Performance Day of “Clay Walkers”

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Well the day I’ve been looking forward to and in a way dreading has come and finally finished.

A quick recap on the last two weeks of rehearsals;

We as a group had a few problems in our dress run two weeks ago due to weather, however it wasn’t because it was raining (which is blessing for England). In April across England had a few weeks of freak sunny and hot weather, which for our performance would be a pain. Walking a cycled route continuously for 8 hours would (and did) cause some bother for us. Something as a group we struggled with. Getting the first stages of heat stroke during a dress run wasn’t fun.

Upon reflection we decided to try and perform another dress run of “Clay Walkers” a week before the actually assessed performance. Sadly this didn’t happen as other assessments had clashes for us to rehearse as a full group. One other issue that was brought up by Rachel was our clay figures (inspired by Antony Gormley) were too small to make an impact on the audience members. We had tried other methods to get the figures bigger and tried many products to get the figures to stand, but alas to no avail.

So today (Wednesday 6th May 2015) is the day of the actual performance. I honestly didn’t think we would of got as wet and as tired as we did. As a group we arrived promptly at the cathedral gardens for 8:55 to set everything up ready for the ever growing crowds of people who were excited to be a part of Clay Walkers. In my dreams really, at the beginning of the day the weather was suitable for us to work in sun was out with a little bit of wind.

But in traditional english  weather the high heavens rained down within an hour of the clay walkers performance began and continued throughout the day. My mood dropped quite quickly from being really positive to really negative about the project. I don’t think I would of lasted as long as I did if I didn’t get the support from both Beth and Georgia.

Conan and Rachel came along at different points of the day to see how we were progressing on with the creating of figures. Well I say figures, halfway through the assessed performance we were advised by Conan to slightly change the idea of self image to creating something that connects and links to Pottergate. So Beth started making bricks and engraving words and emotions on to them then sticking them upon a wooden chopping  board. From this idea it lead on to re-creating the Pottergate from salt dough within the garden. (As shown in the picture below)

We finally finished creating the performance at 3pm this afternoon 2 hours earlier than we first predicted many weeks ago. I think Conan and Rachel were impressed with all the work we created on our own as there wasn’t anyone there that want to participate in our performance no thanks to the rain and very strong winds.

Now that the site specific performance is over I’m glad it went well its just a shame the weather let us down and no one was able to experience the life of a potter and create some wonderful art form.

Till the final blog post

Bye

 

Clay Walkers final product

Forever Editing

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Editing and editing the audio is such a gruelling task to do, the amount of times we’ve had to go back and listen over it because certain parts aren’t right or one person thinks one thing then another thinks something else. I agree that their should be subtlety’s within our audio, however, our build up was still coming cross too subtle, and I was afraid that people were not going to understand what was going on if these punches before the main event did not occur, or at least weren’t prominent enough within the piece. It was an excessive editing process especially as it was the day before our performance it did not make me feel confident until I heard the final piece and then I knew that it sounded better, when I closed my eyes I could imagine myself there, the noises within in and noticed myself turning to try ad see where they were coming from, so for me they worked.

The final event that had been built up to had been made louder and it was almost breath taking when you listened to it so intently, the grasp it had on you when the rumbles began was incredible. I took it upon myself to make sure that when in front of the Cathedral it had the same if not a bigger impact and I was amazed to feel how overcome I was with different emotions flocking me especially when hearing at the end the letter that had been written and read out asking for more information and therefore hitting the audience with the realisation of such a huge natural disaster that had happened such a long time ago and is not well known of today but destroyed such a powerful and big part of Lincoln to this day.

Forever Editing

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Editing and editing the audio is such a gruelling task to do, the amount of times we’ve had to go back and listen over it because certain parts aren’t right or one person thinks one thing then another thinks something else. I agree that their should be subtlety’s within our audio, however, our build up was still coming cross too subtle, and I was afraid that people were not going to understand what was going on if these punches before the main event did not occur, or at least weren’t prominent enough within the piece. It was an excessive editing process especially as it was the day before our performance it did not make me feel confident until I heard the final piece and then I knew that it sounded better, when I closed my eyes I could imagine myself there, the noises within in and noticed myself turning to try ad see where they were coming from, so for me they worked.

