Monthly Archives: February 2015

Perspectives and layers

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During Monday’s lesson the weather was far from perfect. The wind and rain encouraged us to take our research undercover. We knew that we wanted our site to be around the cathedral so we headed into the cathedral to see if we could overhear some conversations about its history or local myths, as our original performance idea involved verbatim. Whist in there we visited the chapter house, of which the architecture blew me away. Whilst gazing into the phenomenal structure of the building a father and his two young children came bombarding in, with booming voices that caught the acoustics brilliantly. The father was telling his children about the history of the building and how it was used for conferences and debates. However the youngest child wasn’t interested at all and continued to run around shouting and seeing if their voice made an echo. This made us think about the difference in perceptions regarding age. What an adult may see in a building (a structure of history), a child may see something very different (a room to make your voice sound big). We then sat and talked more about this idea of seeing things differently and realised that the cathedral has so many layers of perception to it. We really like the idea of perceptions that weren’t overly thought about. Fictional stories that people think of when they immediately see a site or object. This then brought us back to the Gargoyles that we saw. The facts of why they are there are rarely know, thus people create varying myths and stories about their presence. No two stories are the same; therefore the layers begin to appear.

Podcasts

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I found it very hard to put how I felt when listening to these podcasts into words. Therefore I am going to simply list what I scribbled down on my notepad whist listening to them.

Adrian Howells’ podcast: http://www.theguardian.com/culture/audio/2011/nov/21/everyday-moments-podcast-adrian-howells

  • Calming
  • My breathing ending up following his, therefore it slowed it down and made me quite tired and chilled out.
  • When the classical music started playing, it made me fell as if I was in an old fashion black and white movie. Sitting in my small one bed apartment in New York drinking a cup of tea whilst watching the world go by from my window.
  • The constant running water (which I presumed was a shower at the time) grounded the piece a little. It was the one constant sound that played all the way through. It because so constant that I forgot it was happening towards the end.
  • The chime at the end felt a little odd and out of place. For me it broke the relaxation of the piece, and as I was in bed with a cup of tea I could have easily fallen asleep after the podcast if it wasn’t for the chime. Despite it being a soft and none obtrusive noise, it brought me back to reality a little. Perhaps this was his intention?

Hofesh Shechter’s podcast: http://www.theguardian.com/culture/audio/2011/may/20/everyday-moments-podcast-audio-drama

  • This was my personal favorite.
  • At first I felt slightly uneasy, his voice sounded so close it felt as if he was standing right behind me.
  • The build in music really enhanced the overall experience of the podcast. It followed the emotions you were supposed to feel.
  • As the podcast went on his voice became calming, almost reassuring. Therefore when he asked me to feel and imagine these feelings, I did. I ended up trusting his voice.
  • Possibly the accent helped.
  • The music became very hypnotic, helping me get into that trance-like state. Personally it made me feel like I was in some sort of Si-Fi film.
  • The way he phrased what he was saying was incredibly clever. At the beginning it was very general, not personal at all. However when you start to fully immerse yourself into it, he begins to use phrases like ‘no one can see us‘ and ‘we did well’. By the time you reach the end, I honestly felt as if I knew him. Very very clever.

I really enjoyed these site-generic podcasts, especially Hofesh Shechter’s! It has made me really think about what a performance is, and how an audience doesn’t have to be present to make an impact. I was completely taken in by the atmosphere the podcasts created. As an audience member I felt similar emotions to those I would feel if I had visually watched a performance.

 

Howells, A. (2011) Everyday Moments 11: Audio drama for private performance. [podcast] 21 November. Available from http://www.theguardian.com/culture/audio/2011/nov/21/everyday-moments-podcast-adrian-howells [Accessed 17 February 2015].

Shechter, H. (2011) Everyday Moments 5: Audio drama for private performance. [podcast] 20 May. Available from http://www.theguardian.com/culture/audio/2011/may/20/everyday-moments-podcast-audio-drama [Accessed 17 February 2015].

5. Perspectives

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After the horrible rain we experienced this morning, we decided to venture into the Cathedral. Whilst we were walking around we saw not only the beauty of the Cathedral from the inside, but also many different people, from the elderly to young families. Tim Etchells talks about “the strange fragments and endless possibilities of people passing each other in the street” (Etchells, 1999, 79), a phrase I kept thinking about during the lesson. Each one of us will see the Cathedral in a different light (from a different perspective), from the people who first built the Cathedral to those who grew up around the site to visitors and tourists seeing it for the first time. We then spent time thinking about the type of performance we as a group would like to do, and all of us liked the idea of perspectives. Whether this be through the mind of a child, perhaps in the form of telling stories about the Cathedral, or through the means of photographs, to literally and historically look at viewpoints of the Cathedral. Whilst bad weather can be a challenge for any site specific performer outside, for us it was a welcomed help.

