The (unfinished) Ballad of Adam and Elena Emery, Nov. 3rd + 4th

The (unfinished) Ballad of Adam and Elena Emery 

dissertation performance piece by Jacob Richman


8pm, Saturday and Sunday, November 3rd and 4th, 2012
Mathewson Street United Methodist Church
134 Mathewson St. Providence, RI
FREE

 The (unfinished) Ballad of Adam and Elena Emery is a multimedia installation and roving performance piece based on a murder story that took place in Rhode Island in the early 1990s. It is a setting which utilizes four dancers, nine musicians, and almost a dozen rooms of the Mathewson Street United Methodist Church in downtown Providence. It is a mobile murder ballad based on dreams and echoes, fragmented words, images, sounds, and objects inspired by this heartbreaking story. In The (unfinished) Ballad… the audience moves throughout the five floors of the building, filled with performers and various interactive media technology, from large video projections to nine-foot tall robotic curtains, cell phone buzzers, broken lobster traps, blue cellophane, cloth, and the haunting presence of the historic Mathewson St. Church itself, all unified to recreate and reinterpret a tragic and unexplainable act of violence and the folklore that surrounds it.

 Featuring:

Adrian Moore, Anna Muselmann, Brandon Shaw, and Stephanie Turner (dancers/choreographers)
 Yayra Sanchez (soprano)

Aliana de la Guardia (mezzo soprano)
Rossana Chung, Abigale Reisman (violin)
Ken Allen (viola)
Anna Seda (cello)

Kirsten Volness (piano/keyboard) 

Peter McGrath (trumpet)
Jeffrey Neilson (percussion)

Matt Desmarais (seismic activity)


For more information visit: http://www.jacob-richman.com/ballad.html

HELP FUND PERFORMERS WITH INDIE GO GO CAMPAIGN!!! (any little bit helps and it all goes to the amazing/talented performers) http://www.indiegogo.com/HelpFundPerformers 

Thanks for your support!
Jacob

More stills/video of Mathewson St. Church performance site

Some more documentation of some of the performance and installation spaces at the church for The (unfinished) Ballad of Adam and Elena Emery.

Performance Sat Nov. 3rd, 8pm
Mathewson St. United Methodist Church
134 Mathewson St. Providence RI



More Stills/video of Mathewson St. Church performance site from Jacob Richman on Vimeo.





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Presenting at Conference "Crusing in the Ruins" @ Northeastern U. Sept. 22

Saturday, Sept. 22nd, 2pm
Northeastern University
Curry Student Center, McLeod Suite B, rm. 320
346 Huntington Ave., Boston, MA

I will be giving a brief presentation at the conference Crusing in the Ruins, organized by the BABEL Working Group.

The talk will be entitled Rhode Island Murder and Horror Stories in Performance: Adam Emery, Mercy Brown, and the Devil’s Footprint and I will discuss setting past and contemporary Rhode Island folk, horror, and murder stories to performances, including the projects Mercy Brown and the Devil's Footprint and The (unfinished) Ballad of Adam and Elena Emery.

I will talk about reenactment, playing with bones, haunting the scene of the crime, seance, and using these things to try to understand incomprehensible stories.






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dance team!

Had two fantastic first rehearsals this week with the four dancers in this piece:

-Stephanie Turner, Brandon Shaw (interpreting Adam/Elena Emery)
-Henry Nicholas and Laisha (interpreting Crystal/Jason Bass)

I'm very lucky to have them on board!

It's great to have actual human beings up at the performance space which was previously only filled with electronics, fabric, and media junk (including me).  The blood's starting to circulate...





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some location/room dressing: kitchenette and stairwell

Here are a couple of rudimentary videos of some new spaces at Mathewson St. Church.

