As we continue to wait for news of our funding application to Creative Scotland, there's still - of course - plenty to do. Alison's new show 'The Twittering Machine' goes into rehearsal tomorrow and I've a set to complete for that, plus 'Red Riding Hood' continues to tour until it arrives at the Royal Exchange studio in Manchester, as their Christmas Show.
As for Angus, whenever I come up for air from working on the above, new ideas emerge. The video and film sections in particular keep being reshaped in my mind, probably because animated videos are another thing I'm working on at Horse + Bamboo at the moment. Last week I woke up in the middle of the night and imagined 52 Balgarva, the tigh dubh where Angus spent his boyhood, as a small but detailed model that a camera could explore with live feed whilst projecting the results onto the stage; and that the hospital at Craig Dunain likewise could be modelled and used in the same way. I like this idea of combining the action of live use of the camera, preferring it in many ways to using pre-shot film.
Today I went to the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester to see Dark Matters, a show by 10 artists who explore shadow, darkness and illusion - many using video and live-feed projection. Daniel Rozin's pieces I found especially impressive. One 'Snow Mirror' (above) simply played back the viewers likenesses onto a silk screen, but the quality of the image - spectral, snow-like, created a sense of something removed from the present, remembered rather than actual, even though it worked much as a mirror does. This was exactly the quality I had imagined using for 'Angus' in those scenes where Angus MacPhee returns to his home after 50 years and the memories flood back; totally present for him (and the audience) - but at the same time existing only as memories.
