the pianoBoat project

CaravelaTeaser.mov

2010-12-15T06:36:00.000-08:00

The Preview showing of Caravela at the inaugural Wild Dog Gathering was a great success in the end, after the usual seat-of-the-pants feeling during the build-up. It was as fresh for the three of us on stage as it was for the audience, as it was the first time any of us had seen the show projected up on the pianoBoat sail. The response from the wonderfully attentive audience was overwhelmingly positive, with many teary eyes by the end of the 52 minutes. The good feedback has confirmed that we've already got all the ingredients of a great live performance event. It also gave us the encouragement to put the finishing touches in and find the energy for a few extras and tweaks that didn't quite happen in time for the preview.

The last few days have finally seen the first decent audio recordings of Carolina's songs, with the generous assistance of friendly Pigeonhole studio-mate Jody Lloyd. You can hear a pretty fast version of Caravela's opening song Madrugadas Serenas when you watch the new Teaser video for the show posted above. We'll keep you posted about an EP some time in the new year...

Caravela launches at Wild Dog Gathering on 28th November!

2010-11-14T23:55:00.000-08:00

'Caravela' is the name that we've given to the musical projection tragedy that's been in intensive late-night development for several months. Finally all the elements are falling into place, just in time test it out on a receptive audience at the inaugural 'Wild Dog Gathering' on the 28th of November! If you like the look of what you see below and want to be amongst the first to witness our achievement, then jump on the website and get tickets to be amongst it all, at this delightful summer-warm-up event in Melbourne's rural hinterland...

To the best of our knowledge it's a truly unique combination of artforms. It's also the fruition of a long-anticipated collaboration between mutual admirers, the pianoBoat project and Carolina Cordeiro. Throughout the show Carolina Cordeiro's spectacular Portuguese Fado vocals plumb the depths of heartache and heartbreak. And the pianoBoat project has been doing our level best to match the exquisite beauty and haunting melancholy of her singing in the accompanying projections and artwork. Our rich visual language for this show incorporates video, stills, watercolour drawings, shadow-puppets and shadow-acting, as well as artfully composed text translations of key lyrics.

If that wasn't already enough to whet your appetite, Caravela's dozen Fado songs are ably fleshed out by the simple yet fulsome instrumentation of guitar and piano-accordion.

If you can't be at the Wild Dog performance but are interested in the show, please do be in touch, as we are currently scheduling and planning country-wide tours for next year. If you can help with venue suggestions or in any other way, we'd love to hear from you. Read on through our previous posts below for details on the 'pianoBoat' rig and the pianoBoat project's ethos. There's also another post that gives more background on the story presented in Caravela.

projecting the pianoBoat into the new year in style and good company...

2010-11-12T23:32:00.000-08:00

the pianoBoat will be following the winds of change up the east coast to see the new year in at Woodford. First time at the famous folk-fest, and we'll be presenters! Sharing a new projection artwork for the alterBABEL program, and a freshly reworked Howard Grey's Unsame Day at the Recycled Cabaret (see previous posts for an overview of the early version that we took to the streets in Under The Radar). The program is their biggest ever with over 3000 performers and presenters, so you'll have to be lucky or determined to find us in the book or on the website, but we really are in there and the key info is below:

BABELPROJEKT
The mythology surrounding the temple, the ziggurat Etemenanki, the Babylonian tower that soared between heaven and earth; recognised as the site of God’s wrath; an architectural monument that marked the place where the people were scattered into innumerable tribes with a multitude of languages, galvanises the essence of this year’s visual arts festival. From today’s Woodfordian vantage point, it’s possible to reinterpret this tale as an inspired act of holy genius … after all, try to imagine a world without a wonderful abundance of languages; try to dream up a festival without the rich bounty of different art and music; try to conjure up an existence without cultural diversity. Sounds bland? You bet. Towering over the festival on Sculpture Ridge, the three towers of uberBABEL exist as gallery veneers, inverted Guggenheims, where artists generate images, forms, ideas and issues about the ways in which linguistic and cultural diversity is essential to environmental and ecological diversity. Drawing from cultural roots in Indigenous, non-Indigenous and Asia-Pacific cultural heritage in Australia, artists who work on each of the three towers will transfix, disturb and challenge. Arti.Arti afternoons are punctuated by psychoBABEL: the talkfest, an opportunity for debate, repartee, banter, witticism and conversation; where artists from around the nation and around the globe gather in person or via technology, all the while throwing up that uniquely human identifier - to pose and vocalize the questions. In a transformative venture, alterBABEL: the tent event, artists use their digital resources and light sources to manipulate, reflect, mirror, enlighten, blur and project to transform the tents of Artisania into alternate worlds of the night.
Location: Sculpture Ridge, Penny Arcade, Village Green, Arti.Arti

