Just a short update on a couple of shows that I’m working on right now.
Firstly, is BlazeBlue OneLine which is a show that I designed the sound system for and also helped oversee the final stages of the sound design. The brain-child of Anthony Hamilton, this show mixes steet art and modern dance. I know that makes it sound a little like a community theatre outreach program, but this show is the furthest thing from it. Dancing with Anthony is Luke Smiles - these two guys are among the finest contemporary dancers in Australia right now - and this show is so packed full of unexpected moments and general awesomeness that you really have to see it to believe it. Now much time left however as this show is on tonight and tomorrow night at the ArtsHouse Meat Market in North Melbourne. Details here.
Secondly, I’m in the process of doing music and sound design for another ArtsHouse show called Get A Grip. This is a show that has been devised by the Trace Elements crew who are a diverse bunch guys that do “Parkour, Stunts, Performance, Athletics & Art”. This show mostly centers over Pakour and a huge scaffold set has been built inside the North Melbourne Town Hall for the show. Its shaping up to be quite a show and these guys can really move. The show also has a couple of films as part of it that are looking great. I’m working with old buds Nat Cursio (direction) and Jenny Hector. Find details on the show here - starts this coming Tuesday. This video below is from the development that trace elements did last year for ArtsHouse.
Saw this article in today’s AGE about Chunky Move’s“Glow”. I’m heading up to Sydney next week to put the show into the Sydney Opera House and operate it for a weeks worth of shows. I really dig this show. I think it’s one of the only successful ‘multi-media’ (…worst term ever - it makes me want to scream, or at least say a bunch of nasty & amusing stuff..) performances I’ve worked on.
I was chatting to some friends the other day about how it has taken about the last 10 years for ‘new-media’ work to start being interesting - rather than just stuff + screen, of which most is crap and dull. I think that it’s taken this long for artists to a) get a handle on the tech and b) start to be able to conceptualise from the ground up a place for the computer in performance. Thankfully the ideas seem to have moved on from the more process focussed stuff like, “Check me out - how awesome is that I can move and the stuff on screen does as well!?” or “I’m moving pixels in Melbourne and on the screen someone is moving the same pixels from Canada. It’s like talking on phone but slower and crapper. It’s the future.”
Apart from multi-media rants, I’ve been flat out mixing 2 records, one for a band called ‘Dust’ whose music I can best describe as ‘folk rock streaked with country, psychedelic and prog rock flavors’. The other disc I’m in the midst of is for ‘The Red Tree’ whose music is somewhere in the Sigur Ros territory of vast and expansive beauty. Then there has been the first two weeks of a new semester at RMIT, and more besides…
