WEEK 12: 4/7 – 4/11

This week we began development on movement 2 and movement 3 simultaneously. The mechanisms for these movements are slightly different from the first movement, but use the existing art assets. Thus, these are incremental upgrades to the mechanism of movement 1.

The major part of this week; on Wednesday was our first ever tech rehearsal at the Kresge Hall. We needed to see how we were going to power our computer and the projectors and see how the screen would display our images. We took a couple of the small screens that would be used for projecting the virtual instruments, a set of our stage risers and the tall chairs and lights, to simulate our stage design. This was the first time we were in the performance space with most of our equipment. This session was extremely helpful to us, as we realised what we needed to do with regards to lighting and stage design. We tested the brightness of our projectors, and how far the images will project. We also spoke with Sang Mok Lee, who would help us with lighting and providing power to our equipment. We discussed the various options available to us with regards to lighting and stage design.

We even had a playtest on Thursday with all the musicians. This was the first time we had all five musicians together. It was an opportunity for us to test our system with all the musicians playing their instruments simultaneously. We were aware that the live instruments would be considerably louder than all our tests so far, and had to test and fine-tune the mic inputs on the sound board. We managed to get good feedback and the test was pretty successful. The musicians enjoyed playing with our system too; they tried to make things happen on screen with their music. We discussed the possibility of an improv section at the end of the scheduled performance, where they could play what they wanted to create images on the screen.

 

We move into next week, beginning development on the last movement and polishing movements 2 and 3. We begin scheduling for our rehearsals and the final performance at the Kresge Hall.