The final event that had been built up to had been made louder and it was almost breath taking when you listened to it so intently, the grasp it had on you when the rumbles began was incredible. I took it upon myself to make sure that when in front of the Cathedral it had the same if not a bigger impact and I was amazed to feel how overcome I was with different emotions flocking me especially when hearing at the end the letter that had been written and read out asking for more information and therefore hitting the audience with the realisation of such a huge natural disaster that had happened such a long time ago and is not well known of today but destroyed such a powerful and big part of Lincoln to this day.

Daunting Times

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After taking into consideration the feedback we received from our tutor we edited and tweaked our audio accordingly and was happy with the finished product. We again booked a meeting with Rachael and this was our dress rehearsal before the performance day. Rachael then went on the route with the audio and came back and gave us feedback and suggested to us we should leave a few seconds silence at the beginning and at the end we should wait after our ‘disturbance’ before our last speech comes in and to also we consider making the route longer as she was still standing at the Cathedral too long. The route stayed the same but we asked at the beginning of the tour for people to walk at a slow pace and to wonder around castle square before going through Exchequer gate. We also decide to have Elizabeth at the beginning of the walk to give a little ‘speech’ about the walk before the participants went away. My post was to stand near the Cathedral and be there if anyone wanted to ask any questions. The rest of the group was dotted around the route just in case people expiernced difficulties. Below is Elizabeth and my speech:

Elizabeth – “The most famous Roman remain in Lincoln and the best preserved dates to the start of the 2nd century AD. It’s the only Roman arch still in use for daily transportation. In 1964 a lorry passed through the central arch dislodging bits of the arch way. (Beat) If you follow the path under Newport arch and follow the path along until you get to castle square. Turn left they will come to Exchequer gate where tenants who rented from the church came to pay their rent. Built in the 14th century it acted as the main ceremonial access point to the Cathedral close. Along the route if you experience any trouble there are fellow group members wearing headphones, so if remove your headphones they will approach you and help. At the end you will see a Kia standing near cathedral wearing headphones and a black and white chequered coat if you have every further questions.”

Kia – “Thank you for taking part today if you have any further question feel free to ask me or message us on Facebook and survey will be sent to everyone who participated today”

Below is a Link to our final Audio after all the editing had been finished:
https://soundcloud.com/george-murphy…/disturbance-audio-walk

Dress Rehearsal

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Dress Rehearsal

It’s a daunting day dress rehearsal day, but we were prepared for what we were going to encounter. Once again we decided that we should go first so we met up steep hill and set out on our route listening to our audio, I was already slightly apprehensive as I still felt that when editing the audio the build up still wasn’t there enough, however once again we felt it necessary for that outside perspective to relay what we had been saying. I particularly wanted to see if Rachel would pick up on the additional sounds which had been added, I felt they made the piece a lot more realistic as their were parts which almost felt that people were right next to you where as other parts sounded in the distance.

Once Rachel had listened to it once again we met up to discuss her ideas, we were to rerecord the beginning and ending so as to make them sound smoother, as well as to make sure the pronunciation of ‘Derby’ was correct. We were also told to have a silence between the explanation at the start and then when the rest of the audio comes in, rather than creating a transition between them as a paused gives people time to think and digest what they believe to be going on. We thought it would also be best to do this at the end with the letter as well so that it gave our audience a slight pause before they heard the letter and were told what they had just listened to. Rachel found once again that she was waiting at the Cathedral for what she felt was too long and therefore gave us a couple of ideas, whether we would make the route bigger in some way or shorten the audio ever so slightly so that it would equal out when then put together.

We grouped back together and started to discuss the best way to go about our feedback. Sitting down and listening once again I found between 3 and 6 minutes not a lot happened and so it would probably be best just to take that chunk out, I looked into the idea of what Rachel had recommended about walking around Castle Square as well which I thought would work really well as it shows the area in which was destroyed due to the Earthquake and also places which linked into our audio and sound. I feel now we really need to go back and take each 30 seconds listening deeply if they build up in there own way.