The video body and video monitoring

Location video shoots have been conducted throughout the Story Bridge precinct. Visual locations such as the mangrove environs directly below the southern pillar and general structural details of the Story Bridge provide particular scenic focus. Other footage captures choreographed human movement within various locations around the precinct as well an underwater scene and a blue-screen shoot focusing on the video body. Camera techniques have included: rotoscoping, time-lapse, fixed camera and moving camera. As a scenographic element the screen based works are rendered as separate files and remain as a non-linear archive of video and motion graphics stored in digital format for live mixing. During the performance three video cameras have been utilised to mix live performance details with the pre-recorded and composited sequences.

The use of live camera techniques over the course of the project has developed through interrogating the ‘voice’ of the screen-image, its frame and its authorship. Giving the camera to the performer, allowing the visceral performing body amplify its own image becomes an intensification of focus and a distribution of the projected ‘voice’ of the screen frame. The mixing of distributed points-of-view is familiar to audiences through the conventions of screen and cinema narrative devices, it is perhaps less familiar in the syntax of live theatre. In Bridge Song I have designed live screen images that are not perceptually fixed, there is a shifting point-of-view created by use of multiple cameras mixed live into the projection surface. The intention is to distribute authorship of the screen-frame and push the content meaning rather than authorship of aesthetic continuity. This is manifestation of the philosophical principal of decentring and distribution as a consequence of collaboration. For example some scenes – ‘Globe Head’, ‘Humanity’ and ‘Pins’, displace the live performance action to amplify the video body and visceral moment simultaneously.

Significant copyright material has been generated for packaging as new media object. Prototype and proof-of-concept DVD and CDROM components have been generated throughout the duration of the process. These objects distribute Bridge Song product geographically potentially finding its largest audience. The new media object component focuses on screen-based production and sound recordings, departing from ‘black box’ theatre and live art concerns.

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