6: Theatre Projection Design
Think of it as exporting your imagination.
What does in mean to project your ideas?
For talented projection designer Christopher Harrisson it means to literally take the vision in his mind, and project it - onto theatre sets, buildings, or anything where projection design can enhance the story.
Christopher's work has been sought after by companies from Bristol Theatre Royal to Sony and Selfridges.
He is also the projection designer for Proteus Theatre's stage production, Indestructible.
In this engaging and thought-provoking conversation with show host Mary Swan, Christopher sheds light on his artistic progression into projection design and the transformative impact it has on the theatrical experience.
“Projection in theatre shows... is another performer on stage. It should be thought of as such rather than solving all the problems of the show.”
Chapters
1:23 Being a multi-disciplinary artist in theatre
4:06 First projection work
6:04 Technical tools and software
10:18 The impact of AI on projection and set design
17:17 The work and influence of Paula Rego
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Mary Swan 0:00
Hi, I'm Mary Swan, Artistic Director of Proteus, and you're listening to Indestructible. If you enjoy this show, please share. Subscribe and leave a five star review. Thanks for listening.
Welcome, Christopher Harrison to Indestructible the podcast. I'm Mary Swan, Artistic Director of Proteus and host of this podcast. Christopher is a multidisciplinary artist working in performance video and animation, he works mainly in projection design for theatre, which is what you're doing for us on the show Indestructible. But your practice also spans writing comics and performance. Chris has worked for organizations like Bristol Vic, but also corporates like Sony and Selfridges and his animation and production design for theatre includes Outlier for Bristol Vic, his solo show, The North North and the Viking Adventure Vinland by Jack Dean. He was finalist in a one minute projection mapping contest held in Tokyo in 2023. So Chris is joining me today to talk about his practice as an artist, his career path, and what the opportunities and challenges are for the future in this area. And particularly around AI, which we got quite interested in when we were working on Indestructible. But we'll come to that in a minute. But Chris, do you want to just explain a little bit around what multidisciplinary practice means to you when you're working in theatre particularly?
Christopher Harrisson 1:23
Sure. I think mostly it kind of means I'm a bit greedy really, and I like doing as many things as possible. My background really is storytelling. I originally did an English degree and then I trained as an actor I went to the Lecoq school, so I thought about bringing more physical theatre and story and text and things like that, which I've basically just really wanted to keep hold of as I've moved into different areas of my practice. So the visual storytelling of projection design and things like that is just a bit of an extension of what I was already doing, that's at least how I view it, and it's maybe a bit more into sort of visual arts than I've been before. But essentially for me multidisciplinary practice is using whatever tool is necessary to tell a story or to express something. Luckily, I've got a few different skills that I can draw on to do that.
Mary Swan 2:15
Do you think because I think often when those of us who work in physical theatre a lot and kind of use a lot of visual practice in puppetry and things like that, do you think that is where that sort of interface with things, that animation and technology comes through? Because I think a lot of people who work in projection tend to come more from a, as you say, a straightforward visual art or tech background than performance.
Christopher Harrisson 2:38
I think the interest comes from the sense of everything moving and being part of a visual language. So in the physical theatre you're using the body really to tell the story, and the things that the body does in the space are the the tools with which you expressing some sort of sentiment or, yeah, doing storytelling and projection with me was just adding another thing to the space. There's a link with especially with like Lecoq training and scenography and set. There's a whole sort of side course of the Lecoq school which is all about how scenography can sort of move in the space, open up new and different ways of viewing the space and what that can tell you about what's happening on stage, the characters relationship with each other, with the world around them. So I think that they're married is very closely and it's sort of like an interesting way to go into more projection work because, as you say, a lot of people come from a visual arts background or a VJ background or things like that, where it's primarily a visual thing and that has its own set of rules and its own set of preconceptions and biases that are coming in about what the audience experience will be of that.
Mary Swan 3:52
For for you, that transition from pure live performance into then using projection and animation, what was that journey? Was it about? Had you always been drawing you talk about comics and being into that. Was that the route in for you?
