Hal Dimond – Final Blog Submission

Image | Posted on May 25, 2015 by Anthony Hal Dimond

What even is a Technologist?

When our ensemble first set out to create our Multimedia performance, I knew I wanted to explore a different aspect of production, technology. I’ve always considered myself fairly ‘tech savvy’, and have had some experience with the operations and process of Media production at A Level, but I’ve never had the opportunity to really challenge myself and contribute technologically to a grand scale performance. So when the opportunity presented itself within this module, it was impossible to not jump at the challenge. The process has been difficult and trying, but I’ve learnt a lot over the module and the culmination of the final show was to me spectacular, but early portions of the production process was often stilted.

With various ideas of the performance content experimented with and rejected, it took a while for the performance content to hit its stride, but once it had I was able to put all of my technological knowledge to the challenge of applying It to the piece, a challenge that while not easily overcome, was immensely satisfying along the way.

Live!

As we began to make considerable progress, a constructed performance was beginning to form, and I began to focus on the technological and visual components, one incredibly crucial motif began to develop in the practices in which we were engaging, the exploration and exposition of practicing live.

From both audio and visual standpoints, the devices that were more exciting, stimulating and rewarding, were those that were activated, manipulated and controlled in real time alongside the performance. It became a personal endeavor to rely on as little pre-recorded footage as possible, and more crucially as little formulated, visual set pieces instead of being compiled into a pre-edited video, were switched between, and became a much more organic experience.

We wanted the performance to not be a prepared presentation, but to be very much live; to be constructed, mixed and performed simultaneously, or at least implied to be, with as much of the organics and procedures exposed to the audience as possible.

However, as the performance began to come together, it became apparent that without significant practice, seamlessly controlling the media in its unassembled form proved too difficult, and pre-edits had to be made. Given the opportunity to perform the piece again , and have longer to practice, the complete real time compilation would have been much more effective.

We also began to experiment with expanding outside of the predetermined performance space, utilizing the live feed capabilities of the cameras to produce real time expansion.

The first experiment we conducted with this method was during the exploration phase of torturing. During group work, we set out to restage a scene from the Film Reservoir Dogs, in which one character tortures another. During the scene he torturer leaves the building, retrieves the jerry can from their car before returning to the victim, all the while being followed seamlessly by the camera. We restaged this by having our performer leave the stage via the wings, and similarly enter a backstage area to retrieve a prop, again followed by the camera. It was this act of expanding from the established space and into another all that genuinely excited us, and made us want to investigate it more.

Eventually, this devise was utilized during the Columbine and Hitler/Anne Frank sequences.

The Crows’ Nest.

So when it was decided that the implementations of the technology were to be actively shown to the audience, we began to consider the possibilities of having said control mechanism, and those in control onstage at all times. Eventually the decision was made to facilitate the use of a scaffolding-like structure, with the technology and operators on top, above the performance space. The second onstage tech-box, that colloquially became known as the ‘Crows’ Nest’ gave the appearance of an overbearing controlling presence throughout the entire performance, an effect we were enforce, as it exposed to the audience our manipulation of the technology, and created the illusions of an omnipresence within the universe of the performance.

Vision Mixer and Wirecast.

So if control was the key aspect t of our presence onstage, the mechanisms, which I used to control the various on stage assets, are ultimately important. To control the cameras which live feeds were displayed on the two side of stage screens, I had use of a vision mixer. This machine allowed me to allocate one of 5 visual inputs; (3 separate cameras, a blank feed, and colour bars) to each of the two screens; in short, it allowed me to control what went where. However, similarly to the live compositional element, a lack of practice made the full use of the technology impossible, and I was forced to keep its operation fairly simple to avoid error. Given more opportunity to practice I believe I could utilize the hardware closer to it’s full potential.

For the large rear screen, which displayed the prepared movie sequences, still images, and the live feed from the GoPro, I used an application on my laptop called Wirecast Studio. Designed for live streaming, Wirecast allowed me to seamlessly switch between assets and sources rather simply via the interface, so I was able to prepare the next scenes assets easily, before switching to the output of a projector screen.

Going Pro

About 5 weeks before the performance date an idea struck us for a possible addition to our inventory of visual technology; a GoPro. The tiny robust camera which has gained its prestige on video sharing websites among the likes of YouTube has gained its notoriety amongst extreme sports for example skiing, snow and skateboarding, skydiving, various mediums of racing and combat simulators like airsoft or paintball. Exactly why the famous brand of camera has become so widely used can be attributed to various features in which the GoPro line pioneers. It’s compact size and incredibly durable housing along with the ridiculous amount of mounting options allow the camera to give an audience the view of pretty much anything it can be attached to, but possibly it’s most crucial feature is its ultra wide angle lens, which has a much wider field of view than standard lenses, and simulates the peripheral vision of the human eye. When combined with a head or chest mount, this grants an audience relatively authentic point of view, resulting in heightened immersion. So for example within these sports, the audience can experience a close representation of these aforementioned sports from the point of view of those playing it, a view that would not be possible with conventional and/or larger cameras.

Churchill/Columbine/Hitler

Returning to the GoPro’s compact size, we wanted to utilize the cameras ability to capture unconventional viewpoints, and video images of unique perspectives that would not be possible with conventional cameras due to both the logistic and indiscreet limitations of their size. The two methods we developed for experimenting this compact designed were during the columbine and Churchill sequences.

For the duration of the Churchill sequence we wanted to show footage and play audio of a record play turning idly to create ambience while the performers presented their monologues. Whilst this was simple aesthetic feature, designed more to compliment the scene than contribute to it, as record players can only be loosely connoted to the cultural icon, we surmised that simply playing prerecorded footage of said player would not only appear disjointed for the sequence, but also detract from it as a whole. However, in keeping with out our live motif, and with the Record player was clearly visible to the audience at the front of ‘the crows nest’ and was manipulated as equally in full view, the live footage offered simultaneous perspectives of a small but crucially live aspect of the scene, which upheld the exposition of our technological workings to the audience, but did not detract from the performers onstage. Furthermore, the GoPro’s minimalist profile allowed the presence of the camera to not be immediately noticeable, allowing the simultaneous footage of the player to peak the audience’s interest, and initially establish the GoPro’s presence.

Within columbine sequence, the performers aspired to rein act or represent the infamous library shootings. We felt that a conventional third-person view camera of the reenactment would be out of place with the rest of the show, creating an undesired cinematic experience rather than the perspective sharing performance in which were aspiring towards. It was during the formulation of this sequence in which the acquisition of the GoPro was decided upon, as we wanted to use an unconventional perspective during the sequence; that of the brothers who committed the shootings. So after acquiring the GoPro we attached it to rifle so during the representation the audiences is subjected to the point of view of the firearm, a very personal and visceral viewpoint. The viewpoint was also intended to replicate the common first person shooter genre of video games, a cultural that often negatively attributed to the shootings.

A Slight limitation presented by the workings of the GoPro’s wireless streaming mechanism was that the display of the camera’s footage was delayed by approximately 1.5 seconds. While a slight inconvenience, it produced an interesting and coincidental effect when the camera, which was still attached to the rifle, was pointed towards the audience, as they were confronted just over a second later by footage of their own reactions on the large screen.

