Haydn’s Creation At The Barbican

Classical meets tech in a production of Haydn’s Creation at The Barbican in London using live music reactive visuals.

In 2021, the Academy of Ancient Music welcomed a new artistic leader, Laurence Cummings, whose first task was to direct their ambitious production of Haydn’s Creation at The Barbican. The team approached the award-winning Nina Dunn of Pixel-Lux studios to create a reactive musical experience that would be as impactful as a live production as it would live-streaming.

Working through mood boards and Notch pre-visualisations, the creative team delivered a concert-ready visual experience that combined footage, 3D animation and real-time rendered Notch designs that were closely allied to live music. The creative vision was driven by the desire to strike a balance between dramatic, overarching gestures and musical punctuation without the narrative getting lost in a live stream. They also wanted to feature the beauty of the raw elements described within the piece’s creation story theme.

“The project wouldn’t really have been possible without Notch. There was no time in the schedule for repeating sections, so we relied on preparatory conversations with the sound team and tuned all the visuals live”.

Nina Dunn, creative director, Pixel-Lux Studio
https://somethinggraphic.net/

Additional press coverage:
The Art Desk Review

Client: Academy of Ancient Music / Barbican Centre
Production Company: Pixel-Lux Design
Creative Direction: Nina Dunn, Matthew Brown, Laura Salmi

Conductor: Laurence Cummings
Video Designer: Matthew Brown
Notch Designer: Matthew Brown, Luigi Sardi, Adam Lansberry
Animator: Matthew Brown
Video Programmer: Luigi Sardi
Video Engineers: Harrison Cooke, Matt Somerville
Lighting Designer: Jason Kew