quality of assessment. In this way they can be sure that a certificate delivered by another member of the scheme has the same value as their own.

The content of the project is published under a Creative Commons ‘Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike’ licence. This means that everyone is allowed to use or translate it for free. It has been translated in Finnish, Russian and Chinese. In 2021 the Flemish social fund for the performing arts developed an online training based on the passport content.

In 2019 the partners founded a new organisation called [[Item:Q30573|ETTEC]] (Q30573) to coordinate the continued activities. The mission of this association is the mutual recognition of certificates and qualifications in the field of live performance and entertainment between the member organisations. Aside from the founding members, [[Item:Q30574|IGVW]] (Q30574) and [[Item:Q30576|Metropolia]] (Q30576) have also joined. The organisation wants to extend the mutual recognition to other certificates. To reach this goal, they are working together with different projects and organisations in the field(s) of event and technical theatre.

File:IO2 I.10 3.png

2023-02-18T19:59:30Z

LouisR:

File:IO2 I.10 2.png

2023-02-18T19:58:47Z

LouisR:

Its All Data

2023-02-18T19:57:34Z

LouisR:

''Digital technologies have radically changed almost all human activities, including how theatre is made. Many production processes are greatly assisted by digital technologies and workflows.''

[[File:IO2 H.10 01.png|700px|center|thumb]]

Making theatre is a collaborative process – people must work together to make the performance happen. The largest productions require hundreds of people, organised into many different departments, to all work together towards the same goal: the moment of performance. This work requires the communication of information, and often requires the archiving of information for future use. In the first two decades of the 21st century, digital working methods have become central to the creation, distribution and recording of the information needed to make a performance happen.

One of the first digital working methods to be adopted in the theatre industry was computer-aided design (CAD) – the use of computers to aid in the creation, modification, analysis, or optimisation of a design. Starting in the 1960s, when computers were still very expensive and difficult to use, early CAD software provided an alternative to hand-drafting for technical and construction drawings. Initially adopted in engineering and architecture, as CAD became more readily available it began to be used by theatres for the construction drawings from which scenery was built. The advantages were considerable – repeated elements could be duplicated with a couple of mouse clicks, and updates didn’t need the whole drawing to be redone. Different information could be put on layers, so that different users could see what they needed, and hide the rest. Modern CAD software can work in 3D, making it easier to check that parts fit together, the set fits into different theatres for a tour, and to visualise the end result. CAD can also produce bills of materials, calculate weights, and create other data about what has been designed, saving time and reducing errors. Most recently, CAD has become CAM – computer aided manufacturing – whereby CAD drawings can directly control machine tools, for example to cut complex shapes out of sheets of plywood with speed and accuracy.

At an earlier stage of the set design process, many designers now build digital models of the scenic design, either as well as or instead of the traditional card model. 3D modelling tools allow rapid changes during the ideation phase, so many different ideas can be tried out quickly. Rendered versions of these models can show surface finishes and give an approximate idea of how the production will look. With a digital model of the theatre building, sightlines can be tested, and technical issues checked.

Lighting design has followed a similar path, with designers starting to use CAD to draw lighting plans in the late 1980s. Originally, lighting design packages were 2D, and focussed on reproducing the earlier, hand-drawn plans, together with some data management such as generating fixture lists. In the mid-1990s, the Canadian company CAST developed WYSIWYG – a 3D modelling tool that could show what the lights were doing in real-time. Initially it could only display a wireframe view of the lighting, but the technology developed, and today it is possible to visualise the entire lighting rig in a realistic way, while programming the show in a virtual model of the venue.

Lighting visualisation has combined with other departments and processes. At the [[Item:Q7853|Royal Opera House]] in London (Q7853), the visualisation studio is used not only for lighting, but also to plan complex scene changes, involving lighting, sound, video and stage automation. Video departments have developed their own workflows, using tools such as Disguise to plan complex video designs. Virtual projectors can be placed in a digital model of the performance space, so that screen sizes, lens choices, and so on can be planned. The same tool is then used as a media server to run the show during the performance, generating live the video feeds to the projectors.

Sound design also makes use of digital models, which can emulate the acoustics of the space, and calculate loudness levels based on the planned speaker layout. This can help ensure all members of the audience get high quality sound, as the sound designer intended it. Technical issues such as cabling, the number and type of amplifiers, rigging weight loads, and so on can also be worked out.

Digital technologies have not only brought a revolution in how we can model and visualise the production, they have also transformed how we communicate. Email, file sharing platforms, video conferencing, instant messaging, budget spreadsheets, Gantt charts and satellite navigation systems are now all part of the toolkit of theatre professionals. Challenges remain, however. Communication between departments, or between companies, is not always seamless. Software incompatibilities, and different standards and protocols, can cause breakdowns in communication or – worse – errors that are only discovered on stage, in the final days before performance. Fields such as film, computer games and architecture have established, industry-agreed workflows, to ensure a smooth and accurate flow of information without misunderstandings. Theatres, especially those working at the largest scales involving touring and co-productions, would benefit from such a system.

While the fundamentals of theatre performance remain the same – people gathering in a room to share an experience in real time – digital technologies have radically changed the way theatre makers work together to create the performance.

Its All Data

2023-02-18T19:57:16Z

LouisR:

''Digital technologies have radically changed almost all human activities, including how theatre is made. Many production processes are greatly assisted by digital technologies and workflows.''

[[File:IO2 H.10 01.png|700px|thumb]]

Making theatre is a collaborative process – people must work together to make the performance happen. The largest productions require hundreds of people, organised into many different departments, to all work together towards the same goal: the moment of performance. This work requires the communication of information, and often requires the archiving of information for future use. In the first two decades of the 21st century, digital working methods have become central to the creation, distribution and recording of the information needed to make a performance happen.

One of the first digital working methods to be adopted in the theatre industry was computer-aided design (CAD) – the use of computers to aid in the creation, modification, analysis, or optimisation of a design. Starting in the 1960s, when computers were still very expensive and difficult to use, early CAD software provided an alternative to hand-drafting for technical and construction drawings. Initially adopted in engineering and architecture, as CAD became more readily available it began to be used by theatres for the construction drawings from which scenery was built. The advantages were considerable – repeated elements could be duplicated with a couple of mouse clicks, and updates didn’t need the whole drawing to be redone. Different information could be put on layers, so that different users could see what they needed, and hide the rest. Modern CAD software can work in 3D, making it easier to check that parts fit together, the set fits into different theatres for a tour, and to visualise the end result. CAD can also produce bills of materials, calculate weights, and create other data about what has been designed, saving time and reducing errors. Most recently, CAD has become CAM – computer aided manufacturing – whereby CAD drawings can directly control machine tools, for example to cut complex shapes out of sheets of plywood with speed and accuracy.

At an earlier stage of the set design process, many designers now build digital models of the scenic design, either as well as or instead of the traditional card model. 3D modelling tools allow rapid changes during the ideation phase, so many different ideas can be tried out quickly. Rendered versions of these models can show surface finishes and give an approximate idea of how the production will look. With a digital model of the theatre building, sightlines can be tested, and technical issues checked.

Lighting design has followed a similar path, with designers starting to use CAD to draw lighting plans in the late 1980s. Originally, lighting design packages were 2D, and focussed on reproducing the earlier, hand-drawn plans, together with some data management such as generating fixture lists. In the mid-1990s, the Canadian company CAST developed WYSIWYG – a 3D modelling tool that could show what the lights were doing in real-time. Initially it could only display a wireframe view of the lighting, but the technology developed, and today it is possible to visualise the entire lighting rig in a realistic way, while programming the show in a virtual model of the venue.

Lighting visualisation has combined with other departments and processes. At the [[Item:Q7853|Royal Opera House]] in London (Q7853), the visualisation studio is used not only for lighting, but also to plan complex scene changes, involving lighting, sound, video and stage automation. Video departments have developed their own workflows, using tools such as Disguise to plan complex video designs. Virtual projectors can be placed in a digital model of the performance space, so that screen sizes, lens choices, and so on can be planned. The same tool is then used as a media server to run the show during the performance, generating live the video feeds to the projectors.

Sound design also makes use of digital models, which can emulate the acoustics of the space, and calculate loudness levels based on the planned speaker layout. This can help ensure all members of the audience get high quality sound, as the sound designer intended it. Technical issues such as cabling, the number and type of amplifiers, rigging weight loads, and so on can also be worked out.

Digital technologies have not only brought a revolution in how we can model and visualise the production, they have also transformed how we communicate. Email, file sharing platforms, video conferencing, instant messaging, budget spreadsheets, Gantt charts and satellite navigation systems are now all part of the toolkit of theatre professionals. Challenges remain, however. Communication between departments, or between companies, is not always seamless. Software incompatibilities, and different standards and protocols, can cause breakdowns in communication or – worse – errors that are only discovered on stage, in the final days before performance. Fields such as film, computer games and architecture have established, industry-agreed workflows, to ensure a smooth and accurate flow of information without misunderstandings. Theatres, especially those working at the largest scales involving touring and co-productions, would benefit from such a system.

While the fundamentals of theatre performance remain the same – people gathering in a room to share an experience in real time – digital technologies have radically changed the way theatre makers work together to create the performance.

File:IO2 H.10 01.png

2023-02-18T19:56:52Z

LouisR: LouisR uploaded a new version of File:IO2 H.10 01.png

File:IO2 H.10 01.png

2023-02-18T19:56:25Z

LouisR:

Whats Ours Is Yours

2023-02-18T19:55:34Z

LouisR:

''The Canon project builds on previous research and resources relating to the history of technical theatre. More than that, it continues a significant tradition of sharing information and ideas, based on principles of mutual support and cooperation.''

[[File:IO2 G.10 01.jpg|700px|thumb|center]]

Open knowledge is knowledge that is free to use without restrictions. The starting point is that knowledge is a common good that belongs to everyone, and that sharing knowledge benefits everyone.

