Ghosts is an automated cinema performance event. Video and sound are controlled dynamically in real time onstage by performers playing an “instrument” like a visual theramin, that creates a live cinematic media improvisation. Singing, talking, virtual projection characters on dimensional robotic screens perform with musicians in duets. Musicians can program the Ghosts voices and incorporate that sound into their own musical performance.
The ghosts are both virtual and material. The virtual component is interactive media – the ghosts will talk, sing and materialize visually as an unstable and shifting flow of fragmented projection images that gel to form whole characters. They are given coherence of form by a series of robotic screens. The screens will be collapsible, multifaceted, and structured three dimensionally with scrim elements (think of complex umbrellas fused with Chinese lanterns). When they open, projected images will manifest as dimensional entities freed from the rectangle of the movie screen. The entities will appear simultaneously on multiple screens, or travel across screens that open and shut, as the entities inhabit them and depart. They are operated, mechanically and with dynamically controlled digital imagery, by a performer on the stage.
Mari Kimura (composer and violinist) and Elliott Sharp (composer and multi-instrumentalist) will work with us to develop the sonic and vocal sample base for the 'ghosts' characters and will collaborate to create musical compositions they will perform with the 'ghosts'. The virtual robotic characters will sing, talk and dance. They might be virtual backup singers or the lead performer onstage with a musician. They might perform as single entities or as multiples in a chorus. They might also function as instrumental foils
Programmable screen-based video will be added in the second stage of development to create a feature length cinematic narrative performance event. Conversations unfold between characters on the main screen and the ghosts as the narrative unfolds. Performer(s) control this interaction in real time and may include the audience.