Christopher Harrisson 4:06
Yeah, a big part of it was. So I had I had a theatre company and we would tour around and make lots of lots of work. And that was that was great. And then as a side thing, I was doing a little bit of illustration, starting to enjoy that and get into that. Never had any formal art training. It's all been very much just me on my own, exploring and trying out new things and getting paintbrushes out and doing things like that. And then when I made the solo show that you mentioned in the intro, the North to North, that was very much just the first thing that I'd ever done with projection. But the way that I'd envisioned the story was kind of a graphic novel, and the comic sort of world maybe is more animated realm, because it was all very fantastical. It was magical realism, I guess, in its relationship between real and unreal, and it felt like projecting my illustrations would be a good way to show that world that I was imagining. So I did some very simple animating of the things that I've been drawing, using them more like puppets, I guess, than traditional animation, and then got hold of a failry rubbish old projector from someone and projected it ont the set. And I wasn't really aware of any rules or technical things that needed to happen with that so there was quite a lot of trial and error. Yeah, it was great fun. Then after that, yeah, people started to approach me about working with them, and from that it's just sort of grown and grown really.
Mary Swan 5:28
It's interesting you said about the technical rules of things because I think I's said to you that for me kind of working with you on Indestructible was such a different experience from the last time I attempted anything with projection or animation on stage, which is going back a bit. I think sort of 2014 was the last time. And for me, kind of knowing what you're able to do on the show and how solid that technology is, it's quite astonishing how far it's come. I mean, it feels like you kind of really have a handle on all of how that works in terms of the technical end of it, the software and all that stuff. Was that a big learning curve for you? And does it continue to be?
Christopher Harrisson 6:04
The technology's always moving on and there's always new softwares and things coming out and different industry standards. So the software I use isn't necessarily used by that many people outside of CS theatre. So things like Q Lab, which is sort of industry standard queuing software which do great things for video mapping, but if you are very precise or difficult things, then you kind of need to start moving into other ones and new ones are coming out and some of them, which are really good, are also incredibly expensive. I think the main issue really invigilators are one of them is just the sheer cost of certain ways to streamline the process. You can do things very cheaply and you kind of have to work out and learn it a bit as you go and find solutions, which is essentially what I was doing to begin with. Because yeah, having a lot of different services that you're projecting on to lots of things popping up in lots of different places, you essentially have to find work around solutions to stuff, whereas now I can just go, okay, great, pass over that, over that, over that. And that's a really helpful streamlining tool, but I think it's really useful to have gone through the process of working out that. And then this past year that's just gone over as a developing your creative practice drag from Arts Council England, which has also massively helped my technical understanding of how projectors work and how things like networking and software and things like that all interact with each other because there are some incredible video engineers out that I'm not one of them, but that at least I thought, I understand what they're saying. But to me it's just helpful.
Mary Swan 7:42
And when these companies now approach you to do work, I mean, I saw the reason we connected was I seen Vinland and saw your work in that and just loved that and really loved the, you know, in a way, the simplicity of it. But knowing how complex that actually is to do, but it just was lovely. That sort of animation and projection element really elevated that piece for me. AB But when theatre companies approached you to do work too, is it often the case that they have a really clear idea of what they're doing, or are people kind of a little bit like, Oh, we just like to play with it, or what do you tend to get? Do you tend to get very specifically commissioned or not?
Christopher Harrisson 8:21
It depends slightly on who's making the show and what kind of show they're making. So I've worked on shows where they go, Okay, there's just this point where we need KB footage and it's produced on this back square, and that's the only production of the whole show. Yeah. Okay, cool. Clear. And then, you know, to make that really easy. And then other ones, there's a period of R&D, which we've also done on this show where you try out a lot of different styles or different ways of working, and that's quite interesting. You sometimes in different places and then the things they'll just give you a vague ish grief, which can be quite nice because then I can just have my own design ideas and bring them in and then there's a back and forth about what that would look like. But yeah, my conversations are usually with if there's a writer director and set and you know, lighting and things as well. Also part of the conversation process is probably one of the key ones. And then if is a devising show, whoever the design company is, because a lot of the time the way that I feel about projection in theatre shows is that it is another performer on stage. So it should be kind of thought of as such rather than solving all the problems of the show. So if there's an issue with knowing where we are, we can solve that to an extent with the backdrop of a city or a café. But we should be able to do more interesting, exciting things for a scene than just something that a character could say in line, like Welcome to My Cafe. We don't necessarily need a backdrop of the cafe. They can add an elevated scene, gives an atmosphere. That's the only job it's doing, I think. Yeah, it's a little bit about why. Projection. Yeah, it's too hard to have all these different locations.