Even if open source, open knowledge, crowd sourcing and similar concepts seem to be recent phenomena, in reality their history dates back to, for example, the [[Item:Q30590|''Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers'']] of Denis Diderot in the 1750’s (Q30590). He allowed re-use of his work in return to him having material from other authors. In the 1950s and 1960s, much computer software was open source, and the early days of the internet in the 1990s gave the movement a boost. The start of Wikipedia in 2001 gave it a visible face to the world. In the same year Lawrence Lessig and Eric Eldred designed the Creative Commons License (CCL) because they saw a need for a license between the existing modes of copyright and public domain status. Version 1.0 of the licenses was officially released on 16 December 2002.

Within the theatre technical field, sharing information is crucial. Most professional organisations like [[Item:Q30470|OISTAT]] (Q30470), [[Item:Q92|STEPP]] (Q92) and others have in their mission statements such as ‘to stimulate the exchange of ideas and innovations’, ‘to share knowledge’, ‘to encourage life-long learning’, ‘Informing our members’, and so on. Often the sharing is more informal between members, but some collaborative projects have received international recognition.

One example is Theatre Words, an OISTAT project that started in 1975 and collected more than 2000 theatre terms in 25 different languages. In 2011 [[Item:Q20190|Digital Theatre Words]] (DTW, Q20190), was presented at the Prague Quadrennial. The project was entirely volunteer based, with [[Item:Q758|Jerôme Maeckelbergh]] (Q758) and [[Item:Q30592|Michael Ramsaur]] (Q30592) the leading forces. The Canon project’s Canonbase has reused the information to develop a taxonomy and add historical terms.

The [[Item:Q30573|ETTE project]] (Q30573) is another joint project that is Open knowledge. The project developed basic safety learning content in different languages. it was supported by European Erasmus funding, and one of the requirements was to publish results in open source, based on the principle that what the community funds should go back to the community.

The [[Item:Q494|EUTA Theatre Architecture database]] (Q494) and [[Item:Q30593|Observatorio de Espacios Escénicos]] (Q30593) are two other examples of open data generated by international groups in our field. The first lists important historic theatres and describes them. The second is an observatory that places the theatres on historic maps.

The Canon of Technical Theatre History project started in 2019 and builds further on this tradition. The project developed one hundred stories that reflect the main turning points of the technical theatre history, a series of tools to be used in education, a set of inspirational methodologies for teaching, and a network of interested parties in heritage and history of technical theatre. All this information is gathered in a database that is called Canonbase. Everything developed in the project can be reused by anyone without restrictions.

The Canonbase integrates and safeguards information from different open sources and makes collections accessible that are otherwise hard to find. It links the information together so new relations become visible and the information is enriched with source documents. Moreover, it visualises the information by means of timelines, maps, trees and word clouds. The project also created new information by researching in depth the information gathered in the database.

The information is structured in an open data format, so it can be reused by querying the database or exported after the project to the world-wide Wikidata platform. The project setup and methodology guarantees that research from both teachers and students feeds back into education and to the wider professional field. The results can be used by local stakeholders, which reinforces the link between the local community and the educational field. The network that originates from this cooperation guarantees future development and sustainability of the results.

After the project the Canonbase will be used as a collaborative platform where researchers can put their raw research information and link it to the results of others, enriching the common knowledge base. At the same time, it can be used to crowd source information based on a growing network of volunteers and professionals.

Because ‘What is Ours is Yours’ and ‘every day there is one day more of history’.

File:IO2 G.10 01.jpg

2023-02-18T19:55:11Z

LouisR:

Virtual Stages

2023-02-18T19:54:31Z

LouisR:

''With the rapid growth in the third decade of the 20th century of technologies for virtual (immersive) and augmented (hybrid) realities, theatre has available many new, virtual stages.''

[[File:IO2 D.10. 01.jpg|400px|thumb|left|Spatial Encounters, by digital.DTHG]]

In ''Theater als Zwischenreich'', Richard Alewyn wrote, ‘So this is the material the world of the stage is made of: a mixture of reality and appearance’ (1989). Theatre has always been a place for creating fantastic stories, a retreat, and a place of longing at the same time. As ‘world builders’, theatre-makers enable their audience to visit diverse places and travel through time to the future and the past. In theatre, different forms of narration are continually being re-explored and reinvented, in a constant interchange with new technologies, inventions and spatial arrangements. Accordingly, new technologies such as virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR, kinds of mixed reality) are not to be understood as ‘new’ technologies: theatre itself has a long tradition of being an immersive medium.

The medium of virtual reality – like theatre – holds great potential for experience through the interaction of different disciplines (film, literature, music, scenography, architecture, visual arts...). By putting on VR glasses, one steps out of ones immediate environment and shifts ones presence into a digital world, into a new reality. This complete dive into the virtual experience is called immersion. The gap that is created in most narrative formats by the viewing distance between the user and the experience is eliminated. Virtual reality enables a multitude of shifts in perspective, whether by embodying different characters or ‘roles’, or travelling to other times or to inaccessible places and situations. Physical laws and social conventions can be suspended: spaces can not only be entered but also flown through; leaps in scale become possible, the viewers themselves become actors.

Augmented Reality works differently: it is a mixing of reality and digital content, each enriching the other. The theatre has been familiar with this effect for a long time: in 1862, a ghost magically appeared on a stage and triggered a veritable illusion hype: the Pepper’s Ghost effect (B.05, Q305). The method of enriching the visible stage action with immaterial content is exactly what happens – figuratively speaking – when using augmented reality: the overlaying of reality with digital content. The potential of augmented reality lies in its fusion with our directly experienceable environment, so the city is also a stage.

[[File:IO2 D.10. 04.jpg|400px|thumb|right|Virtual reconstruction of the Große Schauspielhaus, Berlin]]

Mixed Reality technologies open up completely new kinds for audience experience and artistic approaches. Digital theatre artists like the Cyberräuber with their dance experience ''Things Fall Apart'' or ''Raum+Zeit'' with their Brecht experience ''Berlau: Königreich der Geister'' explore the possibilities for Virtual Stages. AR installations such as Evelyn Hriberšek with EURYDIKE, or Nico and the Navigators with their ''Verrat der Bilder'', show that those new realities have to be understood as an own artistic medium – and not as a substitute or supplement.

To explore the possibilities of these new realities, the research project Im/material Theatre Spaces by the [[Item:Q19499|German Theatre Association DTHG]] (Q19499) gives some useful examples. In the hybrid-real stage performance Spatial Encounters, developed by the digital.DTHG Team in 2021, explored the possibility of the audience co-creating the performance in a hybrid-real stage setting. In an open space of about 150 square metres, audience members (up to 9 VR users) were immersed in a virtual scene, which was then designed, made and experienced together for the next 20 minutes. They moved freely in these digital landscapes and generated visual effects and sculptures through their encounters and spatial relationships. The resulting immaterial spatial bodies and virtual sceneries were musically interpreted live. At the same time, the musicians themselves gave stimulating impulses and moods to the performative interplay. Through these diverse interactions, the shared experience in virtual space becomes a catalyst for a co-creative process of creation, at the intersection of analogue and digital worlds.

As well as being the medium through which an audience experiences a performance, virtual and augmented reality can also serve as tools for the production process. Theatres have experimented with virtual [[Item:Q30656|‘Bauprobe’]] (Q30656), in which stage designs can be developed and discussed virtually, or the future renovation process of a theatre building can be discussed online in a shared virtual space. Immersive technologies can also give access to im/material cultural heritage. With the virtual reconstruction of the [[Item:Q9256|Große Schauspielhaus, Berlin]] (Q9256), users can experience 3 different stories while ‘walking’ through the reconstructed building in 3D, and see historic theatre objects such as the [[Item:Q30496|cloud machine]] (Q30496) in action.

The arts have always been the impetus and source of inspiration for the development of new media technologies – and the arts, conversely, see new technologies as a space of possibility for the development of new forms of expression and design. Immersive and hybrid realities have become our new, virtual, stages.

File:IO2 D.10. 04.jpg

2023-02-18T19:53:39Z

LouisR:

File:IO2 D.10. 01.jpg

2023-02-18T19:53:09Z

LouisR:

The Guggenheim Effect

2023-02-18T19:51:38Z

LouisR:

''The Guggenheim Effect is named after the 1997 Guggenheim Museum, Bibao, Spain, where the museum helped transform the fortunes of the city. Prestigious performing arts centres and opera houses have since been built in the hope of reevoking the effect.''

[[File:Museo Guggenheim, Bilbao (31273245344).jpg|700px|thumb|center|The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain]]

A single building can change an entire cityscape. Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum put Bilbao on the world map, and was pivotal in the transformation of the northern Spanish city from a post-industrial conurbation in decline to a prosperous centre for the service industries. The museum was the first of a series of cultural, commercial and infrastructure developments, and such was the impact of the developments the Museum triggered, the phrase Guggenheim effect, or Bibao effect, has come to describe the influence of any new cultural centre that transforms its location.

Other cultural developments have attempted to trigger the Guggenheim effect: the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, by Herzog/de Meuron; the Taipei Performing Arts Center, by David Gianotten and Rem Koolhaas; the Peking Performing Arts Center, by Paul Andreu; the Grand Theatre Tianjin, by gmp; and the Grand Theatre Guangzhou, by Zaha Hadid. These developments have four factors in common:
* a central location
* they are near bodies of water
* they have innovative, but often less functional (or even impractical) architecture…
* …which is both provocative and spectacular.