Recycled Cabaret
The night is yours. Join us in the ultimate recycled cabaret experience. Come attired in your handmade festival recycled costume. The maitre de will greet you and your family and show you to a cozy candle lit table. The stage will come alive with a collision of fire and flying chooks with Mic Conway, a juggling symphony with The MaskedMime and The pianoBoat Project combines music and shadow puppetry illuminated against a fabric boat. The piece de resistance, you and your costumes strut your stuff. THUR Stardust Theatre 7:30PM

Stories of Departure at ArtPlay

2010-10-31T06:12:00.000-07:00

A month ago the pianoBoat project ran a 5-day shadow-storytelling workshop intensive with thirteen 8-to-12-year-olds. The workshop and the show at the end was part of ArtPlay's dedicated year-round program of children's art activities at Birrarung Marr in the centre of Melbourne. It was an amazing experience working with a relatively small group of inspired young participants for 5 afternoons in a row. The significant amount of focus required of all involved, ended up creating a wonderful sense of camaraderie along the way to a surprisingly entertaining show for parents and friends.

Shadow-puppets are quite a tricky medium - not nearly as complex as marionettes, it's true, but nevertheless demanding a fair bit of abstract thinking and subtle hand-eye coordination. We were impressed by the fact that everyone got the hang of what was going on so quickly, each in their own way.

The premise 'Stories of Departure' was to create a story filled with characters journeying through a future where the climate had changed and technology had also moved with the times. We introduced the group to concepts of Biomimicry and encouraged them to think of the most imaginative ways in which the special qualities of animals and plants might be taken advantage of, literally or through scientific adaptations.

The drawing and writing games that started things off, successfully got everyone's creative brains in gear. The results of the collaborative writing and drawing games quickly got us all laughing too at the absurdity and hilarity of strange creatures and curious misinterpretations.

Having departed for a somewhat mutant future, the next task was to create characters, complete with names, homes, animal companions and other special attributes. The 13 brave imagineers tackled the assignment with a diverse and idiosyncratic array of approaches. Most clearly went with the known quantities of characters they'd drawn elsewhere, locating them in an adaptive future world. While we'd painted a mildly dystopian vision of times to come, the children were gently encouraged to use the powers of the imagination to devise more cheerful outcomes for the shadow-puppet people they were drawing.

After drawing came the exercises of determining where puppets would be articulated, and of tracing the component parts onto black card. A whole lot of fiddliness later, the puppets were taking shape and escorted back to the workshop in Brunswick for a strengthening coat of shellac. The reassembly required plenty of split-pins, fiddly linen-threaded-joints, tape, rods, and patience.

Once on rods the games could begin again in earnest, as the shiny new silhouette-characters were made to act out happy and sad moods set by the raucous accordion tunes. After that came more complex and nuanced emotions, and a whole bunch of improvising while running repairs were provided by the project leaders.

By Friday the character development had expanded to include the participants themselves as well as their new 2-dimensional friends. Inspired it seems by the conpsicuous mustache on the otherwise hairless head of pianoBoater Raku, almost the whole group ended up with handsome black paper mo's attached by masking tape. Meanwhile scenarios were being devised in 4 sub-groups, and practicing was underway on multiple screens. Each group was given their own section of an epic panoramic digital set, which itself was composed of various drawings with wild visions of biomimetic architecture and advanced urban agriculture rising over the clunky remnants of our modern era.

