Article in AV Magazine

There is a very in depth article about our work on Pippin in AV magazine. Clive Couldwell,the magazine’s editor came to see the show at the Menier Chocolate Factory.

Pippin is a darkly humorous coming of age story. Originally set in a historical world when it was first performed on Broadway winning five Tony awards, this latest version of Pippin is unusual in that it makes extensive use of animated projections.

Directed and choreographed by Mitch Sebastian, the production – which runs at the Menier Chocolate Factory in London until 25 February – features set design, projection content, animations and visual engineering by award-winning production designer Timothy Bird and a 10-strong team from his London-based creative agency, Knifedge.

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Serendipity

I have been using that word a lot recently. I was a the lovely Heart n Soul offices talking about the Dean Rodney Singers project and Dean and Heart n Soul like this:

I think it neatly sums up where all the best peoples’ heads are at. This video sums up what the Dean Rodney Singers project is going to be:

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Piracy and Wikipedia

So Wikipedia has gone dark for a day to protest about anti-copyright bills going through the Senate. Whether or not Wikipedia is right or wrong about SOPA or PIPA, it has reminded me of the frustration of the past 10 years watching these once great industries bury their heads in the sand and not move with the times.

I am very much in two minds about this.

A few points first:

1. For decades the music industry has been kind of conning the public and the musicians they represent by a) repackaging and reselling the same stuff to us over and over again whilst b) screwing the musicians and songwriters down to extraordinarily unfair recording and publishing agreements where musicians often only make 18% of the wholesale price of the record – whilst the record company takes 82% because of the expense of manufacturing and marketing the release.

2. Musicians, film makers and writers need to be paid for their work. Professionals need to be paid properly and – if we don’t – all we are doing is slowly degrading the quality of our media every day.

3. The music, TV, film and book industries have been incredibly slow at dealing with the new technology and looking out for each other.

So you could argue that the music industry deserved everything they got. However without the media industry, as inefficient as it often is, how do musicians, for example, who are generally hopeless at business, get their music heard and therefore sell records to make a living? There is a good reason why old, retired (and rightly so), bands are dragging their butts around the tour circuit yet again. Their coffers are running dry.

When iTunes launched in 2001 it was finally a way to buy music legitimately and effectively through micro-payments. Of course the music industry had slowly been decimated by nasty piracy sites, such as Napster etc., but Apple had finally given us a viable alternative to enable us to buy our music legally and inexpensively by the track. We didn’t HAVE to go in search of illegal music to put on our new Mp3 devices. Of course iTunes only really worked with the iPod at the time, but no-one really cared as the iPod was the thing we had all been waiting for. 1000 songs in your pocket!

Unfortunately companies like Sky have not learnt from this. They still put up a walled garden around their content, so if you want to watch Boardwalk Empire, for example, you have to wait until the DVD comes out or it becomes available for legal download. Of course the ardent fans are going to try to find the content they can’t buy legally via torrents and download it illegally. We don’t want to have to subscribe to a full Sky package to watch one series we enjoy. Downloading Sky’s content sends Rupert Murdoch wrinkle-free with rage, but he hasn’t moved with the times and given us viable alternatives to purchase his content. And besides, where was Sky when the music industry were ringing alarm bells? They were still selling subscription packages and newspapers. Sky lost the right to complain as it stood idly by whilst the music industry was slowly eroded, yet it was bound to happen to them too.

I passionately support the freedom of the internet, but both PIPA and SOPA sound like very ill thought through solutions to an ongoing problem – but one that does still need to be addressed. Will all the online protests work? Probably. But I am rather surprised and disappointed at the self service of sites like Wikipedia denying us access when they are unhappy when some injustice directly affects them? Why didn’t they close down over the Iraq War or China’s ongoing occupation of Tibet, or something that really means something to humanity?

We DO have to protect the freedom of the internet, but we also have to protect the creative industries that are made up of so many professional but struggling film-makers / musicians and artists who are slowly having their protection eroded away.

Of course it is great that the internet has levelled the distribution playing field, but I am not sure the complete amateurisation of our art forms is particularly good for our culture. The bar is set low and great literature, music and films, are often hard to find inall the noise and we need help to filter it out. There needs to be room for the creative amateur, but also a place for professional artists to present their work in a professional way, rather like youtube vs vimeo. The best parts of the media industry do this for us and provide us with great content to enjoy at an affordable price where we don’t feel like we are ripping off the little people.

I don’t have the answer, but international collaboration is needed between the collection societies the world over to create some kind of micro-payment system that works for us all. Maybe Wikipedia (the home of the amateur) was right to protest in this way, but instead of going dark, how about offering up a viable alternative?