These factors also apply to the [[Item:Q10937|''Operahuset'']] – the Opera House in Oslo, and Norway’s most important performing arts centre (Q10937). It is a 21st century opera house, having opened in 2008 and designed by the Norwegian architectural firm Snøhetta. Its architecture aims to combine the urban landmark, an opera house with the character of an urban monument, with an integration with nature. The roof of the building rises from ground level, forming a slope that is accessible to the public. The building is clad entirely in white Carrara marble and glass, completing the intended effect of an iceberg emerging from the sea of the Oslo fjord. Interior surfaces are covered in oak to bring warmth to spaces in contrast to the coolness of the white exterior, while the main auditorium is illuminated by a large oval crystal chandelier – all contributing to the feeling of a modern but opulent space.

[[File:IO2 E.10 1 OsloOperaHouse Rafał Konieczny.jpeg|400px|thumb|right|the Operahuset, Oslo, Norway]]
[[File:IO2 E.10 2 OsloOperaInterior Hans A. Rosbach.jpeg|400px|thumb|right|the Operahuset, Oslo, Norway]]

The building itself is not only a home for the performing arts, it is also an artwork in its own right, and hosts visual artworks inside and out. She Lies is a sculpture constructed of stainless steel and glass panels by Monica Bonvicini, floating in the fjord, moving in response to tides and wind. A perforated wall panel in the lobby was designed by Olafur Eliasson, featuring hexagonal openings and illuminated from below and behind to create the illusion of melting ice. The main stage curtain is the work of Pae White who designed it to look like crumpled aluminium foil. The curtain from wool, cotton and polyester with a three-dimensional effect was manufactured by the German-based theatrical equipment company Gerriets GmbH, and measures 23m x 11m and weighs 500kg.

Plans for the opera house began in 1989, when the Norwegian Opera initiated a study to consider the creation of an independent opera house in Oslo. After the plans for the opera house were presented, there was an intense and time-consuming public debate about whether an opera house should be built in the city. Critics pointed to the level of costs, needs and architectural expression of the building, and this debate has continued after the building was started and opened.

The public, on the other hand, has embraced the theatrical and operatic event. The Oslo Opera’s attendance numbers have increased significantly since moving into the new opera house, to the point where all performances are sold out at the beginning of the season. The public and urban character of its architecture has also attracted many visitors who want to see and walk on the roof of the building, which invites pedestrians to climb up and enjoy the panoramic views of Oslo. The roof has also been the venue for several outdoor events, and the Oslo Opera House has won the culture award at the World Architecture Festival in Barcelona in October 2008, and the 2009 European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture.

It has long been understood that cultural development can help underpin economic and social development. The Guggenheim effect is named after the Museum in Bibao that had a far greater impact than had been anticipated, and which governments have sought to repeat since then – sometimes with success, and sometimes not. Despite early criticisms, the Oslo Opera House has proved popular with audiences, locals and tourists, though whether it has in the end been value for money is a more subjective judgement.

File:IO2 E.10 2 OsloOperaInterior Hans A. Rosbach.jpeg

2023-02-18T19:51:16Z

LouisR:

Sonic Objects

2023-02-18T19:48:54Z

LouisR:

''Since the beginning of recorded and mediated sound, attempts have been made to replicate hearing sound in 3D space. In the early 21st century, technologies based on sonic objects are enabling new kinds of aural experiences for audiences.''

[[File:2017 03 31 Dolby Atmos Studio TVN Group.jpg|400px|thumb|left|Dolby Atmos Studio]]

When sound recording first started, and recorded sound was first replayed in theatres, the audio signal was in mono – that is, it didn’t include any directional information. While stereo sound was first experimented with in the 1880s (D.06), and there was some adoption in cinemas from the late 1930s, stereo was only adopted widely in cinema, radio, television and home music replay from the 1960s onwards. Stereo gives a spatialised sound – so the listener can place different sounds in different spatial locations between the two loudspeakers – but only for listeners in a particular position relative to the speakers. For listeners ‘off axis’, the illusion of a sonic space collapses, much as the visual perspective of the Italianate Renaissance and Baroque theatres failed for off-axis viewers (F.03).

In theatres, bespoke systems for particular productions were developed from the 1960s onwards (D.09), allowing sounds to be directed to one or more speakers located around the performance space, for example from behind the audience, or from off stage left. One early example of multichannel sound for a live audience was the Philips Pavilion at the [[Item:Q30637|1958 Brussels World's Fair]] (Q30637), designed by [[Item:Q30638|Iannis Xenakis]] (Q30638), which used 425 loudspeakers to move sound throughout the pavilion. In 1967, the rock group Pink Floyd experimented with quadrophonic sound, performing the first-ever surround sound concert at ''Games for May'', at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall. The custom sound system used four channels to move sound around the space, controlled by the purpose-built ‘Azimuth Co-ordinator’ with its dual joysticks.

[[File:Dolby Atmos system.jpg|350px|thumb|right|Dolby Atmos System]]

By the 1980s, surround sound was becoming established in cinemas, and later in home cinema set-ups, as some consumers sought to replicate the cinema experience in their living rooms. Various systems have been developed, based on stereo, with extra speakers for sounds behind and to the side. In addition to these commercial systems, there have been many experiments in more immersive sound, which include height information as well as horizontal direction, using overhead speakers. All these methods have the same disadvantage, however: the sound must be recorded, edited and processed specifically for the system that will be used to replay it. For theatre and live event use, where each venue, and often each show, is different, and some sound may be live as well as pre-recorded, these surround-sound technologies have been too inflexible.

Theatre has occasionally experimented with other kinds of sonic experience. In The Encounter (2015), by theatre company Complicité, directed and performed by Simon McBurney, the audience all wore headphones. The sound design made extensive use of a ‘binaural head’ – a life-size model of a human head with microphones in the ears. By feeding the binaural signal into the audience member’s headphones, they were, in sonic terms, placed in the position of the head on stage. At the start of the performance, McBurney introduced the audience to the head and demonstrated the binaural effect, walking around it as he talked, whispering and blowing in the head’s ear, and so on. The effect combed great intimacy in the sound domain with a sense of distance in the visual domain, which was central to the experience of sharing the main character’s journey deep into the Amazon rain forest.

In general, however, headphones are unsuited to theatre or live performance use. What is needed is a way separate the audio content from any particular configuration of speakers, so it can be replayed in any environment. After some false starts, including the 1979 Ambisonics system, technologies are emerging that can provide this separation, and may have a substantial impact on spatial audio. Dolby’s Atmos system is based on ‘sonic objects’ – a sound source that is associated with a particular position in space relative to the listener. The same audio content can be deployed in different contexts, with the decoder maximising the spatial effect for the listener with the speaker system being used, from a cinema sound set-up to a pair of earphones. Soundscape, developed by d&b audiotechnik, is a system using sonic objects that can also simulate different acoustic environments. Soundscape is targeted specifically at live performance; it can place up to 64 sonic objects in three-dimensional space relative to the listener, aiming to align the sound’s position with it’s visual position. Soundscape has been used on the 2022 production MJ the Musical, a jukebox musical featuring the music of Michael Jackson. The system both ensures the sound heard through the speakers is spatially aligned with the performers on stage, and emulates various acoustic spaces for different scenes, as Jackson performs in different venues from an intimate club to an enormous stadium.

The story of spatialised sound began in the 1880s. Now, in the early 21st century, new technologies and new methods are giving theatre-makers ever-greater scope to position sound in space, extending the kinds of sonic experience they can offer audiences.

Sonic Objects

2023-02-18T19:48:43Z

LouisR:

''Since the beginning of recorded and mediated sound, attempts have been made to replicate hearing sound in 3D space. In the early 21st century, technologies based on sonic objects are enabling new kinds of aural experiences for audiences.''

[[File:2017 03 31 Dolby Atmos Studio TVN Group.jpg|400px|thumb|left|Dolby Atmos Studio]]

When sound recording first started, and recorded sound was first replayed in theatres, the audio signal was in mono – that is, it didn’t include any directional information. While stereo sound was first experimented with in the 1880s (D.06), and there was some adoption in cinemas from the late 1930s, stereo was only adopted widely in cinema, radio, television and home music replay from the 1960s onwards. Stereo gives a spatialised sound – so the listener can place different sounds in different spatial locations between the two loudspeakers – but only for listeners in a particular position relative to the speakers. For listeners ‘off axis’, the illusion of a sonic space collapses, much as the visual perspective of the Italianate Renaissance and Baroque theatres failed for off-axis viewers (F.03).

In theatres, bespoke systems for particular productions were developed from the 1960s onwards (D.09), allowing sounds to be directed to one or more speakers located around the performance space, for example from behind the audience, or from off stage left. One early example of multichannel sound for a live audience was the Philips Pavilion at the [[Item:Q30637|1958 Brussels World's Fair]] (Q30637), designed by [[Item:Q30638|Iannis Xenakis]] (Q30638), which used 425 loudspeakers to move sound throughout the pavilion. In 1967, the rock group Pink Floyd experimented with quadrophonic sound, performing the first-ever surround sound concert at ''Games for May'', at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall. The custom sound system used four channels to move sound around the space, controlled by the purpose-built ‘Azimuth Co-ordinator’ with its dual joysticks.

[[File:Dolby Atmos system.jpg|350px|thumb|left|Dolby Atmos System]]

By the 1980s, surround sound was becoming established in cinemas, and later in home cinema set-ups, as some consumers sought to replicate the cinema experience in their living rooms. Various systems have been developed, based on stereo, with extra speakers for sounds behind and to the side. In addition to these commercial systems, there have been many experiments in more immersive sound, which include height information as well as horizontal direction, using overhead speakers. All these methods have the same disadvantage, however: the sound must be recorded, edited and processed specifically for the system that will be used to replay it. For theatre and live event use, where each venue, and often each show, is different, and some sound may be live as well as pre-recorded, these surround-sound technologies have been too inflexible.