With the Hitler and Anne Frank sequence, the GoPro’s Point-of-view style imagery was utilized in a more symbolic style. The Camera, mounted to a performer’s, head thus filming from their point of view, was walked through the set dressed backstage area of the auditorium. The footage was displayed on the large screen, simultaneously with a performer reciting a passage of Ann Frank’s Diary. The footage would show the performer’s arms when ever they interacted with the environment, but while originally the character was intended to be a symbolic Hitler somewhat comically searching for Anne frank, t became apparent to us that with the disembodied nature of the camera’s first person perspective viewpoint, the character become an allegorical personification of the oppressive political movement of Germany during the second world war. As the sequence took place after Columbine’s in the productions running order, so the ontological state of the back stage area having previously been established to the audience, the slow and deliberate approach of the performer towards the stage would be incredibly overbearing. Further more, the audience are once again confronted to their own image prior to being observed by the inhuman character.

Moon Landing/Freddie Mercury

For the Moon landing and Freddie Mercury sequences I wanted to utilize as many still images as I possibly could to confront the audience with a plethora of images of the according topics. With Moon landing, the intention was to comment on the sheer volume of mediation the event has received in the decades since, and with the Freddie Mercury Sequence to shock the audiences with the uncomfortable reality of it’s underlying context; the awareness and effects of aids.

Big Bang/Wright Brothers/Suffragettes.

With these sequences, the performers were the prominent components, therefore I decided to keep and visual components as simple as possible, each containing a loop of simplistic or minimalistic video footage.

Trial and Error/Logistics

Possibly one of the most satisfying parts of creating this performance has been experimenting and problem solving in terms of the technology. Over the course of the process innumerous technological complications and set backs have arisen and overcoming them has been unendingly satisfying.

For example, on of the biggest challenges has been understanding and combatting the limitations of the vision mixer. During the earlier stages of formulating the production, the original intention was to control the distribution of all of the visual assets, i.e. both the live feeds from the camera, and the media controlled on the laptop, via the mixer, to all three of the screens an operation that proved to be technologically impossible. The limitations attributed to the mixer’s inability to process digital imager, i.e. the laptop’s HDMI or VGA outputs, being only able to control analogue video signal, which the cameras used. Furthermore the machine was designed to output to only one machine with the option preview monitor. After experimentation we were able to construct a system in which the mixer could control two screens simultaneously, but were forced to sacrifice the preview monitor and the ability to use visual transitions, meaning the live feeds could snap on and off, but not fade etc. The result of this was that the camera feeds were restricted to the two side screens, and the media controlled from the laptop to the rear. This posed the logistical issue of reorganizing the intended visual assets for each of the sequences to accommodate for this limitation. However upon reaching a finalized and operational system for all was incredibly satisfying.

Similarly the learning of the application Wirecast Studio for the organization and playback of the media assets proved an equally frustrating but rewarding experience, as the feeling of self-achievement when the two systems worked simultaneously was spine-chillingly exciting.

In reflection I believe that only a small percentage of avenues were explored technologically, with many devices not being used to their full potential, and with more time hands-on, or more intermediate training with some of the equipment more elaborate and polished devises could have been utilised. That being said, I am immensely proud of the work I have done for this performance, and of Changing Faces Itself.

Here you can find a playlist containing all of the assets created and used during the process.

Final Blog Submission – Changing Faces: A Reflection

Posted on May 25, 2015 by Rory Martin Butler

The ethos of both the process and the performance as a whole identifies itself within the collaborative efforts of each performer, encapsulating individual theatrically artistic images personal to the individual. Each of these personal ideologies constructed themselves alongside a vast collaborative cascade of inspirational theories, personal interpretations and explorations, influential images, times, and prior impacts.

Reflecting on my understanding of the transformation of the process I’ve noticed particular areas where significant decisions and explorations made the most impact on the construction of the final performance. Looking through the notes on the process I made after and during each rehearsal here is a comprehensive timeline of the journey the group took in developing Changing Faces:

My initial contribution to the process, with regards to developing an initial piece lay in two areas of exploration that fell beneath one main area of study/inspiration; psychology. The first idea proposed was based on the Charlotte Perkins Gilman novel The Yellow Wallpaper which explores the madness of solitude and the development of a troubled mind, alongside, attitudes towards feminism, and the female identity in past examples of literature. The choice to propose this text was specifically inspired by my interest in the human psyche. Whilst performance itself may explore the mysteries of the human mind and open up performative examples of emotion, my interest was to see how the action within an enclosed space is read through camera and projection. The staging concept at this point was large perspex boxes that were wallpapered from the inside, in an open space, with cameras pointing into one corner of each box giving the illusion of fly-on-the-wall, as the performance progressed the wallpaper is stripped away to reveal the live body. Following along this same interest of human psychiatry, I also suggested exploring understanding human identity and how a loss of personal identity causes shifts the psychology of the individual. Using psychologist, Philip Zimbardo’s The Lucifer Effect, the aim would be to explore the human capacity for evil once the personal identity is either deconstructed or obliterated totally. The staging concept for this idea used a large perspex sheet separating the spectator from performer, and using ‘Makey Makey’ spectators can activate sound clips and camera projection to choose their own viewing point via the eye of the lens situated within the playing space.

From this inspiration we began to consider the deconstruction of significant factors that form human identity, and how we interpret them. This led us down two pathways, the first being considering in what way identity can be deconstructed, and considering the potential impact technology may show. This was inspired by the notion of the online ‘world’, migrating into real life, an example of this is RPG, “…the boundaries between game worlds and “real life” became increasingly tenuous.”(Filewod, 2014). This was a defining moment within the process as it began to inspire new thinking into how easy or indeed, difficult, the presence of technology has made our ability to know one another. How real are the people online? Are they a heightened projection of our inner psyche, programmed to operate within the virtual space? These questions led to our second pathway of exploration, the concept of anonymity in virtual space, using the blog site ‘Tumblr’ and avid user Claudia Cross, we encouraged unknown users to send in the dark thoughts and processes their mind had adopted under an anonymous post. The main concept produced from this pathway was specifically the identification and isolation of interpreting identity, and the ease of access media allows us to know a person without having to even meet them, and how we could view the individual – the online personality vs. the live person through the eye of a camera lens; CCTV.

From this notion of CCTV we considered surveillance and the impact of its presence and also, the conspiracies that surround its function, i.e. ‘Big Brother State’. By this point in the process it was evident that the group required the consistency of one notion and so, the G.O.D. was born. Presented as a fresh concept during small group based tasks I assigned Jack and Cherry’s group kickstarted the idea of a controlling faction and conspiratorial government operating within a dystopian future projecting the ‘control’ of two contemporary structures, Government and Religion. This was the first moment during the process that the group managed to achieve their most completion of tasks myself and Bryony began to set. The rehearsal time and space became our sacred playground to explore each new idea individuals were producing, becoming a real life forum of play. Whilst, the tasks were completed away from the space, performers went away with set instructions and questions such as writing tasks, (Imagine this is your final message, what do you say? What rules would you make in a dystopian future?), that they had to follow and answer, and return with their work. However, during this process it began to become clear that what was being developed followed our preconceived notions of performance, the G.O.D. dynamic has shifted from our goal of multimedia and instead, became a play. Once Bryony and I began to notice this, we encouraged the group to begin furthering the exploration of prior ideas. The issue with the G.O.D. concept lay at the foundation which was that, we sought to establish a dystopian, totalitarian, autocratic environment neglecting to notice that such states already exist (North Korea). Now we had a hurdle to cross – how could we transform the temporal, and how do we show the transformation of current culture to this dramatised new culture? We immediately noticed the first issue we hoped never to experience, the large group, had large ideas, and the net of inspiration was spreading rapidly. We were using such materials as Orson Wells’ 1984, my inspiration from graffiti artist Banksy’s work, personal opinions on the decline and rise of religion, and Michel Foucault’s philosophy of the Panopticon amongst many others. So we chose to revert to our prior exploration.

