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of interest…….

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    Berlin-Newcastle-Weatherby

    The above picture are the curtain calls for the show The Yellow Wallpaper which is currently in rep at the Schaubühne Theatre Berlin. We spent 3 weeks in rehearsal in Berlin then 2 more weeks in the theatre space but still didn’t seem to have enough time, Jon, Grant, Giles, Helen and Jack did a great job of pulling the technical and visual elements together and previewed to a very happy audience!

    Around Berlin whenever me and Meg’s went on a random wander we woud see loads of Lamp shops selling second hand antique table lamps and general light which was pretty cool, and one particular one which we would pass on our way to work called Berliner-Lampenwelt which has proved an inspiration for a long term project I’m working on with a couple of colleagues which will involve a few hundred channels of  12v dimming all custom made of course, keep checking back here.

    Straight after coming back from Berlin I was booked to go stage one and work on some things for a large up and coming project, its almost been a year since i was last down but was glad to see the owners do Boo, happily lying in the middle of the floor!

    It was also nice to see the Automation playback wing i helped design and build was still in use and hand a nice new facia. I was told these got used extensively on the Olympic opening ceremony which was nice to hear, although Smithy still doesn’t like the colours on the wheels ;).

    The following week consisted of getting some measurements from cads and 3D modelling what I can only describe as a roller-coaster track for some visualisation. A few mods to the PCB for the Automation Playback wing, finding spares for the overhaul of the Priscilla  london bus which was coming back for a refurb, and also sitting down with Neil and help come up with a solution for a job he was putting together for a Zaha Hadid designed shop!

    Fast forward 2 weeks and I was in the other hangar working with Ian, Ben, Parky, Simon and Iain presented with the huge task of rebuilding the Priscilla London bus which had been in Brazil for a year and had came back in a bit of a state. To get the 8ton monster across the world the whole thing comes apart but not without allot of unplugging unbolting and pulling. Now that it was in the hangar for a reasonable amount of time we decided to do a major LED rewire and re run most f the cabling to make the install easier on its next outing which will be Sweden!

    So, then, somewhere along the chain of wiring the 24volt and 0volt wires got accidentally reversed on one of the led panels and we discovered what happens. Funny enough the capacitors don’t like the reversed polarity and decide to explode, below is the aftermath.

    We eventually stopped blowng up thing and made real headway getting the bus into shape. Thinking back, since the insane build and install in the Palace Theatre in london in 2009 nothing had changed so it was quite a challenge to try and update and make things better. The pixel mapping is done using vvvv software split across 2 computers translating video colour data into art net spread across around 400 universes. Looking at the vvvv patch it is actually quite a monster and quite often I wonder, how on earth I managed to make it work! What I’m really happy with is that the patch is still going strong now and works a treat. Iain sent me the below picture after i had left the job, good work Iain!!

    Finally, for this blog update I have to share that i have, after much delay, installed the pull out keyboard tray into my GMA2 Wing custom flight case. Its been a long time in happening but I’ve been meaning to do it for ages instead of having my bluetooth keyboard balanced precariously on the desk, baby steps but things are taking shape!

     Thats it for now, quite a relatively short post considering all the theings whch have happened imbertween but ill aim to fill the gaps and quite soon!

     

    Andy

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    Snowbots in Berlin

    Its the start of another year and I find myself in Berlin again (currently 29th jan 2013) working on another Live camera theatre show. Previous to comming to berlin i spent a week in Ipswich working for the Philharmonia in preparation for a very install period of re-rite and Universe of sound in the spring! It was a busy few days testing, updating and preparing kit which can bee seen here, with Rich, Ash, Chris and myself very hard at work. Also whilst I remember check out the Philharmonia’s new app The Orchestra which is really quite good it is more expensive than your average app but you get allot for your money.

    Five days later I was in Berlin to join the Jon, Megan, Jack and the rest of the team to start work on Katie Mitchell’s new show Yellow Wallpaper. Luckily I had a MA2 to play with and program video for the show on but first had to set up the system.  This was the first time we had attempted to integrate LX and video onto the same console which had to be tested and proved. Generally in the past with Jons system we had taken the midi MSC output of the console and filtered out the shot number using MidiPipe and then displayed it using the system text function in Catalyst so that when stepping through Cues on the console the current camera shot number was displayed on all of the preview monitors for the actors and camera operators. In theory this should have been easy but because we had 2 consoles and multiple cue lists we couldn’t specify which cue-list would send the MSC so if video pressed GO and our cue-list was on executor 1.11 we would get a combination of the CUE number and the executor ID which was great but also if LX hit go we also got there executor ID and their CUE number which was also great. This was until, it was discovered that MidiPipe which we always use to filter down the MIDI would not read in the MSC output by the MA2. No matter what configuration we tried to output the MSC from the console midi pipe wouldn’t read this in and thus we could not filter the packet.

