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Comment by Ace McCarron on March 23, 2010 at 12:02

So I get this phone call from Muziektheater Transparant. Could I light Maxwell Davis' opera 'The Lighthouse' in Antwerp, with only a week onstage before opening? 'Oh yes!', I said, thinking that the other three productions of it I'd lit had nowhere near that time. 'No problem'. So the day before the dress, we'd done it all; lit, notes polished off, general joy. 'What shall we do today?' asked the crew. 'Today,' I said, 'we do smoke.'
We are in a large stage in the Dance Academy, eighteen meters wide, eighteen meters deep, and eighteen meters high. It has only an audience capacity of 300, as it was built as a try-out space. We conceal a large smoke machine behind our tiny set, with a desk fan pointing upstage. We figure out a way of making it chuck out enough smoke without making a noise the audience or conductor can hear and see how long it takes to come downstage. A stage manager sings out the score, and we watch to see the way the smoke behaves, and make adjustments. We knock off and come in the next day for the premiere. At the appointed moment an eighteen meter wide and eighteen meter high wall of smoke crawls downstage into the sidelights. Jan Lund, tenor, playing the part of Sandy, turns upstage looks authentically awestruck and sings 'Look. While we've been singing, the mists have drawn in.' Much silent punching of the air in the wings and in the control box. 'Why can't it always be like this?' we asked.

Comment by David Harradine on March 23, 2010 at 11:03

Thanks Ace. I'd seen images of this cloud pavilion (I think it's in Switzerland), but hadn't actually seen it in action. Brilliant stuff...

Comment by Ace McCarron on March 20, 2010 at 3:09

Seen this?
http://66.135.59.206/projects/blur/Blur_exterior.mov
Ace.

Comment by David Harradine on March 17, 2010 at 4:59

I found a photo of a prototype cloud frame being built...

Comment by David Harradine on March 5, 2010 at 12:47

5th March, 8am, Anglesey
A big, high, blue sky, low cloud around the horizon, but very flat, very clear higher up. No wind. Low, warming, winter sun. Still. Clear. A blue, blue screen. A pause. A suspension. Stillness. Is there any weather today?

Yes, for now, this is the weather: this big blue clear cold sunny stillness. It's like a space that suddenly opens up in-between the rain and the wind and the snow and the storm, an opening. A stop. Such spaciousness. Clear blue space. Distance. Air. Light.

4pm. On Anglesey again.
A wide, wide, low, blue sky. No cloud; well, very little cloud. Driving east towards the mainland. Over there, around the foothills of the mountains, and higher, over many of the peaks, low cloud, looking as though it has got snagged on the rock, like sheepswool on the sharp corner of a slate. Here, still stillness, suspension: the weather factory is quiet today, only producing blue, and cold, and light.

Over there, clouds building up, stockpiling rain for delivery later.

5pm, on the mainland.
Running. To my right, the Menai Strait. To my left, the mountains. Above, a low, flat sheet of cloud, building up against those clouds around the mountains. This cloudsheet extends out over the water, then stops, a clear clean edge at the western end of that white wedge. Moving in from the west, as though issued from somewhere further out to sea, more clouds, tinged faintly now with brown and orange and eggyellow by the lowering sun - moving in, towards that edge.

It's the rush hour cloud jam: 5 o'clock on a Friday afternoon and there's too much cloudtraffic coming in, so it's all just backing up, laying out a sheet for the night, settling down.

5.45pm
As the sun gets lower, more cloud covering the sky. Less movement, more grey, darker, more colour over to that western horizon.

Venus will be up there, beyond those clouds, beyond those mountains. Venus: the folding star, signaling that we all have to come in for the night, me and the clouds, me and the weather, time to come to stillness again. Time to rest.

7pm. Darkness. I wonder what the weather will be like tomorrow…

Comment by David Harradine on January 30, 2010 at 10:25

January 30th, a cold clear sunny bluesky day. A day for walking in. A day for weather watching. On the lower slopes of Elidir, looking back towards the sea, the Irish mountains visible beneath the distant strip of cloud.

Watching the sea, watching the weather rolling in. Here, where I am, warm sunshine, bright light, blue. Over there to the west, snowshowers. At first, thin, soft cloud, pale grey, streams of snow like mist falling, like icing sugar falling. Then heavier, darker, denser grey. Then the clouds start moving south. Then east again.

After 2 hours of slow moving and shifting and movement, just as the sun begins to set, the soft snow starts to fall where I am. Returning indoors, haven, hearth, out of the weather, to look at the fading light, the light snow, to notice that there still isn't any wind...

Comment by David Harradine on January 29, 2010 at 11:49

29th January. Heading to Wales for January's research visit. Driving west on the M56...

Traveling towards Wales is traveling towards the sunset. The low milkygold light dazzles, the clouds a baffling array of whites and blues and greys. Brilliant silverwhite outline where the cloud is thin, gold where the sun is setting, dark bluegrey at the front, with the shadow of the body of the cloud behind.

I could stop here for days and study the movement of that sky.

A clear blue screen - the arc of the atmosphere - beyond those clouds. The light fresh, cold, clean, sunny, springlike, almost. Crossing the border into Wales, and almost immediately, a blizzard: very fast hard horizontal snow, slow traffic, vanished light. A few miles on, back to velvetblue sky between black clouds, and studs of stars.

Arriving at the place where I'm staying, just outside Caernarfon. Bitterly cold, wind, a bright hard cold full moon; thin clouds racing past. I go inside. I come out: it's milder, there's hail falling. I go inside. I come out: the car is covered in snow.

Sun to blizzard to wind to hail to snow, and moon and cloud.

How am I ever going to choose what to do about all this weather?

Comment by David Harradine on January 24, 2010 at 1:50

So I was in north Wales just before Christmas to take some weather readings. Today I've been looking back over the photos and notes from that visit, in preparation for a return at the end of next week. I found the photo I posted below, which was taken during an early snowshower, presager of the longer harder whiter winter weather that was to come. Just before it started snowing I'd decided to see how long I could stand the cold in just a T-shirt, recording what I could see, what I could feel. I hadn't planned for the arrival of the snow. I made it to about ten minutes (not so impressive, I know), the last 3 minutes or so mainly a percussion of chattering teeth and laughing and brrrrrr.

The instruments of my weather reading: a thermometer, a digital stills camera, an underwater cine camera (I thought this would be the best one to bring to Wales), a shivering body, a dictaphone, a notebook (waterstained), a pen (ink runs), two bare arms, maps and a car.

I've yet to decide how to take a body reading for the depth of the snow.

Comment by David Harradine on January 24, 2010 at 1:50

Hi Tom - I sent a message to your profile - didn't you get it? Yes, of course it'd be great to talk. Drop me an email to david@feveredsleep.co.uk and we can go from there.

Comment by Tom Bow on January 23, 2010 at 23:28

Hey David Harradine.
My name is Tom Bow and i am a performing arts student at Coleg Ceredigion. We all have been assigned a project on the performances that the national theatre of wales are starting. We all had to pick one of the performances, and i was looking at them all and i thought your performance sounded amazing, I was wondering if i could have a small interview with you about your performance. Some of the questions would be, what you will be doing?, How you will be doing it and why? and also what the location means to you? I hope it will be ok and i hope to hear from you soon, Thanks Tom :)

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