With the concerns of temporal performance dynamic fixed within our heads we revisited dark thoughts and identity and explored the performative nature of the verbatim posts provided through tumblr and its relation to the camera. It became clear at this point that the performance needed a firm inspiration, a fixed one-liner that could be easily adapted, interpreted, and understood. Thankfully, Adam had been posting regular materials for new consideration consistently throughout the process that gave us an insight into his operations in the role of writer. This was presented perfectly, when Adam suggested the use of William S. Burroughs’ quote, “When you cut into the present the future leaks out.” (Gallagher, 2013). This quote was taken from Burroughs’ comments regarding Brion Gysin’s ‘Cut-Up Method’ and would be the platform for the new concept of playing with the temporality of the performance. Now that we had reaffirmed the difference between play and performance, we used Burroughs quotes to negotiate themed responses, and the task for everyone was simple, consider the quote and produce an image in response. Unfortunately, no-one in the group actually achieved this, and the unfortunate realisation that we were at this point within the Easter holidays made it extremely difficult to enforce the expectations we demanded as directors. Instead, in the second week of holidays a small amount of the group met up with Bryony and Jack was given control of the session to discuss his new concept that would later be the basis for the final performance. What Jack seemed to have done was to revert the given instruction of a responsive image or vignette that considered the present impacts on the future, instead, looking to the past and the impacts specific moments in history had upon the present. The idea explored the assumption that we would produce a new perspective using the camera, to show an alternative view of what we already knew from pre-existing mediated imagery (e.g. Marilyn Monroe singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to President Kennedy, 1962).

Following Jack’s concept the group explored moments in history they believed to have an impact on the world today or changed our understanding of humanity and our environment. As ideas began to solidify and members of the group began to take ownership of scenes it was decided that culminating elements of prior exploration and amalgamating certain assumptions to meet the criteria of the new pathway. We considered the relation between the mediatised image and the live action on stage, reflecting again on concerns surrounding the nature of surveillance and the impact the lens of the camera made on our individual interpretation of imagery and action. I suggested to that the group consider an almost rotational dynamic, in which each constructed mediated image (i.e. projection), would have its meaning altered with the transformation of the live body’s presence/action/appearance. However, this was ignored and it appeared that the whole group did not ‘buy into’ the idea, and instead focused on in which was to explore the alternative perspective of each historical moment. The only way that this idea of the rotational platform was somewhat reflected was within the staging design that was inspired by the panopticon. By providing a raised structure in the background (the central tower) the playing space became the window of action (individual cells), with the cameras moving within each moment. Once Bryony and I had identified the direction the process was moving, and after we began allowing more freedom within the group, two significant decisions were made: First, no performer will assume to ‘be’ their character, only to represent the figure in its moment. Second, the construction of the image would be visible, the spectator will see everything.

The reason for these two rules followed the group belief that we could expose the assumptions of the media when it considers significant moments in history. What we failed to notice through this decision, was the contradiction we were making. We had created a multimedia performance that dramatised assumptions representative of moments within history using technology, in an attempt to expose the construction of mediated imagery.

Reflecting on the role of Director, I can identify that my personal approach to both the process and the overall artistic image was extremely collaborative with Bryony, and in many ways both aspects of my directorial style were both aided and hindered due to this decision. Throughout the process, our personal styles of approach in terms of director ‘types’ fluctuated between the confrontationalist and creative artist. When one of us was actively influencing the structure of the piece, invading the space of the performer, the other remained ‘behind the desk’ to oversee each scene against the backdrop of the overall aim. This often led to negotiating and highlighting the impact to the aesthetic each decision produced. This was certainly the case when I found myself operating within the space alongside Adam Ragg, constructing the performer intentions during the ‘Assassination’ scene, giving specific direction to form the relationship between the performer and the camera. I attempted to draft out a pattern of movement for Adam that negotiated with the figures on stage alongside his monologue, as well as altering his approach to be consistent with our chosen movement style throughout. Bryony could aid the process by noting the interference Adam’s position made with the camera and therefore the projected image, due to her position in the rehearsal room, observing from the spectator point of view. There is an uncomfortable truth that whilst collaboration can produce spectacular work, (as evidenced by this performance), the ability to truly explore a personal artistic image is consistently threatened by you co-director and your cast. However, it is important to note that multimedia performance was a brand new concept for me to understand and in many ways I was in a new arena that I assumed to grasp prematurely based on my assumption that my directing style, adopted during the Directing module, would be suitable for this work. Directing a pre-existing play is incredibly different from the directing style required for this module, and although my exploration of personal inspiration formulated my artistic image, communicating my ideas was not always the most productive, and often when I did provide stimulus, it was overlooked or fell on deaf ears, due to the decision to work collaboratively. The resolution for this was to continuously ensure that final decisions were left in the hands of myself and/or Bryony, so that we could be confident that an artistic image was not entirely obliterated by the sheer volume of creativity provided by the group.

This decision to ensure that final decisions were ours alone was evidenced by our ability to received feedback and elect to either adopt the ignore the suggestions provided. Often I agreed with the feedback, such as the suggestions to strip each scene to its minimum, this made every scene more powerful in its simplicity, and did not over complicate the space. Another example was the decision to bring Connor and Jake out of the wings, and instead place them firmly in the space; this decision highlighted how Connor’s relationship towards the space was underestimated. The body, whilst live, existed outside of the spectator’s preconceived interrelation of the spatial. The mediatised image presented to the spectator’s interpretation initially intended to play with the concept of live body necessity, based on Phillip Auslander’s statement that, “The ubiquity of reproductions of performances of all kinds in our culture has led to the depreciation of the live presence” (Auslander, 2000). And yet, the mediatised image is limited in the sense that it is a fixed structure, with a fixed window of ‘sight’, and the ontological relationship of the camera and the body in its space was compromised by the spatial environment. Therefore, presenting the body of the performer in the onstage, dissolved the necessity for a new environment, it instead the live, immersed itself into the space, and the spectator now viewed the relationship between the body and the camera, freeing movement, and performability. Connor was no longer performing to an empty space or relying on his personal vision, instead he was performing to the camera, and therefore, to the spectator. The aesthetic was no longer undermined but the spatial stretch was altered, it was no longer physical, but truly mediatised – movement and performance existed in a transfer between body-to-camera-to-projection-to-spectator.

