Green Hippo

Toward the Border

Toward the Border

Toward the Border was a live theatre piece held at the Roundhouse on the 19^th and 20^th January. Curators Ying Tan and Amy McDonnell wanted to engage with Chinese art and culture and slow down the commercialised and fashion-led Chinese art coming into London after the Beijing Olympics.

The venue they found was the Roundhouse, a small intimate space with a capacity of about 50 people. The idea was to set 360 degree visuals with live traditional and electronic music. The haunting lute song ‘Border Mountain Moon’ evolves from its original form into an improvised piece.

Ying said

“I knew we wanted to project 360 degree visuals in our concept, but we had no idea how we would produce it. Then we met Tom from Green Hippo and he showed us how it would actually be possible. We used a Hippotizer HD system with a Matrox Triple Head 2 Go device, projecting via 4 projectors around the round room and the Roundhouse’s eight arches. Using the Hippotizer made it clean and easy and had the exact feel we wanted”

“Border, Mountain, Moon’ is a song based on a poem of the same name by Tang Dynasty poet Li-Bai. The poem describes the nostalgic yearnings for home of soldiers looking back over the border to their homeland. Toward the Border is performed in three sections; traditional, arranged and improvised. These sections were set to the themes of past, present and future to describe the evolution of the performance”

Ying commented “I will definitely use the Hippotizer again in my future projects. The flexibility of the Hippotizer system is great, it allows artists to manipulate their concepts and watch as they morph from concept to reality. “

To read more about this project go to: http://borderartspace.wordpress.com/

Also see :

This video was taken by Jennifer Huang, from CNA, a Taiwanese news service. Although it is in Chinese, some of the shots give the viewer a really good insight into the projections used on every surface in the round room.

Photos courtesy of Ben McDonnell