For more information on the excellent offerings at ArtPlay of fine arts and craft made specifically for, by, and with children, follow this link: www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/artplay. Keep an eye on ArtPlay's 2011 programs as they are published, which may well even include some further adventures with the pianoBoat project…

sailing Under The Radar in a windy river-city

2010-10-25T16:58:00.000-07:00

the pianoBoat project performed in last month's Brisbane Festival, in Under The Radar's Street-Feats program. We presented a 4-night season of Howard Grey's Unsame Day, a show that brings together many of our favorite mediums. Animated 2D drawings are combined with video silhouettes of shadow-actors, and enriched by live shadow-puppetry. All this is projected on to the sail of the mobile boat-set and performed with live piano-accordion and narration.

Once the excitement about being selected for Street-Feats had died away, it all came down to one word really – logistics. It's a pretty long ride from Melbourne to Brisbane, and the passenger trains refused to carry our cargo, so we ended up in a crowded airport lounge negotiating endless queues with the entire set condensed into 2 bike-boxes and 2 suitcases. Arriving into a balmy Brizvegas where even the festival organisers were admirably relaxed.

The boat bolted back together as planned – until it came to rigging the sail onto the newly jointed bamboo mast. So rehearsals had to make room for last-minute repairs. Exhausted by the effort of getting the whole show on the road, it wasn't just the bamboo threatening to give way in the heat and unseasonal rain. With hours to go the laden boat-set was hitched up to the folding bike and towed over the appropriately named Highgate Hill, and on into a gusty city centre. We might have been arriving at the site of an utter humiliation had it not been for the invaluable assistance of an ace tech support crew who supplied sand-bags, mike-stands, electrical tape and a bunch of good-natured enthusiasm. The scheduled performance time arrived with a miraculous calm as the sun slipped behind the horizon. All the sweat and tears that got us there were missed by an appreciative audience as the show itself went off surprisingly smoothly.

A risky and ambitious concept, our street-theatre model of mobile shadow-puppetry certainly wasn't without its hitches and shortcomings. But by the 4th night the whole adventure was running pretty smoothly. Now that we've tackled most of the technical hitches of exporting animation files, building collapsible sets and setting up in unforgiving weather, it's time to revisit the show itself. Which, as a somewhat experimental work-in-progress, inevitably needs some reworking. We look forward to returning to Queensland in a couple of months to present a more resolved version of Howard Grey's Unsame Day at the Woodford Folk Festival. By which time we'll be ready to take the show pretty much anywhere, not least back our beloved adopted hometown, Melbourne

Teenagers, Shadows, and Midwinter in Huonville

2010-10-17T19:44:00.000-07:00

Shadow puppetry and troubled teens may not seem to go together like strawberries and cream, but, after some workshops in Huonville, i think we could call them avocado and honey - a mix you don't often hear about round here, but is surprisingly well suited. Working with a small mixed class of 15-18 year olds who had dropped out of school, then re-entered the education system via the HuonLINK program, we weren't at all sure what to expect. We went in with a 'mini film clip' workshop plan, figuring that music could be a good and unthreatening way to bring shadow-puppetry into the participants context.

Most got enthusiastic about choosing a song and photo they liked, with some relationship in either mood or content. Then came the hardest part - getting these teens (most with incredibly low self-esteem) to come up with their concept. Having mostly worked with creatively interested kids, where you are fighting off the floods of ideas, I was a bit shocked at how much encouragement and support these 15-18 year olds needed.

With limited time, we got them behind the screen, and it's always so great seeing the different ways people approach it. Some had carefully planned all entrances, exits and inbetweens, while others just went nuts experimenting with their puppets possibilities. It was also wonderful seeing how the groups worked together when behind the screen, and watching an awareness of placement, speed and distance grew. While often associated with children, shadow puppetry is actually quite cerebral, so, when put in a contemporary environment (through music\imagery), can be challenging and engaging to many age groups.

