InfoMus Lab

Multimedia interactive systems for on-stage real-time movement analysis and control of sound synthesis and live electronics, in Luciano Berio's azione scenica 
"Cronaca del Luogo"

Salzburg Festival, July - August 1999

Multimedia systems based on the EyesWeb platform were developed for the music theatre work Cronaca del Luogo of Luciano Berio for the opening of 1999 Salzburg Festival (July-August 1999). Here we only shortly address the interaction issues and interface technology developed for Berio's work, in collaboration with Centro Tempo Reale. We designed, in collaboration with the staff of Tempo Reale, the interaction mechanisms for one of the main actors of the work, Nino, played by David Moss. Nino is a character with a double personality: one intelligent and, let's say, crazy and aggressive, the other a sort of repository of knowledge and wisdom and calmness. These two personalities are modeled by two different live-electronics contexts on his own voice, that he controls by his movement. David Moss, according to his movement from one part to the other of the stage, had the possibility to change smoothly in real time his voice from one character to the other. David had small sensors on his costume (FSRs), connected to our Wireless-Sensor-to-Midi system. Further, a camera placed over the stage detects his overall movement on the stage, to recognize how he occupies the stage. We therefore developed a setup able to partially cover both Kinesphere and General space. This information is used to change the degrees of intervention of the live electronics between the two contexts corresponding to the two characters. Therefore, he had the possibility to manage a sort of morphing between the different characters, creating a interesting dialogue between the two Nino personalities.

 

Rehearsal of Luciano Berio's Cronaca del Luogo at Studio C of RAI (National Television), with staff from the Laboratorio di Informatica Musicale of DIST, from Centro Tempo Reale, and with the singer-performer David Moss.