As the subject says, the final preparations for Salomé Crewe today. It's been such a busy week, two weeks, but today feels like the first 'normal' day.
We went for a talk in the library yesterday to see the space. Angus, the manager, was really warm and helpful and suggested that we might perform downstairs where the talk took place. This would be better, as the narrower upstairs space is flanked and backed with windows and streaming sunshine, which would make the projections almost invisible. This morning it was confirmed that we could perform downstairs, with a 60-minute setup, not long. We had three hours in Congleton, but we will have less equipment here. It will be daylit, so no lighting will be used, and I'll be using the smaller 150W amp; one keyboard, two mics, so doable in one hour, and we're the only thing on the bill so if things start a bit late it's not a disaster.
Parveen's talk was about her book and life of seeing angels, ghosts, and helping people using magical therapies. I don't believe in most of that, I can recognise the sales talk which she speaks instinctively like a Q.V.C. evangelist. I don't believe in a god or life after death, except in the minds of others, except in the mark we make in the universe, which is of course, inevitably permanent and tangible. Of the intangible, it's clear that reincarnation has many philosophical problems: Can we reincarnate into other, closely related animals? What if the population goes up or down? Who or what decides who is reincarnated where? What exactly IS reincarnated if not memories? And if memories are reincarnated, then why are not some people now super-humans with thousands of skills which were not learned - over time reincarnation would lead to the closure of all schools.
But there are more problems with angels, ghosts, auras, and other things. If you see something, eg. an angel, an aura, and nobody else sees it, then it's the same as you not seeing it, the outcome is identical to the vision not being there. Parveen talked about finding mysterious feathers everywhere - as though these were left by angels; what D.N.A. would those feathers contain? and why do angels have bird wings anyway, except in art? I find feathers everywhere too, yet no horns. Few people find discarded horns lying around. I suppose this is because demons just don't shed body-parts like angels.
The best story came from Angus, a story about a friend who packed two pork pies for a trip and later, when hungry, could only find one. This was attributed to supernatural forces. Perhaps the ghost pig floated away with its cooked body, in an homage to Pink Floyd. Ghost animals are remarkably rare. We're lucky not to see ghost wasps, moths, or spiders, despite the fact that more of them die each day than humans.
I've spent most of today finalising the new projections. Until the show I didn't appreciate the difference between an active screen and projections. Projections draw with light directly, and 'black' isn't a colour, it is nothing, off. White isn't very effective either, the best colours are, as in studio lighting, the secondary colours of yellow, cyan, magenta, and strong contrast is important too. Most of the videos were unchanged, but I've increased the contrast on two. For Dream Sequence and Sit With Your Ghost, which were grey, I've toned them in cyan, with a green (sad/old) colour for Rilke's photograph.
I wanted to remake Entwined In Infinity completely. The premiere video consisted of two eagles (well one, mirrored) but the light sky and generally light eagle too made it hard to see what it was, and the effect was poor. In my head, this poem and music was a sky-dance over water, and in a film that would be my aim, but for projections I envisioned a flight over a sort of digital landscape of waves, like an E.E.G. or 1980s computer landscape.
For this I made 8 lines with wave-like variations, and made them appear in the distance and move towards the camera. I added some smoke-like clouds, in cyan as in Dream Sequence, and a gradient for the sky and floor in blue and green respectively. Finally I made the camera sway left and right, bank, and rise and fall. The effect is quite amazing. Here's a screenshot:
I kept thinking that this represented the mind, a dance of thoughts, two thoughts interacting, so it matches the poem in this way; a dialogue between philosophers.
In between, I've found time to test the Behringer amp, which works and the crackle, present on one knob, is now gone - perhaps that was moisture. The sound quality won't be as good as Congleton primarily because it will be mono. Congleton, for me, already wasn't as good as it could be; I need a real grand piano really, the MODX piano is poor and the feel of the keyboard the worst of any keyboard I can remember, including my Yamaha PSS toys. The visual or sound quality of the show won't be as good as Congleton, but some aspects will be better.
