Wednesday, 3 December 2008

Questions-

How easily understood was our chance system? Would it have been more interesting to have a system in place that was less obvious as audience member? What about a combination of systems?

Did you feel that the posts needed to have a more common theme (eg all testing the audience, all to do with creating different combinations of sound/image all of varying durations...)

How do you feel about your placement as an audience member? Would you have preferred a different view of the performance? Would you have preferred to have been IN the grid with/instead of the performers?

Tuesday, 2 December 2008

things

1.jigsaw
2.change.
3.radio
4.garment of clothing
5. Alphabet backwards
6. spinning
7. pen/pad for drawing the audience
8. (Knife)
9.

--------- I only had 5 on saturday, i can't think of what the last two were that i needed, i did have the knife, have we decided on something else?


questions: were you bored? did you yourself want to interact with what was happening in the space? could you see any clear system? to what extent did you see us as 'acting' or simply performing?

nick

Monday, 1 December 2008

Possible questions for the audience:

How engaged/bored were you? Was your patience tested at any point?
Did any themes or narratives emerge for you from the perfomance?
Who or what would you like to see inside the grid?
Can you suggest any developments or changes?
Did you feel there was enough nudity?

x

Saturday, 29 November 2008

Things

1) Sparklers
2) Weights
3) One item of clothing
4) 52 Cards
5) Pen and paper for automatic writing
6) Camera
7) Bowl of warm water to wash in (and towels)
8) Obituaries (smaller and more varied)
9) List of facial expressions
10) Watering can (any suggestions for that one?)

Question for audience:

Was the system clear for you, as an audience member? Did you understand how the performers interacted and moved around the space? Does it need to be more apparent/the interactions more defined and disciplined?
I am responsible for: one item of clothing + dice + post it notes + head massager + timer.
As well as my posts:

1. Milk with one glass
2. Articulate cards - do one card
3. Matches/sparklers/bowl of water/glove
4. Parecetemol with one glass
5. Party poppers
6. plasters.
7. Air freshener
8. Bubble wrap - jump upon it once
9. Empty coat hanger

Tuesday, 25 November 2008

Week 7 Meeting : 36 posts

1. Garment : Remove one item of clothing, swap with garment

2. Garment on hanger : Take garment and do not replace

3. Empty hanger : Place garment on hanger

4. Water with paracetamol : Take a paracetamol tablet with a sip of water

5. Dice : Roll dice until you get a six

6. Harmonica : Take one breath of air and play harmonica

7. Small glass and milk : Drink a glassful

8. Articulate cards : Explain everything on the card, put the card at the bottom

9. Digital alarm clock : Set one minute ahead

10. Book of Poetry : Read a poem, mark the page

11. Bag of Interview Q and As : Take one Q and one A at random from bag and read out.

12. Matches : Light a match and wait until it goes out

13. Candle : Light it if it is out, blow it out if it is lit

14. Radio : Tuned by chance before perf., turn on or off

15. 10kg weight : Lift it 5 times, then 10 times, then 15 times…

16. Pile of change : Take one coin, count up money and say how much- when nothing is left, put a coin back & reverse process

17. Paper and pen : Write a sentence, read the whole thing, fold the paper over

18. Playing Cards : 52 card pick up

19. Text- toss a coin to decide if you read from the beginning or end of the book, egg timer measures a minute, read as much as you can

20. Air freshener : one spray

21. Camera : Take a photo (up on screen?)

22. Facepaint : roll a dice to decide from a list of animals how you are painting your face. This is done without a mirror.

23. Kettle and seat : Set kettle to boil and wait, sitting on the chair

24. Bubblewrap : One jump

25. Jigsaw : have to put in 3 pieces

26. Head massager : massage head

27. Famous obituaries : take an obituary and a name from 2 bags at random, read both out

28. Knife : Play game tapping the knife round your fingers

29. Plasters : stick one on your skin

30. Empty hanger :

31. Sellotape : Stick two fingers together

32. Spinning : Spin around five times, 10 times, 15 times…

33.

34.

35.

Tuesday, 11 November 2008

10 Things for the 36 Posts

1) A glass of milk every time you land on the post. A bucket is provided.

2) Swallow one paracetamol. Wash down with a sip of water.

