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TERAVISION (A brief history of the gaze)

An interactive performance piece experienced via smartphones, co-directed with Edgardo Mercado. During the presentation, six choreographic scenes unfolded in complete darkness, which the audience viewed on their cell phones through the TeraApp.

Experimental Centre of the Teatro Colón (CETC)

Buenos Aires, 2018

"The camera’s eye would see clearly where the human eye would find nothing but darkness”.

(W.H.F. Talbot, The pencil of nature)

TERAVISION

A brief history of the gaze

Chapter I

An interdisciplinary work by Augusto Zanela and Edgardo Mercado, loosely inspired by The Pencil of Nature by English photography pioneer William Fox Talbot, featuring Marcos López as narrator. The creative process revolves around the concept of the technical image of the body—the body as explored through the lens and the limits of perceptual capabilities.

With this performance installation for mobile phones, we invite our audience to immerse themselves in an alternative reality, becoming active and decisive participants who shape their own experience even as they move through it.

Credits

Narrator: Marcos López
Performers: Milva Leonardi, Rocío Mercado, Eugenia Roces, Braian Bre, Ramiro Cortez
Dramaturgy: Gerardo Salinas
Digital App Development: Fabrice Costa
Sound Design: Nicolás Varchausky
Assistant Director: Corina Tate
Lighting Design: Fernando Berreta
Set Design: Ariel Vaccaro
Costume Design: Sandra Fink
Digital Image Designers: Ciro Zanela & Aarón Echevarría
Assistant Programmer: Ignacio Buioli
Onstage Assistant I: Aarón Echevarría
Stage Assistants: Dorzong Fernandez Evans, Unai de Amorrortu, Lucía Gusman, Federica Alvarez Gorelik
Concept & Direction: Edgardo Mercado & Augusto Zanela
Video Editing: Ciro Zanela

Scene I
A scene in a library

In its inaugural chapter, this project—conceived to adapt to various formats—debuted as a performance piece featuring a custom system for projecting, capturing, and transmitting infrared radiation. It premiered in March 2018 at the Teatro Colón's Center for Experimentation, where audiences viewed looping scenes in complete darkness through a dedicated app on their smartphones.

The atmospheric setting of the formidable basement space at the Teatro Colón (home to its Center for Experimentation) evoked Lacock Abbey—the cradle of modern photography where Talbot penned his pioneering ideas 170 years ago, which we reinterpret in this work.

The scenes comprising this collective portrait of the Teravision team were filmed in infrared via the TeraApp, developed by Moldeo Interactive to run on audience smartphones through a bespoke intranet system designed specifically for the Teatro Colón/CETC.

Credits

Narrator: Marcos López

Performers: Milva Leonardi, Rocío Mercado, Eugenia Roces, Braian Bre, Ramiro Cortez

Dramaturgy: Gerardo Salinas

Digital Application Development: Fabrice Costa

Sound Design: Nicolás Varchausky

Assistant Director: Corina Tate

Lighting Design: Fernando Berreta

Set Design: Ariel Vaccaro

Costume Design: Sandra Fink

Digital Imagery: Ciro Zanela & Aarón Echevarría

Assistant Programmer: Ignacio Buioli

Scene Assistance: Victoria Lombardero

Concept & Direction: Edgardo Mercado & Augusto Zanela

CETC Director: Miguel Galperín

Scene II
A brief history of recording the body in motion

The scene features surveillance camera footage of performances executed during the show. This segment presents research on groundbreaking experimental photography examples that captured bodies performing various actions before the camera. The creative process revolves around the concept of the technical image of the body - the body as explored through the lens and the limits of perceptual capabilities. For the installation design, the scene was conceived with translucent screens that simultaneously integrated live performer actions with infrared projections of photographic animations, while physically separating the audience circulation space from the performance area. This was achieved through custom infrared projection and lighting technology.

 

PRELIMINARY NOTES*
This scene will employ IR projection and mapping, stop-motion animation, stroboscopy, shadow play, and other techniques. It functions as an observational scene within a CCTV environment - the audience only views performance images through their smartphone screens without interaction, effectively transitioning them toward the next scene.

Here, performers bring photographs to life (as rehearsed at CETC using Muybridge and Gjon Mili's photographs as reference). We aim to reconstruct famous chronophotography and stroboscopy records (Marey, Muybridge, Bragaglia, Edgerton, Mili). The audience enters this space after completing the group portrait activity in the previous scene.

In this scene, The Spectrum ceases to be visible, becoming only a voice in the room's space or through audience smartphones' speakers. Hypothetically, we're illustrating that principle where "...the camera's eye would see clearly what the human eye would find only darkness."
 

