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louisupdates · 6 months

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Louis Tomlinson ‘Faith in the Future’ World Tour 2023

By: Steve Jennings (Photos and Text) | 11 AUG 2023

English singer-songwriter and former One Direction band member Louis Tomlinson is back out on the road in support of his second album, Faith in the Future. For his second world tour, he’s playing to an ever-growing audience—the crowd I witnessed could not get enough of him as evident from the adoring fans singing along to every word he sang. We spoke to Production Designer, Programmer, and Director Tom Taylor of TANCK about the tour.

Designer Tom Taylor started working on the current tour as the new album’s promo materials and aesthetics came to light. Taylor says it’s a more rugged and asymmetrical look than they’ve gone for before, meant to mirror a sort of dive bar aesthetic rather than a beautiful arena production. “This reflects the music off the latest album, which has a more grungy feel to it. There are touches in there such as the light boxes (loosely resembling the fluorescent lights of a nightclub toilet), and our custom camera housing (a hollowed out old VHS camcorder with a Marshall 4K camera inside) that bring it back to a more intimate venue feel than the true scale of the places we’re playing across the world.”

Taylor notes the show itself has definitely progressed and he would say feels more like a ‘show’ than a ‘gig‘ now; it has a start, middle, and end, with themes and segues to connect them throughout. “The video content is more to set a mood for the songs. We’re trying to stay away from anything too literal and obvious. This extends to the lighting programming as well where we largely refrain from hitting everything on the beat, fully ‘perfect’ timecoded hits throughout the rig. Hopefully the end result is that in those moments where we do go crazy with programming and rhythm, it’s much more interesting and stands out in the set.”

Since 2020, Taylor has worked with Francis Clegg on production design. They had worked together for about five years prior to that and have a complimentary skill set. “We’ve accelerated quite rapidly, taking on a design assistant in Jamie Lawrence and soon to have another member of the team joining,” Taylor says. “Whilst one of us is the company face to each artist or client, we work together 50/50 on every project behind the scenes. James Washer [Lighting Programmer] is often the first name on the team sheet when we pick up a show like this one… he just gets it; is a great programmer and time saving resource who knows how to interpret when I say something like ‘can the lights be a little more aggressive.’ Francis (Clegg) is also a fantastic programmer, so I was able to work alongside James in the rehearsals to finesse the previz programming.”

Although he’s on a MA Lighting grandMA3 surface, Taylor runs the show on MA2 software. The reason for that is because this tour goes everywhere in the world, and he knows he can get an MA2 anywhere without having to lug around small form consoles himself. Taylor much prefers to take a USB stick through an airport. “We are running a lot of things through the desk—lighting, video, camera switching, and automation. The MA makes this easier to deal with and the fixture cloning system is excellent, so I know I’m going to get a good replica of the show no matter what fixtures I get thrown wherever we go.”

The venue sizes this time around sort of called for a video element to be added, Taylor says. “The focus of the show is, of course, Louis, so plenty of close-up camera work to amplify his emotion. These are treated with overlays and masks created by [content creators] Two Suns and ourselves, with 3D animation work coming from Boxcat Studio. The whole system is run on a Resolume server. Camera switching is done from the MA console via Open Control, which sends OSC messages to the ATEM switcher, which ultimately sends it to the capture cards. This way we eliminate a touring video director (sorry!) and save a bunch of truck space on outboard equipment. The system works extremely well.”

Colour Sound Experiment out of London is the tour lighting, video, and rigging company. “We use them for a large portion of our shows. It’s very useful dealing with just one company who ‘do it all’ but also don’t cut any corners or scrimp to get the job done. The equipment is well maintained with a good selection of inventory to choose from.” Taylor says it probably took them about three iterations to get to the point they’re at now, keeping ideas from the previous versions until they got somewhere they were all happy with. “It was a bit of a process, but a great payoff. I should probably thank Louis and his Manager, Matt Vines, for their patience in putting it all together. There are a lot of (literally) moving parts to the stage with winches, light boxes, light bulbs, and our shuttering set piece at the back. Ultimately the show is dynamic and exciting, but all the elements sit nicely together as well.” Taylor was a bit unsure on using the GLP X4 Bars across the back because of the brightness difference to GLP’s FR10, for example, but they are exactly the right brightness for this gig without being overpowering, he says. “My absolute favorite moment of the show, where we have some crazy iridescent hyper color animation, is driven by the Ayrton Huracans… amazing lights, just don’t try to pick one up by yourself, they’re beasts!”

