Lighting Companies
Kinetic Lighting, Felix Lighting
Venue
Various (Tour)
Production Team
- Show Directors & Design: Megan James, Corin Roddick
- Lighting Designers & Programmers: Sarah Landau, Julien Reux
- Visual Content Creation: Brett Bolton
- Production & Logistics: Joel Gregg, Keith Butler
- Tour Direction: Brandt Dettling
- Tour Manager: Anna Griffin
- Lighting Director: Erin Peters
- Lighting Tech: Tevita Maliu
- Kinetic Lighting Rep: Dena Cerino
- Felix Lighting Rep: Ryan Herrera
- Accurate Staging Rep: Joe M. Castellanos
Gear
- 1 MA Lighting grandMA3 full-size Console
- 10 Chauvet Color Strike M Strobe/Wash
- 13 Elation Chorus Line 16
- 2 Astera AX2 PixelBar
- 15 Astera Titan Tube
- 2 Look Solutions Unique Hazer
Designer Insights by Steve Jennings:
The Land Voyage tour for the duo of Megan James and Corin Roddick, known as Purity Ring, had been planned for 2020. Sarah Landau, lighting designer and programmer, had just begun brainstorming about various stage designs that would showcase the projections on a transparent surface, and the band demoed some scrim products before the tour was temporarily shelved. “We regrouped in summer 2021, and they had settled on a stage plot with the drapes and risers,” said Landau. “My job was to expand the beautiful vibes from the projections into a cohesive world of light, illuminate the band without affecting the projections, and create the cues for Corin’s MIDI instrument. I shared some renders, they were approved, and we had the luxury of over a month of rehearsing and programming to build the show together. We truly collaborated—each of us giving feedback in all departments and showing off and choosing amongst options as a group—though the band, of course, had the final say. Then Covid-19 blew up again, and we only managed two shows before the rest of the tour was put on hiatus. When it came time to rehearse and redesign for a smaller budget almost a year later, I wasn’t available, and Julien Reux stepped in.”
This was Brett Bolton’s first time working with Purity Ring. “I specialize in a real-time visual software called Notch,” explains Bolton. “If I remember correctly, Corin [Roddick] was interested in the possibilities of building a show with Notch and came across my work and a lecture I gave on creating music from visuals. They reached out via Instagram, and we met up to discuss working together. Things clicked right away, and we came up with a lot of interesting ideas.” Bolton worked directly with Purity Ring to build out their vision, designing the visuals for the full show himself. “Our collaboration was really rewarding and effortless since a lot of our aesthetics align and we had full creative control to create whatever we wanted. This tour was postponed a few times, so we had a good amount of time to talk through and rework ideas. There were about two months of intense creation and rehearsal where we actually built and tested the visuals. Luckily, working with real-time software I was able to flesh out ideas and animate them pretty quickly based on their musical inputs.”
Roddick and James like things to feel organic, warm, and sometimes slightly macabre, notes Bolton. “Building those sorts of visuals was a fun challenge, especially using software that tends to have more of a digital, geometric, and cold look. After some trial and error, we created a nice set of looks that complemented their music well. The process started with mood boards for general ideas/feelings for each song. I then spent some time building basic systems inside Notch for each of these looks. During the days leading up to rehearsal we would test the projections on the scrim along with the music and Sarah’s lighting, see what was working, and rearrange/scrap things that didn’t feel right. Once we had a good base look going for a song, I started to add animation. I had a copy of Corin’s Ableton [Live, software allowing for live audio effects] so I was able to animate directly from the Ableton Live Set along with the music and plan for the real-time drum trigger and camera inputs.”
For the visual tech setup, running everything real-time gave Bolton a lot of freedom. Each performance was slightly different, and it allowed Purity Ring to improvise and be in the moment instead of worrying about syncing to specific visuals. “Avoiding render times is always an extra bonus,” says Bolton. “Corin and I are on a similar wavelength when it comes to audiovisual-tech-geekery, so it was easy for us to work together and get the audio and visual worlds synced.” All of the visuals run in real-time from Notch and are animated live by Corin’s Ableton Live Set and MIDI drum triggers, as well as Megan’s body movements captured via IR cameras onstage. Roddick’s triggers, for example, could emit particles based on the position of which trigger he played and James’s movements could paint and interact with the visuals behind her as she danced across the stage.
Sarah Landau toured with Purity Ring as their LD in 2013, on a tour leg supporting their first album. “We had a super fun time, and kept in touch. I wasn’t available for their second album tour, but was for this third one. On each tour, Purity Ring has had a central showpiece that the lighting design accompanied—pulsating cocoon-shaped lanterns by Tangible Interaction for the first record, Submergence/Squid Soup’s mesmerizing curtains of LED balls on the second, and Brett Bolton’s live-audio intricately interactive projection design for this tour. Corin’s midi- and light-instrument has evolved through the years as well, and this tour’s glowing string-curtain columns are a secondary focal point of the design.”
More photos by Steve Jennings:
