A Doppelganger project
CLAVY
Clavy designs and performs video projections for classical concerts and ballet.
About
Clavy is a Doppelganger project working on the visual side of live classical music. We design projections for concerts and ballet and then perform them live. The people involved are classical musicians, filmmakers, and stage and video designers. The work comes down to three things: balance, control, and flow.
Balance
The image and the music have to agree, or the whole thing feels off. Usually you can't say why: a cut lands too hard, a colour is too bright, the video is half a second late. Most of these problems sit below conscious attention, which is why we treat them as design problems and test for them the same way an interface gets tested.
Control
Nothing is improvised during the concert. One person holds the video parameters and moves them in real time, the way a player shapes a phrase. That only works because everything is prepared first. Every cue is set, rehearsed, and calibrated before the doors open, so the system behaves like an instrument rather than a file playing back.
Flow
Classical music doesn't keep a fixed clock. The tempo follows the phrase, the breath, the room, and it changes with each performer and each night. This is why the click track that runs pop and techno shows doesn't work here. The visuals have to move with the interpretation as it happens.
How it works
The live factor
In a classical concert the range of colour, dynamics, and nuance is wider than software can follow on its own. The instruments are analog and no two readings of a piece are the same, even from the same musician. Locking the visuals to a metronome would fight the music instead of supporting it.
The on-stage designer
So the video designer sits on stage and plays. Classically trained, facing the audience, reading a score marked for picture as well as sound, following the music from the same place as everyone else in the ensemble. When it works, people stop thinking about the technology and just watch the performance.
Versions, not a final cut
Each performance shows us something we missed, so the project keeps changing. There is no single finished film. A production exists in versions, adjusted for the performer and the venue.
Selected Work
Stabat Mater
A ballet with choreographer Gonzalo Galguera at Theater Magdeburg, and the first production where this way of working took shape.
The Lost Steps
A ballet after Alejo Carpentier's novel for the National Ballet of Colombia in Cali, choreographed by Gonzalo Galguera. Eleven semi-translucent columns doubled as projection surfaces and were reconfigured into thirteen scene combinations across the work's twenty-four episodes. Built over six months in Isadora and MadMapper.
Carmina Burana
Video for Carl Orff's cantata, performed with the Philharmonisches Kammerorchester Berlin and the National Ballet of Colombia, among others. A pre-written video score running across all twenty-five movements, working through atmosphere rather than literal illustration.
Dracula
A full-length ballet after Bram Stoker at the Magdeburg Opera House, choreographed by Gonzalo Galguera with the Ballett Magdeburg and the Magdeburgische Philharmonie. Pre-recorded choreography, shot in 4K, played back live so the dancers on stage moved against their own projected doubles.
"The video projections by Jacopo Castellano are particularly effective, creating an atmosphere that is both haunting and beautiful." Dancing Times, May 2019
What ties these together is the idea of a videotrack: a visual line written for one piece of music and performed live with it, the way a soundtrack works for a silent film.
CONTACT
For programming, commissions, and collaborations:
info@doppelganger.mov