*Transcription of Augusto Zanela's preliminary notes for the scene's final design

Credits

Performers: Eugenia Roces, Braian Bre, Ramiro Cortés
IR Lighting: Fernando Berreta
Digital Image Design: Ciro Zanela & Aarón Echevarría / Nipkow
Infrared Technology Development: Moldeo Interactive & Augusto Zanela
Set Design: Ariel Vaccaro
Sound Design: Randomized programming of tracks created by Nicolás Varchausky
Stage Direction: Edgardo Mercado
Artistic Direction & Editing: Augusto Zanela

Scene III
A scene in a laboratory (The autopsy)

This documentary reconstructs the staging of The Autopsy, created by Marcos López and his team, inspired by:

  • Rembrandt's painting The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp [oil on canvas (1.69 x 2.16m)], created in 1632 (Netherlands, 1606-1669)

  • The strikingly similar photograph of Che Guevara's corpse display taken by Freddy Alborta (Bolivia, 1932-2005) on October 10, 1967 at Vallegrande's San Juan de Malta Hospital, documenting the Che's death publicly

These scenes were filmed in complete darkness using infrared security cameras, with infrared projections of the reference artworks, through the TeraApp - the custom application developed by Moldeo Interactive specifically for the Teatro Colón/CETC. The app allowed the content to play on audience smartphones upon entry, after which they participated in recreating the scene live.

Credits

Narrator: Marcos López
Performers: Milva Leonardi, Rocío Mercado, Eugenia Roces, Braian Bre, Ramiro Cortez
Playwriting: Gerardo Salinas
Digital Application Development: Fabrice Costa
Sound Design: Nicolás Varchausky
Assistant Director: Corina Tate
Lighting Design: Fernando Berreta
Set Design: Ariel Vaccaro
Costume Design: Sandra Fink
Digital Imaging Artists: Ciro Zanela & Aarón Echevarría / Nipkow
Assistant Programmer: Ignacio Buioli
Stage Assistance: Victoria Lombardero
Concept and Direction: Edgardo Mercado & Augusto Zanela
CETC Director: Miguel Galperín

Scene III

A scene in the laboratory

Infrared footage from the CCTV camera of A Scene in the Laboratory, showing the audience—who had access to the costumes—and performer Milva Leonardi on the examination table, reenacting The Autopsy scene. This same scene played in video format on a cellphone at the moment of entering the room.

Scene IV

The spectral body

Entire scene filmed with an Infrared Camera, using ambient IR lighting and an Infrared Flashlight.

Credits

Narrator: Marcos López
Performers: Milva Leonardi, Rocío Mercado, Eugenia Roces, Braian Bre, Ramiro Cortez
Playwright: Gerardo Salinas
Digital Application Development: Fabrice Costa
Sound Design: Nicolás Varchausky
Assistant Director: Corina Tate
Lighting Design: Fernando Berreta
Set Design: Ariel Vaccaro
Costume Design: Sandra Fink
Digital Imaging: Ciro Zanela & Aarón Echevarría / Nipkow
Assistant Programmer: Ignacio Buioli
Stage Assistant: Victoria Lombardero
Concept and Direction: Edgardo Mercado & Augusto Zanela
CETC Director: Miguel Galperín

Scene V

The hayloft

The scenes in The Hayloft were filmed in infrared format using a fixed camera through the TeraApp—an application developed by Moldeo Interactive to run on the audience's smartphones via the intranet specially designed for the Teatro Colón / CETC.

 

"One advantage of the discovery of the Photographic Art will be that it will enable us to introduce into our pictures a multitude of minute details that add to the truth and reality of the representation, but which no artist would take the trouble to faithfully copy from nature. Content with a general effect, they would likely consider it beneath their genius to reproduce every accident of light and shadow; nor could they do so, in fact, without a disproportionate expenditure of time and effort that might otherwise be much better employed. Yet it is well to have the means at our disposal of introducing these minutiae without any additional trouble, as they occasionally serve to lend an air of variety beyond expectation to the represented scene."
 

—William Henry Fox Talbot, The Pencil of Nature, 1844

Credits

Narrator: Marcos López
Performers: Milva Leonardi, Rocío Mercado, Eugenia Roces, Braian Bre, Ramiro Cortez
Dramaturgy: Gerardo Salinas
Digital Application Development: Fabrice Costa
Sound Design: Nicolás Varchausky
Assistant Director: Corina Tate
Lighting Design: Fernando Berreta
Scenography: Ariel Vaccaro
Costume Design: Sandra Fink
Digital Imaging: Ciro Zanela & Aarón Echevarría / Nipkow
Assistant Programmer: Ignacio Buioli
Stage Management: Victoria Lombardero
Concept and Direction: Edgardo Mercado & Augusto Zanela
CETC Director: Miguel Galperín

Stop motion animations used in rehearsals

Quick edit for rehearsals of one segment from Scene II.

A brief history of motion capture. Stop motion animation featuring performers Milva Leonardi, Eugenia Roces, Braian Bre, and Ramiro Cortéz, alongside excerpts from the "Man Walking" series from Eadweard Muybridge's Animal Locomotion.

Technical and Digital Development

TeraVision, a work that unfolds in complete darkness, visible through the audience's mobile devices. Staged at the Teatro Colón's Experimentation Center on March 8/9/10/11/15/16/17/18, 2018. Moldeo Interactive developed the streaming system with 6 (six) IP infrared cameras, dedicated server, infrared hack of 3 (three) projectors, and production of a dedicated app for Android and iOS.
 

Concept and Direction: Augusto Zanela & Edgardo Mercado
Technical Development: Moldeo Interactive

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