a beautiful place out in the country
Inspired by themes and aesthetics of traditional Greek theater, ancient Roman colosseums, and English Shakespearean drama, ‘A Beautiful Place Out in the Country’ uses OptiTrack motion capture technology to create a multifaceted and parabolic performance that questions and draws parallels between human consumption and conquest.
An inverted take on the Garden of Eden, a representation of man is born from the Earth, and finds himself in a vast garden, his only company a two-headed herbivorous beast. The beast circles and protects the garden’s only tree, the fruits of which this man seems all too curious about. The human studies his environment and tests the likelihood of being welcomed into the creature’s circle. While the beast seems quite passive, it has no interest in welcoming the man’s advances.
Defeated in his quest to know what he covets, he retires to explore what has been granted to him freely; the rest of the garden, and with it a large scythe. Tool in hand, the human begins to cultivate the earth, coming to bear fruits of his own labors. All the while, however, he continues to envy the beast’s dominion over the singular tree. Before long, he recognizes the power of the scythe- not only to foster new growth but as a weapon.
The performance concludes with virtual cameras placed in the Unreal Engine environment zooming out to reveal the garden itself to have been at the center of a dilapidated Greek Amphitheater. Created using a 3D model of the Hierapolis Theater(found in modern day Turkey), the implementation of this concluding visual element invites audiences to reminisce about western theater in some of its earliest forms(masked greek chorus’, gladiators slaying beasts of the wild, and cautionary tragedies), while also looking ahead to its ever immersive and skeuomorphic destinations. During this piece’s performance, an audience sat in a semi-circle around the combat - a direct parallel to the invisible spectators lining the virtual colosseum on the screens before them. Further subverting the boundaries between the tangible and the digital, physical props/set pieces are constructed in a ‘low-poly’ style reminiscent of early video games and animation, while assets presented on screen are rendered with high detail and realism. The choice to convert the colors on the abstracted models and environment to grayscale speaks towards the post-digital nature of the commentary and work as well. Working with advanced technologies like Unreal Engine and OptiTrack grants the opportunity to quite literally create digital worlds eerily akin to our own. ‘A Beautiful Place out in the Country’ chose to delineate the digital from physical in an overt sense- we often associate grayscale filters with antiquated cinema. The juxtaposition between the modes of relaying information enriches the indeterminate period of time the performance takes place in, as many parables often do.
full performance here