Mary Swan 10:05
It's like the structure of Big Ben and the Red Bus is make movies covering London. I know what you mean. It can be quite literal as well.
And you were talking about R&D, and one of the things that we got quite interested in with the R&D was was around artificial intelligence and the access to it and how artists might be using that. And I mean, for you, what does that feel like an opportunity? How how have you began using it?
Christopher Harrisson 10:38
It's an interesting one because I think there's there's a lot of discussions at the moment in the broader video design section design community around what it's going to mean. And it's less a concern necessarily about the tool itself, although there's a certain degree of whether or not we like the styles or how it comes up with in this philosophical questions about arts, which they're not necessarily that pertinent to the joke at the moment. It's I guess, about who's control, who's in control of the aid programs, which is, you know, big commercial operations and things. So I also has to create a means for my obsolescence. I provide a lot of money to do the things that I said. AI is proving very useful for workflow, especially in things like R&D, where you have to produce sometimes a lot of content quickly that I'm not necessarily going to use. I a lot designers can use things like CBT said, you have to have a lot of newspapers on stage and no one's going to read that you want to have actual text inside you can get to actually write me a Victorian newspaper articles about such and such, and then you can have those and it's just sort of filler I think is very useful for those sorts of things. We are trying out visual imagery, things like that. I think it's still very weird. A lot of the stuff it makes and it's not aesthetically something that I'm particularly interested in or enamored with, so it's cropping up quite a lot, especially in the big sort of events, mapping things. The competition that I did earlier this year in Japan was the winner of that was for the AI video generated this piece, which I think there was very clear artistry in it and I would take that away from the crate of it. It's just there's something about it. And the way that it moves that slowly creeps me out. And that's just a sort of personal view and one of aesthetics, maybe rather more than that sort of philosophical.
Mary Swan 12:28
Yeah. No, no position. Yeah. We found that when we were playing with it, that it was, you know, as you said, it was the hands. I'd never looked at that before, that the sort of less sophisticated ones can't do hands on visuals and things like that.
Christopher Harrisson 12:40
But it's the faces. Yeah. So yeah, it's just something very off about it. But I mean that's, that was what was quite interesting, I think in terms of what we were doing, the R&D, those that is quite the sort of quality of that. Something a bit wrong with this.
Mary Swan 12:54
Yeah. It's the uncanny valley thing isn't it. It's not quite there. It's interesting you talk about the projection mapping, so just explain a little bit about what that is and how did you end up taking part in the competition?
Christopher Harrisson 13:05
The competition was an open call. I say it was just a woman in projection mapping contest. I think it's now in its third or fourth year, but essentially you create a piece and send it to them and then they select up to 20 finalists. So that's what it was. I didn't actually go for it, but yeah, you're sort of invited other than to do this big projection onto a museum in the centre of Tokyo. So that's quite nice to see. My work up there is quite still do a piece, which is just, it's just a set of time and it's just using the architecture because projection mapping and video mapping a video projection will come out as a square or rectangle because that's how the files are made and what they look like. Then through a variety of different methods I software, you can do other things within the actual final, but essentially you are even masking things. I'll see you cutting out bits that you don't want to be illuminated all year, then changing the geometry of the final so it fits onto the geometry of what you're projecting onto. So that might be if say, it's a building, you might have to sort of tweak things and warp things a little bit so they can rest on angle all those different perspectives and things like that. You have to work with the template of the building or the object itself, so you can make things very, very precise. And then the mapping itself is quite a simple thing of just making sure everything fits and the perspective is correct. But you can get very far into things like easy maps, which essentially is building a 3D model of the thing you want to do, and then using some very complicated maths to then have multiple projectors projecting onto it from all different places. It's not something that I'm particularly technically competent at. I'm sort of aware of this theory of that, and it's complicated. It's for that. That's big in the of big companies doing lots of sort of very intense festivals for some of their people and stuff like that.
