BLUE MAN GROUP DESIGN PROCESS
VISUAL REFERENCES
As a character, the Blue Man have most often been like an alien visitor coming into the space of the audience and exploring. For this new production, they wanted to explore what it would mean to create a space that belonged to the Blue Men, which the audience was being invited into. To create a workspace for the Blue Men - their laboratory. As usual, I started the design process by looking at some of my spatial dramaturgy images (photographs that I’ve taken throughout the years that capture interesting moments of architectural storytelling).
Because the Blue Men communicate primarily through music and visual information, I was thinking initially about spaces and structures that are machines for delivery or creating sound and image…
I was the associate for Es Devlin's gorgeous production design of Beyonce's Formation Tour, and I was so fascinated by the structure of the monolith before it was skinned with video tiles to become the huge rotating cube of image. Exposing the delivery and structural systems of the machine...
Years ago, I visited an old piano repair shop in the Bronx and became obsessed with photographing these dissected instruments
what does it feel like to inhabit a piano? To be inside a musical instrument?
Similarly, I remembered the pipe organ chamber of the Cleveland Orchestra's concert hall that I visited a few years ago
walking through the rooms of pipes was literally walking through the insides of a musical instrument. I was reminded how there is a direct connection between physical scale and musical pitch, which creates such a beautifully expressive architectural space
And the delivery systems of information - in this case, air which supplies the organ pipes with the energy to make sound...
when I started visiting the Blue Man Group work space down in the East Village, I quickly realized that Bill Swartz's workspace was an incredible visual reference!
Once I had the initial spark of inspiration from my own photos, I started expanding my research to find other examples of pipe organ interiors...
pipe organ interiors
pipe organ interiors
piano interiors / Conlon Nancarrow's player piano room
the new york times printing press
thinking about visualizing sound without large video "walls"
more examples of using small screens to deliver larger images
interested in large-room scale departure screens and split flap display technology - analog
refining plant or giant pipe organ??
patching, connections, pipes and tubes - ways of delivering data and changing data delivery paths
laboratory spaces and equipment armature
the wall of sound (grateful dead) and other speakers that are also architecture
aluminum framing systems - systems used to create custom machines and laboratory set-ups
more architecture as machine
sonic warefare
listening
DESIGN DEVELOPMENT
Early sketches and renderings
An early design idea re/ networked connectivity that is sort of made it into the final design…
An early 3D rendering from VW, modeled by Anton Volovsek. Early designs felt a bit more industrial, directly inspired by industrial plant gantry architecture.
A later design iteration starting to explore how to incorporate musical instruments and speakers into the architecture of the blue men’s workspace. More inspired by inhabitable room scale musical instruments (organ pipe chambers), and the like.
A deeper development of the design, put into Cinema4D and rendered by Evan Alexander
A deeper development of the design, put into Cinema4D and rendered by Evan Alexander
A deeper development of the design, put into Cinema4D and rendered by Evan Alexander
FINAL DESIGN RENDERINGS
Renderings by Evan Alexander
PRODUCTION PHOTOS
See full selection of production photos and credits at PORTFOLIO / THEATER / BLUE MAN GROUP