When considering the final performance of Changing Faces it is difficult to express its reception. What I noticed from the performance was certainly areas that left much to be desired, specifically in regards to the utilisation of the technology. Visually, the camera work followed the direction Bryony and I gave, the position of the camera was suitable and correct for the majority of the performance. However, I believe that where some angles and close-ups reflected our desire to alter the perspective of the spectator, opportunities were missed. An example of this was evident in the ‘Coronation’ scene, where the image being projected appeared to have very little instinct to select a point of focus, and lacked faith to maintain focus for a longer period of time. If the camera had focus on the movement and positioning of the hands, I believe it would have communicated our desire better. Nevertheless, the camera communicated what we intended, and from a spectator perspective, I was given the opportunity to view the individual in an alternate space than what the live body allowed. Regardless of the constant technical failures, I believe it is imperative to note that the presence of the cameras, (when projecting), achieved to communicate and play with spectator perspective. My main issue with the performance was the transitions and construction of each scene. Whilst still an interesting activity to observe in the live, the transitions lacked the direction given and unfortunately gave off a clumsiness. Given the opportunity, I would have selected ‘pathways of action’ mapped out on the stage space by colour coded tape individual to each performer. This would mean that the performer could not deviate from their given pathway, and would have provided a fluidity that the live performance lacked. However, my understanding of the performance was confirmed by the finish piece, and as I watched the final performance, I witnessed the culmination of each influence and impact every member of the group provided and recognised that the direction given whilst not always adhered to, was a material that worked alongside others to produce and shape a significant example of performance and the relationship it has to media.

Cite List

Anonymous (2015). Dark Confessions. [online] Available from http://dark-confessions.tumblr.com/

Auslander, P (2000) Liveness, Mediatization, and Intermedial Performance. [online] Lincoln:Blackboard. Available from https://blackboard.lincoln.ac.uk/bbcswebdav/pid-940041-dt-content-rid-1799097_2/courses/DRA3044M-1415/Auslander%20-%20Liveness%20and%20Intermediality.pdf

Banksy. (2006) Banksy Wall and Piece. London: Century.

Climenhaga, R. (2009) Pina Bausch. Oxon: Routledge.

Filewod, A. (2014) Patch Notes: Playing the Selves in Gamespace. [online] Lincoln:Blackboard. Available from https://blackboard.lincoln.ac.uk/bbcswebdav/pid-940046-dt-content-rid-1799101_2/courses/DRA3044M-1415/Playing%20the%20Self-Gamespace.pdf

Gilman, C. (2012) The Yellow Wallpaper. [online] Available from https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1952/1952-h/1952-h.htm

Hansen, L. (2013) Making do and making new: Performative moves into interaction design. [online] Lincoln:Blackboard. Available from https://blackboard.lincoln.ac.uk/bbcswebdav/pid-940042-dt-content-rid-1799098_2/courses/DRA3044M-1415/Making%20Do%20and%20Making%20New.pdf

Jacobs, B. (2012) Kennedy Rice Speech. [online video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYb_mhiE-qU&feature=youtu.be

Laermans, R. (2012) ‘Being in Common’: Theorizing artistic collaboration. [online] Lincoln:EBSCOhost. Available from http://web.b.ebscohost.com.proxy.library.lincoln.ac.uk/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=2&sid=6ee35003-e94b-45a2-bf79-5dd9f241689f%40sessionmgr115&hid=115

Ruggill, J. and McAllister, K. (2006) The Wicked Problem of Collaboration. [online] Queensland:M/C Journal. Available from http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0605/07-ruggillmcallister.php

Tullin, J. (2015) Changing Faces Brand New Trailer! [online video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fo-5Cb5gwoE&feature=youtu.be

Zimbardo, P. (2007)The Lucifer Effect: How Good People Turn Evil. Reading: Rider.

Final Blog Submission

Posted on May 25, 2015 by Claudia Cross

Beginning our dive into multimedia, we were given the opportunity to learn and develop skills in different types of multimedia that we may or may not end up incorporating into our works. As well as different levels of camera work, I was most interested in the gaming and sound aspects of our research.

After a lesson on Makey Makey’s, it wasn’t long before I ended up investing in one myself. As an avid musician, the idea of being able to create and manipulate music and instruments in much a way was fantastic. Through experimenting with many mediums, the materials in which I was using narrowed down to a few that I personally believed worked great. Fruit was one of the great conductors, perhaps due to the large amount of water. By linking up the wires to the fruit attached to my electric drum kit frame, I was able to create a functioning full drum kit using the contents of my home’s fruit bowl! However, the most interesting element of my personal experimentation was the use of thick graphite pencil marks.

In the above picture, I began experimenting with thick graphite marks linked up to the Makey Makey. With the great success of this medium, I experimented more, making a few extravagant doodles that, if I had as many wires as I needed, could have been harp-paintings. The simplicity and the uniqueness of Makey Makey’s, I believe, is an extremely effective medium.

With this in mind and inventions such as the Oculus Rift becoming available for gaming use, the thought of using Makey Makey’s for gaming as opposed to sound was pretty immediate as “Sensors such as the Kinect, are readily accessible.” (Hansen, 2013, 136). By linking the Skyrim PC game with the Makey Makey software as a controller, creating our home-made Rift was fairly easy.

As you can see in the image above, the body controller consisted of three simple elements.

The weapon and shield. Two simple handheld sticks that require no more than a touch of the thumb were linked to the left and right mouse buttons retrospectively. Opon touching these, depending on which one was pressed, the on-screen character either striked with their weapon or drew their shield.
This is the vision control and determined in which direction the character on screen would move their head. By closing the gap between the foil on the side of the glasses with the foil sticks either side of the players head, the character would then look in that direction. In simpler terms, if you look left with your head, so would your on screen character.
Connected to the A, W, S, D keys, the feet cause the movement of the on screen character. With foil placements on the shoes, by moving your feet slightly upon your toes, heels or to the sides caused a circuit completion with the foil below the feet to then cause the character to walk forwards, backwards and to the side.

Though I created this home-made Rift for my own personal use and interest, it would be interesting to see if something similar could ever be used as part of a performance. As a player, the emersion into the game was more intense than ordinary game-play, and being able to give that experience out to others would be something to think about.

As part of the course, we had the opportunity to watch and enjoy many multimedia performance videos by a variety of companies. One of these that stood out particularly to me was the work of Gob Squad – Super Night Shot. As a huge fan of video and video production tech, I loved the concept of live mixing something that had already technically been completed for an audience in the present. By actually starting the performance through four recording cameras an hour before the performance was due to take place and the audience was to arrive, four individuals set out on the local time to shoot the content of the movie. Having four perfectly to sync cameras that are to be digitally edited live in front of the later audience along with the music, the performance technically starts an hour earlier than itself and ends with its own beginning of the actors running with their cameras through the audience waiting to get seated in the auditorium. Using multimedia in this way, Gob Squad were able to manipulate time by extending it outside of the time in which it was to take place. Because of this, the audience watch live, something that has already been completed before they even arrived at the venue.

With the theory that time is a stack as opposed to a timeline, the idea that it can be manipulated by picking out pieces and slotting them into others is one that multimedia can assist in producing. By being able to use premade projections in addition to live feed, the idea that time is merely a element that can now be shifted and changed within a performance rather than the performance being the element that is shifted is not only available but should be encouraged when it comes to multi and digital media. By fully immersing the live bodies within the pre-recorded bodies in the performance space in order to create a type of augmented reality as ‘live and recorded images are perceived as belonging to different realms’ (Auslander 1999).

As part of our personal experimentation, we wanted to experiment with the idea of ‘Dark Thoughts and Confessions’. The idea of having a confession heard visually while viewing a video of an individual on screen was a very interesting way to break down that idea of a screen between the actor and the audience member as they could effectively ‘read minds’. But in order to do this, we needed confessions that were real for validity purposes.

With the idea of having people sending in confessions anonymously, I set up a tumblr account and promoted it to my internet base. Within a week, the page got many messages (that are still coming in so the page will have to be deleted shortly) and over 400 people following the page to view confessions. It was an unexpected and overwhelming response, but it gave us some great material to experiment with and was a perfect example at how universal the idea of a censored mind was as the submissions came from all over the world.

