Thursday
Material Considerations for Back of house Structure
Back of House - Consideration
An Extraordinary Multi-artist Multi-media Space Exploration That Challenges the Limits of Movement and Space
Architectural Design: Frances Bronet, Dean of Architecture and Allied Arts at the University of Oregon
Frances was formerly Professor of Architecture at RPI. She is the former president of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture. Her most recent publications include: “Beating a Path: Design and Movement” in Performing Nature: Explorations in Ecology and the Arts; “Quilting Space: Alternative Models for Architectural and Construction Practice” in Knowledge and Society, vol. 12, 2000 on a liberative teaching model for studio learning based on the experience of marginalized students. She was awarded the 2001 Wiley Distinguished Professor Award for excellence in teaching, research, service and contributions to the university and community. She is a recipient of 2001 Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching New York Professor of the Year.
Technical Design: Sidney Fleisher, Adjunct Faculty, School of Architecture, Rensselaer
Sid has managed and directed the School of Architecture Workshop where he has taught courses in Material Exploration and Fabrication, and Furniture Design and Making for 26 years. He has been a professional woodworker since 1971, specializing in designing and building high quality furniture and the renovation and reconstruction of residential scale buildings. He has studied with the celebrated Japanese craftsman Toshio Odate and the American Windsor Chair builder, Michael Dunbar. Sid’s skill as a craftsman has won him private commissions from such well-known architects as Cesar Pelli and Ali Tyar. He maintains his own workshop, studio, and residence in a former bakery he has renovated in South Troy, NY.
Music:William Harper, Adjunct Professor, Art & Technology Studies/Sound, Art Institute of Chicago
William has written many critically acclaimed operas. The opera “El Greco” was commissioned by INTAR (New York, 1993) and was broadcast on NPR's World of Opera program. Completed projects include “Requiem” commissioned by the family of Kenneth and Harle Montgomery and “Marlidendur,” commissioned by conductor Gudmundur Emilsson for the Latvian Radio Symphony and Choir and the Riga Dome Boys Choir. In 2002, both works were recorded by Icelandic Skifan records and released in conjunction with an international tour of the Baltic Symphony Chamber Orchestra. “The Bacchae,” a multi-media dance/opera was commissioned by the Music Theater Group of New York and Now & Then Productions in 1997 and performed at Harvard University. Other collaborations include a musical with Ted Shank about Bessie Coleman called “Black Wings,” a musical with Fred Feirstein based on the Freedom Fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto called “Heroism” and an opera with Susan Bergman based on the novel “Mariette in Ecstasy.” “The Banjo of Death Sleeping”, an Electro-acoustic triptych, was released in 2002 on ARTCO Records, and evolved from “ Working River”, a 1999 collaboration with Ellen Sinopoli (ESDC). With a Ph.D. in music composition, Dr. Harper teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and for his work in opera, film, dance and theater, Harper has received support from many foundations and groups including the National Institute for Music Theater, the Djerassi Foundation, the Yaddo Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and The MacArthur Foundation.
Video: Ralph Pascucci, President/CEO, Myriad Productions
Ralph is a four time Emmy Award winner with over twenty-five years of television experience. He has worked on the Today Show and four Summer Olympics for NBC. He has produced arts and documentary broadcasts for Public Broadcasting. For ESPN, he traveled the Formula One Grand Prix Auto Racing circuit for five years, and also worked on NCAA Basketball and Hockey, the Kentucky Derby, WTA Tennis, Major League Baseball, LPGA Golf and Sailing. Ralph is a graduate of RPI and is a licensed professional engineer in New York State. He founded Myriad Productions in 1985. He is also a guest lecturer at RPI and is currently teaching an Intermediate Video course in the EMPAC program. Ralph designed the video projection system at Saratoga Performing Arts Center and at Tanglewood and directs at events from Santana to the New York City Ballet.
Lighting Design: David Yergan, Theater Manager/Technical Director, Dept. of Theater, Skidmore College
David designs lighting and sound for many productions at Skidmore. He is also the lighting designer and production manager for Lake George Opera Festival for whom he has designed ten operas including last summer's well-received production,Madama Butterfly. He has designed lighting for Capital Repertory Theatre, Curtain Call Theater, Proctor's Theater, Saratoga International Theater Institute, New York State School of the Arts: School of Modern Dance, L’Ensemble, and close to a score of productions at Saratoga's Home Made Theater including recent productions of The Foreigner(sound design), Aladdin (lighting design) and Our Town (lighting design).
