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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.

Lets back track to 9th of March

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Weeks starting 9th of March

After scrapping the idea of a Ghost Walk we came up with a new idea based around CCTV cameras specifically the one on the corner of the Magna Carter. We thought that it would be interesting to look at people and how they crossed the space, thinking about why they were there, where they were going or coming from and how they actually crossed the space.

We decided to base and call the piece after something a group member heard on one of our Site Specific lessons as we were walking in a large group. The passer-by said “Nothing happens here apart from us”. We wanted to capture ‘us’ so we decided that an interesting way to do that would be to use time lapse photography and turn them into videos, by doing this we could show our subject (everyday people) happen slowly, yet when put into a time lapse video creates a smooth impression of motion. A subject that changes quickly is transformed into rush of activity.

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Taking time lapses from these 4 directions will hopefully allow us to capture different angles of activity in the square. We are also thinking about having a live feed for the actual performance and having a laptop stationed in one of the Magna Carter pubs windows, so audience members can come and see a time lapse video that is happening at that moment or we are also thinking about having one of us wear a GoPro that could follow different people around the square. Alongside this we will have 2 people in the square holding iPads that will be showing the time lapses we have taken and the other 3 people will be moving around the square following people as they cross or will be wearing a GoPro doing the same thing.

We also had an idea of recording voices to layer over the time lapse videos which would give the videos more of a purpose and depth, we would do this by having headphones connected to the iPads so the audience could come to watch and listen.

14. Preparing for the Day

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Today we started marketing our performance for our potential audience, creating a Facebook event that we all host. We have titled our peice from the Tennyson poem, The Daydream, “all precious things, discovered here”. We felt the idea of discoverey within the quote really captured the ideas of our piece, of discovering not just more about the site around the Cathedral but also of an inner discovery for the audience member. We have decided to start our performance at 11:00 on the 6th of May, as we felt this enabled our audience and ourselves to arrive and prepare for the performance. We are going to release the audio files on the 2nd of May, allowing for any technical problems to be resolved if need be, and also for the audience to not forget about the preperations they must do.

I also spent time answering some of the questions we were asked by Rachel and Conan to look at, which I feel helps to focus on what we need to work on in these last few meetings.

Where is your site, above and beyond its geographical location?
Our location is a tour around the Cathedral of Lincoln, incorporating the architecture, statues and the Castel Square area.
Why have you chosen to work there?
We feel the back of the Cathedral is relatively unknown to the average tourist, and is an area that deserves more attention.
Which performances and practitioners have influences and inspired you?
Practitioners such as Robert Wilson and Prototype.
What is your idea or framing device?
An audio tour of the outside of the Cathedral which explores the themes of journey and pilgrimage.
How are you documenting your process?
We have all been documenting our process on the blog and in notes of our meetings.
Who are your audience?
Our audience is predominantly fellow drama students, but anyone able to download the audio can perform the piece at any time.
What is your audiences’ role?
Their role is to listen to and experience the audio as they tour, seeing the site from hopefully a new perspective.
What will their experience of your piece be?
Hopefully an enjoyable one in which they are treated generously by us with gifts and thoughts.
What is the relationship between the site, the performance and the audience?
The site and the audience both work together using the audio to create the performance, without the other it would not be.

13. Generosity

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Now that our piece is in its final making stages before the performance, we have been working on the final touches to help our audience experience our piece to the fullest. Once again we met with Rachel, who spoke to us about “giving generously” to our audience, a phrase which I feel really summaries what we want to do with our performance. This also contrasts with what we had previously thought we wanted to do, with the small activities in each site, which was a much more forceful treatrment of our audience. Taking the theme of generosity, we want to expand upon our coincediental moments or “orchestrated serendipity” (as Rachel said) throughout the tour, allowing our audience extra symbols and images for them to connect the audio too if they see them. So far our ideas for this have included a lost glove, teas and coffees, a lost book, a newspaper, confetti and a fundraising bucket. Taking inspiration from Fortnight, I also feel our tour is based upon “the ever-mutating process of taking on new perspectives and interacting in the city – any city – that is central to Fortnight’s intervention”. (Hui, 2011, 8) Moreover, we have also spent time on intervening the “All the world’s a stage…” speech into the audio tour, allowing for it to have more gravity within the tour and not feel like an added extra. We have found ways for each “seven age of man” to be represented symbolically and visually in the tour, hoping that our audience will come to a slow realisationthat the journey of the tour does not just mean a physical walk, but also as a metaphor for life.

  • The judgement doors shall represent birth.
  • “At first the infant” – Tennyson’s Cradle Song.
  • “the whining school-boy” – The sound of school bells and relfective questions on childhood.
  • “then the lover” – The sound of wedding bells with confetti scattered on the floor.
  • “a soldier” – Castle Square, with a fundraising bucket for a war charity.
  • “the justice” – Exchquer gate and the library above, Tennyson’s quote of “knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers” along with questions reflecting life up until this point as they pass through the gate.
  • “the lean and slippered pantaloon” – Futher rheotrical questions about life but in the past tense.
  • “second childishness and mere oblivion” – The speech itself read aloud by an elderly gentleman.

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.

Just to confirm!

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On Thursday 16th April 2015 myself and my group met with a member of the secret gardens staff just to confirm that we were still ok to use the garden on our date and time we would like to do. We have been booked in and we are defiantly going ahead with our 9 until 5 working day.

We also asked if our idea was ok to be working with clay within the garden. We are allowed but we need to put down some protective plastic on the grass and we are responsible for asking people to keep the place tidy.

Our most up to date to-do list is:

  • Buy clothes for dress rehearsal.
  • Make salt dough.
  • Run the piece – dress rehearsal. (full day)
  • Keep running the piece for a couple of hours, within scheduled rehearsal time.
  • Set in stone our little introductions to each place.
  • Buy some protective plastic.
  • Keep promoting our piece.