Monthly Archives: April 2015

15. The First Practice

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After spending the weekend recording all our audio pieces (an example below is of the first audio piece), we decided to test out our working version of the performance within the site.

Although we had planned to walk around the site using the audio tour, we were met with several obstacles that prevented us from doing this fully. The area itself was very busy with a crowd of people outside to see the unveiling of the floral tribute to Operation Manna, which was placed near the beginning of our tour, whilst we were also unable to walk up the steps near the Tennyson statue due to it being repainted. As such, we could not truly listen to the audio, and had to pause it several times to walk around the area. However, this event did allow us to take several photos, as documented here, of moments happening within our site that would not have been there otherwise. Taken inspiration from Fortnight, which said to be “offering the opportunity to fit moments for art into everyday life…creating reasons to question and alter taken-for-granted ways of engaging with the city” (Hui, 2011, 17), we used such obstacles to our advantage to see our site in a new light through different people’s perspectives and uses.

Once Rachel had experienced our tour in its current version, she gave us several comments to use to improve our piece further in these last few weeks. We need to work on the length of pauses and the timings of our site overall, allowing our audience to wait and move around the site at a comfortable pace. We need to make sure our directions are clear to our audience, as at times it can be confusing. We need to work on the tone of the voice we use in the audio, making it seem as if we are a companion to the individual, to help build a relationship between the two. We need to use words like “I” and “we” to reflect our own thoughts and experiences, rather than asking reflective questions, as such a reflection should occur naturally. Overall, we need to make the audio more poetic and suggestive, keeping in mind words like “inviting”, “encouraging” and “generosity” as we move forward, as if there is the feeling, as Rachel put it, “we are holding their hand”.

Hui, Allison. (2011) Art as an everyday intervention: shifting times, places and mobilities in the pervasive media performance project “Fortnight”. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Baptist University.

Have a Listen…

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Our first draft of our audio was complete, and so we all met up steep hill today to see whether it had the effect we anticipated in our site. We began by listening to it as a collective and closing our eyes, thinking about each noise and how it made us feel, I found at certain points my imagination wandered to something else, and then I would suddenly hear something within the audio and I would be dragged back in. Although I was dragged back in, I didn’t want this to be the case, I wanted the audio to be an all round interesting and almost overwhelming experience. constantly keeping you on your toes as to who is goig past and what you are surrounded by as well as what is about to happen next. My group felt similar; however we felt we needed an outside perspective to see if they felt the same.

We met up with Rachel and showing her our route we set her on her path with the audio. Where we met her at the end to discuss what she felt we could change. The main criticism that we were given was that it needed more build up, although there were nice points to it and it sounded realistic, their needed to be more build up to the end result as when you got there it was slightly confusing. We also needed to add more soundscapes in which would make our audience stop or pause fro moments and look, or feel like they need to look in a certain direction etc. As Rachel got to the end of the route within a minimal amount of time and therefore was starring at the Cathedral for the duration it did not have the intended effect, however the end did raise goose bumps which we were happy with. Although we feel we could make this impact a lot bigger if we made the audio before it build up to the main event.

Easter break/15th April

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Easter Break/ 15th April

Looked into Freedom of Information Act, we have emailed Lincoln City Council asking about how we would acquire the CCTV footage but are awaiting response. We are unsure if we will be able to get the footage for the performance if it does we will be presenting it on another iPad along with the iPad we will be using to stream the live feed from the GoPro. If it doesn’t arrive we will just us it as another layer of documentation but we hope that the council will accept our request as we are all interested to see what our performance looked like.

We have recapped on what we want our piece to be and have created a contingency plan for the next few weeks, including rehearsals, our dress run and our actual performance. In our next rehearsal (tomorrow) we will be testing out the go pro and iPad live feed for our dress run Wednesday.

