Photo of a recent dance work @ VCA

As you may know, I have just finished my studies at the Victorian College of the Arts, which I undertook over 4 years. During my time at the college I was exposed to a wide range of artists, giving industry connections and a skillset that I will be eternally greatful for. Recently, the college has been struggling for money, and as such (just before I started), it merged with Melbourne University. This was not much more than a firming up of the finances of the college and was not seen as much of a threat.

Doorway @ VCA

Last year, the college started to bleed; it was renamed the FACULTY OF THE VICTORIAN COLLEGE OF THE ARTS. The Victorian College of the Arts, as an instution did not exist anymore. Recently, the University of Melbourne 2010 Business Plan was released, stating that the Schools of Dance, Drama and Production will be condensed into the “School of Performance” while the Schools of Film and Television and Visual Arts will be diluted into the “School of Exhibition”. (The School of Music has already been amalgamated with the University’s music department as reflected in the College’s recent rebranding as the V.C.A.M.)

This is the first direct hit for the college. You can read more about the changes and cuts to this wonderful arts college at www.savevca.org

Iron gates of the Art School @ VCA

WE NEED YOUR HELP

- Head over to www.savevca.org and take 5 minutes to write to the politicians that could save the VCA.
- Follow the campaign on twitter at www.twitter.com/savevca
- Join the campaign page on Facebook at http://tinyurl.com/o8jxwl
- Join the mailing list by visiting http://tinyurl.com/rcsqte
- Write to the media outlining your contact with the college and reference the site (savevca.org)
- Talk to your friends about the changes and spread the word

Together, we can force the state and federal governments to fund this amazing arts college.

If you would like further information, please feel free to contact me.

Thanks for your time!

Geordie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIp1H9D4SGE

Various Photos – VCA Dance Transmutation CLICK HERE to see the full set

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

VCA Dance - Transmutation Flier

So it has finally come to the end of my days at the Victorian College of the Arts, and as such, my final show has rolled around… Very quickly actually.

So…

VCA Dance and VCA Production presents “Transmutation” four new works by Brett Daffy, Neil Adams, Anna Smith, and Phillip Adams, involving the 1st and 2nd year Dance Students at the VCA. I am the Lighting Designer for Brett Daffy’s work, The Lockard, and Anna Smith’s work, As Yet Un-Named.

So please feel free to click on the image above to see the full PDF flier or click here to view the VCA website.

Undergraduate Dance Season 1: VCA Dance VCA Production Years 1 & 2

New works by Choreographers: Brett Daffy, Neil Adams, Anna Smith and Phillip Adams

Start date

12/11/2008

End date

15/11/2008

Dates and Times

8pm on Wed 12 to Sat 15 Nov 2008
2pm on Sat 15 Nov 2008

Cost

$20.50/$15.50

Contact

Gasworks Arts Park

Telephone

03 9699 3253

Further Information
Gasworks Arts Park, Cnr Graham and Pickles Streets, Albert Park
(Melways Ref 2J H7)

The story behind my most recent light sculpture, begins with my second year lighting class at the Victorian College of the Arts. Rachael Bourke, a prominent and award winning Melbourne lighting design was our guest lecturer for a series of 8 classes, replacing our resident lighting lecturer, John Comeadow. Rachael’s most famous work, is the award winning architectural lighting design of the Victorian Arts Centre’s, Hamer Hall. She also has a very long list of stage and other credits to her name.

“Pink out of a corner – To Jasper Johns 1963″ by Dan Flavin

“Untitled (to Paddy)” by Dan Flavin

During our work with Rachel we were guided through what she believed are the main elements of light and lighting design. One of these elements encouraged us to look at artists that used light or lighting to create or make some form of art. The scope was broad and included many photographers and sculpture artists. She presented a series of artists that shaped her work, one of which included Dan Flavin, a light artist who’s work included only commercially available fluroscent lighting fixtures. I was immediately taken by his work due to its ability to make light a beautiful object, and to play with the viewers idea of light, especially fluorescent lighting. From these examples we were encouraged to design a work that took elements from these artists’ designs. My original work is shown below.

Untitled -1, by Geordie Barker  – The Shed, August 2007.

This work was took elements from two of Dan Flavins works, “Pink out of a corner – To Jasper Johns”, and “Untitled (to Paddy)”, both featured above. My fascination for this mans work revolves around his use of such a difficult fixture, and his linear focus. My work as displayed uses two fluorescent tubes, one blue and one white and is similar to one of Flavin’s pieces,  “Untitled, (to Paddy)” which features one 6ft fluro tube with a smaller one strapped to it, leaning against a wall. The reason I chose to alter the location of the tube (into a corner) was due to my belief that this would enhance the texture on the environment around the light source. I chose to use two of the same sized tubes to keep some symmetry.

Flavin’s use of only fluorescent fixtures was unusual, due to the limited control capabilities of these lights. He took a usual, predictable, practical everyday light fixture and played with its parameters. One of these was position, a key component in his work, as shown in every piece he ever made. Other aspects include colour, line, reflection, lighting as object, lighting on object, shape, pattens and space.

I hope to create works in the future that push the boundries of lighting sculpture and make people think twice about normal light fittings. For more of my past work please CLICK HERE!

