Production Credits
Jean Michel Jarre The China Concerts Beijing and Shanghai 1981

Performed by Jean Michel Jarre
Produced by Francis Dreyfus
Production Design: Mark Fisher
Spaceframe tower design and engineering: Jonathan Park
Lighting Design: Gerard Lafosse
Graphic Design:  Kate Hepburn
Art Direction:  Mark Fisher
Scenery construction: Mark Fisher and Jonathan Park

Mark Fisher writes:
In 1980 the Chinese Government invited Jean Michel Jarre to create a unique laser and lighting show for concert presentations in Beijing and Shanghai.  The project was a cultural exchange between France and China.  The budget was limited; there was some value-in-kind sponsorship from Air France, but most of the costs for the creation of the show and the payment of band and crew had to be recouped from the sale of the live album and the TV rights.  Central TV (a UK TV station) bought the rights to make a documentary film about the project, directed by Andrew Piddington.

The main idea behind the production design was to create a lightweight stage set that could be transported to China at minium cost, but that would fill the stage in large arenas and deliver a picture of high-technology that could be contrasted with Chinese decorative motifs.  The final design was based around custom built space-frame masts that stood around the stage creating a tall forest that supported lights, laser mirrors and other decoration.  Jean Michel and his band were positioned at the bases of the masts.

The ultra-lightweight spaceframe masts were designed by Jonathan Park.  His final design was formed from triangular bipyramids placed tip to tip and stayed by tubes running up the arrises of the resulting triangular trusses.  This design required only two lengths of tube to form the truss, one length to form the regular tetrahedral, the other to form the stays.  (In the prototype, the stays were tension cables, but these were replaced with tubes to create a stiffer structure).  The spade-ended tapered aluminium tubes were joined by die-cast female clevis nodes and held in place with fast-pins.  Working out of the warehouse maintained in Britannia Row, Islington by Pink Floyd’s eponymous lighting and audio company, Fisher and Park organized the manufacture of the die-cast notes and tapered tubes.  The finished masts were so light that Fisher packed a prototype 3m section as cabin baggage for a visit to Jarre’s summer retreat in San Tropez for final sign off on the project.

Once in China, Fisher and Park directed the teams of bemused local workers that assembled and erected the masts.  True to the spirit of rock ‘n’ roll, the mast manufacturing schedule in the UK was so tight that a full height mast was never built before the components were shipped to Beijing.  It turned out that the fast-pins that were packed into the road boxes in London were too large for the drillings in the clevises.  Some of the Chinese workers had their first encounter with an electric drill as they reamed out the holes to the correct diameter.  The masts weighed so little that they were assembled flat on the floor, walked onto the stage, pushed upright and locked down onto their bases without any mechanical assistance.

The tops of the masts were crowned by prototype Telescan moving lights – the first moving-mirror stage lighting instruments in the world.  (It was the first time the instruments had ever traveled outside Paris).  There were no chain hoists or other rigging luxuries on the tour.  All the lights were rigged by lighting crew climbing up the masts and then pulling the equipment up hand over hand with ropes.  Several of the masts were over 12m tall, which was rather hard work.  But logistically, the stage set delivered what was asked of it.  All of the mast components packed into two road boxes each 2.4m x 1m x 1m.  

At the rear of the stage a low platform concealed the apparatus for Jarre’s ‘Laser Harp’.  A powerful laser beneath the stage was divided into beams that radiated from the platform deck and reflected off mirrors mounted on a triangular frame to shine down the length of the arena.  Jarre played the harp by wearing white asbestos gloves that he used to interrupt the beams.  Photo-detectors on the triangular frame triggered synthesizer notes when the beams were broken.

The project also incorporated a graphic design campaign that included billboard posters advertising the posters that copied the retro 50’s narrative style of the posters for state-manufactured consumer products that were common in China at that time.  The posters employed themes that illustrated Jean Michel Jarre, his music, and the cultural links between France and China that led to the China Concerts.  Kate Hepburn painted the posters and designed the typeface for the campaign.  

Trainspotter stuff:
In the winter of 1983 the spaceframe mast system was brought back to the UK and reconfigured as the stage backdrop for Tina Turner’s debut concerts as a solo artist at the Hammersmith Odeon and The Venue, Victoria.

Between 1976 and 1983 Mark Fisher and Jonathan Park collaborated on a number of projects.  In 1984 they formalized their working relationship as the Fisher Park Partnership.  Their partnership was dissolved in 1994.