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if drones become increasingly pervasive
technologies if they become really
familiar everyone starts to have one if
they're internally in our skies just
like pigeons then how might we start to
relate to them
people always imbue them with their own
imagination they add the emotion to the
play so a lot of the show is really out
of our hands and I creates a really
magical kind of environments of work
it's a collaboration between airborne
architecture and music
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Oh
I got one phone call kind of a late
night in London saying John Cal so your
stuff is into it let's do something
together our first conversation was like
two years ago it took a long time to
find the right venue putting these
technologies above people's heads that
are really violent
they spin at extraordinary speeds these
propellers are going to take someone's
head off if you let them
it required someone with some vigilance
and bravery to let us attempt it and it
really is the first time that these
things have been flowing above the heads
of an audience the risk was there it's
part of the package and as part of the
enjoyment this venue was perfect for
getting a feet wet because they'd never
been there either
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so today when we were really just
sketching with technology we were trying
to just figure out how many we could
fill the sky with so we just put five up
in the air at one time of all different
species more different scales just to
get a feel for how they work visually
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we've managed to figure out just how to
start to do things like Kerry John's
voice on a flock of drones bounces voice
around the stadium kind of filling the
air with these remote voices drifting
and dancing back and forth
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we've miked up some of the drones and
we've actually started to run them
through the house PA so we've created
this wall of sound that's quite guttural
they're almost vibrates your body which
is actually just from the sound of the
drones themselves
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having the two of them doing that is
really great I mean it gives the whole
thing persona you know it's mom she's
chasing the other I was theorizing about
how you attach names of feelings to
inanimate objects and how you are
sometimes in the course of a theatrical
performance you have to be forced to
change your mind about what that
character is and how difficult it is to
change your mind if you have one drone
up it's a mystery
if you're two drums up it's a love story
and if you have any more than that it's
a family bra all of a sudden you have
categories I mean you made for you and
I'm looking at these two drawers flying
around and it's emotional
what you have is a sound that is
typically associated with Terra actually
becomes repurposed in a theater space
like this and becomes quite moving and
becomes quite a motive becomes a
cultural act as opposed to a military
act understand they get a chance to fly
America it's a good audience
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this is very different to what we
normally fly we're essentially pushing
the boundaries of what these things are
designed for like this isn't designed to
fly and designed to fly outdoors
the remit of where we're pushing them is
from broadcast but they can be used for
agriculture surveying maintenance
inspection of buildings power lines you
can use them to scare pigeons on farm so
you can use them to search for a
particular wheat spots in fields so
there are people developing them so
they'd fly autonomously and deliver
medical supplies can be used in all
sorts of modes is weird and wonderful
and creative the center
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every morning after each show we have to
go in and do life support on these
things and resuscitate them and get them
back into working order and it's that
vulnerability of the technology which i
think is really interesting the line
between it dropping and staying in the
air is really fine
and hopefully the audience can see that
when they know it's hovering above their
head we've been spending a couple of
weeks in here just setting up a mock-up
of the Barbican theatre and doing test
flights and fine-tuning and calibrating
their choreography system for the
tracking it's a system that's normally
used for for model trains and we'll get
them to who's the range for us a little
bit and we are basically placing little
receivers like this all over the ceiling
having a cup of these together allows us
to triangulate a 3d position of one of
the little transmitters that we've got
that sense that ultrasound piece that we
don't pick up in the sky and that is
translated into a 3d position they were
blinking dogs we've been doing a lot of
this just sort of running around the
space with the drone over our heads we
serve first came up with a set of
characters that we wanted to create Liam
had quite a strong vision about what
each of his characters would be
according to what kind of subcultures
they would come from trying to move away
from like the typical drone costume like
being really military associated and
sort of think about them as being the
next mobile phone so we wanted them to
be playful and fun so people could look
at them and laugh at them it just makes
you smile like some of them were
hilarious
so they all had different behaviors in
the same way that every person has a
different kind of walk and it's through
those little tweaks and quirks do you
start to find your emotional attachments
[Applause]
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so while we've been in the warehouse
John's been in LA in his studio putting
together a whole series of new
arrangements and scores for the drone
orchestra so he's taken some existing
tracks and he's remastered them in the
context of how long that battery lasts
for so now we have a new set of bespoke
arrangements they're gonna be piped
through the drones he's split off a lot
of the tracks into different channels
because some drones are gonna take his
lead vocals some drones we don't take
keyboards
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so at the beginning which one do you
have near ball boy there's a song list
and there was a design and we put the
two together and whichever worked worked
that kind of sound dippity is the
strength of the piece it changed the
music in the sense that I went back and
I read rude the map of it I change the
arrangements
I made them much harder the in fact that
the arrangements were called just made
the voice stand out more the emotion of
the singing but much greater so we're
gonna be in the middle of that yeah it's
just a forest of light you know just
these sharp line right that's fantastic
and then at the back we have a couple of
super-powered searchlights you kill the
forest for that one
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I was waiting for something to show me
that something was gonna happen yeah cuz
it's a collaboration of two very
opposite things one thing is really
hopefully emotional near is openly
closed system I mean most people that
came to those concerts and no idea what
expected and didn't understand what they
saw which is amazing which is really
exciting fertile ground for a lot of
imagination
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a big part of the project is to try and
bring people closer to those
technologies so we can start to
understand that we can start to connect
to them in new kinds of ways these are
really defining technologies of a
generation but at the moment we're just
on the edge of what they are and what
they can be
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