3D 'Ring' Cycle...

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Given our current interest in the way space is ‘imagined, evoked and populated within the constraints of the proscenium arch’, I thought you might be interest in this. Canadian director Robert Lepage (whose production,‘The Blue Dragon’ was presented at last year’s Melbourne Festival) has commissioned the Montreal-based company, Realisations to create a 3D-design for one of the scenes in the Metropolitan Opera’s new ‘Ring’ cycle.

The technology has been developed by digital artists, computer programmers and lighting experts over a number of years and does not require the audience to wear 3D glasses. According to the New York Times, the effect is created by using ‘a bank of projectors, motion-capture cameras and computers to fashion the images. The tilt of the on the stage allows for hundreds of different projections, changing in slivers of a second, at different depths to help create, say, the colour, shading and contour of a rock, or at least (enough) to convince the eye’. If all goes according to plan it will certainly be a tough act to follow!

Check out the behind-the-scenes action here.

Edit: Theo has sent through this link to an amazing design for a Spanish 'Ring Cycle' conducted by Zubin Mehta and performed by acrobatic troupe La Fura dels Baus and now available on DVD.