Les Boréades
2020, Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, Real-Time Two-Screen Projection
45th Parallel Chamber Orchestra partnered with Glowbox and Brad Johnson to create Les Boréades, a live immersive visual and sonic experience that challenged the conventions of live performance. The program featured a survey of French music, including works by Rameau, Debussy, Ravel, and Boulez.
Two large-scale scrims surrounded the performers at Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, immersing audiences in diverse, dynamic environments. Visual content was created by Brad’s photogrammetric captures of natural and built scenes rendered in real-time with new virtual cinematography tools developed by Glowbox. The collaboration resulted in ephemeral point cloud projections that offer a sense of travel through the spatial capture. The entire one-hour concert was created in a virtual reality headset. 3D point clouds were loaded into into a virtualized version of the performance space where virtual camera rigs defined animation paths that moved the scenography across the screens. The Glowbox team’s library of procedural effects were applied to the points throughout the presentation. There were four pieces of music performed, each with paired with their own unique visual worlds.
Stills from Introduction and Allegro for Harp, Flute, Clarinet and String Quartet, Maurice Ravel, (1905)
Forests were captured in Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains, the Oregon coast, and the Hoyt Arboretum in Portland, then reimagined through varying levels of abstraction in concert with the music.
Stills from Mémoriale (... explosante-fixe ... Originel), Pierre Boulet (1985)
The imagery for Mémoriale came from drone footage of the Maryhill Stonehenge in the Columbia Gorge—a replica of Stonehenge in England and a memorial to those who died in World War I.
Stills from Prélude à l’après-midi d'un faune (arr. Arnold Schoenberg), Claude Debussy (1894)
“Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun” was set in impressionistic conifer forests captured throughout the Cascades in Oregon and Washington.
Stills from Les Boréades, Jean-Philippe Rameau (1763)
In each movement of Les Boréades (originally an opera based on a greek legend) the performance weaves between scenes of geological and archeological ruin including the crater of Mount St. Helens, Drumheller Channels, Craters of the Moon, City of Rocks, and ancient greek sites at Perga, Didyma, and Ephesus.
