In this blog I will talk about some ideas I explored in visual presentation of online streaming concerts or recorded live performances. This is something musicians did not think about in the previous world of LIVE live music as it is a work of a camera man and a lighting engineer, but now we, musicians, have to learn a bit about it too.
In search of new and exciting ways of presenting my music online I started to look onto VR experiences. Tech magazines tell us it is a growing segment, promising it a big future. The famous Travis Scott and Fortnite's Astronomical concert is a great example of opportunities for experiences this technology offers. The biggest downside of it is the cost, Inside Imogen Heap’s cutting-edge VR concert provides a peek behind the scenes of VR experience creation. The accessibility to the audience is also limited to one person per VR set, with the price tag for a starter kit is £300-400.
I also looked into 360 video. It is much more accessible, can be enjoyed on any computer without the need for extra tech and has been successfully used by many artists. This is something I could practically experiment with at some point, inspired by tranquil Björk: Stonemilker, but at the moment I am more interested in Projection Mapping. Online streaming/ video recording of live performance allows to set the camera close up on a face to project a mapped images on it, or use the full body as a canvas. For an artist it requires a projector and a powerful computer to run it, but it doesn’t require extra technology for the audience to experience it at home, making it more accessible. I have been in talks with a Projection Mapping artist and hope to share with you some of our experiments later this year.
In a meantime, I’m learning to to create more interesting light for a simple broadcast. My standard soft box provides an excellent lighting for a decent video quality, but it’s wash- out white colour lacks anything interesting, hence, I started to look into cinema lighting techniques. I hope to achieve this with home available resources- like table lamps and candles, but I fear it will be the usual case - to make the scene look natural and simple would require more tech and work behind the scenes.
I have also started to learn free but powerful video editing software Da Vinci Resolve. Participation in community project The Walk with Amalallowed me to put learning into practice, as well as experimenting with audio manipulation in Ableton Live. I recorded video and sounds of the steps through the last year's wheat field, then manipulated audio with devices in Ableton Live to create a different, digital soundscape. I also overlaid videos of me reading a part of a poem with a video of bird murmurations I captured on my walk at the Skylarks Nature Reserve.