3) Turn the radio on. Or off, it is already on. This will be tuned (or not) according to chance procedure.

4) You cannot leave your post until a 6 is rolled on the dice.

5) Lift a 10kg weight. First time you do it; lift 5 times. Second time: lift 10 times. Thus.

6) Go to the pile of change. Take one coin. Count it up and say how much is left. If there is nothing left, put a coin back. If you haven't got one, return to your base.

7) Pick up 52 cards.

8) Write a sentence. Automatic writing. Read out what has already been written.

9) Turn an egg timer upside down. Read as many poems as you can from the book in that short space of time.

10) Light all the birthday candles on the cake. Blow them out again. Make a wish. Once again, the number of candles on the cake is set by a predetermined chance procedure.

Tuesday, 28 October 2008

NOTES THAT HAVE BEEN MADE

Documentation

How is it interesting?

Documentation of live events- Tim Etchells.

Ø Documentation commodifies.

Ø Readings that distance viewers from the work itself.

Ø Commodifying a medium that resists documentation.

Audience throwing the performers breadcrumbs. The performers have to react to the narrative that the audience give.

The act of documentation.

Ø Video of an event or a person.

Ø Just a foot. Just an arm. By focussing on something so close, we lose the bigger picture.

Reminding the audience of who they are; like an amnesiac.

Ø Persuading the audience.

Ø Persuasive but not aggressive.

Ø Expect no response.

Documents of THEIR life. Piecing together who they are.

Amnesiac; functional documentation. When all memory is lost documentation becomes sacred and functional.

Inserting narrative onto people, imagined life. Recognising that documentation is actually fairly insufficient.



Areas of a person that define them- memories, favourite things, people that you know.



Does audience impose their own narrative onto us through the documents they discover? Or do we put them in the place where they are the focus.

When you disappear yourself.

Telling the audience who they are? How do we do this and take it from a one on one environment?

AMNESIAC

What makes identity? Amnesia is loosing everything at once. We forget things everyday but on a small scale. Documents are subservient to memories.

Reduction of identity to commodified documents. Re packaging a life into physical notes.

Reduction to physical mass. Awareness of that mass.

Answer phone messages, repackaging interviews, old TV shows, video snippets, diaries, relationships.

Meeting with Milijia: Thursday 23rd October

Reconstruction: composing ideas.

Ø Empty houses left after the Second World War.

Ø Ghosts of a building.

Ø Objective presentation.

Ø Dinner left on the table.

Ø A house,

o 'We went to a house, and this is what we found'.

o Fragments.

o A box that unfolds.

o Memory.

o Presented as fact.

Ø Trying to reconstruct a history. Plotting a story.

Ø A Short Film About Love.

Ø Verbatim theatre.

o Not immune to manipulation.

o Subjective reconstruction.

o Subject/Object.

Ø What to leave in. What to take out.

Ø What is the audience's role?

o Documenters?

o Facilitators.

Ø Krapp's Last Tape,

o Memories related to loss/pain.

o Triggered by particular situations.

Ø Trauma acted out involuntarily. Flashbacks. Nightmares.

Ø The trap of the universal.

Ø Re-enactment; remembering through play,

o Tattoo.

o Curing. Catharsis.

o Use of parody?

Ø Clothes in the wardrobe,

o A segment of performance.

Ø Absence and reconstruction.

Ø The holocaust.

Ø Amnesia,

o Metaphorical context.

o Socially constructed.

o An abstract term, not just forgetting.

o Has different meanings and contexts.

Ø Beckett,

o Self-construction and how the self operates.

o Ontological and philosophical.

o Historical context rarely provided; is it relevant?

Ø Needs to be anchored with a context?

Ø More abstract/conceptual direction? Challenging. Especially if it comes to audience participation. How do we get them to relate?

Ø Need to be masters of the piece for something to happen. Not just shut them in the room. For some installations it is hard to have patience. Needs hooks of some kind, if the audience are going to be engaged.

Ø The audience should not be left indifferent.

Ø TO PROVOKE.

Ø TO BE UNIQUE.

Ø SUBJECT AND CONTEXT: AN ANCHOR.

Ø A PARTICULAR INCIDENT.

Ø AN INVENTED PERSON.

