Wireframe costume in VRML
designer: Michael Oberle

Gertrude Stein Repertory Theatre is sponsoring a series of workshops for the research and development of a digital mobile projection system that will allow us to digitize and project live images onto the stage. Traditionally static and recorded, the images will become a mobile component of the live event. One of the most promising applications for the performing arts is the "creation" of characters by overlaying digital images from remote sites onto live actors who, through choreography and costume, function as animated projection surfaces. By expanding the artistic vocabulary, the system will open up enormous possibilities for innovation and experimentation in live theater and the performing arts.

After two years of concept and design work, production director Cheryl Faver and GSRT staff are working to refine the digital mobile projection system and apply it to a live production of Gertrude Stein's The Silent Scream of Martha Hersland, which Faver has adapted for the "virtual" stage from the novelist's Making of Americans. Incorporating a new range of aesthetic tools and effects, images of remote actors (senders) will be overlaid on actors in the local space (receivers) to create new repertoires of characters, visual metaphors and choreography.

During the coming year, a final series of technical and performance workshops will focus on hardware and software solutions for digital mobile projection. Through the system, characters and sets will be:
  • Communicated over digital networks from remote locations via cameras, or created by computer-generated animation and modeling techniques.
  • Shaped through the use of middle ware, which manipulates the image as it is relayed from camera or computer to projector.
  • Projected into the performance space using a system of mobile projectors whose movement can be tightly coordinated with live, moving forms on the stage.
The coordination of projected and live images in a large theater space is key. This will involve cutting-edge innovations in the fields of digital encoding and conferencing, digital display technology, computerized show control, and IP-based network synchronization and messaging. The research agenda will include:
  • Moving a projected digital video image across the stage in sync with a performer's choreographed movements
  • Coordinating projected images and performers with mobile projection units, cameras and monitors
  • Developing practical equipment and systems for digitizing and keying projected images
  • Synchronizing other digital media/stage components (e.g., virtual sets, animation, lighting) with performances

Workshop experiment:
Drawing on projected tablet

Workshop activities: test techniques to mount and control digital projection systems in the performance space; alter the shape of performance space and remote site to accommodate the equipment and choreography; design and test lighting plans that synchronize with digital projection; design and test costume systems that support digital character projection; research, test and synchronize equipment in all sites to coordinate them in a single integrated event.

Workshop experiment:
dynamic lighting control

The director will collaborate with a production team comprising artists from traditional theater, film and television, and digital media, including director, programmer, costume designer, director of photography, projection designer, actors and lighting designer. NY technology partners include Learning Worlds, a digital technology company that specializes in developing Internet-based facilities for collaboration and knowledge management, and DCTV, both of whom are donating services and facilities to the project.

The extended development process offers us the opportunity to develop individual scenes in conjunction with successive generations of digital tools and equipment. We anticipate that each workshop will reveal further problems and challenges. As the team works toward a desired artistic end, we will be able to modify and expand conceptions of the potential dramatic effect of the tool - then apply it to a live performance. In other words, as the tool shapes the product, the product shapes the tool. The ultimate beneficiaries are, of course, audience members who will be able to experience expanded visual and dramatic encounters in the arts.