Tomlinson was really involved in the design of this one, and also much more open to trying new things and delivering a narrative through the show, adds Taylor. “Matt Vines should have a shout out for his contribution to the ‘ideas factory’ and being a great sounding board as we developed the show. PM Craig Sherwood has been incredible as always, never asking ‘why’ we want to make it look like a derelict bathroom, just making it happen. Finally, the tour’s secret weapon, technical maestro Sam Kenyon, who is quite literally irreplaceable, has been an excellent resource for actually delivering the show in the real world day after day.”

Production Team

Tour Manager: Tom Allen

Production Manager: Craig Sherwood

Production Design, Programmer & Director: Tom Taylor & Francis Clegg, TANCK

Lighting Programmer: James Washer

Lighting Crew Chief: James Box

Lighting Techs: Rick Carr, Amy Barnett

Stage Manager: Torin Arnold

Technical Manager: Sam Kenyon

Video Crew Chief: Dave Mallandain

Video Programmer: Jack Fone

Video Techs: Tim Curwen, Braden Pettigrew

Camera Operators: Mark Lawrence, Braden Pettigrew, Tim Curwen

Rigger: Mark Lawrence

Vendors

Lighting/Video/Rigging: Colour Sound Experiment/Acc. Rep. Haydn Cruishank

LED Trim: LED Creative

Custom Light Housings: OX Event House

Set Construction: Hangman UK

Video Content: Two Suns Creative, Boxcat Studio, TANCK

SFX: BPM SFX

Gear

Lighting

2 MA Lighting grandMA3 full-size

19 Ayrton Eurus Profile

6 Ayrton Huracan LT Profile

5 Claypaky Mini-B

12 Robe Spiider

72 GLP X4 Bar 20

16 GLP JDC Line 1000

10 GLP JDC1 Strobe

12 CHAUVET STRIKE Array 4

2 Chroma-Q Color Force II 12

16 Elumen8 COB PAR Endura

10 LEDJ Spectra Q15

3 Robe BMFL RoboSpot

Video

2 Resolume Server

23 Custom LED Trim

6 Video Screens, 2.5m x 2.5m

7 Marshall 503 Camera

3 Panasonic UE70 PTZ Camera

2 Blackmagic Design URSA G2 Camera

#fitfwt23: gear #fitfwt23: technicals #louis tomlinson #louis press #fitfwt23: crew #11.8.2023

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won4ver · 1 month

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prompt + dialogue list

you can request up to 3 at a time + feel free to use :)

“stop pouting or i’ll kiss it off of you”

their friends see them with their s/o’s initial on their neck/wrist

their friends find out you’re not as scary as you look

you rub your cheek against their chest

they’re laying down and you randomly pop up above them and kiss them upside down

they find out a random fact about you, one that they should’ve already known (ex. they find out you’re a twin)

you ask them to do your hair because you’re too tired

you ask them to help you with your makeup (ex. ask them to hold your mirror. ask them to put on your fake eyelashes)

they pick out your clothes for you

you were playing the skipping game “strawberry shortcake” and you land on their initial. (strawberry shortcake, appleberry pie, who’s gonna be your lucky guy? *sing the alphabet*. whichever initial you land on after messing up is your ‘soulmate’)

you go skiing and accidentally almost bump into each other

*person one* has a crush on *person two* and they glare at the random person flirting with *person two*

without being asked they go and refill your drink along with theirs

“you think they can treat you better?” “no one knows your body like me”

*person one* walks around with their hand in *person two*’s back pocket, glaring at everyone who looks at them

“i’m going to kill him” “you’re not allowed to talk to him anymore”

“try harder next time, baby”

“I hated them because I loved them more than myself”

you both sat side by side in the garden making flower crowns, unknowingly making one for each other

*person one* spends days crocheting/knitting a sweater for *person two*

they both attend different schools but have always noticed each other at their shared events. athlete!*person one* finally goes up to athlete!*person two* and offered them a deal. If they win then they get to get *person two*’s number.

you confess to them in a photo booth, the photos capture the moment + their reaction

*person one* has small beauty marks across their body and *person two* adores them and always kisses them. *person one* noticed that *person two* would always pull out a notebook, tallying down how many freckled they’ve already kissed.

“I wish we had more time together, their lifetime isn’t enough”

you both attend a dance without a date and a slow song comes on. you saw that they didn’t have anyone to dance with and so you went up to them, offering your hand with a shy smile on your face. “Can I have this dance?”

“don’t you want… revenge?”

“they watched as you burned, no one helped you” “but... they were scared” “they weren’t scared, they just didn’t care enough about you to actually save you”

you were both attending a painting class but instead of painting the model you both secretly painted each other.