Ø Signa (check out website),

o Rented a hotel wing.

o A durational piece.

o Lasted 4 or 5 days.

o Different rooms and different rules.

o Martha Rubin,

§ A fictional character.

§ A fortune-teller.

o Almost a group for historical reaction.

o Played games.

o Players, servants, master of the game and mistress of the game.

o The rules are read to the audience. Rules for the players and rules for the audience.

o http://signa.dk/oraclegames

Ø Mental note; what is wind?

Ø WHAT DO REALLY CARE ABOUT? MAKING THE AUDIENCE CARE/ENGAGE/RELATE.

Dissertation



Tape Recorder- Tape itself, sound of rewinding, fastforwarding, destruction, ability to erase, anonymity, confessions, only half the story, benign stuff, returning calls.



Phone- refiguring space, anonymity, voicemails,



Wardrobe- Collection of clothes, identity, self forged identity or imposed, aesthetic, construction on stage, selecting what to say about your self.

Bookcase- documentation of interests, non-linear narrative embodied, Intertextuality, combining through random selection.

Treadmill- being pushed to the point of physical exhaustion, never ending, how language changes under physical pressure, the damage being done to us, repetition, interferes with the art. Physical embodiment of struggle (to document) degradation of documenting.



Writing onto bodies- the audience leaving the own identity to be document (or facets of identity)

Shredder- making things again! (Wallace n Grommet Fire) Playful. Audience power. Willingness to burn things. Big machine to cycle things and destroy them.



Testing performers.

Board Games- getting them to play, remembering through play. In constant flux.



Moments of intimacy with cold hard physical facts- Kissing (video or onstage) small moments that make up a life. Jumping into swimming pool from diving board, being in the back of the car.



Tattoos (miliah) remembering of narrative.

Needs to be real. (deleting contacts) Physical acts.



Q and A with Parents! Very honest. Without being self-indulgent.



Merging mediation and documentation separating the re-configuring them. Exploding them into one. Video/tape/props. Taking a scene and exploding the different elements. Loss of content because of our 'documentation'.



'If you could say one thing what would you say?'



Recording the audience's information.



Write 3 things, which we would like to see in a scene that can be exploded.



Dissertation Meeting (Tuesday 28th October)

Ø Playing with chance. Playing with dice.

Ø Dice on stage.

Ø Performance premeditated by chance, or done on stage.

Ø Creating material by chance.

Ø John Cage Chesspiece.

Ø Is this giving us structure?

Ø Exploding scenes.

Devise a system that incorporates chance.

Ø Material coming from chance.

Ø Documenting,

o Sacred events.

Ø 4 = write a monologue.

Ø 6 = put it in a shredder.

Ø Audience rolling the dice.

Ø Exploring different types of systems,

Ø Sourcing an influence.

Ø Does that constitute performance?

Ø Words,

o Speech/scene.

o Controlled by dice.

o Editing,

o Reshuffling found text.

Ø Movement,

o Interaction.

o In space and with each other.

o A system that dictates how performers move with each other and within the space.

Ø Task,

o Task-based.

o Objects.

o A system to control how performers navigate around a series of object based tasks.

Ø Dictionary based,

o Creating new words.

o Creating new sentences.

o A system to generate text.

Monday, 27 October 2008

Hi guys, for some reason matt i can't open those attachments. but i'll sort that out.

Joe those ideas are really great, that's a cool way of separating them out.

3 i want to see:

Diving into a swimming pool from the top diving board.

An plane crash.

An old man coughing up blood.

3 more practical ones (whatever that means)


A doctor explaining what happens when the body shudders

the journey from the back seat of a car.

A meal being cooked over a few hours.

Wednesday, 22 October 2008

Films to be exploded.

Medical:
A person regaining consciousness after being declared medically dead.

A blind person removing their bandages after an eye operation.

A baby being born.


Religious:
A catholic mass.

A Hindi Puja ceremony.

A burial.


Personal:
A kiss.

An important letter being opened.

A person going to the toilet.


Verbal:
Alan Rivett talking about the arts centre's fire procedures.

An old person discussing decimalisation of currency.

A biology professor explaining how the eye evolved.

Sunday, 19 October 2008

Technology eh?

Hey all! Wow. This is super funky. We meeting tomorrow? I can't come till 1:30 now, is that cool? Where are we going to do this? x