So as some of you may know I have been working on the Melbourne International Arts Festival this year as a secondment student. It is a requirement of my 3rd year studies at the VCA. I have been periodically posting updates of my work on Brightkite and Facebook, but thought it would be appropriate to give a little wrap up of my time, here on my blog. (this is kind of a prologue to the 1000 word report I have to write for uni anyway, but more interesting!)

My work started about a month out from the festival, at the festival office on Flinders Street in the city. I was inducted into the office by Russ Snelling, the production coordinator for “Outdoor Events, Fed Square, and the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV)”. Russ was to be my direct supervisor alongside Genevieve Cizevskis, the Stage Manager for the “Opening Night Concert”, and Rus’ assistant (of sorts). I was quite literally introduced to every member of the team present in the office that day, and I mean everyone. I met Pru in the Publicity department, Pia in Marketing, Rachael in Artist Liaison, right up to the director of the festival, Kristy Edmunds. The office is very well equipped, and is on the 5th floor overlooking Federation Square. Russ and Gen were situated in ‘the fish tank’, a room lined with glass bricks next to Reception. I was given my own desk in the Operations end of the office. The other end of the office is the Publicity end. I was signed up to the network, given an email address and encouraged to look at all the documents on the server to get a better understanding of how the Festival runs.

Longing Belonging Land - Birrarung Marr

My first week consisted of me sourcing quotations for various equipment, adding information to the Festival’s database (DataFest), and learning the ropes of the office. DataFest was a big learning curve, but it was created in house, so tech help was never far away. It is essentially a very tailored and amazingly useful database, that is given a massive amount of information, from crew contact details, venue specifications, supplier quotation information, right through to the flight information of the incoming artists. It is all based off a web server, so staff at the festival simply open an Internet browser (in this case only Internet Explorer), log in and are greeted with the home screen, with database news and a number of quick-links to useful places. There are then tabs on the navigation bar to the left of the screen that give you access to the other areas. The power of DataFest is its ability to generate very specific schedules and reports. After a week of data entry I was able to see the efficiency of the system when I was asked to produce a schedule for one of the drivers employed by the festival. It was as simple as clicking, typing her name, selecting the date range, specifying how much detail to use, and then clicking print. It took me under two minutes including the time to walk to the printer. I wasn’t alone in my learning curve on DataFest as this was the first year that Operations had used the system. Each year they port another department onto the system, next year it will be publicity.

The start of the Chris Doyle Ecstatic City Bump In

I was nearing the end of my 4th week at the office, and the festival was rapidly approaching. As the days counted down, more and more people were appearing in the office. I lost my desk about 4 days out from the opening to one of the artist liaisons. We were set to have a very full first few days, and alongside the preparations, we had our first event. It was part of the Ecstatic City project, by Chris Doyle, due to be constructed out the front of the National Gallery of Victoria. The performance piece involved photos of local people, and this filming day was to do just that. We set up nice and early, out the front of Champions Racing Museum, in Federation Square. It was the day before Grand Final, and as such the Square was also hosting a number of other events, such as a live sunrise filming. Our setup consisted of three sets of satellite uprights and black curtains, to make the backdrop for the photos. The camera gear was supplied by VCA Art Students and a hire company called Borges Imaging, and was operated by the artist and VCA Student assistants. Our job for the day was traffic management, making sure the curtains didn’t blow over, and feeding people to the site.

Workers work on a miniplex - National Gallery of Victoria Moat

Chris Doyle’s Ecstatic City Installation was our first day of “real work”. We started at eleven thirty on Sunday morning, securing the parking spaces, starting to set out bollards, and marking up the site. It was interesting to be on site that morning, and just watch the passers by. I never quite comprehended how many people there are in that precinct on a weekend, I am normally charging through there to get to uni on time. We were in for a long wait, as the first set of contractors wouldn’t be arriving until five. The contractors included Element Rigging, who were constructing the scaff towers (projection towers), and OnSet Arts who were building the walkway and the miniplexes (little projection rooms) on the water. Hede Electrics had already installed a catanery wire, and power box in the days previous. We were also to expecting a signage company to install signs on the towers, but it was to be confirmed, as the length of construction was an estimate.