Theatre has occasionally experimented with other kinds of sonic experience. In The Encounter (2015), by theatre company Complicité, directed and performed by Simon McBurney, the audience all wore headphones. The sound design made extensive use of a ‘binaural head’ – a life-size model of a human head with microphones in the ears. By feeding the binaural signal into the audience member’s headphones, they were, in sonic terms, placed in the position of the head on stage. At the start of the performance, McBurney introduced the audience to the head and demonstrated the binaural effect, walking around it as he talked, whispering and blowing in the head’s ear, and so on. The effect combed great intimacy in the sound domain with a sense of distance in the visual domain, which was central to the experience of sharing the main character’s journey deep into the Amazon rain forest.

In general, however, headphones are unsuited to theatre or live performance use. What is needed is a way separate the audio content from any particular configuration of speakers, so it can be replayed in any environment. After some false starts, including the 1979 Ambisonics system, technologies are emerging that can provide this separation, and may have a substantial impact on spatial audio. Dolby’s Atmos system is based on ‘sonic objects’ – a sound source that is associated with a particular position in space relative to the listener. The same audio content can be deployed in different contexts, with the decoder maximising the spatial effect for the listener with the speaker system being used, from a cinema sound set-up to a pair of earphones. Soundscape, developed by d&b audiotechnik, is a system using sonic objects that can also simulate different acoustic environments. Soundscape is targeted specifically at live performance; it can place up to 64 sonic objects in three-dimensional space relative to the listener, aiming to align the sound’s position with it’s visual position. Soundscape has been used on the 2022 production MJ the Musical, a jukebox musical featuring the music of Michael Jackson. The system both ensures the sound heard through the speakers is spatially aligned with the performers on stage, and emulates various acoustic spaces for different scenes, as Jackson performs in different venues from an intimate club to an enormous stadium.

The story of spatialised sound began in the 1880s. Now, in the early 21st century, new technologies and new methods are giving theatre-makers ever-greater scope to position sound in space, extending the kinds of sonic experience they can offer audiences.

A Light-emitting World

2023-02-18T19:41:25Z

LouisR:

''By the end of the 2010s, LED lighting was on the brink of taking over as the light source for stage lighting. This shift was controversial for some lighting professionals, but now we have LEDs almost everywhere.''

[[File:IO2 C.10 7.jpg|400px|thumb|left|LEDs in the set of the game show Jeopardy!]]

From its introduction in the late 19th century, the [[Item:Q3120|incandescent lamp]] (Q3120) became the dominant light source not only in theatres, but in almost all situations where artificial light was needed. In many ways it was ideal – the warm colour was flattering to actor’s skin tones, the full spectrum ensured the colours of scenery and costumes were seen correctly, and the lamps could easily be dimmed smoothly to zero. However, it had disadvantages: a relatively short life, and low efficiency, with most of the power consumed being converted to heat, not light. Alternatives were developed, which found applications outside theatre, but both [[Item:Q30636|fluorescent tubes]] (Q30636) and the various types of [[Item:Q3093|discharge lamp]] (Q3093) had the same problems for stage lighting: they had poor rendering of colours and could not be dimmed smoothly to black. They found some limited applications in theatres, with fluorescent lamps being used, combined with special dimming systems, for lighting cycloramas where their linear, smooth light distribution was ideal. Discharge lamps were used for high power applications, and later for moving lights, combined with mechanical dimming systems.

[[Item:Q3195|Light-emitting diodes]] (LEDs, Q3195) are electronic devices that produce light by electroluminescence when an electric current is passed through them. The first commercial LEDs appeared in 1968, but they were inefficient and could only emit a deep red colour, restricting their use to numeric displays and indicator lights. Further development over the following years produced yellow, green and eventually blue LEDs, as well as an exponential rise in brightness and reduction in cost – a phenomenon known as Haitz’s Law.

[[File:IO2 C.10 5.jpg|400px|thumb|right|LED walls and ceiling at Outernet, an immersive entrtainment venue in London.]]

With the development of high-efficiency and high-power LEDs, it became possible to use them in lighting applications. In 1997 the very first LED stage lights were presented at the LDI trade show in Las Vegas. They used red, green and blue LEDs that could be controlled separately, allowing a wide variety of colours to be produced. However, the three colours when mixed did not produce a clean white, and colour rendering was poor. For producing an impact with strong colours, the early LED spotlights were effective, but the quality of white light for theatre use on performers was inadequate. By the mid 2010s the first white LED were being produced, employing a phosphor coating to partially convert the emitted blue light to red and green frequencies, creating a light that appeared white. It seemed at that point that LEDs were the future of lighting, with the benefits of greater efficiency, long life and compact size. LEDs could also be used to produce light sources with variable colour, the new white LEDs ensuring that a good quality white light could be included in the range of mixable colours.

However, in 2018 the European Union announced proposals to ban the sale of tungsten lamps, as part of its measures to address the climate emergency. Lighting designers in the live event and architectural fields were concerned that the available LED lights could not meet their requirements, in particular the quality of white light on skin tones, and launched a ‘Save Tungsten’ campaign. Industry representatives met with the EU to argue the case, pointing out that not only could tungsten incandescent lamps not meet the efficiency requirements in the proposed regulations, neither could the new LED stage lights – their colour mixing and optical systems required for stage use reducing the overall efficiency below that required. They were able to negotiate some adjustments to the regulations, with exemptions for the main types of lamp used by the entertainment lighting industry.

Technology advances, and most of the disadvantages of LED have been addressed by manufacturers, though it has taken several years to win over the most sceptical lighting professionals. Manufacturers have developed colour mixing systems using up to seven different colours, to ensure accurate, high-quality colour rendering, especially the subtle near-white tones that are required for lighting people on stage and on camera. Experiments suggest that even experienced professional lighting designers can no longer tell a high-quality LED source from a tungsten one, in a blind test.

While the introduction of LEDs to main stage lighting has been controversial, LEDs have quietly taken over another important role on stages and television studios. The features that made LEDs a useful light source in their early days – compact size, low heat output, and a range of colours – meant they are now the main solution whenever a light source needs to be embedded in the set. Strips and panels of LEDs create graphic, radiant lines that mark out the edges of scenery, or create architectures of pure light in space. Not only are the overhead lighting positions full of LED sources, now almost any surface, any scenic element, can glow and colour-shift with rippling, strobing illuminations: LEDs everywhere.

File:IO2 C.10 5.jpg

2023-02-18T19:40:03Z

LouisR:

File:IO2 C.10 7.jpg

2023-02-18T19:39:07Z

LouisR:

Every Surface is a Screen

2023-02-18T19:35:54Z

LouisR:

''Since the start of the 21st century, projection and pixel mapping have developed as new ways to integrate video content into all kinds of live performances, from experimental dance to large-scale public celebrations.''

[[File:Vivid Sydney - Opera House sails (9002375891).jpg|700px|thumb|center|Sydney Opera House, projection mapped during the Vivid Sydney festival 2013.]]

In Edinburgh in the summer of 2001, at the international entertainment lighting Colloquium [[Item:Q30645|''Showlight'']] (Q30645), a novel product was previewed. Catalyst combined a high-power video projector fitted with a unique moving-mirror head that allowed it to point in all directions, and a software that controlled video content in real-time via [[Item:Q3957|DMX, the lighting control protocol]] (Q3957). For the first time, a video projector could be controlled in the same way as other lights: the video content could be resized, stretched, colour tinted, started, stopped, sped up and slowed down, faded in and out, and overlaid in multiple layers, all from a standard lighting console. As far as the console and the lighting operator were concerned, Catalyst was just another (very complicated) moving light.

It turned out that the real power of Catalyst was in using the software to feed content to standard video projectors. For lighting designers wanting to control all the visuals, particularly for live music concerts, clubs and similar applications, it brought video into the same technical system, and the same workflow, as lighting. If you wanted to match the colour tint of the video to the lighting, you could – just programme Catalyst in the same way you programmed a moving light. For video designers, almost everything could be done in real time. Rather than having to edit and re-render the video files when the content had to be rescaled or colour corrected, it could be done live. Video design could be as responsive as lighting and sound design. Following Catalyst’s success, other manufacturers started to make their own version, and a new product category was born: the media server.

One of the features of media servers is they allowed video content to be distortion-corrected to counteract the effect of the projector hitting the screen at an angle – something previously requiring difficult graphical or photographic techniques. As well as this type of distortion correction, media servers facilitated more complex ways of relating the video content to the surface it was projected on – a technique known as projection mapping. The first projection mapping was analogue. In 1969 Disney created their Haunted Mansion ride at Disneyland with its singing busts known as the ‘Grim Grinning Ghosts’ which were created by filming head-shots of five singers and projecting the footage onto three-dimensional sculptures of their faces. On a larger scale, the 1986 musical ''Time'' featured a huge head of the actor Laurence Olivier, animated by a projected film of the actor. For projection mapping onto buildings, where the content related to the features of the façade, elaborate systems were developed using layers of large format film, with one layer masking out the others as the film scrolled through the projector. The result was effects such as fish seeming to swim between the pillars of the building, or only appearing in its windows.

With the advent of digital video and media servers, all of these effects became easier to achieve, and could be more sophisticated. Today, projection mapping is used to animate buildings for festivals, public events and son et ''lumière'' performances, as well as on stage for theatre, opera, dance concerts. By integrating the media server control with other stage systems, video content can track the movement on stage of objects and people. For the 2004 musical ''The Woman in White'', the stage scenery of moving and revolving walls was painted grey, with projected scenes for each location made using games software. The video tracked the moving walls, so the images appeared to be ‘painted on’.

Taking a step further, Troika Ranch’s 2006 dance production ''16 [R]evolutions'' used an infra-red camera to track the motion of the dancers, so the video content could respond to the dancer’s movements on stage. In one sequence, white bars projected on the back wall outlined the maximum extent of the dancers moves, so the dancer appeared to be pushing the bars away as if to make space to dance in.