Caravela

2010-10-05T00:07:00.000-07:00

Rosa Maria falls in love with a fisher boy, despite their differences, she being a woman of the earth and he, a man of the sea. Their coming together brings untold richness to their lives as she learn the ways of the ocean and her gifts. Her lover gains from the beauty and bounty the earth bears up.

They meet in springtime and experience a full cycle of the seasons together in happiness. She grows and sells her flowers and plants and he goes fishing in the nighttime, returning in the afternoon. Their love affair makes the two of them deliriously happy. However, there is disapproval amongst concerned families and neighbours who foresee that with the difference in their different natures, it will end badly.

the pianoBoat project is delighted to announce the upcoming launch of an exciting new show with long-time collaborator, the astonishing Fado vocalist Carolina Cordeiro. A singer who has only discovered her raw talent in her mid-20s, Cordeiro is based in Melbourne but sings and plays the music of the city of her birth, Portugal's ancient crumbling port of Lisbon. A deep tradition of passion and poetry, Fado can be difficult at first for the uninitiated, with its tendencies towards tragedy, apparent melodrama and unusual modalities. Cordeiro however cuts through this with an arresting clarity and freshness that has been shooting her to attention and acclaim in Melbourne's multicultural music scene.

the pianoBoat project brings further levels of seduction with a rich and layered world of visual metaphor, translating the Portuguese poetry of the lyrics in our synthesis of textured projections and surreal shadow-play.

Fria Claridade (loungeroom version)
Carolina Cordeiro - vox & guitar; Raku Pitt - piano accordion

The show will premiere at the Wild Dog Gathering on the 27th of November. See www.wild-dog.com.au for more info on this event and to buy tickets.

Watch this space for announcements of seasons and festival appearances of this unique piece of storytelling shadow-theatre with an exquisite musical heart...

why the piano? & why the Boat?

2010-08-16T02:05:00.000-07:00

ok, so it's time for a wee bit more of the back-story to this crazy pianoboating adventure! The piano: was always there in the livingroom for years, after it was inherited from our 93-year-old Hungarian great-aunt. It was a challenge, a system to be de-coded and re-coded. I loved its walnut paneling and dusty cast-iron interior. So many tuning pegs and so many wound steel and brass strings.

The boat: well, I wasn't getting much better at swimming, and I'd swapped the elemental challenges of sailing Mirrors at the Yacht Club for the simpler Saturday-morning trials of wrestling with my racquet at the local tennis club. After the social bafflement and confusing humiliations of school or tennis, the piano was my daily escape. As the keys became more and more familiar to my fingers, I could slip further and further away from the tawdry human horrors of an isolated small town's melancholy. So it was that the piano, for all of its aged German-made solidity, became a kind of boat. A vessel for an inner life that refused to surrender itself to the fearful trip-lines of spoken words.

The music was exploratory and compelling, guided first by the simple pointers offered by family and friends, and then by intuition. It began very simply, like i was learning the ropes of a boat still in port. Gradually my adventurous fingers charted some kind of a coastline as I gathered some precious compliments and found confidence. The meandering improvised music I surrounded myself with became deeper, and eventually truly oceanic as i sought out the transcendent potentials of the curiously intermingled currents of applied mathematics and pure emotions.

By my late teens I had performed improvisations in front of the entire school at assembly, and for some puppet shows, playback theatre and low-key arthouse gigs. I could still scarcely read sheet-music but badly wanted to share this crazy passion in a way that might do it justice. Conversations with my informal mentors Ross and Sandy prompted the first imaginings of combining a piano with wheels – to reach the public! – and with an artistic theatricality – yes, perhaps even with a maritime theme ...

pianoBoat headquarters

2010-07-29T18:56:00.000-07:00

A few months ago we came across the chance to take on a studio space in a fantastic arts warehouse in Brunswick East. An opportunity too good to miss ...

After some judicious editing of the claustrophobic dingy corner that we'd taken on, it stopped living up to the 'Gypsy Cave' tag left scrawled on its old door in red texta. A multitude of hours later – many of them in the evenings after escaping other commitments – our 2-level home-base began to take shape.