“i’ll never forgive you, any of you”

even though *person one* hated the cold, they still went out at the same time every night to walk their dog, knowing you’d be skating at the public parks arena.

“i’m not real, none of this was” “look in the mirror, i’m just another version of yourself that you created”

your brothers friends didn’t know that you’re his sister, not until they invited you inside after your brother forgot to ask you to pick him up later.

*person one* asks *person two* to paint their nails, *persom two* gets super excited and pulls out the nail supplies they secretly bought just in case you ever asked them to paint your nails.

“but that’s not what happened, is it?”

“you’ve always said you’d protect me, I didn’t know the person I would’ve needed to be protected from would be you”

“i…i cant reach her/them/him/etc”

they’re both famous and went to a sports game together, the kiss cam focuses on them.

secret relationship! *person one* grabs *person two”’s waist as they walked around them.

*person one* has a usb drive filled with unreleased love songs and *person two* accidentally listened to it, realizing that all the songs was written about them.

“this drink’s called a love bomb” “love bomb? why” “because i put my love into it” *silence* “just kidding, it’s because of the heart shaped ice cubes”

“you’ll be alright” “but you won’t be” “but you’ll be okay, once i know you’re safe i’ll be alright”

“i need to make sure you won’t need me”

“you were there to save everyone, but who was there to save you?” “don’t worry about me, you’re what matters the most”

“this wasn’t all by chance, it was because of me. I sacrificed everything to give you the life you deserved”

“you don’t have to worry about getting shot through your window since your bed is above it!” “well i wasn’t worried about that to begin with..”

“you can’t just pretended none of this happened! that we didn’t happen”

“you never really loved me, did you?” “i loved you with every part of me”

“relax, i’ll wash your hair for you”

“don’t fall asleep yet, i haven’t finished removing your makeup”

*person one* gently grabbed *person two*’s chin and tilted their head up, carefully giving them water

*person one* comes home to *person two* sleeping with their clothes / a plushy with their shirt around it

#won4ver ྀིྀིྀིྀིྀི #really emptied out my notes app for this #won4ver ྀིྀིྀིྀིྀི prompts #writing prompt #dialogue prompt #story prompt #prompt list #fic prompt #enhypen prompts #kpop prompts #fanfic prompt #writing prompts #story prompts #dialogue prompts #fanfiction prompts #kpop

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averageartistamber · 8 months

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Okay, so Sider Order.

Here's a few of my random observations and thoughts:

So here it looks like Pearl Drone is flying Eight in through a window? Ands it looks like some kind of factory or packaging plant. I've heard folks saying that the things being packed in boxes could be something akin to Mem Cakes from Octo Expansion...Perhaps and early sign that Kamabo.Co is involved.

FINALLY, ENEMIES THAT AREN'T OCTARIANS!

Well, these Goo-bers are interesting. Many have pointed out that they resemble fish species that feed on coral. But I also want to add that they have an "undead" aesthetic even more overt than they sanitised people. Someone on Tiktok pointed out that they look like fossils, and the "jelly" surrounding the bones (and what seems to be their ink) could be a visual pun on "fossil fuels". Note how the "bursts" of fluid don't look anything like the ink that other entities in the series use.

This basically confirms that we'll be playing as Agent Eight. After the first teaser I saw a lot of theories about being a clone floating around.

Now everyone's going crazy about DedF1sh (Or Acht, as they are referring to themselves here.) There's some interesting dialogue here. First of all, "another bystander who got suck in here", so, "another" in this context could be themselves since she's talking to Eight and Pearl, but there could be a chance that we could encounter more people who have ended up at the Spire of Order. Plus, she's most likely not here of her own accord, from the "bystander sucked in" part (assuming she's telling the truth). People are being brought here.

Secondly, Acht mentions knowing Marina from "way back", so we could be getting deeper into Marina's backstory (another common theme in the fan theories). Dedf1sh also introduces the player to the Chip and Palette system, which are a core part of the DLC's gameplay loop, since they appear to be going for a Rogue-like. Ther chips kind of remind me of the paint colour swatches you get at a hardware shop, combined with computer chips (that's not totally relevant, I'll admit).

More stuff to do with the gameplay. It looks like each floor has a few variants with different difficulties and objectives, which reward a currency, most likely used to buy chips and other upgrades. It's giving that impression almost that the Spire is another "testing facility", akin to the Deep Sea Metro. Hopefully this places doesn't contain any blenders.

Unusual way of spawning in, where you can see Eight's soul ghost...thing enter a polygonal model before fully forming. There does seem to be a lot of digital glitchy stuff going on. Maybe some virtual reality elements?

