Iceland - FLÆKT, a dance performance piece created by artist Juliette Louste, premiered at the Tjarnarbíó Theatre and utilised a Zactrack mini automated tracking system for the first time in Iceland to track lighting, audio, and video cues.
Juliette is also a lighting designer, lighting, AV and sound technician, a technical director, and a choreographer.
A combination of these disciplines led Juliette and IT specialist and computer programmer Owen Hindley, who worked on the show’s technical production, to utilise a Zactrack solution, together with the rest of the technical team, including Zactrack technician Dariel Garcia.
FLÆKT, which translates to ‘unravelled’, is a powerful one-person performance related to the challenges of living with psychological issues, among them obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). It is choreographed by Juliette and directed by Kara Hergils.
Juliette, originally from France, but resident in Iceland since 2016, was commissioned to create FLÆKT by producers Hans Gruenert and Virginial Wall Gruenert of Viva Holding.
With her experience as a lighting designer and vision as a director, she also took the lead on suggesting lighting moods and treatments for the piece. She and Owen collaborated closely with Andreu Fàbregas Granes, the show’s lighting designer/operator; sound designer Kristín Waage; composer Íris Hrund Stefánsdóttir; set and costume advisor Rebekka A. Ingimundardóttir, dramaturg Gígja Sara Björnsson; and assistant choreographer Selma Reynisdóttir.
Having previously worked as a representative for Zactrack in Iceland, Juliette was convinced that the system would assist the overall show control and smooth the workflow by zoning the full stage area, covering some 8.5m in width by 10.5m in depth. “It is just a fantastically versatile system,” Juliette commented.
Striking abstract video projections were sometimes beamed onto the floor but mostly onto a large white voile curtain, and the interplay between that helped reinforce the kinetics of the performance.
In the final scene, 12 lights – six Robe DLS and six Robe DL4S spots – in the overhead rig were hooked into the Zactrack mini system.
TouchDesigner captured the raw PSN positional data from Zactrack, which after some processing/filtering was sent via OSC to a QLab system used to trigger all the cues – so video and sound cues programmed in TouchDesigner were triggered by QLab, as were lighting cues programmed on a grandMA3 compact console.
FLÆKT will be touring selected European theatre festivals over the next year.