Costume Design:
Kim Vanyo, Khymanyo Studio
Kim attended the Fashion Institute of Technology in NYC and worked as a designer for various menswear companies before opening Khymanyo Studio in upstate NY. She has been designing private label lines of clothing for boutiques and operating a custom clothing atelier since 1984. She currently collaborates with Northeast choreographers to create costume designs.
Tour Production Manager:Peter Kobor, owner of StudioArts Entertainment, is a producer of film, theatre, and music. He has directed the short film, “A Tale of Fear and Lattes,” co-produced and sound designed “Enchanted April” at Schenectady Civic Theatre (winner of 5 TANYS awards), and sound-designed “The Santaland Diaries, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever,” and “Into The Woods, Jr.” at Home Made Theater. He has also co-produced and directed “Tango Fusion” at the Saratoga Arts Theater, and was the executive producer for the recent Northeastern Premiere of “Ladies of Eola Heights” and for David Auburn's Pulitzer Prize-winning “Proof,” as well as bringing Eve Ensler's “The Vagina Monologues” to the stages of Saratoga for a second season.
| Performers:Ellen Sinopoli Dance Company, Resident Company of The Egg ESDC, the pre-eminent modern dance company of the Capital Region, presents the provocative and richly imagined choreography of Artistic Director Ellen Sinopoli. Now in its 16th season, ESDC shares its work with diverse audiences through concerts, showcases, residencies, workshops and educational outreach, seeking to enrich our community by enhancing the appreciation, understanding and experience of contemporary performing arts. “Exuberant, serendipitous, gutsy and soaring” and “magicians in motion” are just some of the expressions used to describe ESDC dancers who delight audiences of all ages with movement that celebrates rhythm, energy and musicality. Its performances at professional, regional and college theaters include The Sage Colleges, Hudson Valley Community College, Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, The Arts Center of the Capital Region, SUNY Cobleskill, Greenville Cultural Arts Center, Old Forge Arts Guild, Snug Harbor Cultural Center, Lake Placid Center for the Arts, NYC's Mulberry Street Theater, Inside/Out Series at Jacob's Pillow, Kaatsbaan International Dance Center, Avery Fisher Hall in NYC's Lincoln Center and Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood. The company’s performances and arts-in-education programs reach more than 8,000 people each year. |
week10 - development of spaces - program - audience
The Eyes of the Skin
"I confront the city with my body; my legs measure the length of the arcade and the width of the square; my gaze unconsciously projects my body onto the facade of the cathedral, where it roams over the moudlings and contours, sensing the size of recesses and projections; my body weight meets the mass of the catherdral door; and my hand graps the door pull as i enter the dark void behind. I experience myself in the city, and the city exists through my embodied experience. The city and my body supplement and define each other."
"Our own body is in the world as the heart is in the orgamism: it keeps the visible spectacle constantly alive, it breathes life into it and sustains it inwardly, and with if forms a system. Sensory experience is unstable, and alien to natural perception, which we achieve with our body all at once, and which opens on a world of inter-acting senses."
"In Okakuras description the present and the absent, the near and the distant, the sensed and the imagined fuse together. The body is not a mere physical entity; it is enriched by both memory and dream. The world is reflected in the body, and the body is projected on the world."
DAIDALOS
"The atmosphere of a building seems to be produced by the physical form. It is some kind of sensuous emission of sound, light, heat, smell, and moisture; a swirling climate of intangible effects generated by a stationary object."
"To enter a project is to enter an atmosphere. What is the atmosphere, not the objects as such."
"...Gottfried Semper insisted that the 'true atmosphere' of architecture is 'the haze of carnival candles'. Architecture is but a stage set that produces a sensuous atmosphere. Semper argued that the full force of architecture is to be found in tis outer surface, the decorative layer through which the atmosphere seemingly percolates. Architecture is indistinguishable from decor."