The Catalyst software was not just the first media server, opening up the possibilities of projection mapping. Its creator, Richard Bleasdale, added a feature to output DMX data based on video content: the result was the new technique of ''pixel mapping''. The colour and brightness of any pixel in a video could be used to control the colour and brightness of a light on stage. Suddenly, video could be used to make rich, organic, non-repeating lighting effects which previously would take many hours to programme with a traditional lighting console. Pixel mapping has many uses, but it is perhaps most frequently seen in television light entertainment shows, controlling individual lights, strips of LEDs built into the set, and so on (C.10).

Since the start of the 21st century, the technologies of projection and pixel mapping have developed as remarkable new ways to integrate media content into live performances and events. The results can be seen in almost every sector of performance, from opera to theme parks.

Six Degrees of Freedom

2023-02-18T19:24:49Z

LouisR:

''In the early 21st century, stage automation made it possible to control large scenic elements in complex ways, and integrate their movement into elaborate performances with performers, light, video and sound.''

[[File:IO2 A.10 03.jpg|400px|thumb|left|The floating stages of KA]]

From the late 19th century, stage machinery began to change from being moved by muscle-power to being powered by hydraulics and electric motors (A.06). Large stage lifts and revolves by their nature need to be powered, but flying systems have in many cases stayed with the older technology of manually operated counterweights. However, by the early years of the 21st century, powered flybars were increasingly common, especially in new, or larger, well-funded theatres. The adoption of powered systems has been driven both by an artistic demand for larger, heavier scenery, as well as safety concerns.

As soon as powered stage mechanics began to be used, the question arose of how to control them. Permanent installations in theatres, such as flying, stage lifts, trucks and revolves, came with their own, bespoke controls. The same was true of the temporary stage machinery built for specific shows. The ‘mega-musicals’ of the 1980s, such as ''Les Misèrables'' and ''Miss Saigon'', had substantial mechanised scenic elements, powered and controlled by systems built specifically for the show. From the early 1990s, however, companies such as [[Item:Q30635|Stage Technologies]] (now part of TAIT, Q30635) began to develop re-usable components such as winches, motors and controllers. The control system became more than a series of manual controllers; adopting principles established in lighting control, the new breed of ‘automation controllers’ could be pre-programmed with cues, so that multiple scenic movements could work in perfect synchronisation. They differed from theatre lighting consoles by offering immediate manual override, and a large ‘emergency stop’ button. The powered stage was now stage automation.

[[File:IO2 A.10 05.jpg|300px|thumb|right|Performers climb a near-vertical wall in KA]]

Through the first two decades of the 20th century, the systems continued to evolve. Stage automation systems can now integrate with other technical systems, so that lighting, sound and video can be perfectly synchronised. Motion control systems mean the automation controller can know exactly where the scenic element is in space, correcting for any errors to give very precise positioning. This allows, for example, two pieces of scenery to move together and meet exactly, or a video image or a moving light to precisely track the moving scenery. Large shows such as ''KÀ'', the 2005 production by Cirque Du Soleil, directed by Robert Lepage (Q436), make extensive use of these types of technologies, and give a sense of what can be achieved.

''KÀ'' is a story about the journey of self-discovery for twins who are separated and fight to find their way back to each other. The KÀ Theater inside the MGM Grand, Las Vegas, Nevada, has a capacity of 1950 people. Its unique floating stages help immerse the audience in the story combined with complex automation, pyrotechnics, puppetry, and multimedia projections. KÀ lacks a conventional stage with a permanent floor; instead, two giant moving platforms and five smaller lifts and platforms appear to float in a bottomless space. A narrow boardwalk separates the audience from a deep abyss where the stage floor would normally be. From the stage level of the boardwalk up to the grid is 30m, and the pit drops 16m below. The width and depth of the performance area are each 37m. The performance space is reconfigured with each scene change by the movements of the show’s lifts and platforms.

The largest moveable platform employed in the show, the Sand Cliff Deck, measures 7.6 x 15.2 x 1.8m and weighs 50 tons. A vertical gantry crane supports and controls the Sand Cliff Deck, lifting the platform up and down 22m, rotating it 360 degrees and tilting it from flat to 100 degrees. This is attached to four 23m long hydraulic cylinders that run along two support columns. The Sand Cliff Deck has circular elevators to bring performers in and out, 80 ‘rod actuators’ that sprout from the floor surface to enable performers to climb it when it is tilted vertically, and video tiles that allow computer-generated images to appear on the floor. The second largest platform, the Tatami Deck, is a cantilevered 9.1 x 9.1m platform located upstage of the Sand Cliff Deck, and slides in and out like a drawer to provide a horizontal stage and carry massive set pieces such as the Wheel of Death. These two decks can appear alone or together or simply disappear from view; they can move in front of, behind, above or below each other.

An object on stage can move up and down, from side to side, or forwards and backwards: movement on the three axes, X, Y and Z. It can also rotate about these three axes – it has six ‘degrees of freedom’. While not every object on stage – every prop, every piece of scenery, every person – can move or turn in any direction, stage automation has brought us closer to this possibility than ever before.

File:IO2 A.10 05.jpg

2023-02-18T19:24:31Z

LouisR:

File:IO2 A.10 03.jpg

2023-02-18T19:23:56Z

LouisR:

Zero Point

2023-02-18T19:23:38Z

LouisR:

''The Zero Point is a reference point on the stage, from which measurements can be taken in a standard way. In a proscenium theatre, the zero point is usually the place where the centre line of the stage and auditorium meets the line of the curtain.''

[[File:IO2 J.09 02.jpg|400px|thumb|left|Overlay of theatre in Berlin Tiergarten, with the zero points aligned]]

The [[Item:Q3660|zero point]] (Q3660) is a mark in the stage, serving as a reference point for all departments in the theatre. In proscenium theatres, the centre line runs from upstage to downstage, defining a mirror-symmetry about a central axis for both the stage and the auditorium. At right angles to the centre line is the setting line, which is usually defined by the back face of the proscenium arch, or the line slightly upstage where the curtain or ‘house tabs’ fall, or where the safety curtain (the ‘iron’) meets the stage when it is lowered. The setting line is therefore sometimes called the ‘plaster line’ (where the decorative plaster of the auditorium ends), ‘curtain line’ or ‘iron line’. Where the setting line and the centre line meet is the zero point – also known as the centre point or setting point.

The zero point is an essential tool in planning productions. It gives a reference point for placing scenery, and lighting, sound and other technical equipment. The zero point, with the centre line and setting line, are marked on plans, so all departments share a common reference, to avoid errors and misunderstandings. When placing scenery or equipment on the stage, measurements can be made from the zero point, based on the measurements shown on the plan. The zero point is therefore a vital tool in translating from a drawing of the space to the actual space.

The zero point is particularly important in touring. Technicians and designers working in their own theatre get to know what will fit, and what the most important measurements are, but for a production that has to fit in many different theatres, each different in size and shape, having a system for making measurements is vital. Designers, technical and production managers can plan their touring production by overlaying a drawing of the set onto a drawing of each venue, aligning the zero points, to see if the scenery will fit into each theatre, and make any adjustments required.

In the mid 20th century the development of large, complex and three-dimensional scenery made standardising reference systems essential. In particular, the growing complexity of lighting, sound and video systems, which require very precise positioning to work as intended, has greatly increased the need for detailed planning of how everything will fit together in the space. A standard system of reference points is fundamental to this work.

The zero point is not just a conceptual point, it is often physically marked on the stage. This is usually done with a small brass plate embedded into the stage surface, with the zero point engraved into it. In the Netherlands the zero point is given the name Koperen Kees, suggesting the mark is made of copper, though it is usually made of brass. It can be found as a mark in almost every theatre, and owes its name to Kees van der Wilk who carried out the first technical inventories. Nowadays the technical inventories and the digital drawings are managed by the foundation ‘Stichting Teken’, founded by Bert Middelweerd. He has been placing ‘Bronzen Bert’ in theatres since the 1990s.

The zero point, used by the scenic and technical departments, is not the only referencing system used on the stage. Lighting designers will often divide the stage space into areas, each lit separately to give an ‘area cover’. They sometimes mark these areas out temporarily in chalk or tape while focusing. In repertoire theatres, grids may be marked on a stage cloth to help focus lights, when the actual piece of scenery to be lit is not on stage. Choreographers also may mark the front edge of the stage with numbers, to help dancers locate themselves.

The concept of the zero point, defined by a presumed centre line and proscenium line, is particularly related to proscenium arch theatres. The increase in theatres that are not proscenium stages has brought the zero point into question, both practically and conceptually. For a theatre in the round, or a thrust stage, or a traverse with audience on opposite sides, where is the universally understood reference point? In a proscenium arch, ‘downstage centre’, where the zero point is, is the most powerful position for an actor to address the audience, but in other types of spaces, where is that position? The zero point is a practical method to eliminate errors and failures of communication, but it also reminds us that proxemics – the way that people relate to each other spatially – is fundamental to the theatre experience.

A Matter of Principle

2023-02-18T19:23:32Z

LouisR:

''The UK Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 has transformed the culture and practice of health and safety since its introduction, dramatically reducing the number of fatalities and serious injuries in all kinds of workplace, including theatres.
''

Through the 19th century in the UK there was a growing belief that regulation was required to address the dangers of the industrialised workplace. Government inspectors were appointed in key industries, including factories (1833), mining (1842), and railways (1894), with various industry-specific regulations being introduced over time, but there was no overarching legislation. By the 1960s the shortcomings of this ad-hoc approach were apparent: deaths and injuries at work rose from 450,000 in 1961 to 513,000 in 1969.

The radical and far-reaching Robens Report of 1972 established a principle that has shaped workplace health and safety ever since: ‘those that create risk are best placed to manage it’. The Health and Safety at Work Act (HASAWA) came into effect in 1974. Previous laws that specified very detailed requirements were replaced with general duties to reduce risks ‘so far as reasonably practicable’. Rather than trying to dictate the specific risk controls needed, the act stipulated that employers have a duty towards both employees and other persons to ensure their safety. Employees in turn also have responsibilities.

