Projects 2013

Project partners

Kenneth Hamilton is the Dean of the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at Cardiff University

Amanda Bayley is Professor of Music in the School of Music and Performing Arts at Bath Spa University

Sheila Hayman is a BAFTA winning documentary filmmaker

Journal Authors

Kenneth Hamilton

Sheila Hayman

Amanda Bayley

Page to Stage

 

Breaking down the fourth wall of classical music, this app enables audiences to explore the invisible history, context and meaning of a piece of music, as played by the world-leading Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Following the musicians from first rehearsal to finished performance, the app blends carefully-shot video with timed metadata tags, exploring how to create a textured, fluid experience that actively engages more people in classical music by adding layers of understanding without distracting from the beauty of the performance itself.

Journal Entries

Tuning Up!

Thu 13 Mar, 2014

I've just sent a file to Henry, our Creative Technologist, (that's what we're asked to call him, but in this world of TransMedia it seems he could as well be called FishTailed Deity; every job seems both mysterious and amorphous, but I guess that's the fun of an infant industry). It's an assembly of very beautiful, tight  shots of musical instruments being prepared, with a soundtrack of an orchestra tuning up. It's the loading screen for our prototype, and I'm thrilled because it's enticing and gorgeous, and looks like the entrance to a magical adventure.

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Filming day for Page to Stage

Fri 15 Nov, 2013
Capturing all the material for an interactive performance video with a ten minute master, five individual interviews, 'point of audition' sound, slowmotion fancy fingerwork, and some intriguing shots of instruments being assembled
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Where three worlds meet: documentary film, apps, and classical music

Tue 22 Oct, 2013
This week, we enter a world where a timpanist has different drums for every period of musical history, and twenty sets of drum sticks. Where oboeists make their own instruments, and every player is an authority on some arcane aspect of musical history...
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let the dog see the rabbit (how to speak to 'creatives' - or not)

Thu 3 Oct, 2013

So, yesterday we all trekked to Bristol again for another day being 'struggled' as they used to say in the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Unlike the Maoist version, the pain involved in this process is designed to make you feel better in the end. It's for our own good. It's good for us to realise that "people like us" (or even "people like our children") is not aviable market, to have some vague idea of how to let people know these products exist, and even to imagine ourselves into the heads of a stick figure we are calling the User.

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Haydn in the Pub

Thu 12 Sep, 2013
In preparation for our interactive classical music video, I took myself on a damp night to hear four members of our orchestra, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (try saying that after four beers) play Haydn quartets in the upstairs room of an Islington pub. A revelation, concluding with the best way yet devised to teach people about fugues. (Okay, vocab 101 - remember singing 'London's Burning' round the room in primary school? That's basically a fugue).
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