Lighting Test - Chris Doyle

Once the contractors arrived, the work really started. Russ and NGV Security gave us all an induction, we signed the appropriate forms, the trucks arrived, gear was unloaded, and the structures started taking shape. First to be built was the walkway on top of the moat, then access could be gained to the miniplexes, a group of three small three meter by four meter viewing rooms that would feature visual work by local artists. The rooms were complete with external lighting, a data projector, speaker system and playback device, in this case a Mac Mini computer. I was sent home for a break overnight and returned in the morning to find that it had been a very productive night. Two of the miniplexes were finished, and the four scaff towers were almost complete. By Monday night most of the structural stuff was complete and it was onto the lighting installation, to be installed on the underside of the walkway. The lighting equipment consisted of 40 Dichroic Par 16 Birdies, and 24 iLED Multipar units. The lighting test was Tuesday night and was programmed into a DMX Streamer that would be active after 7pm at night. The projection rooms (Miniplexes) would run from 10am until midnight with the external projection starting up at 7pm. One of the highlights of the setup was showing my skills in Automator on a Mac. I programmed the computer to book up before 10am and run the DVD files, then if they didn’t execute, it would load the files from the DVD drive. Ecstatic City opened on Wednesday night coinciding with the Visual Arts Launch, held in the Great Hall of the National Gallery and was received exceptionally well.

Melbourne Ska Orchestra - Melbourne International Arts Festival Opening Night Concert - Fed Square

Our focus now shifted onto the Opening Night Concert, to be held on the stage at Federation Square. There were to be 4 musical acts, a speech from the Artistic Director and the Premier, before a procession heading down to Birrarung Marr for Margie McKay’s Longing Belonging Land. We started early that morning, moving supplies such as water, sunscreen, snacks, chairs, signage, water coolers, passes and t-shirts. We setup the two greenrooms, the side of stage tent, and received deliveries from Billy Hydes (Backline), Optical Audio (Camera Equipment). We then proceeded to sound check each of the bands, the FOH team was supplied by Microhire who are the in-house supplier for the whole of Federation Square. The sound check went well and the concert kicked off. My duties included assisting in the changeover, water distribution to crew and performers, escorting performers and maintaining the backstage area. The concert went exceptionally well, and I even got to escort the Premier from his car to the stage. Once the concert had concluded, I assisted in crowd management leading down to the Longing Belonging site. Once the Longing Belonging performance had concluded we commenced pack up, transporting equipment back across the road to the office and packing things away in the storeroom ready for the performance in BMW Edge and the Echolocation Installation, under Princes Bridge. We then headed to the MIAF Artist Lounge for some well-earned refreshments and some pizza.

Echolocation Rigging - Princes Bridge (Near Riverland)

Our next installation was Echolocation, a multimedia installation to be installed under Princes Bridge and manipulated via the Internet and control gear in BMW Edge. My role was quite simply crowd management, and there wasn’t much of a crowd at 1am. The project was very interesting though and I had the opportunity to have a good chat with Alex Stahl, the commissioning artist. The project centred around live recordings taken from under princes bridge, that would then be sent via Voice Over Internet Protocol to BMW Edge where they were manipulated and sent to multiple sites, including back underneath the bridge, the walkway between the Arts Centre and Hamer Hall, and the Fed Square Screen. It was an amazing project, but not without its delays. There was quite a large amount of soldering to be done to complete the circuit boards that would be mounted under the bridge, and due to the artist being unwell, he and the electronics didn’t get to Australia until very close to the bump in. It was no major problem, and in the end, the installation went up about 4 days late.

My workload during the running of the festival was decreased. I covered a few shifts at the Ecstatic City site, replacing Chis Sanders and Murray Dempsey, the permanent technicians. I also assisted on some events in the BMW Edge and did some office work in between. My role was gradually reduced due to several factors, including my involvement on the end of year dance season, and the decreased need for my work. I assisted on bump out of both Ecstatic City and Echolocation in a very similar role to that of the installation.

Overall, my time at the Melbourne International Arts Festival was an amazing learning curve, working with truly talented and very resourceful people. It showed me the inside or behind the scenes of festival operations, and gave me the opportunity to be involved in new media projects that pushed the boundaries of what art can be. I would like to thank Russ and Gen for being my guides through this time, and for mentoring me and showing me the better, or quicker or more logical way to do things. I hope to work on the Festival, and with any of the Festival staff, in the future.

DJ Spooky rocking out @ Meat Market - Melbourne International Arts Festival