Finally, what I think looks like a boss arena (although some have suggested that this machine is the Big Bad itself). Upon close inspection, the "faces" scattered around it are covered in the oil and are moving around a bit. Looks kinda like Tartar during the final confrontation when he for some reason had a blob of sanitised goop on his face. I might be reading too much into this.

I mean, if they wanna bring Tartar back, he is an AI, so they could say a back-up copy of him was found somewhere. Like, a time capsule with the Professor's crappy spare USB or somethin' idk.

Anyway, that's all I got for know. Just gotta wait for Spring.

#splatoon #splatoon 3 #splatoon side order #splatoon dlc #dedf1sh #splatoon off the hook #splatoon agent 8

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grantmentis · 4 months

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PWHL Montreal arrive at USB Arena

#PWHL montreal #PWHL #Mariah Keopple #Sarah bujold #Sarah Lefort #Leah lum #Gabrielle David #Madison Bizal

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harrysfinelinevol1 · 2 years

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love on tour insta blurb pt.7

harry styles x personal assistant!y/n

summary: y/n is harry's personal assistant and is currently working on his tour

emma chamberlain

part 1! part 2! part 3! part 4! part 5! part 6!

harrystyles

liked by yourusername, harris_reed and 6,810,471 others

harrystyles Harry’s House. Out now.

view all 66,812 comments

harryfan2 im crying already

latelateshow 👏👏👏👏

harryfan10 iM SO PROUD

harry_lambert yes king

yourusername so incredibly proud of you and what you have achieved. it's been an honour to witness ❤️

↳ harryfan9 naww shes so cute

↳ harrystyles thank you for experiencing it with me x

yourusername

liked by harrystyles, annetwist and 523,019 others

yourusername happy harry's house day!

view all 21,302 comments

harryfan3 y/n feeding us harry content, thank you queen

harryfan7 im actually so sick of her she makes it out like shes everything to harry when shes really not

↳ harryfan31 literally shes obsessed with him, bitch get a life

yourbff it's on repeat in the car, I'm obsessed!

harryfan20 did anyone notice the subtle references to the album that y/n has been making in her insta comments and posts recently? she's too clever for us

harryfan5 get away from harry, he deserves better

harrystylescherries

liked by harryfan2, harryfan12 and 4,232 others

harrystylescherries y/n spotted in new york today heading to the USB arena ahead of ONO new york! apparently there were some harry fans following her and they wouldn't leave her alone. it didn't look like a good interaction :(

view all 491 comments

harryfan1 poor y/n shes been getting so much hate recently for no reason

↳ harryfan19 literally the amount of hate this poor girl gets is unbelievable

harryfan52 shes literally never done anything wrong either its just cos people think she's with harry

yourusername

liked by harrystyles, yourbff and 1,092,819 others

yourusername taking an indefinite hiatus off social media. hope this video explains why. it's heartbreaking to have to do this, but for the sake of my mental health, i cannot continue interacting on social media for the moment. love u all, y/n xx

comments have been disabled for this post

harrystyles

liked by yourbff, gemmastyles and 7,101,345 others

harrystyles hello all.

first, i would like to thank all my fans and supporters who have shown this girl nothing but love and support since the beginning and have always supported the relationship i have with her. however, i have been appalled by the levels of disrespect and harassment she has received since rumours of our relationship began to circulate. this breaks my heart to see such levels of abuse being directed at the girl i love, seeing people accuse her of being someone she is not and making horrible assumptions about our relationship. i am very happy in this relationship, possibly the happiest i have ever been. i want to express the importance of spreading positivity on platforms like this and also make people aware of the damaging effects that negativity can do to a person. i have witnessed the love of my life go through it and nothing was more painful to watch than her suffering every day due to the enormous amount of hate sent her way. it's time to stop.

treat people with kindness, every day, all the time. H.

view all 220,291 comments

harryfan10 this is heartbreaking, watching y/n's video actually made me burst into tears, she was so upset over all the hate

harryfan6 we love you y/n!!! so happy that you are in a relationship with harry and we wish you the best for the future xx

gemmastyles sending all my love to you both ❤️

harryfan1 i feel bad that harry had to announce his relationship like this, cant believe some people are so horrible online :(

harryfan22 guys, harry's fans started chanting 'we love y/n' and all held up candles in support at ono london tonight and he almost cried

↳ harryfan3 he really does love her, that's so cute

harrystyles thank you all for the overwhelming amount of love and support you have sent our way in the last 24 hours. we do appreciate it massively. thank you in particular to my fans at ONO London who did a massive gesture for y/n last night. i cant tell you how much that meant to her. thank you.

that's it! that's the end of this long insta blurb series which was the first thing i posted on this account. i know it was a bittersweet ending but that's how i planned it out in my mind from the beginning. thank you for all the support you have shown me since i posted the first part of this. i'm sad i finished this but onto the next one! affection will continue based off these events so keep up with that

sloane xx

#harry styles blurb #harry styles #harry styles fluff #harry styles x reader #harry styles imagine #harry styles x y/n #harry styles x you #harry styles fake social media #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles fanfic #harry styles and reader #harry styles request #harry styles reader insert

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guttersnarls · 1 year

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Congratulations the band Ghost on another much deserved Grammy nomination!!!!