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Backbeat Debuts in West End

Projection design specialists Knifedge have unveiled their latest theatrical collaboration in Backbeat – the stage adaptation of Iain Softley’s cult 1994 British film about the birth of The Beatles – which has just made its West End debut.

Set in the early 1960s, Backbeat tells the story of the fifth Beatle and original bassist, Stuart Sutcliffe. As the band made its name in the backstreet clubs of Hamburg, artist Sutcliffe fell madly in love with German photographer Astrid Kirchherr. Sutcliffe’s struggle in choosing between his best friend John Lennon and the band, or the woman of his dreams and his art, is the focus of Backbeat. All time Beatles rock ‘n’ roll classics from the era are performed live on stage throughout the production.

Knifedge’s projections – co-designed by Timothy Bird and Nina Dunn – play both a narrative and emotional role in the production. They bring the work of the two main visual artists to life – Sutcliffe’s paintings and Kirchherr’s photographs. The Knifedge team, which also included Lucy Ockenden, Sam Hunt, Aaron Trinder and Vron Harris, worked in close collaboration with the rest of Karl Sydow’s creative team. The show has been substantially reworked for the stage by director David Leveaux.

“The Beatles’ time in Hamburg provided a catalyst for all the protagonists and their art: Stuart as a painter, Astrid as a photographer and the Beatles as a band,” say Nina Dunn of the Knifedge team. “Our projections aim to represent the emotional importance of visual art to the story, and interweave the idea of how Kirchherr, Sutcliffe, their photographs and paintings contribute to the development of the most iconic band of the 20th Century.”

From a technical standpoint, the need to project onto multiple surfaces has called for a sophisticated rig. Knifedge is using four front-of-house projectors that are cross-focused to reduce actor shadow and internal set shadow, as well as an on-stage projector. These are driven by two main Catalyst media servers, with two back ups. Video is triggered via the lighting desk.

Backbeat runs at the Duke of York Theatre, London from 10th October 2011. Co-written by Iain Softley and Stephen Jeffreys, the production is directed by David Leveaux and produced by Karl Sydow, with musical direction by Paul Stacey. Andrew Edwards and Christopher Oram provided the set and costume design, with lighting design by Howard Harrison and David Holmes. Sound design is by Ed Clarke and Paul Groothius.

Time Out

David Leveaux’s production, transferred from Glasgow Citizens, offers a video montage of hectic paintings and grainy black-and-white imagery, evoking the art of both Kirchherr and Sutcliffe and lending the action a restless dynamism.

Variety

There’s a pale intensity to willowy Gedmintas’ performance as Kirchherr. She’s helped by the sophisticated use of video projection to show her passion for both photography and Sutcliffe. A lesser production would have overdosed on her now famous stills. But here, black-and-white video footage is used to establish a tone that is completely in keeping with Christopher Oram’s stark, impressively fluid design.

Financial Times ★★★★★

Time Out ★★★★ Metro ★★★★ Evening Standard ★★★★ Whats On Stage ★★★★

Guardian ★★★ Sunday Times ★★★

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Information is Beautiful

Information is a tricky subject to deal with. As a visual person I can find myself getting lost in pain text information and not really understand the significance behind it. Once numbers hit a certain point I switch off and find it hard to comprehend the magnitude of them.

For instance, the Iraq war cost an estimated $3000 billion. What does that mean? I can’t understand what 3000 billion is but when I think about it in these terms I get closer. If a million was converted into seconds it would be 12 days but if a billion was converted into seconds it would 31 years! This helps to come closer to understanding but is still quite a dry way of looking at information. David McCandless calls himself a ‘data journalist’ and he understands how we need visuals to understand the information around us. Our current lifestyle mean we are constantly being feed information or data glut as David puts it, and it’s hard for us to take all this data in. However, through visualising the information we can start to see the patterns and connections that matter. Look at David’s ‘The Billion Dollar-o-Gram’. Suddenly $3000 billion make sense.

Think about our own planet. How large is it? The circumference is 40,075.017 km but again, what does that mean? It could be a random collection of numbers for all I understand. But when I watch a visualization of the size of our solar system I begin to understand how very tiny our planet actually is.

I have been thinking about this recently because Knifedge is going through a rebrand and one of our biggest issues is how do we communicate all our offerings without overloading people. A simple solution would be to use a diagram and lay it out for all to see. Obviously this isn’t a new idea, it’s been done before but it is tricky to get right. Look at AirSide’s ‘What we do…’ diagram. It’s overwhelming and a bit confusing, too many colours. But look at Australian based consultancy Folk’s ‘What we do…’ diagram. it’s clean and clear, they break it down into three offerings that all have three sub-offerings. Simple. Information can quite often be hard to digest and breaking it down and laying it out visually can be an easy  and quick solution to this.