Key concepts were introduced. Employers have to appoint one or more ‘competent persons’ to manage health and safety, where competence is defined as a combination of training, skills, experience and knowledge that enable someone to perform a task safely. While training and qualifications might be appropriate, the act recognised that these things alone do not guarantee competence. Risk assessment became a vital part of the process of managing health and safety – again, allowing and requiring those close to the activity to respond to the specific circumstances when deciding how to ensure safe working.

Responsibility for regulation was to be tripartite, with workers’ representatives such as unions having a formal role, together with the state and employers. This distributed model of responsibility again was based on principle: ensuring safety is everyone’s job, and everyone has a role in developing safe working practices.

The HASAWA created the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) as the national regulator for workplace health and safety. It is ‘dedicated to protecting people and places, and helping everyone lead safer and healthier lives’. Its role ‘goes beyond worker protection to include public assurance … to ensure people feel safe where they live, where they work and, in their environment’. The HSE undertakes inspections, enforcement and investigations, as well as providing guidance. It has the powers to carry out criminal prosecutions of companies and individuals, and to require changes to working practices and to the physical working environment. Employers are required to report fatalities and serious injuries to the HSE. The emphasis of the HSE, as with the HASAWA, is on the role of employers and employees in preventing accidents and ill-health, rather than detailed regulation.

Nevertheless, since 1974 a wide range of regulations have come into effect under the act, covering all aspects of health and safety. Those relevant to theatres include the Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) at Work Regulations 1992, the Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations 1998 (LOLER), the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, and the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002 (COSHH). These regulations are supplemented by codes of practice, which may be created by the HSE, or they may be developed by specific industry sectors and adopted by the HSE, so ensuring they are closely tailored to the way particular industries work.

The HASAWA has had a far-reaching impact on the theatre industry. [[Item:Q30488|The Association of British Theatre Technicians]] (Q30488) has taken on a role providing guidance, disseminating best practice, and organising industry-specific training. Its Technical Standards for Places of Entertainment is a primary reference point for technical theatre production, developed from the combined expertise of the association’s members. Many theatre companies now have dedicated health and safety officers, who take on the challenging role of balancing the sometimes unique creative demands of productions with the need to ensure the safety of all involved. Unions too have recognised they have an important function, representing their members and helping ensure employers meet their responsibilities. The result has been the embedding of health and safety in the daily lives of theatres and theatre workers. Risk assessments and method statements are an established part of the planning process, and safety is routinely built into contractual arrangements between individuals and companies.

Sometimes health and safety is used as an excuse to say ‘no’. It is often the butt of jokes: the cry of ‘it’s health and safety gone mad!’ is regularly heard. The benefits though of the HASAWA’s principled approach are undeniable. In the UK, fatal injuries at work dropped by 85% from 651 in 1974 to less than 150 in 2014. And the total injured at work fell by 77% from 336,701 to 77,310 over the same period. As a result of the Health and Safety at Work Act, Britain is now one of the safest places to work in Europe and the world. Nevertheless, there is further work to do. Occupational and mental health are still significant, and growing, issues. Work-related stress is common in the pressurised environment of theatre production, and in the post-pandemic environment of the early 2020s, the UK ‘Reset Better’ and US ‘No More Ten Out of Twelves’ campaigns are pointing the way to a theatre workplace that emphasises a holistic approach to wellbeing, not just physical safety.

A Matter of Principle

2023-02-18T19:22:45Z

LouisR:

''The UK Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 has transformed the culture and practice of health and safety since its introduction, dramatically reducing the number of fatalities and serious injuries in all kinds of workplace, including theatres.
''

[[File:IO2 J.09 02.jpg|400px|thumb|left|Overlay of theatre in Berlin Tiergarten, with the zero points aligned]]

Through the 19th century in the UK there was a growing belief that regulation was required to address the dangers of the industrialised workplace. Government inspectors were appointed in key industries, including factories (1833), mining (1842), and railways (1894), with various industry-specific regulations being introduced over time, but there was no overarching legislation. By the 1960s the shortcomings of this ad-hoc approach were apparent: deaths and injuries at work rose from 450,000 in 1961 to 513,000 in 1969.

The radical and far-reaching Robens Report of 1972 established a principle that has shaped workplace health and safety ever since: ‘those that create risk are best placed to manage it’. The Health and Safety at Work Act (HASAWA) came into effect in 1974. Previous laws that specified very detailed requirements were replaced with general duties to reduce risks ‘so far as reasonably practicable’. Rather than trying to dictate the specific risk controls needed, the act stipulated that employers have a duty towards both employees and other persons to ensure their safety. Employees in turn also have responsibilities.

Key concepts were introduced. Employers have to appoint one or more ‘competent persons’ to manage health and safety, where competence is defined as a combination of training, skills, experience and knowledge that enable someone to perform a task safely. While training and qualifications might be appropriate, the act recognised that these things alone do not guarantee competence. Risk assessment became a vital part of the process of managing health and safety – again, allowing and requiring those close to the activity to respond to the specific circumstances when deciding how to ensure safe working.

Responsibility for regulation was to be tripartite, with workers’ representatives such as unions having a formal role, together with the state and employers. This distributed model of responsibility again was based on principle: ensuring safety is everyone’s job, and everyone has a role in developing safe working practices.

The HASAWA created the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) as the national regulator for workplace health and safety. It is ‘dedicated to protecting people and places, and helping everyone lead safer and healthier lives’. Its role ‘goes beyond worker protection to include public assurance … to ensure people feel safe where they live, where they work and, in their environment’. The HSE undertakes inspections, enforcement and investigations, as well as providing guidance. It has the powers to carry out criminal prosecutions of companies and individuals, and to require changes to working practices and to the physical working environment. Employers are required to report fatalities and serious injuries to the HSE. The emphasis of the HSE, as with the HASAWA, is on the role of employers and employees in preventing accidents and ill-health, rather than detailed regulation.

Nevertheless, since 1974 a wide range of regulations have come into effect under the act, covering all aspects of health and safety. Those relevant to theatres include the Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) at Work Regulations 1992, the Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations 1998 (LOLER), the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, and the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002 (COSHH). These regulations are supplemented by codes of practice, which may be created by the HSE, or they may be developed by specific industry sectors and adopted by the HSE, so ensuring they are closely tailored to the way particular industries work.

The HASAWA has had a far-reaching impact on the theatre industry. [[Item:Q30488|The Association of British Theatre Technicians]] (Q30488) has taken on a role providing guidance, disseminating best practice, and organising industry-specific training. Its Technical Standards for Places of Entertainment is a primary reference point for technical theatre production, developed from the combined expertise of the association’s members. Many theatre companies now have dedicated health and safety officers, who take on the challenging role of balancing the sometimes unique creative demands of productions with the need to ensure the safety of all involved. Unions too have recognised they have an important function, representing their members and helping ensure employers meet their responsibilities. The result has been the embedding of health and safety in the daily lives of theatres and theatre workers. Risk assessments and method statements are an established part of the planning process, and safety is routinely built into contractual arrangements between individuals and companies.

Sometimes health and safety is used as an excuse to say ‘no’. It is often the butt of jokes: the cry of ‘it’s health and safety gone mad!’ is regularly heard. The benefits though of the HASAWA’s principled approach are undeniable. In the UK, fatal injuries at work dropped by 85% from 651 in 1974 to less than 150 in 2014. And the total injured at work fell by 77% from 336,701 to 77,310 over the same period. As a result of the Health and Safety at Work Act, Britain is now one of the safest places to work in Europe and the world. Nevertheless, there is further work to do. Occupational and mental health are still significant, and growing, issues. Work-related stress is common in the pressurised environment of theatre production, and in the post-pandemic environment of the early 2020s, the UK ‘Reset Better’ and US ‘No More Ten Out of Twelves’ campaigns are pointing the way to a theatre workplace that emphasises a holistic approach to wellbeing, not just physical safety.

File:IO2 J.09 02.jpg

2023-02-18T19:22:03Z

LouisR:

Shelter or Building

2023-02-18T19:20:39Z

LouisR:

''Theatre artists work within organisations and buildings that are not always suited to their artistic purpose. Sometimes, they set up their own companies and find their own spaces, to make the most suitable environment for creating their work.''

[[File:IO2 H09 5.jpg|400px|thumb|left|Home of the Theatre du Soleil]]

There is a tension in most theatre companies. On the one hand, theatre is made by artists – directors, designers, actors, technologists – who are motivated to experiment, to collaborate, to work in close, personal relationship with each other to make their art. On the other hand, theatre companies and theatre buildings operate as corporate entities, that have budgets, funders, management, contractual arrangements, employees, legal obligations. Mostly, the corporate identity is dominant, and artists make work within the institutional structures as best they can. Sometimes, artists set up their own companies, and run them in new ways, better suited to their particular artistic ethos. Two such companies are the Théâtre du Soleil at the Cartoucherie, a former munitions factory in the Bois de Vincennes in Paris, and the Odin Teatret, based at a former farm in Holstebro in Denmark.

In 1964 the young Odin Teatret company arrived at a farm in Saerkjaergaard, a suburb of Holstebro, founded by Eugenio Barba. The members were four young people who had been rejected from the Oslo State Theatre School. In the early days it created street theatre; today it has a permanent and paid staff of about 20 people, including actors, technicians and administrative staff.

The French theatre collective Théâtre du Soleil was founded in 1964 by Ariane Mnouchkine. The international company has its main venue at the gates of Paris, in the old, abandoned munitions factory of Vincennes (La Cartoucherie), where other theatre groups are based today. The Théâtre du Soleil sees itself as a politically active theatre that wants to influence social reality in a critical way. It is oriented towards the theatre of the Far East and Greek tragedy, as well as the traditions of popular theatre such as the Commedia dell’arte.