Using all salvaged materials (with the exception of some white paint) the process became typically fiddly. Old windows and doors – previously collected and assembled to create a north-facing verandah wintergarden – were gradually repurposed as a cosy little workspace on top of the remaining half of the mezzanine floor. The timber and glass cube that gradually emerged out of the chaos now provides a heatable and relatively dust-free pianoBoat control-tower. In these long winter evenings its like a glowing lantern up in the corner of the cavernous old light-industial complex.

In spite of the slowness and frequent frustrations of piecing the curious variety of building materials together, it was often lots of fun – and actually felt quite like building an adult-sized cubby!

Setting the boat up in the early days next to the unlovely but solidly-built structure we'd inherited.

Glass wall and ceiling, featuring a classic old decorative shower-screen, and windows saved from demolition sites.

The lantern effect – yet to be fully exploited for its glorious creative potential with shadows and silhouettes. New Brompton folding bike waiting in the foreground at the end of another long night.

pianoBoat plays on the East Coast of Tas

2010-06-20T21:39:00.000-07:00

the pianoBoat project, in Tasmania for a wee bit of work. We had a fortuitous spell of fine weather on the way down the East Coast. First stop after fleeing the ferry at Devonport was the Fingal Valley, where we got to test out exactly how effective the boat is at catching even a modest breeze ...

At Friendly Beaches near the famous Freycinet Peninsular, the pianoBoat project (under the care and guidance of our photographer and close friend Toby Story) braved austere finger-freezing temperatures and dazzling breath-snatching beauty. Toby managed to compose some exquisite images, in defiance of his injured knee and the severe sleep-deprivation of all concerned. We all had to keep pinching ourselves to reassure against the impression of super-reality conveyed by the remarkable calm and clarity of the skies.

We set the pianoBoat up in the dunes and tested out the new battery and power inverter with the data-projector, attracting some very curious (and curiously silent) observers in the process. We'd lost most of the twilight by the time we'd ironed out the many technical hitches along the way, but this led to some wonderful photos of the milky way behind a light-painted boat. The difficulty of sitting still for minutes on end was more than matched by the technical challenges of timing exposures in-camera for the projector, torch, and starlight.

Simply witnessing the extraordinary sky above a becalmed Tasman Sea, complete with the crispest views of the Milky Way with the Magellanic Clouds and other distant galaxies, made it all worthwhile.

The spectacular weather held, even as the mast occasionally threatened to give way on the sometimes exposed ride out of the National Park...

With many thanks to Toby Story for all of the above photographs.

2010-06-20T05:09:00.000-07:00

Stills from a short kids show pianoBoat performed at the ArtPlay Winter Caberet in June.

April Workshops at ArtPlay

2010-06-20T03:36:00.000-07:00

pianoBoat landed at ArtPlay in April for a two day workshop with 12 kids involving all things shadow. Games, puppet making, story devising and a quick performance for other participants and families made for two very full days!

Overflowing with drawings and ideas for creatures, the kids quickly had paper and card flying as they created their shadow creatures. Then there turned out to be just as many creative ideas for the narrative - opinions ran high, but scripts were eventually negotiated – although leaving precious little time for performance preparation. Shadow-puppeteering on the pianoBoat sail with live accordion accompaniment and narration, the kids gave life to their puppets and stories. Here's a few quick snaps from amid all the action!

Poster for ArtPlay workshops

2010-05-17T22:32:00.000-07:00

In April and September 2010, the City of Melbourne has funded pianoBoat to run workshops at ArtPlay for 8-12 year olds. The workshop running 28th September - 2nd October will be a voyage into the future, explored through storytelling and shadow-making. This intensive will culminate in a short show for the public on Saturday, 2nd October, so come and check out the creative machinations of young minds!

Stills from the animation in Howard Grey's Unsame Day

2010-05-16T17:37:00.000-07:00

The animation is mostly drawn (using a graphics tablet), and imported into flash, where I tween the heck out of them. The two main characters are filmed silhouettes (see Howard below) which are then inserted within the drawn layers. A whole lot more editing, but I really like the juxtaposition. On top of all this will be live puppetry, which I can't wait to start playing around with.

