Saturday, 1 March 2008
Voluminis (working title) will be a collaborative project involving voice, performance, film and synchronised image projection art.
Adelaide Vocal Project, under the musical direction of Timothy Sexton, will work with Director Andy Packer and Projection Artist, Cindi Drennan, whose work involves using video and projection technologies to project imagery mapped onto architectural forms in public spaces—a synthesis of form and the illusion that light creates within that form.
Together we will research the rich and colourful history, as well as the spacial properties (dimension, acoustic and light) of the Queens Theatre, and the resulting performance will tell tale of the Old Dame through integrated site-specific projections, vocal performance and an exploration of different uses of the space. The work will be performed twice, once in April/May 2009 with a possible second season during the 2010 Adelaide Fringe.
The team will also include Cindi Drennan is a high calibre multimedia and projection artist who has presented internationally and at high profile events around Australia. Cindi’s work involves cross-disciplinary processes combining film, illustration and lighting with architecture, sculpture and performance, often with people who have not worked with projection art before.
The Queen’s Theatre offers immense possibilities to engage with space and form in new ways.
On the corner of Gilles Arcade and Playhouse Lane in Adelaide’s west, Queen’s is managed by the History Trust of South Australia who’s resources we expect to utilise during the research process.
The rustic state of the theatre, with no stage, seating, lighting or other infrastructure is of course perfect for a project such as ours and given the historical significance of the façade, the building ideally lends itself to the possibilities of a promenade-style performance both inside and outside the building.
Adelaide Vocal Project has forged a reputation for realising challenging contemporary scores with strength, rhythmic precision, technical brilliance and an x-factor excitement. (see summary of reviews attached.)
The choral music for this project will be chosen and developed as part of the RSVP process, exploring both the acoustic possibilities of the space as well as the stories that will weave into the final narrative and will exploit the particular strengths the ensemble has demonstrated in performance over the last five years.
It is likely that the selections of choral music, sometimes only very short sections, will create sound pictures that evoke emotions, thoughts and concepts, rather than exist as whole works with a narrative thread or compositional structure.
They will be woven into a continuous 60 minute (approx) collage appropriate to the historical and acoustic properties of the building, creating a vibrant, ethereal and sometimes surprising sound. The music will start with western choral music as a base, possibly crossing different eras and styles, but will also explore different possibilities of vocal production and projection in the chosen space.
Cindi will work with the team throughout the development and performance process to develop light and video imagery which will be a fundamental and integral part of the final narrative, exploring the immense possibilities that the Queen’s history provides and evoking, through suggestion and illusion, the sounds and images of a building that now lies largely silent.
It is envisaged that the singers would perform in a combination of live performance, pre-recorded video, and live projected video, fusing the sounds and images into a magical and dramatic spectacle.