Sunday, October 12, 2008
Engineering, Theater Students Combine Skills to Produce High-Tech Stage Sets
UANews.org: "Engineering and theater students are working together at The University of Arizona to design the kind of sophisticated stage machinery that is used at stadium concerts, as well as in Cirque du Soleil and similar productions."
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7 comments:
The labs that the class has been working on seem really interesting. Not to mention there is some obvious financial backing for the class.
Seems odd that this guy is teaching this class and hasn't heard of other programs that off anything similar.
This sounds really badass, but they never mention how many people are taking the class, and how long they spend on these projects. If you have 15 students taking this, it's probably a justified course and could probably warrant its own major eventually but if it's only four, than the University may not see it as being worth a whole group of teachers.
I definitely feel that it's a great thing to be teaching in an age where automation is becoming more frequent, and if formal education (opposed to hands-on) is the way to train the next generation in trouble-shooting these designs, than I hope it spreads in popularity.
During part of “New Genesis,” the musicians played the light instruments and “taught” automated lights to play along with them. Later, these mechanical lights appeared to teach the musicians a tune... sounds really cool, I wish there was some sort of a video of this.
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The third part involved creating a way to track an actor on stage and reproduce that track in a way that a motorized object could follow, appearing to travel in the actor’s footsteps... goodbye follow spot operators.
I think this is really cool. Again, it shows taht we are in the midst of a heavy technological era. Theatre technicians need to start having the skills to produce these kinds of stunts. So these intigratative initiatives are a great place to start. Also, programs like BSA and BCSA help students learn both kinds of thinking and how to combine the ways they learn. This would be a class I'd Love to take.
The question I end up asking is, why can't we? Automation is a giant part of professional theatre today and every other major theatre school is equipped to teach it. While we butcher wood, other schools are lifting stages, and we trail behind.
This class seems pretty facinating. I would love to be in a class with a bunch of engineers and get them to see our perspective on things. Most of the time, people don't understand the way we do things and it would also be a very good opportunity to get some outside perspectives as well.
I think it is great that classes like this are being offered. It is interdisciplinary collaboration like this which makes for the fascinating theatre productions which keep drawing audiences and leaving them speechless.
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