2010-05-16T17:36:00.001-07:00

A promotional image as we work towards performances of Howard Grey's Unsame Day in September. A work in progress. Shows the illuminated fabric boat, with musician (Raku), shadow-puppeteer and animation (Freya). This image is actually a combination of several photos taken in our new warehouse headquarters. The intention being to give the general gist of what the pianoBoat project is all about, as we gear up for festival shows in Brisbane and Melbourne.

Stories From The Ground: Wild Dog

2010-05-16T05:24:00.000-07:00

dear Wild Dog, I miss you. When I was younger I was frightened of you. Now that you are far away & I am grown up & living in the crazy big city, now I wish I could be with you. I hope this reaches you in good health, for I suppose you are an old dog now. When we were both much younger I used to hear you howling near our tent. I used to see your footprints in the black sand. We must have been strange to you. But my mother had an old dog called Tzigane (Gypsy). She died when I was 3, & you never visited us again – perhaps you loved her? Although I never set eyes on you, you made a big impression on me, & for many years you came to me in my dreams. I was terrified of you at the time. Now I find myself wishing we could meet as friends to share our different stories. Best regards, x Raku

Wild Dog was first written to be exhibited in Albany for a show called Unravelling Country. The 25 postcards tell the story of my relationship to Wild Dog through text, etchings and digital collages. Subsequently exhibited and performed in Fremantle in 2008, it became a key bridge between my former wanderings as an artist and my current path with Freya as the pianoBoat project.

Back when I first visited Melbourne in 2003, I met an eccentric and phenomenally enthusiastic young designer called Stephen Mushin. I also met a brilliant young lady called Olivia (Mei Lai Swan) in another friendly Brunswick sharehouse. When I actually moved to the city the following year, Steve was one of my housemates, and Mei Lai a collaborator co-producing the art program for Students of Sustainability 2004 (SoS). By 2005 I had also made fast friends with Carolina Cordeiro, Emily Smith and Bernadette Trench-Thiedeman. While all of us were active in a typically wide variety of counter-cultural activities, a common passion for illustration and storytelling had become apparent.

Stories From The Ground was first dreamt up as a giant exhibition where every room would use a different creative medium or method to tell a story through words, images, and music. It was also hoped that the group could assist each other to navigate through the notoriously treacherous waters of bringing an illustrated story project to fruition. When a tiny derelict space became available in 2006 to be rebuilt as a studio, I decided that it should be not just my personal studio, but a kind of clubhouse for Stories From The Ground, a place where we could get together and give each other feedback and encouragement.

The space was so appealing when we'd finished fixing it up, that the idea of a 'Microtheatre' was born – an opportunity to invite 20 friends over to cram into the old laundry for a private show. The idea being that if we put ourselves on the spot in the same sorts of ways that we were using to creatively engage youngsters, we could jump-start the stalled creative processes with a mere 12 hours of creative development. With the invitation put out a couple of weeks in advance, the group would meet at 9am, and no matter how reluctant we were by the evening, there was nothing we could do by then to put off the audience arriving at 9pm.

No published books – illustrated or otherwise – came out of these essentially theatrical adventures. But the appetite for down-home shadow-theatre and improvised storytelling was evident from the beginning, and the shows quickly outgrew the tiny studio, first to the stables, then the Boite, the Northcote Town Hall and beyond. Steve went on to found Split-pin Limbs, especially notable for innovative productions accompanying the music of alternative pop-star Lior.

I went on to eventually found the pianoBoat project in partnership with my sister Freya, inspired by the success of a collaborative exhibition called Shadow Me Home at the Moores Building in Fremantle. It featured the two of us together with our mother Kati Thamo, a high-profile West-Australian printmaker. The exhibition included a shadow-play performance of Wild Dog (first adapted as a microtheatre with Steve Mushin, Emily Smith, Myfanwy Alderson, Amadis Lacheter and David Henry, at the Stables in Brunswick East.)

raku pitt