FESTIVAL FEATURES | The Harmonium Project
Clockwise from top: Edinburgh Festival Chorus member Clare Hewitt, the Chorus in rehearsal, 3D model of the Usher Hall PHOTO © EOIN CAREY
PHOTO © 59 PRODUCTIONS PHOTO © EOIN CAREY
show running for a few weeks. This is a one-time-only extravaganza.’
The animations projected on to the hall on Friday have been inspired by data captured through EEG scans of brain activity on willing volunteers from the Edinburgh Festival Chorus. ‘They were listening and they weren’t negative, but they were dei nitely cautious about it. They are still pretty cautious about it,’ Linehan laughs.
Slaney explains further: ‘We wanted to show off how amazing the music season within the festival is. Coming up with a way of showing what happens inside the hall was part of the brief, so we took that very literally, I guess. Fergus introduced us to the Informatics Department at the University of Edinburgh, who came up with loads of ideas, like “we could capture this particular bit of data about what their i nger does, what their pulse does, what their brain does when they’re singing, what their eyes are doing, reading music”, and those kinds of things. We could then take that as raw data and translate that into the visual material.’ The data-capture process started in mid-April and 59 have been working on the visuals in their London studio, projecting the animation on to a miniature 3D-printed Usher Hall. The 35-minute show that they’re creating will be set to ‘Harmonium’ by contemporary American composer John Adams, and a recording of that choral work by the Edinburgh
Festival Chorus will be played on the night. And whether it rains or not, The Harmonium Project looks set to be a show that the city won’t forget. ‘The thing I love about 59 is they’re very rigorous but they’ve got a great kind of popular sensibility as well,’ says Linehan. ‘Because once you step outside on to the street, you know, the colours have to really pop and you really need to understand the dynamic of speaking to a big crowd. It’s a different type of vernacular and they just really get that. The process they have is very rigorous but the i nal results generally speak to everyone.’ ‘I can’t wait to see it on the hall,’ adds Slaney, ‘because, you know, when you’re working on a model half-a-metre wide you have to sort of stop and remember that this hall is huge! And it’s going to be really bright [and] be a big impact thing, and I’m really looking forward to that. I’m most excited for the chorus to see it. For better or worse, I think their feedback is going to mean an awful lot to us, to see if they think we’ve interpreted their performance in the right way. That’s the most intriguing thing for me, to know what they make of it. We’ll i nd out Friday night.’
The Harmonium Project, Usher Hall, 7 Aug, 10.30pm, free (non-ticketed); Opening Concert, Usher Hall, 473 2000, 8 Aug, 7.30pm, £14–£46 (£7–£23).
24 THE LIST FESTIVAL 6–13 Aug 2015