On Wednesday 18th March, our group had to give a presentation to Conan, who is the second marker for our site specific performance. We had to give a presentation, clearly stating our idea to Conan, to make sure we are on the right tracks when it comes to our idea. After the last rehearsal we had on Monday 16th March, we were confident that we had a well thought out and well organised plan and mini performance to show Conan. As we decided who was holding the 4 iPads and what time lapse footage we were going to use, as we spent most of Monday recording more footage. With a successful rehearsal behind us, we were confident at the start of our presentation, as we knew who was doing exactly what and also we were confident on explaining why we were going to do these ideas in our performance.
Lucy and Brittany started explaining our idea of using time lapsed footage on 4 iPads to the general public, to show them how they use Castle Square as a place throughout a certain time period of 4 months, to show the evolution of people’s daily journeys and habits in a communal place in the city such as Castle Square. After that clear introduction, Me, Tania and Lily explained our parts in the process and performance, for example Lily and Tania explained how they were going stand and interact with the audience whilst holding the iPads which were showing the footage. Finally I explained my part in our idea, I would be documenting the piece by taking photographs of the audience interaction between them and the 4 participants holding the iPads, to show how the public would react by witnessing footage with them potentially be included as accidental audience.
When our presentation was over, it was time for Conan’s feedback. There were certain bits of positive criticism, Conan liked the idea of using footage to mirror what the general public do in an unsuspecting and natural way. However he did find problems and gave us constructive criticism, such as our movement, he said we should be moving more or it will just look like 4 people holding iPads for half an hour. Also the main ideas he wanted us to include in our piece is using the CCTV camera in our piece, as we are interested in looking at how the general public act everyday, and CCTV cameras do that all the time, with the public being unsuspectingly filmed.
Conan wanted us to include more of the space of Castle Square, including the idea of directions, as Castle Square has 4 directions to go in and every member of the public is different and going a specific way for different uses. To conclude Conan gave us a lot of constructive criticism to work on in the upcoming weeks, if we experiment with most of his ideas, I believe our piece can be a well rounded performance disguised as a social experiment showing exactly how the public use Castle Square.