thesis propsal? check!

Yesterday, my thesis proposal was accepted by the faculty. Yay! Now to firm up my committee and get crackin'...on the below!

“Word Painting: Conversations in Light”

Word Painting is an exploration of the relationship between light and text, abstracted from narrative. Robert Edmond Jones writes in The Dramatic Imagination, “we use light as we use words, to elucidate ideas and emotions”. (120) In this thesis, I want to explore the conversation created by images which are text-based.

Purpose:
Jones writes, “The lighting of a play should contain an element of surprise, a sense of discovery”. (118) I think that the discovery of meaning and value in a text can be expressed through light. Further, I think that it is a beautiful and valuable thing for one to experience control over the environment in which one is. I would like to marry this sense of control with the sense of discovery in the text. The visitor to the space is in total control over what happens in the space: should he chose to read or not to read, should he chose to sit or not to sit—his degree of interaction with the text determines what visual is created in the world he inhabits. Further, he is unaware of this degree of control until he does something to make himself aware.
It is important to me that part of the this project be about communicating the kind of images which lighting designers conjure up when they read a text, but which other people might not readily conjure. I am creating the images, the visitor is discovering them and manipulating them. I want to have a personal conversation with each viewer through these images.

Why this is not a piece about acting or designing a scene:
I think that through this project, the visitor would become aware of the emotion being expressed by the text in a way that differs from a play. I am not interested in how one would convey a sad scene or a lover’s scene to an audience. I am interested in making the visitor understand/feel/generate the emotion that the text conveys. There is no audience to watch.
I think that the real-time, interactive nature of this project makes it different from designing a scene from a play. Like an aria in opera develops an emotion over its various sections, I think that the exploration of the text will develop the visual picture in real time. As the person becomes aware of his degree of control, he can revisit and reorder the text, thus manipulating the visual world around him. It is a tangible, breathing set of parameters. There is a “livingness” to the light. (113)


Why tie this to a text?
In a world where everyone is not a lighting designer or a theatre artist, using text gives the everyone a common language, so that a conversation through images is possible. I am not interested in creating something pretty to look at, nor am I interested in making an installation that people walk through. I want to create a piece that forces you to interact with it—something that doesn’t exist unless you interact with it. I am interested in the creation of theatre inside of one’s mind—in the everyday fantastical pictures that ordinary people get when they read a love poem or listen to a song play. In tying the project to text, I provide a medium through which people can interact. There is a structure to what they are doing, which will allow them to discover their control and manipulate it more easily. Also, I think that text is integral to theatre, whether that be in the form of a monologue or an action. Just design is, in my opinion, just visual art.

Structure:
There are three types of text that would be explored in this project: commands, literature and song. Types are as follows:
Direct command: stage direction, eg, “Stand over there”
Literature: imagery from poetry and prose, eg, “the rosy fingered Dawn…”
Song: song lyrics without music, “I’m Mr. Blue…”
When the visitor arrived at the space, he would be given one of the three types of text and directed to enter the space. Once inside, he would interact with the text- either speaking it out loud, singing the song, or completing the action. This would begin the sequence of lighting: creating a predetermined atmosphere to reinforce the experience. There is no scenery or props—everything is supplied by the design.

Misc:
Set Up:
Light needs to inhabit the same space as the viewer: a black-box style space would work well. Also, due to the conversational nature of the piece, I will be cueing most of it live every time—building from a few existing looks.
Design:
It is important that each possible permutation within a visual sequence be compositionally sound. However, there is something to be said for a set of confusing emotions being confusing visually until they resolve into something familiar.
As much as possible, there needs to be a tangible quality to the visitor’s interaction with the text. Things should not appear to be happening to the visitor; the visitor should feel as though he is making things happen.

Other things I would like to incorporate:
1)Ensemble experiences: three people, one for each type of text. Make a piece of theatre, by working together to figure out the rules of the visual design.
2)Free-form environment creation: some sort of mapping system for exploring texts outside of the preselected group