Blog

BlackBox is a series of musical performances broadcast live. The series sees video directors matched up with bands to create a visually and aurally unique experience exclusively for an online audience.

The latest installment of this features the ornithologic band British Sea Power.

The performance will be staged in a popular venue that can house up to 5,000 people, but rather than a full house, the musicians will instead perform to an empty room. That’s not to say nobody will be watching them, just that the eyes and ears looking and listening will all be sat at home staring at their computer screens. But viewers tuning in won’t simply find footage of the band on stage playing their instruments. The performance will be virtually pimped using the visual device du jour, a hacked Kinect, to image map the band and provide some augmented visual fun, courtesy of designers Silvio Paganini and Danilo Figueiredo.

They’ll be taking thematic inspiration from the band’s current album, incongruously titled Valhalla Dancehall which they say is “meant to evoke Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry and Thor having a great time together”. In Nordic mythology, Valhalla is a splendid giant hall ruled over by Odin where warriors go to rest after they get killed in battle.