KATIA & MARIELLE LABÈQUE

The Reverb Classical Musical Festival returned to the Roundhouse in January 2010. This festival hosted a series of concerts offering a refreshing and exciting approach to classical music. This Festival saw the return of Katia and Marielle Labèque, 37 years after they made their UK debut at the venue.
EYESONTHEWALL was given the great opportunity to work with The Labèque Sisters who were performing live in the main space at the Roundhouse. They represented pieces of classical music composed by Erick Satie and Stravinsky, while our task was to introduce a rich and heterogeneous material to go with the setting of the event.
We incorporated live camera work into the visual set by placing cameras inside the grand pianos that the Labèque Sisters where playing on. These cameras captured the movement of the strings whilst the pianos where being played which was directly shown on the large screens. Prior to the event the EYESONTHEWALL team conducted microfilming on the inside of grand pianos, we were able to manipulate the speed at which this footage was played during the live concert so that it fitted in perfectly with the feed from our live cameras and the music.
Apart from the microfilming of the inside of pianos, EYESONTHEWALL created stop motion videos from the pre-captured footage of the organic textures dividing. The final visual output had an absorbing aura that perfectly ties in with the classical music. The Team also filmed ink splashing into jars of water, which worked with some of the more dramatic pieces of music. Collaborating with the Labèque Sisters on this audio-visual performance was an immense pleasure for us all.