After a truly delicious lunch hosted by Bernhardt Design, Serious Play resumed and Fishtank Ensemble took to the stage, armed with an eclectic mix of noise making apparatus: violin, cello, guitar…accordion…household saw…all mixing with ethereal female vocals. Then, on a take of a Mozart classic, a ukulele was debuted. The performance was capped off with lead singer Ursula’s powerhouse vocal talent. Silence eventually returned after massive applause and whistles erupted from the audience.
“Our next guest has conveyed the power of architecture to more people than perhaps any actual architect,” John professed. Architecture is composed of so many systems encounter every day. Enter illustrator/author/inner workings guru: David Macaulay. His forthcoming book took six years to make, focusing on the working of the body, and we’re not talking about the Magic School Bus sort. He showed us the earliest sketches, he realizd that trying to figure out the important questions required starting with the smallest cells. Not stopping there, he sojourned to molecules, all the way to atoms. “It was a daunting task to go back [and] to gain a deeper understanding of the body.”
Macaulay’s wonderful color-pencil illustrations strike playful balance between the bodies functional complexity while maintaining visual clarity; a crucial part of being able to teach others. Some of the intricate biological drawings seem almost like part of some magical, Seussian world – fleshed out. Others drawings explain complex chemical processes by means of clean, yet fun, flow charts. “I was struck with the simplicity [of the moving body], like just shifting material across a membrane by altering the internal/external balance, only slightly.”
On our journey through the nervous system, arteries and veins, to the skeleton joint by joint, Macaulay used simple metaphors, like factories and rivers, to create visualizations of our organs and bodily functions (jeer). It’s inspiring to see how clearly Macaulay is able communicate massively complex systems. “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” Macaulay explained without hesitation, “I was looking for a way to make things understandable and engaging. If you’re not included in the process I don’t think you’re going to learn much.” Macaulay’s techniques can be adapted to other arenas, giving us the chance to understand more of the world’s intricacy.
Blurring the distinction between architecture and landscape, Dutch designer and next presenter Petra Blaisse challenges conventional notions of environments, seeing exterior and interior space as continuous. “I have a confession to make, all my fonts on my slides are in Helvetica.” (uh-oh Paula). Blaisse draws on inspiration from her time as an assistant curating, learning about the effects of lighting on textiles and its influence on the objects and artwork the light highlights. After cramping herself in her home studio, crawling over model, Blaisse went on a high speed run of a large array of the diverse projects that her ‘cross-cultural’ team at Inside/Outside work on: parks, interiors, exteriors, facades, furniture, and more, spread through all corners of the globe.
Curtains – Blaisse’s eternal foil – can not only add function and aesthetic to a space but also create their own spaces. She showed us examples of strikingly original curtains created for the Hackney Theatre in London, pleats of plush red velvet sewn together with fresh yellow yarn into accordion patterns, giving a rich texture to the vibrant stage curtain. She didn’t quite make it through her 300 slides but the effort was valiant.
Michael Curry, one of the world’s leading production designers, is a master of puppetry and kinetic theatrical design. With no training in puppetry, Curry employs incredible realistic body and face movement in his puppets. He works with a team that seems to have a surreal amount of fun brainstorming on how to get lifeless mechanisms to emulate emotions and stimulate the audience. His work on the puppets of the Lion King is a perfect example of his talent of breathing life into his creations. “In theater if you don’t play you get no where.”Curry enjoys live theater more than anything else. With so many mediums of how to deploy your work, he finds live experiences the most exciting, and thinks that others believe this too, proud to say theater sales are rising where others are not as fortunate.
Curry constantly references living things, so much of his time is spent on character design. He also employs the designs of spaces and environments to further enhance the effect of his productions. Curry preaches the importance of bringing this ‘hands-on’ approach to his current work, and encourages his entire team to incorporate play into their processes in his studio, “a playground of tools and machinery,” where welders work along side seamstresses and sculptures work next to painters. This cross-pollination can take much credit for the studio’s successes.
After sporting a giant pterodactyl outfit for thirteen hours one night, business cards spread to a top level producer of the Siegfried and Roy show. This was Curry’s entry into the world of ‘theater’ a word that rolls off his tongue with a fluid eloquence. On fluidity, he recounts that it is the dancer he uses who best understand the music, to cast a graceful shadow behind the puppeteers. Curry demonstrated how even a simple static mask can emit such senses as breathing and listening, with only the slightest twist of the wrist (above). “Kinetics is the fourth degree of sculpture.” He appreciates how constraints can inform creativity, “boundaries can offer often more possibilities than complete freedom.” On beginning the creative process with instinct, rather than research, we can all identify, as attendee Rainer Zierer agreed, “After all, the word ‘inspiration’ comes from the two words ‘in’ and ’spirit,’ so best to start with your own spirit before going elsewhere.”