In January 2019 we went up to MassMOCA in North Adams, MA to tech a musical piece called Triptych. Triptych is a musical piece composed by Bryce Dessner with a libretto by Korde Arrington.

The tale of this piece is long and winding. Since I’m really here to write about LEDs displays in performance I’ll start with that. And If I have enough gas in the tank I’ll continue to tell the rest of the story.

The piece was inspired by the photography of Robert Mapplethorpe. As such his photography was to play an importand visual role in the show. Daniel Fish, the director, wanted the most sharp, arresting image he could get.Two ~12 foot by ~12 foot screens were flown above the heads of the performers. Control was via a Disguise D3. At around P3 and an audience at least 40′ away from the screens the image was sharp with great contrast and potentially really, really bright. In the end we had to dial back intensity of the walls way, way down. Or an excellent audience blinder as Daniel gleefully found out.

I think that I’ll leave the full story of what happened next with Triptych for another post. Maybe another platform. But the LED system brought an amazing level of clarity to these images that I don’t think would quite have been as brilliant with a conventional projection system.