"Atmosphere occupies the space between a building and its context. Or, rather, it defines that space. Since the physical context has its own ambience, the building is a kind of device for producing a particular atmosphere within another one. To enter it is to pass from one atmosphere to another. Architecture is to be found in the relationship between atmospheres, the play between microclimates. The meeting of these seemingly ephemeral atmospheres can be as solid as any building."
THE CLOTHING OF SPACE
"Even where solid walls become necessary they remain only the inner and unseen structure for the true and legitimate representatives of the spatial idea: namely, the more or less artificially woven and seamed-together, textile walls... the visible spatial enclosure." The truth of architecture is now located in its visible outside rather than its hidden interior."
"To wear a building, by entering it, is to feel its weave. More precisely, to feel the surface is to enter. Occupying a soace does not involve passing through some kind of opening in the surface, like a door, to find an interior. To occupy is to wrap yourself in the sensuous surface."
Week9 - Mid Review
PROGRAMS AND SPACE
Considering the church as a space as temporal fluid, unstable space in which u walk into a space flooded in water, as there are 3 visible platforms which run directly down the center of the space leading u to the end of the church. On the way down etchings in the wall resemble flood lines, this will evoke feelings of emotion as these lines run over the head of the average height. These lines can be used in part of performance to tell the story of the tragedy which occurred in Prague. As this experience is taking place the water which is dug out of the ground seeps lower and moves back up only wetting the souls of your shoes as u walk along these platforms, the uncertainty of not knowing when the water will rise or how far it could rise evokes feelings of panic and anxiety.
Once u reach the floating stairs at the end of the church u move up through to a stable platform to view the performances which take place. Rising to higher ground.
The back of house structure can be used as part of performances as it is wrapped in a thread like material which when lit up will allow u to see dancers and organisers move through the stair well structure to set up dancers and equipment. Revealing behind the seen details.
The piece would deal in fear and delight, anxiety and peace. A dreamlike experience, slightly frightening, intensely magical and physically involving : It evokes complex feelings, both as an idea and as an adventure. It involves trust of your balance to lead you to an aerial stage, along the walls etched [LED] lights resemble the past of floods in Prague.
KEY WORDS GUIDING THE PROJECT - FLUID / UNSTABLE
River walk
sensory
evoking feelings
water - rivers - flooding
Swapped - flooded
overwhelmed - anxiety - distress - panic - tragedy - disaster
Tension - spectacle - tranquility
altered
pure - liquid - saturate - soak
subjected to water
submerge
immerse
removing ground plane
detached
plane of water
immersion of tragedy
confronting reality
fluctuating water levels
temporal - emerge
rejects stability in favour of movement
FEEDBACK FROM INTERIM PRESENTATION
Week8 - Concept Design
INVISIBLE CITIES - ITALO CALVINO
Summoned to lay down the rules for the foundation of Perinthia, the astronomers established the place and the day according to the position of the stars; they drew the intersecting lines of the decumanus and the cardo, the first oriented to the passage of the sun and the other like the axis on which the heavens turn. They divided the map according to the twelve houses of the zodiac so that each temple and each neighborhood would receive the proper influence of the favouring constellations; they fixed the point in the walls where gates should be cut, foreseeing how each would frame an eclipse of the moon in the next thousand years. Perinthia - they guaranteed - would reflect the harmony of the firmament; natures reason and the gods benevolence would shape the inhabitants destinies. Following the astronomers calculations precisely, Perinthia was constructed; various peoples came to populate it; the first generation born in Perinthia began to grow within its walls; and these citizens reached the age to marry and have children. In Perinthias streets and square today you encounter cripples, dwarfs,hunchbacks,obese men,bearded women. But the worse cannot be seen; guttural howls are heard from cellars and lofts, where families hide children with three heads or with six legs. Perinthias astronomers are faced with a difficult choice. Either they must admit that all their calculations were wrong and their figures are unable to describe the heavens, or else they must reveal that the order of the gods is reflected exactly in the city.
