I'm John Huntington, author of Control Systems for Live Entertainment, the first book on show control and entertainment control systems. Through Zircon Designs, I do consulting and design work on entertainment control, show control, and audio systems, but this site contains many non-commercial resources related to entertainment, technology, and anything else I find interesting.
Ooops, forgot to release this post! Here in Orlando at LDI, my first session (DMX) is tomorrow.
Shot this Monday night. Still working on getting a good compression setting, but this one's getting closer:
There's one meteor in there if you look closely...
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We usually have a hike and dinner at LDI, but where do you hike in Orlando? So we're going to ICE! instead! See you there! |
I had seen some of these Rock-afire videos, with a pretty sophisticated animatronic setup performing modern indie songs, like Arcade Fire:
NIN:
MGMT:
I knew these systems were made back in the 80's by Aaron Fechter of Creative Engineering, Inc. However, thanks to an email from James Hergen, I found out that there is now a documentary, called The Rock-afire Explosion:
The story of Rock-afire is crazy, with a long history involving Showbiz Pizza Palace (additional link here), and its battle with Chuck E. Cheese's. Rather than summarize it, you should click those links and read the craziness for yourself. I just ordered the DVD of the movie.
I'm trying some new time lapse techniques, and shot this from my roof yesterday:
My little Nikon (P6000) has a built in time lapse mode, that takes photos and compresses them automatically. I made this time lapse by shooting lots of individual pictures with the P6000's built in intervalometer, and then used using HandyAVI and the Accusoft Picvideo Motion JPEG encoder to make them into a motion JPG movie. I then let Vimeo compress it. There's still a few glitches but overall I think it looks OK. Now, if I can just get my Nikon D90 to behave--when I shoot with an intervalometer on that camera, I get some weird movement inside the frame.
Monday, November 9, 2009 at 09:52PM in Entertainment Technology, Interesting Show by John Huntington 
I've long been interested in magic, but long hated the cheesiness that often accompanies it (as I have previously written here). I've also long been a fan of the producing organization Creative Time's work, so when I got an email from them promoting a magic show as part of the Performa festival, I thought it might be interesting. And interesting it was.
The description said:
In a hybrid performance of art and magic, Los Angeles-based artist Glenn Kaino collaborates with renowned magician Ryan Majestic in an awe-inspiring interrogation of what is and isn’t believable: a question at the heart of both age-old traditions.
Pretty vague, but I thought, given the players, that it might be interesting. So I talked a friend into going, and here's what happened at the Slipper Room in the East Village last night. The curtain opens and there is a huge stack of decks of playing cards visible. Magician Ryan Majestic comes on stage with an assistant, and he picks a deck from the top of the pile, and selects someone from the audience. He does a bit of patter, asking her if she believe in psychics and so on. He said he used to believe in them, but not so much anymore (kudos from me for that, of course), but he said he got a vision of a card and turned it upside down in the deck in advance, and then he asked the audience member to name a card. He talked about deja vu, and then fanned out the deck, and a card is, in fact, turned upside down in the deck, now facing him. He asks her if she would like to see the card, and she says yes. He asks if she's sure, and then he shows it to her, and it is, in fact, her selected card. He then goes upstage, asks the audience member's name, writes it on the deck of cards, and has his assistant give it to her.
He then does the exact same trick for the next audience member sitting next to her. And then he does the same thing again and again and again, working through the audience row by row. One woman said she did not want to see the card, and so he ended the trick and did not give her the deck. Another woman picked the exact same card as the person before her to test the magician (he passed). Being a peformance festival in NYC, many audience members tried to outsmart Majestic's banter, but, being in the magician's position, Majestic was always able to one-up the audience member.
I guess this was actually spelled out in advance, but I didn't read it very carefully (from the event page on Facebook):
The show will begin by evoking the experience of wonder at first seeing a magic trick performed. Then, slowly, through the performance art technique of repetition, the audience will become a part of the magician’s process of rehearsal and refinement, witnessing how the magician engages audience members in different ways. Before the audience, the trick moves from one of illusion to one of technique. The deconstruction of the trick forces a reevaluation not only of the specific trick, but the blurry terrain between art and magic. The performance will transform the Slipper Room into an experimental laboratory where ideas are worked out in real time—ultimately becoming a rumination on the relationship between a performer and his audience. The evening will end with seemingly impossible illusions performed by Kaino and Majestic.