Find the blog at dark-confessions.tumblr.com

With an active site, we were given lots of new material to work with. These included but weren’t limited to:

Above: personal, violent actions.

Above: various suggestions about society

Above: personal sick fantasies

Though we didn’t decide to go with this particular element within our performance, it was a fantastic experiment and really showed the power of the internet in terms of performance and material.

After being led through a vast portfolio of works and multimedia devices, we were left to our own devices. After eventually experimenting with two ideas: important moments in history, where we would explore moments in history that we would be able to revit with multimedia tech that couldn’t have been possible at the time, like a fly of the wall, and GOD, the idea of permanent surveillance, the ideas of conspiracy theory became very evident to me.

By its very definition, a conspiracy theory is an ‘explanatory hypothesis that accuses two or more persons, a group, or an organization of having caused or covered up, through secret planning and deliberate action, an event or situation which is typically taken to be illegal or harmful.’

Ever since the mid 1960’s and the assassination of President John F Kennedy, the term ‘conspiracy theory’ developed a derogatory meaning and is now seen as a paranoid tendency to find influence of ‘more than what meets the eye’ elements within events. Though it is usually a term of ridicule, conspiracies have been proven to be true. A few examples include Watergate and how Richard Nixon and his aides conspired to cover it up, the theory that Ronald Reagan’s people conspired to cover up the Iran-Contra affair and also the that government mass surveillance was tracking a large percentage of the world’s free telephone and Internet traffic.

Observer columnist, John Naughton states that ‘The reason we have conspiracy theories is that sometimes governments and organisations do conspire.’ Though conspiracy theorists have often been labelled crazy lunatics by the media, a number of webpages and illuminati related public research being pushed into the realm of ‘deep net’ in order to limit trafficking, theories are extremely valid and the difficulty comes where one is to sift through what to keep or throw away within a theory. This was definitely a problem as we started to research moments in history.

All of the following moments were ones that struck interest, that also contain their own popular conspiracy theories: whether they be political or through deep space illuminati.

Pearl Harbor advance-knowledge conspiracy theory
9/11conspiracy theory of being faked/orchestrated by the government or being a cover up for the State of Israel.
Assassinations, such as John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X
The final few months and death of Marilyn Monroe
The Abbey Road, Beatles conspiracy
Adolf Hitler’s death

As our original idea for history was that of fact vs. conspiracy, it was interesting to note that this was the idea that would eventually turn into our performance and how that had an underlying effect on the overall performance.. Perhaps a conspiracy theory in itself..

In terms of staging and my role of calling the show, it was a real eye opener to always have that God-like, bird’s eye view of the performance. With this at my advantage, I couldn’t help but see how effective, albeit subtext, the idea of the entire performance taking place in a news studio was. Before catching onto the idea of a news room during our final ‘BBC’ scene, the audience were allowed to watch every scene change and manipulation first hand. Nothing was hidden: be it camera workers, set changes, the tech being mixed live on stage or the stage manager performing within scenes wearing head cans.

With all of these elements in place, I couldn’t shake the feeling that it seemed to be making a statement about conspiracies. With the moon landing as our opening scene and perhaps one of the most talked about and publicised conspiracy theories of all time, it really set the mood for the performance being a visual staging.

With the audience in full view of the performers deconstructing and reconstructing elements in time, the audio and video mixed and projected live and camera workers personally manipulating what the audience is able to see on the screens, it really made a statement about the idea of constructed history and selective viewership. It may or may not have been obvious to the audience, or even an intent as us as a theatre company but it was evident either way and made its own subconscious statement about the staging of history and how this then effects the outcomes. Instead of accurately recreating and becoming those people from the past, we instead chose to represent them and what they stood for or achieved.

When it came to the final performance, to say that the tech went smoothly from the point of view of someone calling the show is neither yes nor no: but both. Though everything went smoothly through full runs, the actual performance was far from a perfect ride. Whatever could have gone wrong with the tech, due to no fault of ours, went wrong. We had failure of lighting, microphones needing resetting, cameras running out of battery and videos failing to make it to screen. However, between myself, the stage manager and the tech team on stage, every error was handles swiftly and effectively over the cans.

Being able to directly discuss with both the lighting and microphone techs up in the God’s, I was able to look through the calling script and make decisions about how to discreetly rectify small lighting or voice volume changes during the show, which really made a difference to the overall aesthetics of the show. More importantly, the method of being in direct vocal links to the on-stage tech and the stage manager involved in the performance was a general life-saver. If cameras were slightly off or volume levels needed changing, with just a few words they could be manually rectified. As a team, I believe we worked incredibly well together. In stressful situations with tech not working, we could discuss and come up with solutions mid-performance in a calm manner and ultimately produce a seamless tech performance.

It takes a lot to stage a performance that tech heavy, with performers and grades sitting on the backs of a multimedia tech team. If the moon landings were a conspiracy, the pressure there would be pretty high. Of course, I cannot ask them if our stress levels were similar as my contacts with NASA aren’t that great.

But then I would say that wouldn’t I?..

Wheeler, Brian. ‘Are Conspiracy Theories Destroying Democracy? – BBC News’. BBC News. N.p., 2013. Web. 23 May 2015.

Hansen, L. 2013. ‘Making do and Making new: Performative moves into interaction design’. International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media. 9 (1). 135- 151.

Causey, M. (2009) Theatre and Performance in Digital Culture. London: Routledge.

Auslander, Philip. Liveness. London: Routledge, 1999. Print.

Posted on May 25, 2015 by Poppy Amelia Stockdale

Original concept.

Looking back to our very first discussions about where we would end up with or final performance is a memory of chaos and excitement combined. Our original idea was stemmed from the fact our show would have a lot of media in it therefore we looked into the representation of the media in today’s society. For example in today’s society the media can be extremely manipulated, in some cases in can be harmless for example photo-shopping celebrities to look good but in other cases it can be extreme for example:

Media cropped image of man holding gun

This got us thinking about how the government can manipulate the way we see things and also how the media are always watching us, for example the recent phone hacking of celebrities and royalty scandal cropped up in conversation, this then led on to the discussion of how the government can always see what we are doing and how they can hack into our phone calls etc. Citizenfour (2014) was a stimulus that influenced our ideas that when you are aware you are being watched, you may act differently. This intrigued us and allowed us to look further into the extensive use of cctv footage in today’s society.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ADUs8iN7NE

I believe that this was our starting point for our original idea of doing a show about the GOD (Government of development) and how they are constantly watching us and manipulating the way we see things. We then expanded this idea by working on writing tasks such as ‘when I was six’ this task allowed us to attempt to develop characters with a background story.

The fact that ‘On the one hand, the vastly extended digital technologies of surveillance have fostered a culture in which people have a sense of being observed almost everywhere, all the time. Global satellite mapping, for example, has been criticised because of the coverage and details it now provides, almost intruding into individuals’ private homes and lives.’(Bbay-Cheng, 2010, 21). This was a turning point that made us reconsider our original idea. This was because our performance would be heavily based around technology and therefore we were already making a point that today’s society is heavily mediatised so it seemed pointless to make the point with the narrative of our performance as well as it was already obvious.

Our final idea.