FLOOD PROTECTION MEASURES OF THE CITY OF PRAGUE
Prague is the capital of the Czech Republic with about 1.5 million inhabitants. It is located at the river Vltava. The Vltava drainage area covers 28,090 km2 and its total length is 430km. The Vltava has an important influence on the city of Prague in a positive way, that is the urban and aconomical development along the river in history and present, but also in a negative way, because of the danger of flood events along the Vltava. Several flood marks along the river show the water levels of the different events in history and try to keep this danger of flooding in mind of the people.
PERFORMANCE
performance space can be used in different ways, creating the stage as the aerial stage by removing the ground plane. Also the stage can be considered in the water and consist of type of performances in the example above. Flexibility to use the roof as well as the back of house structure is situated and accessed through the roof so that the aerial performance is roped onto the rafters and the equipment is let down onto the stage that way.
AERIAL PERFORMANCE
Aerial dance by Jayne c.Bernasconi, Nancy E.Smith
"On some occasions in history, dance simulated the conquest of the aerial space against gravity, creating the illusion of lightness."
"It involves the spectators perception of a spatial illusion that allows him to transcend his static vision and generate a new point of view. At the same time, it redefines the use of the stage space, discovering sections of the stage rarely used."
"Aerial dance is a process of reformulating choreographic decisions regarding order, nature of movements, and techniques. The technical resource is achieved by suspending dancers through ropes(static and elastic and harnesses."
"Dancers without harnesses and dancers suspended in the air are a dialectical relation between air and floor. This relationship can be researched through various modes of movement, such as light and heavy, slow and fast, suspension and gravity, and centrifugal forces."
"Spectators experience this spatial change with an altered perception, as if they were looking at the dancers from above, transcending their static vision."
" The point of view of the spectator is unusual because the eye sees as if it were under the earth."
"Exploring the movement concepts such as weight shifting, phrasing, transitions, and dynamic energies and finding the effortless flow go movement while doing big swings will help students to discover the essence of aerial dance."
PRECEDENT
BRIDGE BY MICHAEL CROSS
The idea for bridge first sprouted from a simple desire, i wanted to stand in the middle of a lake surrounded only by water. I didn't want a boat to get me there or a pier to link me safely to land and i didn't want to get wet. I wanted to walk across the water to the middle of a lake, so i saw that i would need a new kind of bridge and i decided to make one.
Thoughts and notes
Flooding can be defined as any area of land covered by water, which is normally dry. Sometimes water levels can rise slowly and unnoticed, other times flooding can be rapid, sudden and unexpected. Floods are one of the main weather hazards that can be made worse by where we chose to live and how we manage our environment.
Rain is the most important factor in flooding. How much rain, how heavy and for how long it falls will all have an impact on the level of flooding. What happens to the rain once it hits the land can also decide which areas will flood. Developed land surfaces or recent weather conditions will both play a part in how serious the floods are. The most common influencing factors are:
Recent weather – The more rain in recent days or weeks, the more likely a flood is to occur. Even if rain falls land affected by drought, the soil may be too hard and dry to absorb any water.
Urbanization – water flows much faster over pavements and concrete than grass and soil.
Soil Type – Rainfall moves through sandy soil much faster and more easily than through thick clay.
Topography – Most of the world’s flash floods occur in mountains where small streams can become raging rivers in a matter of seconds, as they fall almost vertically. In lowland areas the slopes are gentler with floods taking longer to develop.
Experts have named two types of floods:
1. River floods
2. Flash floods
A river flood forms slowly, normally because of melting winter snow or a very wet season. Smaller streams will eventually join larger rivers and the waters power can be great. Flooding can cause disruption for weeks on end, destroying buildings, washing away vehicles and roads.
Flash flooding is far more dangerous and can happen very quickly. It is usually caused by large amounts of heavy rainfall from thunderclouds moving slowly over a land area that is likely to flood. Very heavy rainfall over an hour or two can create a ‘wall of water’ that can raise river and lake levels by just one meter in a minute. Flash floods are much more likely in area where it has been raining for a few days and the soil is saturated. The natural environment is also an important factor, and some of the most devastating flash floods have occurred in narrow, steep-sided canyons. For example the Lynmouth Flood Disaster 1953 on the edge of Exmoor, Devon.
http://www.econet.org.uk/weather/floods.html
Anechoic Chamber
Anatomy of a Dead Room
The ideal anechoic chamber is a room totally free of acoustical reverberations. Any sound projected into the room, at any frequency, is fully absorbed. It helps to build the room as large as possible..... a smaller room will require more or better sound absorption material to have the same effect.