Now..What’s on that list thats better than Call Me Little Sunshine? 🤷🏻‍♀️

(📸 me -usb arena 9/10/22)

#the band ghost #the answer is NOTHING better #thanks #💙

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kingofdinosaurs · 20 days

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hmmmm labrys

favorite thing about them: i like that she's an optimist because it's genuinely earned. like she went through the fire and flames for that optimism she deserves to be cheerful. she had to fight for that shit and her outlook remains positive anyway

least favorite thing about them: not her fault but it is aggravating that she's like. probably the Spinoff Warrior who gets the most attention from people who don't bother to actually like play p4a like your understanding is surface level and you are missing out on the experience

favorite line: i think it's cute when they bring up the student council thing again i really like her winquote with mitsuru in vanilla p4a. she would be such a good student council president at gekkoukan...

brOTP: her and aigis! their family thing is so sweet to me like they thought they'd lost all their sisters but they found each other... all is not lost

OTP: HER AND TEDDIE!!! they're sooooo cute in arena I'm a sucker for their silly lady and knight dynamic. also chie/labrys/yukiko i think chie especially has such an underappreciated relationship with her

nOTP: i just cannot get behind sho/labrys it smacks of "girlfriend who's there to fix boyfriend" and like. labrys isn't even fixed herself?! it's been 2 days. neither of them are ready for that and doing that to them feels mean

random headcanon: she's got an integrated usb port we already know this i think. but i think she also has a dvd player.

unpopular opinion: everybody has got to play this damn fighting game visual novel nowwwww

song i associate with them: honestly i just have got to give it to spirited girl everyone go listen to spirited girl it's such a good little song

favourite picture of them: no notes i just like this one it's nice

#persona #ask

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tamapalace · 9 months

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How to Check Tamagotchi Uni Battery

How much battery do you have left? The Tamagotchi Uni is the second Tamagotchi to feature a built-in rechargeable battery. In the past, you had to change batteries, or recharge them before inserting them back into your Tamagotchi.

With the Tamagotchi Uni, you need to charge it with a USB-C charger, and check the battery to ensure that it doesn’t die in between charges! How can you check the Tamagotchi Uni’s battery? The battery indicator is only visible on the watch face/clock screen. Simply press and hold the “A” button and you will see the battery indicator.

There are 5 statuses of the battery, which include full, high, mild, low, and charging. If your Tamagotchi battery dies, you will see a full screen battery icon with a sad face.

The battery takes 1.5 hours to charge, and should last around 72 hours with normal play of 1 hour per day. 1 hour of play assumes the following: 15 mins of taking care of your Tamagotchi character; 20 mins of Tama Walk; 10 mins of Connecting, 10 mins of Arcade 5 mins of Tama Arena events; and the downloading of one item over Wi-Fi.

#tamapalace #tamagotchi #tmgc #tamagotchiuni #tamagotchi uni #uni #tamatag #virtualpet #bandai #battery

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mtaartsdesign · 1 year

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“Cyclical Everything” (2022), a #MTAarts commission by Shawna X, was recently unveiled at the new #LIRR Elmont-USB Arena station. Composed of glass and metal, the artwork uses an oval motif throughout, meant to represent the nearby racetrack and arena, as well as the evolving and transformative nature of Elmont. Cutouts in the metal platform railing capture the rhythmic form as bold black lines. The station overpass features ten brightly colored laminated glass panels that depict bodies in motion, referencing musicians, athletes, and performers at the nearby newly built UBS Arena.

The Elmont-UBS Arena Station is the first new LIRR station built in almost 50 years. Operational as of about two months now, the station provides service to and from events at UBS Arena and Belmont Park racetrack, as well as to the local community.

Photos: Collin Hughes

#mtaarts #publicart #permanent art #shawna x #lirr

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dreamings-free · 6 months

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This month Steve Jennings looks at Louis Tomlinson’s Faith in the Future world tour and spoke with Production Designer, Programmer, and Director Tom Taylor of Tanck.co about his design. Taylor, along with Tanck.co partner Francis Clegg, added a video element to support the larger venues on this run.