After our discussions we eventually decided to portray the way in which media can manipulate our mind as ‘particularly relevant to the perspective of theatre and performance of this aspect of digital culture is the capacity to manipulate data in real time in a way which was not possible with earlier analogue technologies such as film. Thus, whilst the impact of the projection of moving images on pre-recorded film in live theatre events was utilised by predecessors such as Meyerhold and Piscator, the capacity for live feeds and manipulation of imagery in real time greatly extends the possibilities of contemporary theatre practices’ (Bay-Cheng, 2010, 16). Therefore this idea seemed to be an advantage as it would be easy to show manipulation with the use technology.

We decided to look at specific moments throughout history and use the technology we had to show unseen moments or alternative sides of the story. This could be done by the fact that the audience would be able to see what’s on stage but also a contradiction to that with what we presented on screen.

Fragmentation in performance.

When deciding on the structure of the scenes in our show we also had to consider how these scenes would be performed. As the order of the historical events we were putting in the show were not going to be in chronological order, it made the show fragmented, therefore we decided that the style of each scene could be different to fit in with fragmented mise-en-scen. As ‘Over the past 30 years, the study of the performing arts has embraced not only a broad spectrum of practices which were formerly categorised under other art disciplines but also a wide range of social activities under the banner of ‘performance’ that were previously considered aspects of everyday life’ (Bay-Cheng, 2010, 14), we decided to incorporate both practices into our show.

A particular scene that was extremely staged was the Watergate scene as this scene had many props to create a realistic effect as we tried to represent a version of the story of what may have happened before Nixon gave his 1972 leaving parliament speech, we also used cameras to highlight Jakes face as he was playing Nixon and therefore it was a way of showing his facial expressions up close. This scene was also scripted and rehearsed like any traditional play at the theatre would be and we spend a lot of time working on ways to create tension in the atmosphere. As we didn’t know Pat or Richard Nixon personally or what they were like behind closed doors it was hard to create a true representation of these people, therefore we took inspiration from Mackey and Cooper who state; ‘you may not initially recognise the atmosphere that you wish to create. It is quite appropriate that this arises during the rehearsal process. Then, tension and atmosphere can be enhanced through other elements of performance such as stillness’ (Mackey and Cooper, 2000, 52). Therefore we found that during our rehearsal process it was effective to be still for a while as a tension would automatically be created as audience members may think an actor/actress had forgotten their lines. This technique was simple but in my opinion successful.

A scene that created a big juxtaposition with this style of acting was the Suffragettes scene. This scene was extremely minimalistic; the only use of technology was the video and audio playing. No set was on the stage it was completely blank with only one actress performing. As the video showed the famous scene of Emily Dickinson who jumped in front of the queen’s horse in order to gain rights for women, the actress on stage represented this particular movement and threw herself onto the stage floor every time the loop video showed the collision of Emily Dickinson and the horse. This was successful as ‘through our movements we provide a rich performative, communicative visual expression onstage and in other unscripted scenarios’ (Hansen, 2013, 135). Therefore it was better for the scene to be minimal as the audience could focus on the real pain that was being caused which hopefully put them in an uncomfortable position as they were aware that the pain Georgie was being put through was real and therefore her reactions were also real.

A performance artist I thought inspired this piece was Melati Suryodarmo who created a performance where she had a very minimalistic set and stood and danced on butter, each time she fell during the performance she would get back up and continue very much like how Georgie did in this particular scene. When describing why she chose to perform this task Suryodarmo explained, ‘I also believe that everything happens in this world does not stop, even when we die. What we can deal with is the time that our body can adjust to the whole conception of time, whether it is physical or biological’ (Suryodarmo, 2000). This intrigued me as the suffragettes scene had an audio clip of women throughout history explaining why women must stand up proving that still today some woman do not feel as though they are treated with the same equality as men, therefore the pain that both performers bodies went through during these performances could physically represent the struggles that we may mentally go through throughout our lives.

Suryodarmo’s Butter Dance Performance

Both Georgie and Suryodarmo were the artists the creators of their particular performances and acted completely as themselves performing their own body’s strengths therefore it is a lot different to rehearse scenes like this as opposed to a scripted scene. Instead of practising lines a scene like this would be more of a mental preparation for the pain. As ‘Movement is unique in the sense that we have a particular insight into other people’s bodies through the projection of our own (Wachsmuth et al. 2008) as well as having training from birth in navigating the complex situations that inter-personal communication creates’ (Hansen, 2013, 135) no lines were spoken or necessary. After her performance Georgie stood up and left completely emotionless. This highlighted the fact that it was just a performance mentally however her bruises and blood showed that physically it was real.

The theme of performing as ourselves ran throughout the show for example Charlotte our stage manager would go on stage during the performance to fix cameras ect, this showed how we were not aiming to pretend to be anyone other than ourselves. When we were acting as characters it was only to represent them not fool the audience that we were them.

‘One major impact which has led us to modify our primary understanding of theatre and performance is the way in which everyday life itself has, as noted, been widely re-conceived as performative.’ (Bay-Cheng, 2010, 21). Richard Schechner was also another inspiration for our performance as he believes that ‘performances are actions’ (2002, 1) and that actions in everyday life can be classed as performative. Therefore our opening scene had a row of performers doing the simple task of typing. At first this was completely naturalistic, however as time went on the typing became more ritualistic. This again from the beginning of the performance hinted at the audience that the show would be fragmented and had juxtapositions.

ensemble work

In our rehearsal process we practised the ensemble work by doing simple tasks such as walking from one side of the room to the other. This task may sound simple but to get our rhythm and pace all at the same time it took a lot of practice. One inspiration for this type of ensemble work was theatre company Complicite as ‘The Company are able to improvise their way seamlessly out of most situations without an audience realising if anything out of the ordinary has happened’ (Mangan, 2013, 60). This was important to us as we were going to be working with a lot of technology on the night of the performance and therefore anything could have gone wrong so if we were able to walk on stage in a performatively way it would not look messy and the audience would not be aware if there were any technical errors. We also did a lot of rehearsals that involved how we would take the props on and off stage which included perfecting the timing. Putting our efforts into these rehearsals committed to transactions ensured that we did not lose our audiences focus.

The Final show.

I believe our extensive rehearsal process and lengthily discussions paid off in the end as we presented a successful show. The way in which we used technology throughout fit in with our fragmented theme as in some scenes we added basic forms of technology and in others we made it more complex.

In the Watergate scene we showed how the media can present things we do not see ourselves in a simple form for example, when Jake played Nixon he had his back to the audience but we used cameras and screens to show his facial expressions. As Causey suggests; ‘The competition between live performer and mediated representation of that performer for the perception of the spectator ends up as a draw at best since the mediated subject is that “which has emerged from some primal separation, from some self-mutilation induced by the very approach of the real’ (Causey, 2006, 24). We thought staging the scene this way would be effective as the audience saw on stage a president known as a crook with his back to the audience which represented how he did not face responsibilities however on the screen his facial expressions when performing his monologue show the real character and how nervous he was deep down allowing the audience to get a different perceptive on this character.

Another way in which we used the technology in this scene was when we had a camera focused on some flowers that were not arranged correctly. This showed how ‘the mediated screens in live performance are both the opaque border of the representable object trapping the gaze of the perceiving subject before it apprehends the object’ (Causey, 2006, 389). The flowers represented the fact that in this scene things were not quite right, myself playing Pat was staring at these flowers until eventually she snapped and re-arranged them. This showed how she was under a lot of pressure and wanted everything small detail to be perfect therefore creating a tension. Without the camera focusing on the flowers the audience would not have seen the way they were arranged and therefore may not have understood why Pat was becoming agitated. Although simple and basic this usage of cameras was successful as it allowed the audience to see important details more clearly via the screens.