[http://www.meyersound.com/products/technology/chamber.htm]
(IM)MATER(IALITY) and the Black-Box Theatre as an 'Empty Space' of Re-production
"The body suspended within it is always held in that moment between flying and falling; caught in the act of endlessly dis-appearing."
"It becomes both womb-space and void-space."
"The place s without form - one vast square of empty space is before us - all is still - no sound is heard - no mevemnet is seen.... nothing is before us - And from that nothing shall come life - even as we watch, in the very centre of that void a single atom seems to stir....."
"In denying a purely visual apprehension of built space, and suggesting a profound interiority, the black-box posits a new way of regarding the body in space."
"I can take an empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged."
week7 - concept presentation and feedback notes
Powerpoint presentation
Feedback - Notes from presentation
Sunday
Initial Brief - Visual and Textual
Brief
This design proposal will examine the connections between past and present through the form of dance and architecture that intervenes into the existing site of the crossroads. This intervention will work with the existing architecture highlighting moments in history, culture, time, place and the everyday. The design will question the surrounding environment through dance, clothing of the space and enhancing moments within the site through stage lighting.
The design will sit outside the realm of a traditional theatre layout and question ideas of visibility and movement; this will allow visitors and spectators to have a sensory engagement with the embodied performance and become part of the installation.
Site
The Prague Crossroads, formerly known as St Anna’s Church, situated in the capital of the Czech Republic, Prague. St Anna’s is an important landmark in the cultural heritage of Prague and is a protected building.
Program
“..we should assume that stages exist everywhere in a city.” [Tadao Ando]
Silk strands as indicators of times in history which could entail a story through colour and light - dramatic forms of lighting - elongating and suspending space from the rafters down - using the site as existing space to reveal and highlight moments in time - clothing the space with these forms of cloth and embodiment - saturated with a water ground revealing the rivers of Prague and the bridges that cross over it [laneways – crossroads]. Spectators becoming apart of the performance whether dancers are occupying the cloth or not, water will rise off the ground as the cloth moves around with dancers, plat forming system constructed in the same elongated language [scaffolding] may be apart of this installation where spectators can rise at the same level as the dancers, therefore reflection from the water and light may interfere with the visibility of the performance questioning what needs to be seen. Cloth has the possibility to have history inscribed into it therefore when dancers aren’t occupying the ‘stage’ spectators could read, touch [sensory] become apart of the intervention taking place.
What are the various spaces for:-
The public (front of house)
The audience (performance space/s)
The technicians (back of house: technical zones)
The performers (stage/s: dressing rooms etc.)
Project Requirements
+ Evidence of research and making in response to this; evidence of process, a body of work developed from week 1 to final week to be displayed at your desk during project
+ images and plans, sections or sectional perspectives, and details [parti plans, sections / scaled drawings @ 1:500, 200, 100, 50, 20, 5, 1] of your intervention in Prague Crossroads, formerly St Anna’s Church, Prague Czech Republic, establishing : how the intervention structures the building in relation to the spatial idea and program; inhabitation intention, how bodies engage with the space.
+ To be digitally archived in a concise manner and placed in the 352_studio dropbox and uploaded as a pdf pr powerpoint to stream, making sure you compile to the SD file naming standards
Learning Objectives
+ Research and investigate theatre architecture
+ Develop a spatial language into a existing site integrating materiality, construction, structure, and theoretical concerns
+ Advance an understanding of involved and varied programs and space
+ Express and represent your intervention through a variety of means and media with a high level of craft and in a way which extends the spatial language in the mode of representation itself
Assessment
+ Richly researchers; site, programs, planning, performance design and spatial typologies and translate these into spatial designs
+ Makes evident a strong and cohesive design process which shows development from an initial spatial idea to a developed scheme, and through details, materiality, construction / structure, planning and program
+ Method of expression of the project which is related to, derived from the found text, spatial idea and program, and which is convincing, evocative and well crafted
+ Evidence of research and makings at your workspace in studio
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