In the first I demo an idea I have for an old kitchenette in the backstage area.  This place will become a installation space of a general domestic area with some home-made multimedia interpretations of details from the Emery/Bass story.  However there is always an uneasiness, and a nagging rustling noise (rustling noises like insects or rodents in the wall have been recurring in my mind about this piece, which I mainly interpret as harbingers and warnings).  The video shows little 3Volt pager/cell phone motors I am controlling with a button, through the Arduino and an H-Bridge (Texas Instruments SN754410).  All the motors are wired to the same control, though eventually I'll program them to move independent from each other and randomly.  In the performance the wires, microcontroller/circuit, will be hidden (mostly) as will the motors in the drawers, sink, etc.  However I do want them to pop out and roam around at will.  Instead of critters like mice or insects scurrying or scratching out a warning, these are electronic critters with their own personalities.

The second video is just a really rough demo of the awesome/beautiful back staircase at the church with a FIVE SECOND REVERB!  I apologize for my atrocious singing, but the idea is that the actual good performers will be singing/chanting in this incredible space, accompanied by temple bowls, and video/lights.  Can't wait!


"The (unfinished) Ballad..." Aug1 dissertation tests 1 - buzz motors from Jacob Richman on Vimeo.

"The (unfinished) Ballad..." Aug1 dissertation tests 2 - stairwell reverb from Jacob Richman on Vimeo.

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Curtain Room Pics - early July

Some pics of the expanded curtain room.  All the curtains work and spin on command.  Wiring will be hung from the ceiling, leaving performers/audience free to move about. The larger layout and number of curtains will allow different groups of curtains to act independently to conceal and reveal performers, and change perspective of the video projected onto them....it's very hot up there also.






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Update

I've spent the past month reacting to the tech demo, the biggest question being: in exactly what manner is the piece related to the story of the Emerys and the murder of Jason Bass?  What level of literalness or abstraction?  This has always been a very tough question, but I believe I'm getting close to the sweet spot of this relationship.  Closer, at least.

I've been working a lot on content (music/sound, video).  And trying to figure out the best way to measure audience/performer proximity in the curtain room (see here).  I've been reaching out to performers and collaborators and will meet with dancer/actors Shura Baryshnikov and Peter Deffet (whom I've worked with before).  They're both fantastic.  We'll be meeting in the same space as the demo show (Mathewson St. Church) where I'll be doing more work with the installation stuff next month.

I haven't put any music up here, since I'm much more squeamish about putting in-progress music up than in-progress video or tech.  But here's the theme of the piece, which has been rattling around in my head for two years, and is for toy piano/fender rhodes. Though it pops up all over in one way or another during the piece.

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Video Documentation of May 18th Demo Show

Here's a brief video walk-through from the May 18th demo show at Mathewson St. Methodist Church.  It was a very helpful event and I really appreciate Karen and Audie and others from the Church letting me use this amazing theater space on the top floor of their historic building.  I also appreciate all my friends, advisers, and colleagues who came and gave me very useful feedback, especially Peter Bussigel who always gives fantastic and engaging responses that keep me thinking on my toes.

It was a good start, but just a start.  I was able to hint at what these three spaces are capable of, and the spaces can be expanded (more curtains) or pared down (fewer monitors, etc).  It was mostly a tech demo, and I admit was low on content (video, audio, music).  But for these large scale performance/installation spaces, it's really impossible to visualize what they might look or sound like in my little mock-ups at the MEME studio.  The work done here, especially building/programming, is bankable and I have asked the Church to allow me to work in these spaces for an extended period later this month, which I think will be the only way I can build and "practice" these spaces as performance tools (as instruments!).  I am also excited to start bringing more of the music and video I've been working on, along with performers into theses spaces to try stuff out: will keep you posted.

Video below (full resolution is only available at the Vimeo page)







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16 Channel Amp building pix

This is an amp I built will be used for the "audio hallway" installation of The (unfinished) Ballad.... It has 16 independent audio channels going to 16 little speakers hanging in a hallway. This amp (which has an attached 5V power source not seen here and can be expanded to 24 or even 32 channels!) will hopefully serve as a good project amp for use in installations or other applications in which control over a large group of discreet audio channels is needed (extreme spatialization!).   Special thanks to Charlie Vickers at the Joint Engineering Physics Instrument Shop for helping me bend and cut the metal for the amp housing.








