The stars will be 162 miles apart, but through technology, they will compliment each other's performance for audiences at both locations to make one theatrical experience, a musical known as "The Technophobe and the Madman."
Music and dialogue performed at one location will be transmitted to the other in near-real time through a new networking technology using full bandwidth high-quality video and audio.
Internet2 Distributed Musical, as the technology is referred to, will allow music, video, and interactivity to be shared between the two locations. Internet2, developed by a consortium of 180 universities, is thousands of times faster than the standard Internet and capable of transmitting high-quality audio and video almost instantaneously.
There will be a small delay, about one-third of a second, as action is bounced between locations. The action taking place in one location will be experienced by those at the other through speakers and a large video screen.
The "Technophobe" portion of the story is about a girl who creates a computer-based alter ego for herself. She loses her self-made creation, then deletes it. All the while, a madman wanders the streets of Manhattan ranting about love and the technophobe.
Audiences at each location will see their own version of the play unfold, but each portion will complement the other. Internet viewers will get to see both.
"No one audience member will see the whole thing ... each location will offer a discreet viewpoint," said Carol Parkinson, executive director at Harvestworks, a non-profit company from New York City that commissioned the production. "The idea is to make the audience member more of a participant than just a viewer."
The free performance will be shown tonight at 8 p.m., in Room 174 at RPI's Darrin Communications Center. On Thursday, it can be seen on-line at www.academy.rpi.edu/projects
/technophobe.
"What's been exciting about Internet2 technology is that the quality is so much better," said Neil Rolnick, chair of the Arts Department at RPI, who produced the piece with Robert Rowe, NYU's associate director of music technology.
"One of the reasons for supporting this kind of project at research-oriented schools like RPI and NYU is that demands of art and music projects for the highest quality of technical performance pushes the envelop on technology," Rolnick added.
The structure of the work comes from the confluence of two stories: "Confessions of a Technophobe" by Quimetta Perle and "The Madman" by Tyrone Henderson. The performance is directed by Valeria Vasilevski.
In the two separate locations, Perle and Henderson sing their stories simultaneously, commenting on each other's relationship with technology. Two musicians in Troy and two at NYU will perform live accompanying music with keyboards and drums.
The stories, when taken together, address issues of our relationship with technology. From another perspective, it questions how we love, what that love is, and mediates that view through technology, according to Harvestworks.
The $100,000 experimental piece is being supported, in part, by a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts, which specifically was looking for artists to explore the possibilities of using Internet 2 applications for theatrical performances.
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