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Live audio reactive visuals for Wella International Trend Vision Awards

By Kurst and sometime Knifedgers, Karim Beyrouti and Farley Brian.

Wella ITVA – Young Talent and Colour Competitions Visuals from Knifedge on Vimeo.

November 6th, Halle Freyssinet, Paris.

Projection introductions and flag sequences provided for the ITVA competitions.

Projection – Knifedge and Kurst

Lighting – Richard Knight

Choreography – Kim Gavin

When we were asked to create a set of live audio reactive visuals for the Wella International Trend Vision Awards we initially researched the use of various technologies, this boiled down to a choice between; Adobe AIR and Processing. Processing (an open source programming language based on Java) was a strong contender for this project, however we were also aware that Adobe AIR 2.0 has a new feature that allows for raw data access to live audio streams, as well as being more flexible in terms of quick amends and customisation.

One test concept incorporated a 3D engine where thousands of multi coloured particles work in tandem with wireframe meshes to animate in time with any live audio input. In conjunction with the 3D compositions, we also developed a 2D particle system to create additive visuals that looked like audio reactive light beams.

The use of Air also provided a common set of features for asset management, layout, and controlling the overall visual output in a variety of ways. We went back to the client with these results and began the process of incorporating concepts and ideas that formed into storyboards for the three audiovisual pieces.
As the application was going to be used in a live environment, the first step was to develop a dual screen application framework that incorporated a user interface so the visual pieces can be triggered, switched and adjusted without having to reload or reconfigure the application in between sets.

With the core framework in place we began to develop the individual audiovisual compositions. The biggest technical challenge was implementing audio processing and analysis for the live audio stream; running an FFT (fast Fourier transform) analysis on the audio proved too processor intensive, so we ended up using an ‘arithmetic mean’ to calculate the changes in levels over time, as well as using an external DSP mixer and an ASIO audio interface to process the audio signal before sending it to the visuals machine.

The DSP mixer helped equalize the live audio input levels and bring out the rhythms with a gate effect to process the audio, this passed through the ASIO interface to the computer with zero latency enabled so the audio processing could take place without any unwanted delay to overall signal processing. Also, Offloading some of the processing to dedicated external hardware helped remove some intensive calculations in flash and allowed us to push the visuals a little more.

Once complete and approved the visuals were optimized for the Catalyst system during technical setup. This involved optimizing the content for alpha keying, and transparency blending. All this is only half the story though; we also developed a number of animated 3D video backgrounds that complemented the audiovisuals.

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3i digital Platform Launches Canary Classics

After a year of experimenting in search for the perfect media online solution for Canary record label we have been working with the amazing Julie Kagan on the 3i platform. 3i Platform combines unique and intuitive user interface, which is targeted at very specific needs an entertainment business using powerful backend technology. It provides us with “one stop shop” solutions for all of our needs – Content Management, CRM, full e-commerce and fulfillment management, extensive reporting system, integration with payment systems of choice, readily available communication interfaces for outside vendors. It employs “pay-as-you-go” cloud computing principles for the storage and delivery of sizeable media files.
Following Web 2.0 concepts, the Platform allows integrating any plug-ins, widgets and media content into the fabrics of the site in a matter of seconds. It is also built to “export” our own media and e-commerce content to the sites of our partners and clients.

The system is a combination of databases holding various types of inter-related information. All media is delivered through the cloud via Amazon S3 and we have already taken our first sales!

We are now looking for new business for this fantastic platform.

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Creativity vs the Procurement Process

I was at the launch of a report by the Associate Parliamentary Design and Innovation Group in association with the DBA on Tuesday. It was a rather surreal affair with high tea at midday but it was rather delicious.

This event could not have come at a more appropriate time. We have in the last 12 months being going through a rather torturous affair of exposing ourselves to the procurement process for the first time.

It all started with Milton Keynes Council. A 10 month project.

I had sent an email to Deborah Dawton, chief executive of the Design Business Association, an email in October after finally having been awarded a place. She called earlier to say my email had become a case study in the report.

See here for the page with the case study on. It explains it all really. I am pleased to have had our voice heard.

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The Semantic Web

This is really exciting and something I hope that we can work on soon. Just finding the time!

See here for Sir Tim Berners-Lee TED talk last year and the resultant website from the government. Almost makes me want to vote for them again! Almost…

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Hounslow Projections

This is filmed from the projection position in Hounslow Park trying out our latest projection content for the Heliosphere. It might shake a bit…it was cold!!!

Hounslow projections from Knifedge on Vimeo.

This is a film of all our latest 3D content for the Heliosphere filmed in December in a cold park in Hounslow.

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