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(unfinished) Ballad...In-Progress Demo Show Scheduled for May 18th

I've scheduled an in-progress/demo presentation for The (unfinished) Ballad of Adam and Elena Emery.
It will be:

Friday, May 18th, 4-7pm
Mathewson St. Methodist Church
134 Mathewson Street Providence, RI
(between Westminster and Washington sts)

It will be on the 4th floor in an amazing children's blackbox theater, put in by a now extinct theater group.  I'll be using a number of rooms and the presentation will be mostly a tech demo of the moving curtains, multi-little speaker hallway, and the 3-screen Sgt. Zarrella/Rescue dog installation.  I will have some audio/video content in these installations, but the main goal is to make sure these "instruments" work and see how they sit with each other in different rooms.  All comments/criticisms/responses are welcome.

The presentation will be informal and on-going 4-7pm, so come when you can!






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(unfinished) Ballad...Curtain/Motor Demo Video May1st

So I settled on servo motors instead of steppers.  They are lighter, cheaper (I have a bunch from a previous piece anyway), robust, and easy to wire (no driver chips needed, just ground, power and pwm control signal) and stronger than they look.  They don't turn more than 180degress, but it doesn't seem to matter yet.  I had trouble getting the steppers to work with their drivers being controlled by the Arduino.  Although I didn't give it a true "college try"-- the other drawbacks (weight, cost, complexity) was more important to my decision.   In this demo I've set up a Wii-remote to control their position.  This will be a tool used by a performer (mezzo-soprano, singing a solo, channeling Elena Emery).  When the "curtain room" is not in use by performers, it will be a installation, controlled by sensors (passive infrared and or ultrasonic pulse) monitoring  audience members and randomly reorienting while it plays back the audio/video content.






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Unfinished Ballad...interview w/Sgt. Zarrella

[UPDATE 5/12/12: I removed the interview of Sgt. Zarrella from public viewing for now.  It will be part of a 3-channel video installation that will be on view during the in-progress show May 18 described above]

RI State Police Sgt. Matthew Zarrell is the head seach and rescue dog trainer for the RI Troopers, and he was the one who searched for the Emerys under the Newport Bridge with his dog Hannibal.

In the interview he talks about the history of rescue dog training in RI, his first training dog Hannibal (check him out!), and his work with Hannibal on the Emery case.

This footage will be used with other old footage of Hannibal and of Sgt. Z training dogs now in an installation setting used as part of the performance piece "The (unfinished) Ballad of Adam and Elena Emery."

Thanks to Sgt. Zarrella, and to filmmaker Mary Healey Jamiel for getting us in touch. Please check out her amazing documentary "Reliance" about Sgt. Zarrella's work HERE.

Attn dog lovers: Footage I took of Sgt. Z training search and rescue dogs this week will be up soon!






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Pretty Ok Week!

Pretty productive week. Reached out to a few more possible performers/collaborators. Nailed down an interview with Sgt. Matthew Zarrella, rescue dog trainer extraordinaire, to talk about his work with his dog HANNIBAL (thanks Mary Healy Jamiel) who searched for the Emerys' bodies underneath the Newport Bridge.

Worked on electronics/programming for the CURTAIN ROOM: an installation room with multiple curtains hooked to motors which turn to reconfigure the room as people move through it. Think a changing Red Room from Twin Peaks, but instead of it being red, are projections on the curtains as they move and change the space.

Servo vs Stepper motors, that is the eternal question. I managed to fail in my last attempt a few years back building this room with Servos (weird false triggers and VERY SPOOKY curtains spinning for no reason), though I never really knew what I was doing. Went back to basics this week and had a lot of luck getting the Servos to do what I wanted them to. Now I got this big beautiful Stepper Motor, but couldn't get it to work before busing-home-time today, only managed to over-heat the H-bridge ...the diagram below is the bane of my existence. At least I wrote some music this week (crappy MIDI realization samples up soon).




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Creative Arts Council Grant Award

Thanks so much to the Creative Arts Council for awarding me their maximum $1000 to help realize The (unfinished) Ballad...!







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Castle Theater Pictures

Some pictures of the Castle Theater including main screening room, bar room, some connecting halls and basement stuff.






