Crude Capital

Video & Projection Design for Opera

Set in 2028, during a hurricane that destroys an unnamed city, Crude Capital follows the crisis of conscience of Congresswoman Grace Hennessy, as she realizes the policies she’s been paid to support have led to the city’s destruction. As she grows increasingly vocal about the problem of climate change, her political backers turn against her and plot to ruin and remove her from office. This first production of the opera was presented as a part of Beth Morrison Project’s Next Gen festival, dedicated to discovering new composers and their work.

The video design couched the magical realist political opera in the visual language of an interactive expressionist graphic novel. Live cameras captured and wove the images of the singers into the fabric of the graphic projections, and facial recognition software was integrated in order to allow the movement of a singer’s face to control the movement of a graphic character’s face on screen.