Etchells, T. (1999) Certain Fragments. London: Routledge.

The Rain

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Originally we thought doing site specific in the rain was a miserable affair. However, the weather forces people to do things differently and we found inspiration from today that we probably would not have found had we been outside. We decided to go into the cathedral to see what we could hear from people and their take on the cathedral. There was a family including two small children that we encountered more than once in our trip and we noticed something very interesting. Children’s perspectives on things are not only very different to an adults but their insight seems to provide much more excitement to a place. When we were in the Chapter House one of the children came running in loudly to the space unaware of the noise he was making and it opened our eyes to the world from a child’s perspective. This we thought could be a good idea for our performance; looking at a place from a child’s perspective. In order to gather information we aim to ask Children or young adults to tell us a story about the Cathedral, based on anything and we aim to take inspiration from this. We would like to do this as we believe the world can be seen as a playground through the eyes of a child and we would like people to consider this when visiting a new place, but also revisiting an old place with child-like eyes. The benefit of this would be that by viewing a site as a playground, people can step away from conventions such as walking on pavements where they could be missing small areas and sights that would be seen, say if they walked on the grass. Our aim is to encourage people to look past the norm the way that children do so naturally.

Initial ideas and sparks of inspiration

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Our fourth time venturing up Steep Hill to our given site, and it was pouring it down with rain. After having brilliant blue sky and sunshine weather for the past few weeks (albeit still being very cold), it is of no surprise that it made us view the site in quite a miserable way. Despite the awful weather, we continued to explore our site and the possibilities of performance. In this session we had formed our groups, mine consisting of: Charlie, Jess, Megan and myself. We had originally tried to write messages and leave them in certain places around the cathedral and keep an eye out for passers-by to see if they would notice and comment about them. However, with the weather clearly not being in our favour and getting harder, we decided this probably wouldn’t work and took our inspiration indoors. It was in this session that we discovered how hard it is to begin creating something for Site Specific Performance – it is so open to ideas, that we could practically begin from anywhere. Struggling to spark initial ideas of where to go and what to do, we decided to think back to previous tasks we had done whilst exploring Uphill Lincoln. We thought back to last weeks session of misguided tours and our individual interests when creating our maps and decided to take a walk round the inside of the cathedral and subtly listen in to various people’s conversations. We headed to an unusual part of the Cathedral that none of us had been in, ‘Chapter House’ which happens to be where parts of the Da Vinchi Code was filmed. Having seen bits of it in the film, it was incredible to see the architecture and its brilliance in real life. We sat round on the seating area surrounding the round room and were commenting upon the organ that was placed in the room and how incredible the acoustics of the room must sound. At this moment when we were discussing this, we noticed a family come through the door: A mum, dad and two little boys. The first boy ran into the space shouting and running to the back wall and it immediately changed the atmosphere of the place we had quietly been admiring. He then sat down at the far side of the room gazing up at the ceiling. The mum, dad and the other little boy sat down on the right hand side of us, explaining to the little boy some history he knew of this room and how people in generations gone by would ‘have discussions’ in the room. We continued to observe the first little boy and began to think how different a child would look at the Cathedral, in comparison to someone of our age. I knew at their age I found places like the Cathedral extremely boring and quite scary places. What did that little boy think?

After spending around 5-10 minutes in Chapter House, we decided to go to the Cathedral Cafe and listen in to more conversations. Whilst we were there, we found it quite hard to listen in without seeming overtly obvious. Instead, we began to write down any ideas or places that seemed to spark any of our interests during the day. Here are some of the things we listed to look at or research further:

  • Looking at the space with a child-like mindset – interview children about some of the pictures (below) we have taken surrounding the Cathedral?
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Photo Credit: Charlie Roberts, February 2015.

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Photo Credit: Charlie Roberts, February 2015.

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Photo Credit: Charlie Roberts, February 2015.

  • The Archways around the Cathedral – Stepping back in time, like a time capsule: the old and the new.

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  • The Hut, or ‘pixie’ hut as we referred to it outside the Cathedral – what myths does it have. Could we combine fact and fiction into our piece?

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  • Alfred Lord Tennyson statue – research some of his poems and reflect them back into the space in some way.

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  • The picture of the man’s head coming out of the wall. What is his story?

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  • Layers of perception – photo within a photo idea from our previous session.

Our job now is to do further research into these ideas and see which one sparks the most interest.