The past week consisted of more research, mostly regarding Qlab and whether or not it could trigger Pharos Designer, as I mentioned last week. I emailed Pharos support and they replied that unfortunately there is no way to control the software directly—the actual control from Qlab is for the Pharos lighting controller, which responds to UDP commands in order to trigger certain actions (e.g. start/stop timeline). This is somewhat disappointing, as we won’t be able to rehearse properly outside of the venue, and will have to rely on manual synchronisation (ie. pressing spacebar on two laptops simultaneously).
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Today, I met Sarah, who is involved with gallery residency spaces; she showed Honor and I (along with Erik and Simon) around the space we’ve been given access to for developing the show. The space looks great, and will be a good “office” to work from. I’ve found that I’m more productive for this project outside of my home studio, as there is less potential for distraction.
Honor and I stayed back to discuss schedules for the next couple of weeks. We’ll likely be back in the space on Friday or Sunday, in order to create a preliminary Qlab project with all of the audio cues. In the meantime, I’ll be experimenting in Qlab on my own in order to learn some of the more complex features.
After a quick lunch, I visited Building 16—with some minor issues entering the building—and met up again with Simon, who was showing Elliot (a fellow casual Capitol employee) some Qlab features. I joined in and picked up a few techniques that I’ll be experimenting with this week. We also discussed equipment required for the residency space, getting a basic list together based on Honor’s notes. Essentially, we’re aiming to set up a smaller verson of all of the gear used in the show, in order to make the rehearsals as realistic as possible in terms of potential failures.
Erik also made another appearance at Building 16 and took me on a whirlwind tour of the RMIT galleries. It was great to see these spaces, and it looks like I’ll have the opportunity to display some work of my own at some point. We took some gear from the storage areas (cables, mixer, speaker, projector) and transported it to the residency space. There will be more to come, but this is a good start.
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In additon to Honor’s show, I’ve also potentially been offered more work at Capitol, for more lighting design, this time to create a lighting experience for an album by a fairly well-known Australian electronic musician. I’m very excited about this as they’ve been involved with a lot of projects that I am fond of, and it’d be amazing to be involved with their work. Hopefully I’ll have more news on that in the coming weeks.