As part of the Perth Festival and performed in a purpose-built pavilion in Langley Park, nature and technology came together in perfect harmony for Björk’s Cornucopia, a fully immersive audio, visual and musical experience.
It was a visually spectacular landscape of lush colours, futuristic screens and wild images of nature that comes alive with Björk’s music, as she performed live alongside musicians and choirs of flutes and voices.
Produced by an award-winning team of digital and theatrical collaborators, co-directed by Björk and based on her environmentally-themed 2017 album Utopia, Cornucopia sees the production rule book torn up and thrown out the window.
The lighting was co-designed by Bruno Poet and Richard White. Poet is a theatre and opera LD and has created lighting for bands including Sigur Ros, whilst White has worked on the road for Björk as a programmer and lighting director for several years.
The visual starting point for the lighting design was the video content created by artist and designer Tobias Gremmler, who Björk has worked with previously, in addition to Chiara Stephenson’s set designs.
“The overall show design features visuals heavily with multi-layered video being used throughout,” explained Richard. “Projected content passes through a theatrical gauze and two automated tracked string curtains with a large LED wall at the rear of the stage. This gives a really rich three-dimensional appearance to the stage where performers can be behind, in-front or sandwiched between the various surfaces.”
The lighting in the show has to embellish on the above, taking into account the ever-changing stage shape, but being there to tie in the physical presence of the performers with the widescreen digital environment.
To make things even more complex, the audio design of the show was created in full 360deg using d&b Soundscape immersive system.
The main challenge in Perth was for the local festival team, where finding a space large enough and flexible enough meant that they had to build a 55m x 100m, 5000-seat capacity temporary structure in a city park to house the show. The complexity of the rigging needs meant that a combination of the structure’s points and ground support was needed.
One of the biggest challenges for lighting was during the more ‘video-driven’ songs, where people and set had to be lit in complementary and subtle ways, and the designers has to find angles that would create the effect but avoid any of the projection surfaces.
This was the primary reason for using fixtures with framing shutters and in this case, Robe BMFL Blades for all keylight and sidelight with Richard saying that their accurate framing shutter system was essential in the show due to the multi-layered tracking curtain system for video projection. BMFL Spots and Washbeams made up the remainder of the flown and floor fixtures primarily for effects and beams.
Robe Spiiders were the overall wash light chosen for the main stage show and audience trusses and were padded out with LedBeam 600s.
There were two light curtains above the stage from GLP X4Bars and effects were generally from the JDC-1 strobes.
A series of Astera Titan Tubes and Pixel Bricks in wireless mode was used to highlight the organic stage set and when the projection curtains are closed, to be able to highlight performers when no other lights can get to them.
Two Robe Robospots played a vital role in the show too for Bjork with the operators looking after the position and size and FOH keeping control of intensity and colour.
Along the front of the stage on automated lifts, were four IVL Photons from Minuit Une. These gave refracted laser beam looks to match the content in some songs.
“The show is programmed on MA2 and lots of the show is timecoded,” said Richard. “A major consideration during programming was the integration of lighting effects into the 360-degree audio. There are points in the audio where instruments and effects will appear in different parts of the room or track around the perimeter. We map these effects where possible with lights positioned on trusses around the audience.”
The stage set is a ‘utopian planet’ where the main performance risers appear as huge floating organic platforms. The risers appear like fungal forms where the undersides are constructed from a set of flocked/latex ‘gills’. Also on stage was a 6m tall custom-designed reverb chamber where, on occasion, Björk can walk inside and make use of the room’s echoic nature.
Local supply in Perth was from Showscreens with Kale Tatam (Production Manager) and Cameron Munro and Josh Tilson as show support techs. Perth Festival Production Managers were John Carter and Rio Hall-Jones.
Gear List
2 x Robe BMFL Wash Beam (for RoboSpot)
2 x Robe RoboSpot Base Station
18 x Robe BMFL Blade
20 x Robe BMFL Spot
15 x Robe BMFL Wash Beam
30 x Robe Spiider
12 x Robe LED Beam 600
32 x GLP X4Bar20
41 x GLP JDC1
24 x Astera Titan Tube
24 x Astera Pixel Brick
2 x MDG AtME
2 x MDG Ice Fog
2 x Look Solutions Unique Hazer
4 x Minuit Une IVLPhoton
4 x Wahlberg Lifting Column
Control
1 x MA Lighting grandMA2 Full
1 x MA Lighting grandMA2 Light
1 x MA Lighting grandMA2 NPU
Luminex Luminode 12s
Photos: Santiago Felipe
