Robe in Auckland Vinegar Bottle installation
- Details
This was part of the Auckland Live Fringe Town aspect of the city’s annual Fringe Festival event, an independent and popular open-access arts festival which took place earlier in the year, just before the Coronavirus pandemic shut down the industry for an indefinite period.
Rachel used the venue’s lighting equipment which includes Robe MMX Spots, WashBeams and T1 Profiles to help realise the piece, which was commissioned by Auckland Live programmer, Anders Falstie-Jensen.
Collaborating with Rachel was Bradley Gledhill who assisted in the design, rigging, lighting programming and timecoding; Thomas Press who produced the special 20-minute soundtrack; and dramaturg Benjamin Henson with whom both Rachel and Brad have worked on previous invigorating projects.
Combining a mix of technical disciplines and fusion of ideas, a performance concept was developed to unfold Elizabeth Clark’s traditional story – a favourite from Rachel’s childhood – in a new and engaging medium.
Lighting wise, this included the notion of creating an art installation using what are essentially rock ‘n’ roll moving lights, plus a few custom elements, and this was one of the key provocations.
The performance area was beneath a box truss in the centre of the room. The four MMX Spots and eight MMX WashBeams were rigged on this, with the single T1 Profile (generously on loan from Jands NZ, and Auckland Live subsequently purchased a new batch of 5 x T1 fixtures) was positioned right in the centre of the box.
Framing the piece with a narrative storyline structure was fundamental to Rachel’s vision of relating the tale The Old Woman Who Lived in a Vinegar Bottle which encompasses many contemporary and relevant themes.
Another galvanising factor was the room which usually hosts seated musical and theatrical performances but had to work spatially for Who Lived in a Vinegar Bottle. As it turned out people – audiences were limited to 20 per show – stood all around the space and moved as the journey evolved and propelled them through the experience - sound, lighting and imaginations working together to evoke a series of thrilling individual experiences.
The T1 Profile was selected for the centre luminaire because Rachel needed a powerful light source with framing shutters to keep it in a tight space, and a fixture with a wide range of looks, colours and effects for that central role.
At the heart of the installation suspended from the truss were three ‘pixel clusters’, each comprising multiple lightbulb shaped housings with a single LED tangled together by a spaghetti-knot of transparent cords.
Two projectors rigged on the trussing and pointing vertically downwards were used to project abstract moving images onto the floorspace immediately below the box.
All the lights were programmed on one of the venue’s grandMA2 consoles and ran to timecode for the four evenings that the show ran.