    This was one of those horrible situations where there was no time or resources to test this previously and being unable to make this work onsite with the time constraints was frustrating! More frustrating was that because of this and the camera operators complete reliance of seeing the shot numbers, was that because we could guarantee it to work straight out of catalyst meant I was to ditch the MA and program Cue-lists direct on the Mac! Onwards and upwards, 3 weeks in I can say its not really too bad, just slow, and with the inability to quickly copy states makes some of the simpler tasks slower.

    Its an interesting working environment, with allot of politics going on around the room which is definitely worth staying well out of and making the most of tea-breaks sponsored by our new friend Eddie sent to us by Karl 🙂

    Last week a couple of friends were touring to Berlin with Enter Shikari, Ed and Steve. Ed who id seen for the second time in 2 years at ipswich the year before and Steve who I hadn’t seen for probably a year. Me and Megs went to the gig which was lots of fun and then partied Berlin style afterwards. It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening although the following day was quite difficult. Only a few weeks, earlier Ed had proposed to his now fiancé onstage at the Roundhouse London, and I have to share the video below. Hats off to you Ed, bloody good work!

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vd4BlVxIuG4&feature=youtu.be

    Last week we also went to a trip to Teufelsberg in the Grunewald area just outside of berlin to see if we could get into the old abandoned listening tower which I visited last year. I had heard that shortly after i had climbed through a hole in the fence last year to get inside the compound that they had repaired all of the holes and were charging people for tours. This is true, all of the holes are repaired and there are a couple of people at the entrance keeping an eye out. It kind of looses some of the appeal of sneaking in and exploring but with a popular visiting place it was bound to happen. During our time walking arround the perimeter fence we founs this tree which had grown through the chain link fence and knitted itself in, pretty amazing!

    Today, 29th Jan, the snow is almost gone, its been a relatively warm couple of days and combined with the drizzly on and off rain/sleet theres barely any snow left on the paths. This is the complete opposite of sunday when most of the rivers were frozen and enough snow in Treptower park for us to make a Snowbot, he was named Herman, how original!

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  • October November

    In an effort to catchup to current times wit this blog, heres what been going on over the past few weeks since the last update beginning in October.
    The very beginnings of october was a week full working with  59Productions helping out with possible system design scenarios for the pending DavidBowieIS exhibition due to go into the V&A museum next March which looks like its going to be a pretty media intense experience, I’m pretty sure I cannot say anything more than that right now!

    With a couple of days off i was back on a plane all the way to South Korea to do the setup and some video programming for the Korean mount of Les Miserables in Seoul. The first week was a rather busy week setting up and getting the system ready for Jon arriving the following week to take over the programming up until press night, by the time everyone had their desks setup in the auditorium it was very much like mission control.

    On the sunday we had off Jon and Myself went to the aA Design museum in Seoul.

    I wasn’t sure what to expect when we turned up there but the place is actually a cafe first, and a kind of museum/shop second. Unfortunately the shop was closed when we were there but the decor of the cafe and the feel of the place is pretty cool, definitely a place to visit. Of the few places we managed to get around in our 2 sundays off in seoul this area around Sangsu rail station (37.547767,126.922955) was quite a neat area to visit!

    Upon returning home from Seoul i had decided to build my first Hexacopter and after quite a bit of research settled on the DJI F550 kit with the NAZA controller. The kit was pretty straight forward to build but quite a learning curve getting into the whole radio control business and such. After a few school boy errors in setup myself and my good friend Iain had a very successful first flight with the copter and we were massively impressed by the responsiveness of this thing. More about this in future blog posts!

    Whilst I was in Korea i had a call from Roy at Stage one Creative Services asking for some advice on a project they had where they needed to transmit power and data down a slip-ring to a huge mirror ball which had LED screens on the outside. I managed to find a product which would do the job and thought nothing of it until a couple of weeks later I saw a huge LED mirro-ball outside the TATE gallery, after quick mail to Hayden at the Colorsound Experiment who were StageOnes’s client for this and low and behold it was the same project!

    By the end of November I was back on a plane to South Korea again this time to work with Simon Wait on the automation side of Les Miserable Korea for its move from Seoul to Deagu. It was very good and rather busy 10 days working with Simon, Shin, Bak and Jong Min.

     Thats it for now, im currently sat in Starbucks in London with a strong coffee watching people walk by on a very wet Oxford street! Next update will once again be sooner rather than later!

    Andy

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