Magicians, much like artists, make changes to one’s basic understanding of reality. Honor Among Thieves is an attempt, says Kaino, “to learn to believe and not believe at the same time.” It is the first of many ongoing experiments with art and magic that the artist will make as an interrogation of the social contract and a restructuring of systems of validation and meaning.
Majestic got through about the first two rows or so of the theatre, and one woman said she was not interested in participating the trick. After a few more iterations of the trick, the woman got up, and, as she was leaving, loudly said, "This is coercion! It's coercion!" At that point, they quickly closed the curtain and someone had to come out and explain the show was over.
This was a kind of fascinating performance experiment on many levels. First to me, as someone interested in magic, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out the trick's method, but Majestic did a great job of keeping this to himself (he also got it right every single time). It was also interesting to watch how the same trick would play differently, depending on how the audience member reacted, even though we knew what was coming. This is why, as a backstage crew member, it's always interesting to work on shows where there is no fourth wall and performers interact with the audience--you never know what's going to happen. It was also fascinating to see how long it would take until someone walked out (my friend and I were discussing it, but this woman beat us to it), and what kind of exodus would occur at that point (I see the same thing when giving tests at school--once one person finishes and leaves, a big clump will go right afterwards). In this case, everyone except the woman (who someone next to me said was a famous choreographer) stayed to see what would happen.
The show ran just two performances, and I can't say I would recommend it, unless you're a performance/magic geek. But my friend and I talked a lot about the whole thing at dinner after, which I guess was the point.
Thursday, November 5, 2009 at 10:44PM in Entertainment Technology, Interesting Show by John Huntington As you can see from my "interesting show" entries on this blog, I'm a big fan, supporter, and creator of "Hallucinatory and Immersive Environments of Sound and Light". So, when I saw exactly that offered in a full page ad in Time Out, I immediately put on my todo list to check out "Zee" at the 3LD Art & Technology Center in lower Manhattan (I'm intentionally NOT linking to them for reasons you will see shortly).
The advertisement in Time Out and the web site clearly state that the show is scheduled October 28- November 15, Wednesday to Friday 5-9pm. So, I convinced a friend to go with me, and rushed over there this evening after working all afternoon on the strike of the Gravesend Inn. I arrived at 6:30 a few minutes ahead of my friend, and was greeted with nothing in the lobby and someone asking why I was there. I said I was there to see the show, and I thought maybe I had the night wrong. The oblivious person said that things had changed, and that some unreadable 9-point text on the website showed that it was now either by invitation or by RSVP, or, well something. I was just totally confused and asked what I needed to do to see the show and I was not able to get an answer. It turns out that the web site now reads:
Kurt Hentschläger's ZEE is now previewing BY INVITATION ONLY for individual visits by the press, curators, and professionals in the art and performance community. Due to limited capacity, entrance is by confirmed RSVP only -please contact rsvp@XXXX.org and include your phone number.
What the hell??? I don't think that in 20 years in NYC, going to or working on literally thousands of shows, I have ever seen a more inept and ham-handed approach to PAYING audience members.
So, while 99% of the time, I keep this blog positive (and I am generally a positive person), screw this show. Either they are so inept that they can't handle paying audience members A FULL WEEK after a published and advertised opening night, or they are incredibly elitist. So, either way, I've got better things to do--like go have a nice Indian dinner, which is what we did.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009 at 09:17AM in Entertainment Technology, Interesting Show by John Huntington Great video here, at about 1:00 there's a big and very cool surprise:
This is Globie, "The Big G", the inflatable mascot of the Harlem Globetrotters.
It's apparently made by WalkAround Mascots:
I'll be watching Storm Chasers tonight; in case you missed my own storm chasing adventure from August, below is a new picture and here is my full write up. Be sure and check out the video at the bottom of the writeup--the hail storm we saw was unbelievable!
