Flowering Tree (from sketch to the real world)

This all started with Rui Horta’s idea of having a physical tree on stage that would support my visual projections. Rui Horta came up with a drawing and I quickly put it to 3D and sent to the great artist and set designer João Paulo Araújo who made this great master piece!

Flowering Tree - from a sketch to the real world

Flowering Tree - the tree

After the tree was finally built, I’ve made the first projection test, for this I created a program in Jitter, where I have a video running on the background, and on the foreground a .png transparent mask with the tree silhouette.

Flowering Tree - tree projection program

Flowering Tree - tree projection program

Flowering Tree - tree projection program

Flowering Tree - tree projection program

Everything fitted perfectly! We were astonished!!

For the subtitles I’ve created another program in Jitter that could run videos on the background and on the foreground the subtitles could be displayed and crossfaded one next to each another. Another cool feature of this program is the ability to run videos at different speedrates, this was very useful because most of the videos were created in sync with the music, was a bit tricky to sync the video with the orchester and chorus but not impossible. Another great help came from the composer João Godinho who was by my side telling me when to swap to the next subtitle.

Flowering Tree - subtitles and video player program

Flowering Tree - subtitles and video player program

Flowering Tree - subtitles and video player program

Flowering Tree - subtitles and video player program

Flowering Tree - subtitles and video player program

Finally after one month of crazy hard-working days, and with a final week of non-stop working, troubleshooting, finetunning and problem solving everything worked so smoothed on the premiere, we were all thrilled and excited!!

Big thanks to André Almeira, André Sier and Sérgio Ferreira who are great tech advisors and always gave positive inputs.

I must also mention that the Gulbenkian crew was absolutely fantastic, without their help this epic task wouldn’t been achievable!

Click here if you want to see more photos.

Flowering Tree (photos)

Flowering Tree

Click here if you want to know more about the software that played the projections.

Rehearsals:

Flowering Tree

Flowering Tree

Flowering Tree

Flowering Tree

Flowering Tree

Flowering Tree

Flowering Tree

After the performance, there was a fantastic dinner with plenty of indian flavours and music and the tree was moved to the outside garden:

Flowering Tree

Flowering Tree

Flowering Tree

Flowering Tree

Flowering Tree

Flowering Tree

Flowering Tree by John Adams

A Flowering Tree by John Adams, inspired by Mozart’s Magic Flute. This performance, previously presented in March at Cité de la Musique in Paris, in the context of a festival dedicated to John Adams, and conducted by Joana Carneiro, in Lisbon will involve the scenic intervention of Rui Horta.