Mary Swan 14:59
Yeah, it's amazing stuff. I mean it is there's some great stuff on YouTube, isn't there? Various places that have done it. But as you say, it's kind of that way that you are able to map onto our set in the shows is just extraordinary. It just makes such a difference. And what for you? What? I've asked everybody this, but what advice would you give young Christopher starting starting out? Because did you want to originally be an actor? Was that your first impulse?
Christopher Harrisson 15:27
I think so. From until probably I was about, yeah, my mid-twenties, I still well, I always wanted to initially be an actor and then I, I enjoyed telling stories and making my own work and I sort of thought that was probably what I was going to do forever, really. And I still have that impulse to make things and to tell stories and do things like that. But this is a quite a nice adjacent avenue with collaboratively making stories and telling stories, which is really nice, I guess, for young me, if I knew this is where I was going to kind of and I think just maintaining a daily or as frequent as possible, like arts practice, probably doing some more technical arts classes or courses or things that probably has been of great benefit because there's always been rumour, trial and error, espe with drawing and the more kind of foundational art techniques, because without any training it's, it's not impossible, but it's quite hard and you're constantly looking back at stuff you did about a year ago and going, that's not how you draw hands, whatever. I think there's so many tools picking a few that you can get good at because a lot of the things that you learn in those things are transferable. Annoyingly, Adobe's way is quite useful because it's in the place of a lot of different things, which is so annoying because they're a little bit of a monopoly, but there are free alternatives and those are the tools that are being used by big massive production companies. Free versions or versions like that. So I think if I'd sort of known about that and got involved in those sorts of things earlier, then if you get a bit more of a head start at this point, I've got no idea what are going to be the new because there's new things to me every day. And then you're like, Oh, well, everyone's using this now. I mean, the thing comes along and it's even more sparkly and pretty unique that we live in now. Sees that.
Mary Swan 17:17
Yeah, it's constant, isn't it? I suppose that's probably the life lesson, isn't it? In some areas like this, you are having to constantly relearn or learn new things to do. But just to finish with, I've asked everyone to bring along a female artist that they feel more people should know. It doesn't necessarily mean this person is unknown, but just someone that isn't known as well, because that obviously, as I've said, is that was the first impulse of making this show is around people not really understanding who Lee Miller was. Have you got someone for this.
Christopher Harrisson 17:46
Question for us, what we call the radio.
Mary Swan 17:50
Right? Yes.
Christopher Harrisson 17:51
British Portuguese artist who died, I think last year. And I think her only her first major retrospective was only the year before that. And traditionally one in the UK since you print really. But it's a visual world and a visual language which I think really chimes with a lot of the things that I value and make. She brings a lot of stories into her work and a lot of those are from fables or folklore. I do similar things when I think about my work, and I think there's something very interesting about translating the sort of tales that we all sort of know into something and finding something new in them. But I also think have some visual style is extraordinary and it's that I think she calls it beautiful, grotesque, beautifully grotesque. And there is, I think, beauty and in grotesque things and terrible things and things that are sort of unsettling to look at. I think it's a really interesting feeling, looking at what was the paintings and feeling a sort of repulsion and attraction simultaneously and an obsession with bodies, paints, bodies. It's fun to see all of it without having this sort of slightly cringe cliché or fantasy. Oh, look at you. I
sold baths on sale.
Mary Swan 19:08
Yeah.
Christopher Harrisson 19:09
I mean, if it's your cup of tea go for it.
Mary Swan 19:11
Yeah. Tends not to be very feminist, does it?
Christopher Harrisson 19:16
Yes. I don't know what part of a body that is protecting so much, but yeah, I think. I just think she's great. And I think becoming a lot more sort of known and Barbie and considering who her contemporaries were, that it's really taken until this century really for anyone to properly go, oh no, she's actually a really great painter and was doing something really interesting at a time when a lot of the other work was conceptualist and things like that. She was taking it to surrealism and figurative painting to the more interesting space right now.
Mary Swan 19:53
That's brilliant. Well, thanks, Chris. Lovely to chat with you. Thanks ever so much for coming on the podcast.
That's it for this edition. I'm Mary Swan. Thanks again for listening to Indestructible. I look forward to your company next time.
Credits
The Indestructible podcast is a Creative Kin production for Proteus Theatre Company.
Executive Producer & Producer: Jason Caffrey
Mixing and Mastering: Adam Double
Production Music: DEX 1200
Artwork: Y Designs