A scene in the final show that was heavily packed with technology was the scene representing the Columbine shootings. During this scene as well as having two actors on stage we also showed pre recordings of the full cast that was to represent the dead bodies of the people who had been shot in this tragedy. This is because, ‘Intermedial theatre may be both physically based and on-screen; experiences may be both actual and virtual; spaces may be both public and private; bodies may be both present and absent’ (Bay-Cheng, 2010, 17). On stage the two actors held guns that had a go pro camera attached to them. When the guns were aimed at the audience the cameras were too and the footage of the audience was shown on the screens. This was an example of how ‘performance, like the body and its subjectivity which embodies and enacts the performative, has been extended, challenged and reconfigured by way of its position in the space of technology. Performance has taken on the ontology of the technological. (Causey, 2006, 394).

WORKS CITED

Bay-Cheng, S. (2010). Mapping intermediality in performance. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

Causey, M. (2006). Theatre performance and technology. London: Routledge.

Hansen, Lise (2013) ‘Making Do and Making New: Performative Moves Into Interaction Design’ International Journal of Performance Arts & Digital Media 9:1 pp. 135-151

Mackey, S. and Cooper, S. (2000). Drama and theatre studies. Cheltenham: Stanley Thornes. Drama and theatre studies. Cheltenham: Stanley Thornes.

Mangan, M. (2013). The theatre, drama and performance companion. Basingstoke, GB: Palgrave Macmillan.

Schechner, R. (2002). Performance studies. London: Routledge.

Suryodarmo, M. (2000) Melati Suryodarmo HOME. [Online] Indonesia. Available from: http://www.melatisuryodarmo.com/works_Exergie_Butter_Dance.html

Final Blog Submission.

Posted on May 25, 2015 by Bryony Rose Joyce

Devising begins

The teaching had subsided and this week was the beginning of our devising process. A helpful starting point for this process was to create a visual diagram of ideas and inspirations which would give everyone the opportunity to get their ideas and their preferences heard. The three main headings for the diagram included; Form, Content and Inspirations.The diagram not only meant we could all write down our ideas but also read everyone else’s. We all wrote what we wanted then walked around the paper to see what direction other people wanted to go in, some people were even inspired what others had wrote which sparked new ideas amongst the class.

Once everyone had written a substantial amount, we had to narrow the ideas down. We did this by identifying similar ideas, common interest and the most popular themes.

These included:

-Fragmentation

-Multiple cameras

-Live feed

– Pre recorded footage

– CCTV

– Re creating/Re enacting

140 characters or less

No introduction, no context, just words.

These 140 characters inhabit power. The sort of power that can make someone I have never met before from the other side of the world, know how my day is going my simply reading my twitter feed.

I can write whatever I want (in 140 characters or less) and anyone from anywhere in the world can respond to their desire.

Even with its limited text output, Twitter enables the possibility for a global platform.

Just 140 characters thrown together to create words, in a particular order that makes our brains say “yes I understand that”. These words typed in a specific way so that when it is read, it is recognized, like a specific code or language.

People who read my tweets last week were completely unaware of the task I was given but because I wrote it in a recognizable form, people responded. The use of hashtags in each tweet gave the tweets connections and something for my followers to actually follow.

I had followers who were, and I quote, “gripped” by it. I gained ‘retweets’, ‘favourites’, ‘followers’; a social media recognition and appreciation.

People I haven’t seen or spoke to face to face in years are interested in something I am typing which has nothing to do with them, has no relevance to them and probably doesn’t make much sense to them, all because It just so happens to catch their eye as they scroll aimlessly through their Twitter feed. They feel compelled to respond to it and engage with it.

That’s incredibly powerful and yet so easily done.

To incorporate this into our piece creates an experience for the viewer, it demands responsive engagement from them. It enables a co-authorship of the piece and would be just as much of an experience for us, the performers, as it would for the audience.

I think that using twitter in our performance, and giving the audience some agency through this social media, could potentially create something that both incorporates modern day technology to benefit and improve theatre as well as exposing this type of technology as potentially hazardous to modern theatre.

Fragmentation

The process we are in at the moment seems a bit playful and unstructured as we are not necessarily learning lines or blocking scenes but it is useful and important all the same.

By purely experimenting with materials produced, such as short scenes or a monologue, even an idea with the camera, we are slowly but surely making progress.

The beauty of producing a fragmented show enables you to play around with different ideas and themes. Things we experiment with in these sessions can all be brought forward into the final show; we can alter them and expand on them to produce something with meaning and of worth. Cutting and stitching pieces together is what will make our show. It has been and will be of worth to discuss what works and how we could expand what works to start producing full scenes.

Reservoir Dogs

We were given the task of splitting off into groups and choosing a 5 minute scene from a film. We then had to recreate this scene on the stage, using the multimedia technology.

I immediately thought of the ear cutting scene in Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs. The scene shows character, Mr Blonde, toying with a hostage and then taking a razor blade to his ear and cutting it off.

“Classic Quentin: Reservoir Dogs “Ear Scene” HD”:

The scene primarily takes place in one room, except for when Mr Blonde leaves that room to go to his car. We staged this by having a live feed camera following Mr Blonde (Me) off stage but with the camera on my face the whole time. We chose to present it this way because it builds up tension in the scene; the main character has left the stage, there is a live feed of the main character but the audience cannot see where the main character is going, the music is still playing and the other characters are left on stage.

When it came to the ear cutting scene, Tarantino chose an angle that didn’t explicitly show the ear being cut off as Mr Blonde was sat on the hostage so his body covered the guys face. When we were on stage that is the same view the audience would receive so we wanted to create a new shot for the audience with a camera.

What is performance?

Something that caused difference of opinion amongst the group was the distinction between theatre and performance. I noticed a few people in the group found it difficult to grasp that we could create a performance that wasn’t theatre or naturalist theatre more specifically. During our process we spent most of our time struggling with a concept and I think it was because of the lack of clarity between the two terms, theatre and performance. Richard Schechner claims performance can be everything from everyday life, to sports, to a play performed in a theatre. So what we were creating wasn’t necessarily theatre but it was definitely performance. The idea of the piece being a play held us back a lot, we felt restricted and conformed. When we let go of those restraints, we had a lot more freedom. We felt that even playing around with audio, camera feeds and live bodies in the space was still productive and could potentially be developed into a scene.

A particular favourite of mine

I had one scene in particular which was my favourite; The Wright Brothers scene. Not only was the scene visually and aurally beautiful but it also stood out to me because of its simplicity. In that 7 (or so) minute scene, no text was spoken, no narrative spelled out, no extravagant props or set. Just two guys with paper and the cameras were there to simply observe.

The Wright Brothers invented the very first successful aeroplane and enabled society to fly across the world. This scene represents a world changing moment in history and could have been overloaded with text, action, narration, audio and video merely because of its huge significance in history. At one point, this scene was just that; overloaded but after receiving feedback, we realised the scene could be beautiful stripped back. We didn’t need the action of two characters building a plane or elaborate props or set. We loved the idea of using paper to show who the two guys on stage were portraying; Connor used the paper to draw designs and parts of planes and Jake used the paper to construct paper planes.