The course this year is home to 5 puppeteers, Sabrina D’Angelo, Gai Anderson, Rachel Guy, Lisa Foote and Iris Radovic. The 5 puppeteers are an extremely diverse group of people with a wide range of backgrounds, a very large age range and varying interests. My work on the project was as Sound Designer for Sabrina D’Angelo’s and Gai Anderson’s pieces.

Sabrina D’Angelo

Introduction
Sabrina’s piece told the story of a lonely character dropped into an unfamiliar world, and his search for companionship and happiness. It involved the creation of a strange barren, alien landscape incorporating a wide range of different objects, ranging from tin cans to used condoms. The piece had an important flow as a story, it started with adventure, then moved to fun with a companion, then to obsession, then a character building affection, then intimate interaction, which ultimately led to murder and the remorse felt after committing such an act.

Working with Sabrina
One of the first things that Sabrina and I worked on in the piece was the way in which we wanted the audience to feel. We studied the difference in emotions of the different scenes and agreed that each scene needed to be to the point and naturalistic.We both felt that we needed to introduce the audience into the world that Fin (the main character) had been dropped into. As Sabrina and I had broken down the piece into sections and allocated each section an emotion, I set to work to source the different tracks we would use. Sabrina has already decided on her final track, a song by Damien Rice called Cold Cold Water. It featured strong lyrics
and a stirring musical accompaniment. For this reason I chose not to use spoken work in any other section of the piece.

The Sound Design
The first track was called “About Fun” by Psapp, a track that required heavy editing to take out all of the lyrics. It featured a great bopping beat with toy sound effects over the top. Sabrina enjoyed playing with the characters in that track and happily described it as almost sounding like a Hello Kitty Orgy. The Second track was also by Psapp and called Always in my head. This
track also required heavy editing to take out the lyrics, but featured a very flowing obsessive drumbeat alongside an electronic gurgle. It perfectly represented the scene where the character is drawn to a dummy like object thet he receives pleasure from. This tracks drum beat was faded out when the other girl character entered, but the electronic gurgle remained as a lingering reminder of the dummy.

The gurgle discretely faded into the intimacy of a track called Upstairs, also by Psapp. This track used Foley of creaking floors and footsteps to create the beat alongside a toy xylophone and a wallowing trumpet. This track was also stripped of its vocals. This section of the piece was the most important part as it led to the confusion of the main character and ultimately him losing control. At the end of the song, he gets carried away and is pushed back by his girl companion, this is where I included the use of static to create disorientation and drama. The track was played through an FM transmitted and tuned out on a standard FM radio, the output of which was recorded by a computer. This created an effective and realistic tuning out of the sound. The static was deliberately the loudest sound in the whole piece. This was included for two reasons; the first was that it was arguably the most important part of the piece, and second to give even more emphasis to the silence that followed it. The reason for the use of silence was to allow the character to connect with the audience and have the realisation of what he has done.

I believe that a stories most important part is its ending. The ending of a story usually provides a moral, a meaning or a resolution. Thus the use of our final track Cold, Cold Water, by Damien Rice. Not only is the dialogue in that song literal, as the character is surrounded by cold water, but the song tells the story of loss and isolation. The last track was edited to end on the sound of swelling chanting and an echo of inaudible words.

Gai Anderson (Click here to listen to final sound design)

Introduction
During the pre-production period Gai’s piece went through many changes, but the general premise never changed. Her piece told the story of a family, who had been happily living in a forest, until the introduction of the city, and the complications of money and possessions. This impacted on the family and as the environment changed, so did their daily lives. It followed the family’s son, and his relationship with his friend, the bird. With narration, and cute subtext the piece was very much a performed fairy tale or folk story, and with this came the challenge of creating a Soundscape that allowed for some imagination.

Working with Gai
It was decided that the piece would begin and end with ambient bird sounds, this was to put the audience in the scene of the piece and to give closure on the story. For this I used a combination of BBC Sound Library tracks and a track recorded by the puppeteer on her home
property. Ambient noise also played a large part in the body of the piece with the traffic sounds being layered over the top of each other. The music sourced for the piece was deliberately of a non emotive genre. The puppeteer originally described it as Gypsy music, but we narrowed that down to music that used no electronic instruments and that was instrumental.

The Sound Design
A Melbourne based band called The Band Who Knew Too Much were an ideal candidate due to their use of piano accordion, woodwind instruments and basic drum beats. Two of their tracks were used in the piece, Gypsy M.F. and Spinning Round and Round. The Spinning Round and Round track was editing to include only one introductory verse, and no chorus. This was due to the length of the music, and its importance in the piece.

Another prominent sound in the piece was the factory bell. The bell was designed to be the only electronically generated noise in the design so that it would stand out from the rest of the Soundscape. It was panned hard to the left of the speaker system to create an effect of distance. I created the track by generating a tone and then applying a series of delay and echo effects to it. It was designed to sound more like a fire alarm than a factory whistle.

The piece was designed to feature only two sections of silence. The first was the start of the narration, and this was intended to bring the audiences focus into the playing space after the environment ambience. The second is when the bird doesn’t return, and this is due to the importance of this scene as a catalyst for the boy to make the forest return. We return to the forest sounds including the bird whistle which is now included in the whole sound, not just from the side of stage.

Summary
Overall, the piece created worked very well with the sound design. It was a dangerous piece to design due to the relative ease of cheesy and over literal sound opportunities, but I believe the sound helped to tell the story and helped to connect the audience to the actions onstage.