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Saturday, March 29, 2014

Faster than Night

We've got a new site up for Faster than Night, linking to all the show's many online presences:


Check it out for blog posts, Twitter, Facebook and of course, that all-important box office link!

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Mind, Muscle and the Music of the Spheres

(Originally published on praxistheatre.com as part of Harbourfront Centre's HATCH 2014.)
Hawking radiation (illustration by 
Communicate Science)

When you're writing a science fiction story about wormholes and time travel, sooner or sooner you're going to bump into Stephen Hawking. The world-famous physicist and Brief History of Time author even has some theoretical black hole quantum-effect radiation named after him, for heaven's sake. He's just. that. good.

But there's another resonance with Faster than Night that we didn't anticipate. Hawking, like us, uses facial-capture technology.

Friday, March 21, 2014

#Fasterfood

(Originally published on praxistheatre.com as part of Harbourfront Centre's HATCH 2014.)


squeez-a-snak

Earlier this week, ISMEE, the artificial intelligence on board the starship Envoy, issued an invitation and a challenge:
And you know there's nothing people like better than tweeting their #foodporn:

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Facial Capture

by Heather Gilroy 

(Originally published on praxistheatre.com as part of Harbourfront Centre's HATCH 2014.)

It looks like he’s wearing a bike lock on his head.

A protruding horizontal rectangle shadows the actor’s face—it’s attached to him by a black headband. The tiny camera is suspended just inches in front of his nose. A cable comes out of the contraption leading somewhere behind the curtains...

Centre stage, a huge animated head is projected, a donkey whose lips are moving in time with the man’s, whose head turns when his does—a big 3D cartoon puppet. It's March 2013, Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night's Dream is getting a high-tech treatment over at York University, and poor Bottom has been turned into an ass for real this time.

Adam Bergquist as Bottom in the 2013 Theatre@York production of A Midsummer Night's Dream
(3D model by Aaron McLean, animation by SIRT Centre

The Dream's director Alison Humphrey first met Pascal Langdale during this production, introduced by creative producer Vanessa Shaver of Invisible Light.