As the scene was focused on planes and the piece itself was looking at moments in history that changed the way the world works, we felt there should be a connection to 9/11. We wanted it to be subtle and simple because there was no possible way we could re create such a horrific event on stage. We decided to use the actual audio of a voicemail message made from a flight attendant on the plane, CeeCee Lyles.

9/11. United Airlines Flight 93. Phone call made by CeeCee Lyles:

The music used in the scene was by composer Claude Debussy, as his music fit in with the time period and also was very peaceful and did not take away from the action on stage; only complimented it.

Claude Debussy – Nocturne

Stripping back

When in the midst of the rehearsal process it is sometimes difficult to indentify problem areas. At this point, the focus was working on the individual scenes and their content. Even when doing a full run of all the scenes, it can still be difficult to see the piece as an impartial spectator. Fortunately for us, Wes was a regular visitor and was happy to offer plenty of constructive criticism and feedback. There was one piece of feedback that had the most effect; it completely changed some scenes until they were a brand new scene entirely. The feedback was to strip everything back. We were overloading every scene with bodies in the space, props, lots of different action happening at the same time and also an overload of tech. I think we did this because there was a growing concern that our audience were potentially of limited historical knowledge, as some of the scenes were re creating moments in history that, unless you are historically apt, might not be as well known as others. Another reason we did this was because of the lack of a continuous narrative throughout the piece, without the narrative it felt as though we needed to cram everything we knew and everything we explored about each scene into each scene. The perfect example of this was the suffragette scene. At first the scene was packed with all different aspects and ideas of feminism, the female form, the suffragette movement, modern women and iconic women. We had multiple performers on stage, all representing feminism and what surrounds feminism. But after being given feedback, we realised that there was too much going on and it was unclear what the scene was trying to say. The final scene was very simple and minimal yet depicted the pain and suffering women went through n order to gain equal rights.

Another thing we were concerned with was our use of tech, a question which continuously cropped up in rehearsals was; what is the multimedia aspect in this scene? This question caused us to overdose on the use of technology in every single scene, which we didn’t need in order to achieve a multimedia performance. We kept forgetting that what comes after that question is; what is the reason behind using this technology here? We encountered a similar problem at the very beginning of the devising process when we explore the idea of G.O.D. The Government of Development was a fictitious government with excessive control and surveillance over its citizens. This idea was conjured up because a lot of discussion was based around being watched, the invasion of privacy and society being a mass mediated and mass technological one. I was particularly unconvinced with the idea. The more we discussed ideas of content and writing, the more I disliked it. It felt as though we were overdosing on the concept of multimedia technology, as it was already being used in a formal sense, why did the idea need to be presented in content too? The fact the our performance would have multiple different types of mediated technology on stage and off stage, as functions of the performance, it felt too much to have it as the content of our piece too.

Precise intention

Something that was pointed out to me and Rory, as directors, was the overall aesthetic of the piece and style or performance needed solidifying. With this feedback, we were also told to look at different work and gather inspiration for how we wanted our performers to be on stage. As an ensemble, we decided we wanted our performers to be very precise, very intentional and precise with their movements. We looked at Robert Wilson’s work and were inspired by how his performers carry themselves and how his performers look as an ensemble.

The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic III:

We gave the instruction that no one was to move unless they had to and every movement was to be thought out before actually moving. We used this to performance style when approaching scene transitions. Rory and I decided that due to the vast amounts of tech on stage and constant set changes for each scene, there was no point in trying to disguise what was happening during a transition. The piece was already quite clearly fragmented and non linear, therefore there was no need to disguise this construction of different worlds for each scene. So we approached it as though they were mini scenes themselves. Everyone was given a role during each transition and we asked everyone to enter the stage space with a very slow paced walk, head held high and posture upright. When picking up objects and equipment, it was to be done slowly, neatly and precisely then moved to its next position. We felt that by doing this, it re enforced the idea that our performance was being constructed before our audience and they were witnessing how we were constructing it.

The performance style altered slightly during each scene, for instance during scenes with naturalism the performers were to perform in a naturalistic manner. The suffragette scene was a scene that needed choreographed, precise and intentional movement. The scene involved Georgie watching a looped video of suffragette Emily Davison jumping in front of the Kings horse at the Epsom Derby and then attempting to replicate Emily Davison’s movements.

http://www.infinitelooper.com/?v=um9GV6_AILM&p=n#/120;1377

We wanted the movements to be choreographed and repetitive, like a dance routine. We watched Pina Bausch’s Café Müller to gain inspiration for movement, in particular the pair scene;

Pina – pair scene from Café Müller:

We instructed Georgie to use this sequence when creating her movements. Along with the onstage action, an audio track played. The track was a compilation of women speakers, leaders and activists all of whom have had impact on feminism or equal rights.

The looped video, the action from the performer (Georgie) and the audio track all combined created an emotive and powerful scene.

Final Performance

It was hard to believe that the day had arrived. After months of struggling with devising a concept and creating a full production; it was show day. With a mass mediated production such as ours, there was bound to be set backs or issues on the day and that was something we didn’t escape from. Lighting was our first major issue, on paper they looked great and we imagined the designs would illuminate the stage beautifully however that was not the case when we ran our first rehearsal in the space on show day. There were issues with light bouncing off projectors and light not reaching performers bodies, it seemed almost impossible to find the perfect lighting so had to settle for a happy medium between reaching the performers in the space as well as not effecting the two projections on both sides of the stage.

Here is a sketch, drawn by cherry, of the stage and how it was set up. This particular sketch was drawn up for one of the early stagings of the Churchill scene.

Watching the final performance was a nerve wracking experience, I felt so out of control and useless. Again, due to this mass amounts of tech and endless lighting, audio and video cues, there were issues but this time during the performance. During the Churchill scene, a camera was brought on stage without a fresh battery thus losing a shot of one of the performers and then another camera failed to work during the Freddie scene. These issues are unpredictable and cannot always be prevented however there were a few moments that I felt could have been prevented by better communication between myself and the cast. There were moments that I was certain I had directed a certain way and yet it was not being performed that way, this made me reflect on my communication within rehearsals.

Overall, I was very pleased with our performance and so proud that after all the hard work, the time and effort we put in we had put on a beautiful show.

Devising begins – form image, what do i want to say image, inspo image, fragmentation image

140 char – twitter 1, twitter 2, twitter 3

Fragmentation – sam image, proj image, paper tv image

Reservoir dogs – ear scene vid, gun image, razor image, poppy image, razor 2 image?

What is performance? – Richard Schechner – performance studies: an introduction

A part

Works Cited

EUcitixenLT (2009) 9/11. United Airlines Flight 93. Phone call made by CeeCee Lyles. [online video] Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bnPmyUUEjg

DesAbends (2009) Debussy: Nocturne (1892) [online video] Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyZJ3rNb4xM

ReservoirWatchDogs.com official YouTube Channel (2011) Classic Quentin: Reservoir Dogs “Ear Scene” HD [online video] Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ye7x3jbi_TE

Paul Cuthbert (2011) The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic III [online video] Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWgD9ZEdZA0

Schechner, R. (2002) Performance Studies: An Introduction. New York: Routledge.

Hedvika Kadlecova (2014) Pina – pair scene from Cafe Muller [online video] Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCQ29EUwvrI

InfiniteLooper (2015) Infinite Looper: Easily loop your videos. [online] California: InfiniteLooper. Available from: http://www.infinitelooper.com/?v=um9GV6_AILM&p=n#/120;204