[[File:IO2 H09 6.jpg|400px|thumb|right|Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium, home of Odin Teatret]]

And in both spaces, territories are liberated from everyday life. Crossing the entrance door of both spaces gives the impression of entering a different space and time, an emotion that Soleil seeks to reinforce through a protocol of rituals, the first of which is the welcome. Thus, Ariane Mnouchkine, the director and alma mater of the troupe, often welcomes the audience by interrupting the spectators’ entrance.

The feeling of being part of a community, of constituting an audience, is present in the companies’ rooms. At the Odin, in a warm, welcoming atmosphere, upholstered with carpets and with the presence of posters showing the life of the company. At the Soleil, the foyer, which is also the dining room, is a particularly well cared for area, changing according to the work being staged. It is perhaps this desire to create a community of audience and artists that is the reason for opening the dressing rooms in the Cartoucherie to the view of the spectators, another singularity of the company's spaces.

Theatre is a space and a time of encounter, of the audience with itself and with the work of art. Also, the theatrical work of the companies is also constructed as an encounter of genres and theatrical traditions – a new form of theatre needs new kinds of theatre-makers. The Soleil actors explore a diverse range of techniques: clowning, commedia dell’arte, kabuki, puppetry... Arts, trades, industry make up the organic body that gives life to theatre.

The Odin Teatret and the Théâtre du Soleil are builders’ houses. The halls of the farm and those of the Cartoucherie offered the space, the proximity necessary for collective creative work. In the Teaterlaboratorium, as Eugenio Barba called it, and in the Theatre-Workshop required by the Soleil in the Cartoucherie, the structure of the old pavilions could be adapted to house storage, workshops for scenery, costumes or props, office space, a magnificent library and study centre for theatrical anthropology in the Odin’s house in Holstebro, or kitchens and dining rooms. The kitchen and dining rooms of the companies are as important as the workshops or even the stage.

In his article ''L’abri ou L’édifice'' (The Shelter or the Building, 1978), Antoine Vitez was able to capture very well the antithetical condition that the architecture of theatres can assume, either as a ‘perfect technical instrument’ building, more or less monumental, an eloquent sign that seeks to distinguish itself, or as a refuge that shelters theatrical activity. The halls of the former Holstebro farm, enlarged over time, and those of the Cartoucherie, offered the refuge sought by the companies. They offered just the right place, ready to host any stage proposal, they formed an empty space, though not a neutral one. The Soleil’s treatment of the theatrical space also avoids the black box, the tabula rasa. The rooms must be transformable, but they must not become a theatre-machine. The technique is used, but not exhibited. In the case of Odin Teatret and Théâtre du Soleil, and other companies founded by artists with particular intentions, the theatre company is organised, and the physical environment arranged, to be the best possible context within which to make the work.

File:IO2 H09 6.jpg

2023-02-18T19:20:14Z

LouisR:

File:IO2 H09 5.jpg

2023-02-18T19:19:38Z

LouisR:

The Prague Quadrennial

2023-02-18T19:18:17Z

LouisR:

''The Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space (PQ) started in 1967 and has been held every four years since. It is a key international event for professionals in the field of design for performance, scenography, and theatre architecture.''

[[File:IO2 G.09 7.jpg|450px|thumb|left]]

The core of every PQ edition is an international exhibition of countries and regions. From the beginning of PQ until about the turn of the millennium, exhibitions of models, sketches of designs, and performance photographs presenting the international developments in scenography were the central focus. Since 2003, more and more countries have been bringing exhibitions that include performative elements, drawing the viewer into new imaginary spaces, and turning audiences into active participants. The festival that gradually emerged around the main exhibitions from these impulses has grown in size and popularity. Both of these developments opened PQ to other art professions and showed the multidisciplinary nature of performance design/scenography.

[[File:IO2 G.09 3.jpg|300px|thumb|right|PQ 2019 project 36Q°]]

The first edition of the Prague Quadrennial, named ‘International Exhibition of Stage Design and Theatre Architecture’, opened on September 22, 1967 in the Brussels Pavilion at the Prague Exhibition Grounds. The overall concept for the PQ was in part inspired by the [[Item:Q30554|São Paulo Art Biennial]] (Q30554), an exhibition of painting, sculpture, and the graphical arts that had been held on a regular basis since 1951, and in 1957 expanded to include scenography as an independent discipline. Czechoslovak scenographers continued to enjoy success in São Paulo and brought home gold medals from every edition between 1959-1965. The catalogue for the first edition of PQ briefly summarises how scenography was approached by both events:
''Compared to the Biennial of Stage Design in São Paulo, where the artistic aspects are the main criteria for judging the exhibited works – apparently because this particular section was only subsequently included within the context of the Biennial of Visual Arts – the Prague Quadrennial is led in an effort to capture the specificity of stage design, the inseparability of scenography from the direction and all other components of a dramatic work, and the synthetic nature of this field.''

[[File:IO2 G.09 1.jpg|300px|thumb|left|PQ 1967 Canada-Quebec day]]
[[File:IO2 G.09 2.jpg|300px|thumb|left|PQ 1975 exhibition]]

As the organiser of the Prague Quadrennial, The Ministry of Culture charged the Arts and Theatre Institute with the realisation of the event. Invitations to participate in PQ were sent out diplomatically through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs via the countries’ embassies. Given the bureaucratic demands of this official form of communication, information was also disseminated using the network of national centres of the International Theatre Institute (ITI, established in Prague in 1948), making PQ an important cultural event on the UNESCO programme calendar. Additionally, OISTT, the International Organization of Scenographers and Theatre Technicians (which was later expanded to also include theatre architects), was closely linked with PQ – its founding meeting was held in Prague in 1968, one year after the first PQ.

[[File:IO2 G.09 6.JPG|300px|thumb|right|PQ 2019 Bulgarian exhibit, Conglomerate]]

The preparations for the second edition of the PQ were significantly affected by events in August 1968. The occupation of Czechoslovakia by the armies of the Warsaw Pact nations under the baton of the USSR was followed by the reintroduction of a strict totalitarian Communist regime, reflected also in arts and culture. Although the new restrictions also had an impact on the composition of the PQ Committee, fundamental changes in the concept and structure of the PQ were successfully prevented. Artists from several Western European nations were planning a boycott as a protest against the occupation, but thanks to the intervention of ITI and OISTT the boycott was averted. This made it possible for PQ to become one of the very few events where, for the next twenty years, artists from both parts of the divided world could meet in relative freedom.

Nowadays the PQ offers new ways of networking, learning, and knowledge exchange through a wide range of activities, including workshops and masterclasses, performances, discussions and round tables, online educational platforms, and accompanying specialised exhibitions.

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2023-02-18T19:17:57Z

LouisR:

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2023-02-18T19:17:28Z

LouisR:

File:IO2 G.09 1.jpg

2023-02-18T19:16:51Z

LouisR:

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2023-02-18T19:16:03Z

LouisR:

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2023-02-18T19:15:23Z

LouisR:

Theatre without Theatres

2023-02-18T19:13:47Z

LouisR:

''20th century theatre makers have often sought to reform the spaces where theatre takes place, in some cases abandoning purpose-built theatres altogether. Instead, they have made work for a specific, found location, adapted to the purpose.''

[[File:IO2 E.09 8.JPG|400px|thumb|left|Jahrhunderthalle im Westpark, Bochum]]

The term ''site-specific'' refers to a type of theatrical production or artistic work specifically designed for a particular location. A ''found space'' is an existing space adapted to be used as a theatre, though the work presented there may not be made specially for the space. Vacant industrial buildings are often converted into theatre spaces after they are no longer required for their original purpose.

During the development of the coal and steel industry, the German Ruhr region became the largest conurbation in Europe. However, the coal crisis in 1958 heralded the end of this era. With the decline of the coal industry, the region had to reorient itself economically. Previously neglected, art and culture as well as an awareness of nature and quality of life took on new significance. Many event spaces and exhibition halls were founded after the end of the coal and steel industry, and the terrain, buildings and history of the industrial era themselves became the subject of culture.

[[File:Ruhrtriennale.Diamante.jpg|350px|thumb|right|Ruhrtriennale festival, 2018]]
[[File:F.08 02 Carmen - Bregenz festival 2017.png|350px|thumb|right|Carmen on the floating stage at the Bregenz festival, 2017]]

The International Building Exhibition Emscher Park (IBA) project between 1990 and 1999 developed new uses for former industrial wastelands, and played a major role in this change. Buildings and places of the industrial era were converted into monuments or venues for art, for example the Zollverein Coal Mine Industrial Complex (‘Zeche Zollverein’ in German) in Essen.

The Ruhrtriennale music and arts festival in the Ruhr region happens every three years, with its own theme and under different artistic directors. The Ruhrtriennale locations are industrial heritage sites of the Ruhr area, transformed into venues for music, theatre, literature and dance. The main venue of the festival is the Jahrhunderthalle, a former power station from the early 20th century in Bochum. Other locations include the Zeche Zollverein coal mine in Essen, the Landschaftspark in Duisburg-Nord, and the Maschinenhalle Zweckel in Gladbeck. The festival’s central feature is interdisciplinary ‘creations’ or productions that unite contemporary developments in fine art, pop, jazz, and concert music. Artists who have appeared include Ariane Mnouchkine, Peter Brook, Robert Lepage, Bill Viola, and Patrice Chéreau.

The idea is to perform in totally unconventional places, to generate innovative results that provoke new sensations. In these productions there is a strong interrelation between the piece and the space, in such a way that if the piece moves from the specific place where it has been mounted, it loses a substantial part of its meaning. The place not only acts as the scenic environment in which the action takes place but is also the subject that triggers the action itself. The place is the origin of the dramaturgy, and research into the place and its history constitutes a large part of the work. The spaces used are usually those that have a particular historical charge or a certain atmosphere: a hangar, a disused factory, a specific neighbourhood of a city, a house or an apartment.