By: Steve Jennings (Photos and Text) Wide Focus - August 11, 2023

Production Team

Tour Manager: Tom Allen Production Manager: Craig Sherwood Production Design, Programmer & Director: Tom Taylor & Francis Clegg, TANCK Lighting Programmer: James Washer Lighting Crew Chief: James Box Lighting Techs: Rick Carr, Amy Barnett Stage Manager: Torin Arnold Technical Manager: Sam Kenyon Video Crew Chief: Dave Mallandain Video Programmer: Jack Fone Video Techs: Tim Curwen, Braden Pettigrew Camera Operators: Mark Lawrence, Braden Pettigrew, Tim Curwen Rigger: Mark Lawrence

Vendors

Lighting/Video/Rigging: Colour Sound Experiment/Acc. Rep. Haydn Cruishank LED Trim: LED Creative Custom Light Housings: OX Event House Set Construction: Hangman UK Video Content: Two Suns Creative, Boxcat Studio, TANCK SFX: BPM SFX

Gear

Lighting 2 MA Lighting grandMA3 full-size 19 Ayrton Eurus Profile 6 Ayrton Huracan LT Profile 5 Claypaky Mini-B 12 Robe Spiider 72 GLP X4 Bar 20 16 GLP JDC Line 1000 10 GLP JDC1 Strobe 12 CHAUVET STRIKE Array 4 2 Chroma-Q Color Force II 12 16 Elumen8 COB PAR Endura 10 LEDJ Spectra Q15 3 Robe BMFL RoboSpot

Video 2 Resolume Server 23 Custom LED Trim 6 Video Screens, 2.5m x 2.5m 7 Marshall 503 Camera 3 Panasonic UE70 PTZ Camera 2 Blackmagic Design URSA G2 Camera

► audio version of the article available at the source

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 8 months

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If the ninety-eight-page indictment by Fani T. Willis, district attorney for Fulton County, Georgia, of Donald Trump, Rudolph Giuliani, and seventeen other people is ever made into a movie, it should be called The Framing of Ruby Freeman. Willis gives names to, and levels charges at, some of the people who appear anonymously in Jack Smith’s federal indictment of Trump. She brings more characters into her cast of racketeers. But her plot follows the same contours. The methods used to try to overturn the election of Joe Biden as president of the United States in November 2020 are by now familiar: making claims of electoral fraud that were themselves knowingly fraudulent, leaning on election officials to “find” votes for Trump, creating fake electors, pressuring the vice president Mike Pence not to certify the results. What makes the Willis indictment different is that its story is not only a grand narrative of what Smith characterizes as an attempt to defraud the United States. It is also the tale of a frame-up, a grotesque travesty of justice in which the power of government was used to traduce and attempt to destroy an innocent and defenseless citizen.

As such, it tells us not just what Trump did to try to hold onto power, but also what he will do if he ever gets hold of it again. There are big constitutional, political, and policy matters at stake in his campaign to return to the White House. But the kind of authoritarian rule he is trying to establish always comes down in the end to what happens to small, inconvenient people, those who become what Freeman was called in the Trump campaign against her: “a loose end.” They are lied about, criminalized, terrorized, threatened, and smeared—not by private gangs but by a gangsterized government. These are the things that happened to Ruby Freeman. What is at stake in the Georgia indictment is whether those who inflicted these intimate cruelties can get away with it and, therefore, be free to do it again.

Shortly after the presidential election of November 2020 Kay Kirkpatrick, a Republican state senator in Georgia, passed a complaint of electoral fraud to the office of the secretary of state, her fellow Republican Brad Raffensperger. It included photographic stills from social media posts purportedly showing Freeman, a sixty-two-year-old woman who was working for $16 an hour as a temporary election worker, fraudulently tampering with the counting of votes in the State Farm Arena in Atlanta. On December 10, 2020, Giuliani, as Willis puts it, “knowingly, willfully, and unlawfully” claimed that after counting had ended for the night surveillance video footage caught Freeman, her daughter Shaye Moss, and an unidentified man “quite obviously surreptitiously passing around USB ports as if they’re vials of heroin or cocaine” to be used to “infiltrate the crooked Dominion voting machines.” (Why the Dominion systems had to be infiltrated surreptitiously when they were already, as the Trump campaign insisted, rigged is a detail Giuliani never explained.)

Kirkpatrick also passed on to Raffensperger’s office Instagram posts in which Freeman appeared to boast that she and her daughter “did something to change history and we will not be silent and allow evil to control this country,” and “Thank God my baby had a plan and today we put that plan in action after those Trump supporting [sic] and Fox News thought they won and left the building.” These posts seemed to prove not just that Freeman and Moss had conspired to corrupt the election count but that they were brazenly proud of their handiwork.

