“This project marks the naissance of an up-and-coming collective, spearheaded by opera stage director and creator Amanda Smith and composer, media artist, and audiovisual performer Maxime Corbeil-Perron. Their first project will be a portable, one-person opera, written for tenor and electronics that will occupy a space between retro-technologies, digital arts and opera. The residency will provide the platform for the devising process, thus allowing the behaviour of the visual technology we will be exploring to inspire our team and inform the dramatic narrative of the piece and its composition.
Smith’s lived-experience with Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD) has inspired the foundation of our project, particularly the symptoms of vivid flashbacks and flashforwards that can pull a person across different temporal spaces. At times, these symptoms can feel like bouncing between distinct moments from the past, present, and even the future, while others are like being simultaneously stretched across multiple, disparate timeframes. In psychology, these temporal symptoms are known as Mental Time Travel (MTT) and, although it is not exclusive to PTSD, they are certainly powerful symptoms of this diagnosis. Our technological explorations will focus on simulating MTT and the distorted perception of existing across timeframes.
Our project’s team, including Corbeil-Perron as the composer and digital designer, Smith as the director, Naima Phillips as the librettist, and Jonathan MacArthur as the performer, will use residency time to investigate the narrative capabilities of blending old and new technologies. For example, we are interested in exploring how to create a stereoscopic effect for live performance using an optical illusion known as the Pulfrich effect. With this theory, the audience wears glasses that darkens the view of one eye and, with lateral motion, one can create the appearance of three dimensions with a 2D image. We will explore the combination of this effect with other technologies, such as projection mapping and live-processing of musical improvisation to incorporate live-audiovisual modulations. Using historical and present-day techniques, we believe this strategy will generate a seldom-seen aesthetic in an operatic setting that ties in with our theme of MTT and its ability to manipulate perception.
In addition to exploring the combination of new and old technologies, our goal is to identify methods that can create replicas of the performer, with variations in depth and movement. Using a 3D mesh projection fabric called Hologauze, we will investigate ways to blur the lines between reality and simulation. Our experiment aims to create moments when the audience cannot tell which of the performer’s likeness is real, replicating the disorienting sensation that can accompany MTT.
With this residency, our team will gather the information we need to write a 3D opera that lives in the live theatre environment and utilizes the technology’s strengths in musical storytelling.”
