Pierrot Lunaire
21 short animations and graphic designs
The opera is structured in 21 songs, and the event space on 3 floors provided the opportunity to split the performance into three parts with 7 songs on each floor.
To create a spacious ambiance we lit the space with star projections. Actual Nasa footage of the Moon was projected onto the ceiling.
Since Kandinsky was a friend of Schönberg and the mutually inspired each other, I animated Kandinsky paintings and projected them in the second floor, the bar area of the space.
Pierrot Lunaire - Exposing classical music to audiences
GOAL
Collective 1781 is an international collective of musicians and interdisciplinary artists. Launched in Autumn 2018, its mission is to explore new listening and performance methods with music, and offer an alternative to the traditional music industry for both audiences and creators.
My goal for the visual part of this project was to create a mysterious atmosphere.... Dark. Mysterious. Intense. Horror. Playfulness.
Audiences will enter the world of Pierrot, a surreality and become a physical participant in the work as they trace the steps through the moonlight and into eventual redemption.
Love. Sex. Jealousy. Violence. Crime. Blasphemy. Homecoming. Nostalgia. Live through the emotions of Pierrot as never offered before.
“The poet, urged on by his devotions,
Becomes intoxicated with the sacred beverage;
Enraptured, he turns toward heaven
His head, and, staggering, sucks and sips
The wine that one drinks with one's eyes.” - Albert Giraud, ‘Mondestrunken’
COLOURS: White (moonlight). Black. Red (blood)
Thematic Ideas
RESEARCH
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Chromotherapy
Pseudoscientific practice in vogue in the early-20th century favoured by Kandinsky and friends. Closely linked to the Theosophy movement that was popular across the USA and Europe, that explored the use of colour to heal sickness. Can be used as thematic narrative tool to change the atmosphere and mood - intense colours as the main set design element.
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Numerology
The piece of music is strongly linked to certain numbers: 21 short pieces create the entire work (which is also Opus 21, and he began composing it on March 12, 1912); divided into 3 sections of 7 pieces. 7 performing musicians (incl. conductor) on stage. There are several 7-note motifs in the work; the first line of each poem occurs three times (repeated as line 7 and 13). 13 is another key number, with each poem being 13 lines long.
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Kandinsky + Der Blaue Reiter Connection
Schoenberg and Kandinsky shared a close friendship for several years, as evidenced in this book . The two shared an obsession with the potential of colour and musical form, and assisted each other in developing artistic work (Kandinsky’s ‘Der Gelbe Klang’ musical theatre piece, and Schoenberg’s ‘Die Glueckliche Hand’ in particular). Adding elements of Dadaist costuming/set design would be an interesting visual theme to work with, as well as elements of colour design from Kandinsky’s manifesto ‘Concerning the Spiritual in Art’
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Physical and Psychological Journey
The venue is essentially a quadrangle with two floors ascending above it in a gallery viewing. One possible concept would see the audience venture through Pierrot’s physical journey, with each floor completely contrasting with the previous experience, capturing the disembodiment and symbolist ‘otherworldly’ element that theatre offers.
by Chris Lloyd, Collective 1781
FORMATS
FORMAT
The project involved 3 projections of Kandinsky paintings, 21 graphic countdowns for social media, a typographic animation as well as various star/moon videos and graphic designs.
The Moon - for Pierrot Lunaire
THE MOON
Concept
Some nights, when the moon is large and full, we marvel at its grandeur. Other nights, it seems small and inconspicuous, but one thing we are always aware of is that it is ever-changing, growing from a thin sliver to a round, glowing orb and then slowly fading back again to nothing.
In this subtle way, it reminds us that all things on Earth have a natural cycle. Water evaporates from the ocean and falls down again as rain. Fruit falls from a tree, carrying a seed that grows into a new tree.
We are born, mature into adults, age and eventually die, but our children are there to start the cycle over again. Some people believe that the "rebirth" of the moon hints at the renewal of the soul through reincarnation.
The idea to show real footage of the moon and not an abstract version of it, is to bring the performance night into reality and "down to earth".