In responding this week to Willis’s indictment, Giuliani tweeted that it is “the next chapter in a book of lies with the purpose of framing President Donald Trump.” That’s an interesting choice of words, consistent with the standard Trump tactic of naming one’s own crimes while projecting them onto others. For one of the most egregious aspects of the conspiracy to overturn the result of the election in Georgia is this attempt to stitch up Freeman and Moss for nonexistent crimes. Although Willis’s narrative of malfeasance ranges even more widely than Smith’s federal indictment, it also allows us to zoom in on the sheer cruelty of what Trump, Giuliani, and their gaggle of lawyers and operatives were willing to do to ordinary people who stood in their way. The damage to the American republic is the panoramic wide shot, but in this close-up, we can see a particular kind of ugliness with a specific American history: Black people being framed, and publicly punished, for other people’s crimes.

Following Kirkpatrick’s complaint, Raffensberger’s office opened a criminal investigation into Freeman and Moss. The potential charges they faced came under three headings: conspiracy to commit election fraud, fraud by poll officers, and the use of counterfeit ballots. Conviction on the second of these offenses alone could have resulted in Freeman and Moss going to prison for up to ten years. “Teams of investigators” from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, and the secretary of state’s office were employed to look into these alleged crimes. Two law-abiding Black women were potentially facing the loss of their liberty, reputations, and livelihoods.

The “evidence” against Freeman and Moss was entirely bogus. Counting of votes had not, as the Trump campaign alleged, stopped when the video was shot. The county election director had instructed Freeman, Moss, and other workers to retrieve ballots that had been packed away in anticipation of counting being suspended for the night and to take them to the scanners to be recorded. All of this was perfectly in order, and a subsequent hand count of votes showed that there were no discrepancies and that no fake ballots were scanned.

As for Freeman’s supposed Instagram posts, the criminal investigation found that a man whose name is redacted from its findings had created a phony account called @rubyfreeman_georgia. On December 4, a month after the election, this man (as he told the FBI) came across another account (also not Freeman’s) that had posted her fake “confession.” The name of this second account was then changed to @rubyfreeman_georgia. Subsequently, the first man “described his account as being a fake or parody account.” This sequence of events still seems somewhat murky (and Willis does not deal with it in her indictment) but there is no doubt that more than one person was involved in inventing and disseminating the Instagram “confession” that Kirkpatrick used as part of her complaint against Freeman and Moss and that helped to bolster Trump’s wider claims of a rigged election.

The report into the criminal investigation that cleared Freeman and Moss of any wrongdoing whatever was not completed until March 7, 2023, and not published until June 20. This means that the threat of imprisonment continued to hang over the two women for more than two years. In December 2020 and January 2021, they were relentlessly targeted as the devious criminals who had stolen Trump’s victory in Georgia. As Willis records, on December 10 Giuliani showed the edited version of the video to members of the Georgia house of representatives and directly named Freeman and Moss as the alleged fraudsters. On January 2, in a now infamous call to Raffensperger and other Georgia officials, Trump claimed that Freeman was “a professional vote scammer and hustler,” that “she stuffed the ballot boxes,” and that, in Willis’s words, “Freeman, her daughter, and others were responsible for fraudulently awarding at least 18,000 ballots” to Joe Biden.

Between them, Trump and Giuliani thus had Freeman engaged in four different kinds of vote-tampering: stuffing ballot boxes with fake votes; taking fraudulent ballots from “suitcases” she had hidden under tables; scanning the same ballots multiple times; and using USB flash drives to access and interfere with the electronic voting machines. The combination of these techniques would make Freeman not a low-level scammer but a criminal mastermind, able to conceive and implement a multidimensional plan to generate false Biden ballots, transport them in suitcases into the State Farm Arena, tamper with the scanning machines so that they would record the same ballots more than once, and somehow interfere with the software codes of the Dominion counting machines—and to do all this under the gaze of cameras, election officials, party monitors, and the media. While themselves trying to steal the election, Trump and Giuliani were trying to create for the American public an action movie in which they were battling heroically to save democracy from a female version of Lex Luthor or Keyser Söze.

Was it accidental that this arch-villain happened to be African American? Hardly. If the Trump campaign genuinely believed that something dodgy was being done at the counting center, the obvious person to target was the man who gave the instructions to continue the count: the elections director, Rick Barron. But Barron, a suave-looking white man, did not fit the casting requirements. (This did not subsequently save Barron from relentless harassment by Trump supporters because he honorably defended Freeman and Moss. He resigned in despair last year.) On the other hand, Giuliani’s choice of a lurid simile, in which Freeman and Moss were allegedly passing USB devices “as if they’re vials of heroin or cocaine,” linked them to familiar tropes of Black drug dealers.