Site-specific performances can be classified according to the different types of space they use, and the types of relationship between performers and spectators. Performances in theatres, public buildings and private homes are characterised by the occupation of different parts of the building, so that the spatial arrangement of the audience and the performers creates new forms of relationship and new modes of perception of the theatrical event. In the city, disused buildings or apartments and private rooms are also used. Performances in public spaces have been used to create scenographies in which the viewer has the possibility of experiencing a familiar space in a new way. Places such as train stations or the metro network have been widely used. Performances in natural spaces use the environment of nature to provide either a background to a more conventional stage, such as with the floating stage of the Bregenzer Festspiele on the Bodensee lake, or as an immersive environment for the performance in parks, forests, and similar nature locations.

In general, ''site-specific'' theatre is more interactive and immersive than conventional theatre. The spectator is taken from their usual place in the stalls to an unfamiliar environment. The events that take place in these places are usually of an ephemeral nature and are linked to the moment of their execution and the environment in which they take place. It is a fruitful scenographic practice that continues to grow and evolve, often favoured by artists who wish to escape what they see as a stale theatre culture, to find new ways of communicating ideas and new kinds of experiences for their audiences, and indeed to find new audiences – those that might never set foot in a traditional theatre.

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2023-02-18T19:13:11Z

LouisR: LouisR uploaded a new version of File:F.08 02 Carmen - Bregenz festival 2017.png

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2023-02-18T19:11:32Z

LouisR:

Any Theatre You Want

2023-02-18T19:08:23Z

LouisR:

''In the inter-war period, the theatrical avant-gardes felt the need for a theatre that would allow them to carry out their proposed innovations. The empty space, with only walls, floor and ceiling, became the model for black-box and flexible theatres.''

[[File:IO2 E.09 1.jpg|400px|thumb|left|The Schaubühne]]

Edward Gordon Craig wrote in 1922:
''A necessity appeared to me: the theatre must be an ‘empty space’ with only a ceiling, a floor, and walls; within this space, a new kind of temporary stage and auditorium must be built for each new play. In this way we will discover new theatres, because each type of drama demands a special type of stage. (Q325)''

The theatre of the 1960s renewed the desire of the avant-garde to escape from the Italian model, which was too limiting, too codified and representative of an aesthetic from which they wanted to break away. In the same spirit as Gordon Craig, it was advocated that the theatre space should not pre-establish or condition any spatial solution, but should leave the field free to all investigations. Each show must impose its own scenography, its own form, its own space, and establish a unique relationship between actors and spectators. Each show needs a transformable container, technically equipped – a ‘black box’, adaptable to any need of the director.

[[File:IO2 E.09 7.jpg|300px|thumb|right|The Schaubühne before it was divided into three spaces]]
[[File:IO2 E.09 2.jpg|300px|thumb|right|the reconfigurable floor sections on lifts]]
[[File:IO2 E.09 8.JPG|300px|thumb|right|the reconfigurable floor sections on lifts]]

The small black-box studio became established for experimental and fringe work, and for training purposes, from the school drama studio to the technical laboratory. In the UK regional theatre building boom of the 1960s and 1970s, the black box studio was an essential adjunct to the more traditional ‘main house’ theatre. In 1976 at the new [[Item:Q9343|National Theatre]] in London (Q9343), the amphitheatre Olivier and the proscenium-arch Lyttelton were joined, as an afterthought, by the flexible, courtyard-like Cottesloe (now called the Dorfman). Many would claim this third auditorium is the most successful of the three.

However, the flexible, black-box concept brings difficulties as well as opportunities. If every production must create a new scenography within the empty container, then every production must have the technical, financial, creative and human resources required to fill it, otherwise a minimal production becomes an empty production, devoid of life and warmth.

Not all flexible spaces are black boxes. The [[Item:Q13102|Schaubühne]] (Q13102) was born in West Berlin in 1981 with all the ingredients to become a model theatre machine. Located in a central area of the city, it occupies a well-known work of modern architecture: The Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz is part of the Woga complex planned by Berlin architect Erich Mendelsohn in 1926-28, in a space originally built as the Universum Cinema.

The new house is the largest spoken theatre in western Berlin, intended to overcome the supposed limitations of the company’s previous ramshackle home in Hallesches Ufer, where the company had established itself in 1962. There, the group had made a name for itself. On 18 November 1970, with the staging of ''The Mother'', Bertolt Brecht’s adaptation of Maxim Gorki's novel, the Schaubühne had begun a new phase under the direction of [[Item:Q30555|Peter Stein]] (Q30555). Inspiration was to be taken from previous productions: from Ibsen’s ''Peer Gynt'' (1971), a hilly topography with the audience situated on the two long sides of the nave. From ''Übungen für Schauspieler'' (Exercises for Comedians, 1974), and from Euripides’ ''The Bacchae'' (1974), unique, distressing spaces: the former because of its mysterious luminosity and the strange sensation of the asbestos-clad walls, the latter because it is too cold. From Gorki's ''The Holidaymakers'' (1974), a real forest. Any work offered the opportunity to transform the space of the theatre.

In the new premises, the machines installed on the roof and in the basement were to be the means to achieve these transformations more easily and more completely. This was to be the multi-purpose theatre, divisible into rooms of varying dimensions, in a display of mechanisation unusual in the group’s practice before then. However, as the years went by, the mobile multi-purpose rooms tended to become fixed, and the structures of the audience seating were built over the mechanisms that should have transformed the floor.

In theory, Schaubühne had not appealed to the machine as a sign of fidelity to the spirit of modern times. Advanced technology was only to be used to achieve greater creative freedom. Experience has shown that this confidence was unjustified. Due to financial constraints, the many possible configurations are not being used, and today the three separate auditoria are played individually in isolation and do not change. The lifts that reconfigure the many modules of the floor are out of use. Nevertheless, the possibilities of a grand vision in theatre architecture and performance show the limits we can attempt to exceed.

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Power and Control

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''On theatre and concert stages, good sound requires the ability to produce the required sound in the right place, under the control of the sound engineer. The fundamental methods for achieving this were set in the 1960s.''

[[File:IO2 D.09 4.JPG|400px|thumb|left|Theatre sound control with mixing desk and turntables, around 1970]]

In Germany after the Second World War, there was a great investment of public money into rebuilding the theatres that had been destroyed in the bombing. These theatres were equipped with the latest technology, including sound. A control room was placed at the back of the auditorium, with clear sight of the stage, staffed by the Tonmeister and his team. In London’s West End in the 1950s and 1960s, the situation was quite different: sound didn’t have its own department, it was operated by a junior member of the stage management team from backstage, using a panatrope, or later, reel-to-reel tape machines (D.08). The role of the sound designer was only just emerging.

The musical ''Blitz!'', by Lionel Bart, opened in London in 1962. Set in the East End of London during the aerial bombings of the Second World War, the show – scenery, lighting and sound – was on a more massive scale than anything that had been seen in the West End before. The sound designer and operator, David Collison, argued that he needed to be in the auditorium to control the sound, so he could see and hear the show and integrate the very complex sound plot into it. No West End sound operator had ever been located front of house before, and the producer initially refused, but eventually three seats at the side of the auditorium were allocated, when it became clear the huge, mobile set pieces and cast of 40 actors left no room backstage for the sound operator.

[[File:IO2 D.09 5.jpg|300px|thumb|right|Scene from the musical Blitz!]]

The sound for ''Blitz!'' was innovative in other ways. Fourteen speakers were placed around the stage and auditorium, and Collison designed a custom mixer, build by Stagesound, to allow him to send sound from any of the three tape recorders, via four master faders, to any combination of the speakers. The flexibility of this system was unique in the West End at this time, allowing Collison to move sound around the stage – for example, panning the sound of an underground train across the stage. A separate sound system handled the reinforcement of the singers, with microphones placed along the front of the stage. While there was much further development to come over the following decades, at the start of the 1960s the sound for Blitz! was the template for theatre sound as we know it now: the operator in the auditorium, able to hear what the audience hears; a speaker system that can locate sound spatially with precision; multiple sound sources mixed and fed to any combination of speakers.

The period was also important for rock concert sound. Until the late 1960s, bands used amplifiers for their guitars, and vocal mics. With the amps at the back of the stage, the vocals could not be turned up without causing feedback, restricting the loudness of the whole system. Column speakers, with several drivers, were added, but the low power of the available amplifiers was still a limitation. In 1965, the Beatles played the Shea Stadium in New York – the first stadium rock concert – and were completely drowned out by the screaming crowd. In the UK, Charlie Watkins of WEM was seeking a higher-powered amplifier. RCA had recently introduced a 100W transistor amplifier, and Watkins, in conjunctions with his colleagues, had the idea to combine up to ten of the amplifiers, to achieve a 1000W output. He tested the new amplifiers at the 1967 jazz festival in Windsor, UK, driving ten of his largest speakers, plus 20 column speakers, plus high frequency horns, and bass speakers. It was the breakthrough he’d been looking for.

News spread rapidly. Watkins received requests for systems from Rod Stuart, Pink Floyd, and many others. When Bob Dylan gave a concert at the Isle of Wight festival in 1969, he insisted on buying the sound system afterwards. In the same year, Watkins provided sound for the Rolling Stones in London’s Hyde Park, mixing it from the side of the stage. Mick Jagger asked Watkins to tour with the band, saying the mixing position should be in the middle of the crowd; Jagger even had a special scaffolding platform designed for the sound control position. At around the same time, Watkins had introduced on-stage foldback, so bands could hear themselves and each other clearly.

As with theatre sound, by the end of the 1960s the key components of sound for live music were in place: backline for the guitars; main PA speakers with bass, mid and high cabinets each optimised to the task, driven by powerful amplifiers; the main mix for the audience controlled from a front of house position; a separate foldback mix for the band. On both the theatre and the concert stage, the late 20th century saw the development and refinement of sound production, with many technical innovations, but based on templates set in the 1960s.

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