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Update on Castle Theater

Last Friday spent an hour with Joe Warzycha from Rhode Island SPCA and 7 firemen (including a captain) in the catacomb basement of the Castle Theater as well as all the other rooms in this amazing building. I coordinated this time for the inspectors to meet with Joe and me there to get their take on whether it will be kosher from their end to perform in this beautiful building. It was a very cool visit: what an incredible building. One of the firemen told me about going to see 99 cent movies there as a kid. Despite the fact that the building is decaying, the prognosis could have been worse. I can perform there if there are a few replaced exit/emergency lights, 3 borrowed/rented fire extinguishers, if I clear out a couple blocked exit doors, and if I clearly cordon off the rooms in the theater that are not being used.

However, the sprinkler system still needs to be checked, and if it works (unlikely) that's fine. If it doesn't work (much more likely), that would also be fine since I will have a fire marshal on premises, but the problem is that it is against code to have a sprinkler system visible if it isn't working...Something about how it gives a false sense of security...The RISPCA would have to cap all the visible sprinkler heads (not gonna happen).

I fear I'm living on borrowed time as far as this location is concerned. The next step is to see the results of the sprinkler test, which the RISPCA needs to get done anyway, but probably won't be for a while.

So I'm in a bit of a holding pattern for now as far as locations. But hey! They sure is a lot more of the actual piece i need to make...so get back to work, you!

Super duper thanks to Joe at the RISPCA, who spent a lot of time working with me on this, for free even.






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The (unfinished) Ballad of Adam and Elena Emery

I've chosen to revisit the story of Adam and Elena Emery and Jason Bass for my dissertation piece. I've been sitting around with this story banging around in my head, and I figure I'll try to do something about it.

It's been a long time since my last post, but I felt it is worth it to start keeping a blog-diary of my progress, and as always comments/suggestions are always welcome.

Here is a blurb from a recent grant proposal that tells what I am up to in 500 words or less:

The (unfinished) Ballad of Adam and Elena Emery is a multimedia performance piece loosely based on a murder story that occurred in Rhode Island in the early 1990s. It will serve as my dissertation piece for the completion of my doctorate in the MEME program at Brown. The story is that of Adam and Elena Emery who, in a case of mistaken identity, murdered innocent 16-year-old Jason Bass in 1990. In 1993 Adam Emery was convicted of this second degree murder and while out on bail prior to sentencing, he and his wife Elena allegedly jumped to their deaths off of the Newport Bridge. However Adam Emery's body was never found.

I wish to set the story of this case as a multi-tiered performance piece in which small details, rather than big picture judgments, are presented as both performance scenes and mixed media installations all occurring within a single performance venue. I am approaching this story obliquely, through fragmented details known about the case: the Emery's last meal at Burger King, the remembrances of Jason Bass's niece, a story from the rescue dog trainer, etc.

The (unfinished) Ballad is a roving performance, in which the audience does not sit and view the performance on a stage from a fixed location, but travels around with groups of performers who perform scenes in various rooms within one structure. The piece will last about one hour and will consist of six short (7-10min) performance scenes and three audio/video installations in connecting rooms and hallways. I am writing the music, making the electronics, and developing the audio/video processing tools for this piece. There will be ten performers (dancers and musicians), most of whom are locals and students, though two will be coming from New York City.

The piece will take place off campus at the Castle Theater (http://wiki.ppsri.org/tiki-index.php?page=Castle+Theater), which is a closed-down movie theater in Providence. I have chosen this location both because of its historical past and the blank slate quality of this location. It is the perfect place into which to build a roving piece such as this from the ground up. I have received positive initial responses from the owners of the theater as well as the Providence Fire Inspector. I will hear whether I can definitely perform here or not within a few weeks. If it does not work out for me to perform here, I am looking into similar locations, both on and off campus.

The costs associated with this project will mainly include electronics, building supplies, and props used in the performance as well as a modest per diem and travel expenses for visiting performers. I will also need to pay a fire marshal to be present at the performances. I am planning on an in-progress performance on May 10 and between two and four final performances occurring over weekends this September or October.






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