“Our intention is to show walking not only as directed movement from one place to another, but a wandering, an odyssey of sight and sound, a quest for knowledge and stimulation, a grand roaming expedition, and a living breathing work of art in its own right.” – (Wrights and sites, 2006)
The day before our dress rehearsal with Rachel, we all undertook the journey ourselves to see if we thought any improvements needed to be made. One thing I found was that the instructions could be misinterpreted wrongly and I believed we needed an indicator along the way, therefore, I bought a chalkboard which we drew an arrow and also a scallop shell on, something so simple could stop a lot of confusion from our audience who are independent along the journey (besides our companion of course). We then decided on where to place our orchestrated serendipity’s for our exam (only a few of which were used on the dress rehearsal as to keep something back for our performance). All in all we hope to achieve the aim of our performance; to take our audience on a personal journey, to encourage them to look up and around and consequently make the most out of everything thrown at them, something I think Sarah Gorman understands in Wandering and Wondering: “My perceptions of street activity, the sounds around me and my sense of ‘belonging’ in that environment were heightened, I had a greater sense of visual stimulation, and was amused rather than irritated by the idiosyncrasies of people who passed by” (Gorman, 2006, 168) this is what we hope to achieve in our piece. We decided on our dress rehearsal that we would ask for casual feedback from the audience in an informal manner, questions such as “how was that for you?” are ideal as they offer no biased way for the question to go which we want – we want total honesty from our audience members.
As the journey is supposed to be a personal voyage, we would like the audience to keep their scallop necklaces after their journey as a reminder of what they learnt and a memory of the day. People will also have the audio on their smartphones/ipods/mp3’s etc so we hope the journey and memories of the journey can live on after the event has taken place.
Referring to my earlier quote from Wrights and Sites we hope to give walking tours a new awakening, so they cease to be thought of as boring but intend to breathe new life into them, so people look upon them as art. Although we are not doing a misguide, I have taken inspiration from their ethos of looking at a city and noticing what the people who spend a lot of time there don’t notice, such as structures that may not be considered beautiful but can have a personal meaning for someone if they found them upon a journey. This can be seen in their A misguide to Milton Keynes: https://vimeo.com/21391861 We hope to instill this sense of nostalgia around the cathedral for those who participate.
One of the reasons we chose one of the main attractions of Lincoln was so that people will come to the site, not expecting to learn anything new – people have seen the cathedral before why would they see it differently? And our journey will hopefully be powerful enough to make them see through different eyes almost, as if for the first time yet with a pre-existing connection to the place.
Gorman, S. (2006) Following Janet Cardiff’s Missing Voice. Wandering and Wondering 167-178.
Wrights and sites (2006) ‘Dealing with the city’ [in press] A manifesto for a new walking culture. Available from http://www.mis-guide.com/ws/documents/dealing.html [Accessed on 5th May]
Edelstyn, D. (2011) A misguide to Milton Keynes. [online video] Available from: https://vimeo.com/21391861 [Accessed on 5th May]