But the salience of race is even harder to miss in Willis’s explication of the alleged conspirators’ attempts to “turn” Freeman. The indictment sets out how the Trump team, having framed Freeman and her daughter, then offered to “help” her if she would do what they wanted. The plan was to “to harass Freeman, intimidate her, and solicit her to falsely confess to election crimes that she did not commit.” An explicit part of the plan involved using Black members of Trump’s racket to offer her this deal.

One of the alleged conspirators, Stephen Lee, a white pastor who got involved in the attempts to get Freeman to “confess,” told Harrison Floyd, a leader of Black Voices for Trump, “that Freeman was afraid to talk to [Lee] because he was a white man.” Floyd then recruited a Black woman, Trevian Kutti, a former publicist for Kanye West and R. Kelly and a self-identified member of “the Young Black Leadership Council under President Donald Trump,” to travel from Chicago to Freeman’s home in Georgia. Freeman, who had been understandably frightened by a barrage of online and personal threats, did not answer her door, but called a neighbor who spoke to Kutti. Kutti “falsely stated that she was a crisis manager attempting to ‘help’ Freeman before leaving Freeman’s home.” Later that day, Kutti called Freeman on the phone to tell her that she was “in danger.”

Before agreeing to meet Kutti, Freeman called the police and, according to a Reuters report by Jason Szep and Linda So, told the dispatcher, “They’re saying that I need help, that it’s just a matter of time that they are going to come out for me and my family.” Freeman then agreed to meet with Kutti in the safety of a police station. The beginning of the encounter was captured on a police body camera, which recorded Kutti telling Freeman that it may be necessary to move her and members of her family from her home, and that “You are a loose end for a party that needs to tidy up.” Kutti, before putting Freeman on the phone with Floyd, describes him to her as a “Black progressive crisis manager.” Another piece of theater was being staged, one in which Kutti and Floyd acted out for Freeman the roles of concerned Black brothers and sisters.

The quid pro quo for this show of solidarity was that Freeman would sign a fraudulent and self-incriminating statement vindicating the allegations made against her by Trump and Giuliani. “If you don’t tell everything,” Freeman remembered Kutti insisting, “you’re going to jail.” As so often in this whole story, there is a bizarre circularity to the conspiracy: what Willis alleges here is a crime committed by trying to force Freeman to herself commit the crime of making false claims about a crime of electoral fraud she did not commit. But in all of this dizzyingly convoluted plotting, it is abundantly clear that the desired outcome for the Trump team was a spectacle familiar from totalitarian states: a repentant traitor confessing to her crimes against the great leader. The special American twist would be that the self-confessed vile conniver would be a Black woman who tried to bring down a president who had long played with white supremacist tropes. It was no accident that many of the pro-Trump attacks on Freeman and Moss on social media not only used racist epithets but explicitly called for them to be lynched: “YOU SHOULD BE HUNG OR SHOT FOR YOUR CRIMES.”

If there are any conservatives left in the United States, they owe it to themselves to read at least these parts of the indictment and to think carefully about what happened to Freeman and her daughter. Conservatives are supposed to distrust above all the overweening power of the state and its capacity to crush individuals, strip them of their rights and reputations, threaten their families, and break their wills. The plot against Freeman has elements of the Mafia behavior that Giuliani, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, was so good at prosecuting. But this was much worse than a Mafia maneuver—it was a state operation. It was led by the sitting president. Of the nineteen people indicted by Willis, four were at the time holders of federal or state governmental offices: the president, his chief of staff (Mark Meadows), a senior official in the Justice Department (Jeffrey Clark), and the Coffee County elections supervisor (Misty Hampton). What is this if not Big Government at its most oppressive?

Had Freeman not found the inner resources of courage and dignity to resist the almost unbearable pressure heaped on her by the occupant of the White House, she would have signed a false confession to crimes against the integrity of US elections. Can anyone doubt that Trump and Giuliani, amplified by Fox News and the other right-wing propaganda channels, would have insisted that she and Moss should be given exemplary sentences of penal servitude and locked away for many years? The defense of democracy, they would have cried, demanded nothing less for those who dared to corrupt the electoral process. In that, if in nothing else, they would have spoken the truth.

Fintan O'Toole :: NY Review of Books

#Fintan O'Toole #NY Review of Books #RICO #corrupt GOP #indicted #witness intimidation #Fani T. Willis

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