Dress run will be on Wednesday 22nd April at 2.30pm

Assessment performance will be on the Wednesday 6th May at:

  • 9am 30 minutes
  • 12.30pm 30 minutes
  • 5.30pm 30 minutes

 Inspiration: Antony Gormley

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So as I said in my last blog that I was going to write about the artists that have sparked an idea for this site specific performance. Those artists are:

  • Antony Gormley
  • Nele Azevedo
  • Do Ho Suh

So this first ‘Inspiration’ blog, I will be talking about is Antony Gormley is known for his works on sculptures all over the world, one of his famous ones is the ‘angel of the north.’ Gormley’s work started to be critically acclaimed in the 1985. The work I will be talking about that relates to my group’s piece is the ‘Field for the British Isles’ where this piece is created by volunteers. Who create their one terracotta figure to place in a room where the room is filled with them, corner to corner, end to end. http://www.antonygormley.com/projects/item-view/id/245#p6

Antony Gormley says “I wanted to work with people and to make a work about our collective future and our responsibility for it” (Gormley, 2014).  Where the artwork faces you and makes you responsible for these figures as they constantly stare at you. This feeling makes us think that we are “responsible for the world that it [FIELD] and we were in” (Gormley, 2014).

The idea of figures such as these spread all over the cathedral garden gives it have a dramatic effect from the end of the journey from creating your piece from Pottergate to making sure its ok from the path which we take to the garden to put it in its final resting ground. I feel the dramatic effect that Gormley’s work gives a great effect for our piece to make the garden more a live and gives an impact to the volunteer of a permanent memory and impact on the place, by placing down a part of you and part of your imagination.

As it says in the Site Specific Performance book Pearson puts that a “French archaeologist Laurent Olivier has termed a ‘relationship of proximity maintained regarding places, objects, ways of life or practices that are still ours and still nourish our collective identity’” (Pearson, 2010,43). By bringing the idea of our sites into a performance that gives an impact on the place but also gives it nourishment to our piece. That make us feel what we are doing to our sites makes it feel like ours for a day and hopefully to the volunteers as well. It shows the “relationship between material culture and human behaviour” (Pearson, 2010, 44) as these places are neglected and should be given back to the public, like they were back in their day then being in the background.  With making a performance with salt dough figures and making a path between the hidden gems (Pottergate and The Cathedral Garden) it does make the work look back at you, as this piece is a simple figure of you, created by you, looked after by you, carried by you and placed down by you. It gives you a connection to you to the piece, giving that feeling of responsibility.

References

Gormley, A. (2014) Field, 1989 – 2003. [online] London: Antony Gormley. Available from: http://www.antonygormley.com/projects/item-view/id/245#p0 [Accessed on 19 April 2015].

Pearson, M (2010) Site-Specific Performance. 1st Edition. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

CCTV ‘Ballet’

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Week starting 23rd March

We have decided after our meeting/ presentation with Conan that we would try to get some CCTV footage of the Castle Square, from the camera situated on the corner of the Magna Carter so we could have it on one of the iPads we will be using.

Our group created a piece of theatre and performed it to a CCTV camera for 30 minutes. Rachel gave us the idea to do this and called it a ‘CCTV Ballet’, we also took some inspiration from a group Surveillance Players who have done a lot of CCTV performances, their performances/ protests focus on political issues and say that “The surveillance camera Players are not watching you. They are watching the cameras, because we have forgotten to.” (Surveillance Camera Players, 2006) We are using their ideas of performing to the camera to create awareness of CCTV cameras and how they are constantly watching us.

We then thought that it would be interesting to walk in any direction across, through Castle Square, Tania still being the constant and following wherever the CCTV camera pointed next. Instead of walking away we decided that we would all stand in a line facing the camera, count down from 10 then disband in different directions and repeat this where ever the camera moved to again.

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I personally found it really interesting and actually quite enjoyable, we were all quite apprehensive and nervous at first but then after the first 5 minutes we were all enjoying ourselves. It was really interesting to see people’s reactions to what we were doing, passers-by were confused, and some were interested in what we were doing which was good because they stayed to watch, also workers were giving us odd looks as we moved around the square.

To get the CCTV footage we’ve had to do some research around how to retrieve it and who to contact. We have may have to make a Freedom of Information Act request or we may be able to get the footage through Lincoln City Council.

GOV (2015) Make a Freedom of Information Request. [online] United Kingdom: GOV. Available from https://www.gov.uk/make-a-freedom-of-information-request/the-freedom-of-information-act [Accessed on 28 March 2015]

Surveillance Camera Players (2006) 1984 [online video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RILTl8mxEnE [Accessed 10 April 2015]

 

Here’s a link to my flickr for more pictures

https://www.flickr.com/photos/lilybinghamdavis/