Role: Media Designer

Director: Kim Weild

Producer:  AZ-Arizona State University; NY- Our Voices

Venues: Galvin Playhouse, ASU; New Ohio Theatre, NY

Design Team:

Matthew Ragan- System Programmer/ Assistant Designer

Jesse Cabrera- Assistant Designer

Summary: Charles Mee’s play is a deeply personal and poetic exploration of the life and art of profoundly deaf outsider artist James Castle. Produced originally at Arizona State University and then remounted at the New Ohio Theatre in New York, Kim Weild’s direction called for an immersive and reactive media environment. Using live cameras and procedural animation techniques we turned the physical structures of the entire set into a virtual canvas for the performers to draw upon with movement as well as brush strokes from the actor playing James Castle. The captured and processed movements brushed on and off samples of Castle artwork throughout the production.

4 projector Dataton Watchout network with video capture inputs from a Black Magic Atem production studio receiving inputs from 2 live cameras and separate server running Isadora for computer vision motion capture and realtime processing of captured video.

Two 8K Barco projectors hung parallel to canvas the set with media, and 2 4K Sanyo projectors for surtitles on opposite walls of the theatre. Each scenic element was video mapped for geometry correction and content was built for each unique surface.

Artwork from James Castle was sampled, formatted, and reinterpreted for the unique surfaces of the set and prominent figures were digitally extracted and animated in Adobe Photoshop and After Effects.