Tag Archives: Imagination

Prepping a lot of Salt Dough

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So what does plain flour+ salt + vegetable oil+ water equals?

Salt dough

We had to quite a lot of it, we made about 190 amounts of these…. https://flic.kr/p/rYC7Ha .

We found out that two bags of salt and flour wasn’t going to cut it, so we had to go back to the shops and have a quick calculation what will make enough models for our piece. We came up with this:

  • 12 bags salt
  • 6 bags plain flour
  • 2 bottles of vegetable oil

And three rolls of cling film to keep the dough fresh.

https://flic.kr/p/rjgADz

Overall it cost £12.

We did have some difficulty with some of the batches… some were too oily or to sloppy or even to dry! We soon sorted it out with trial and error with having 190 in 4 hours.

https://flic.kr/p/rYC3YM

I did have some problems making the salt dough as we were working with to ingredients that are very dry, so someone who has eczema it didn’t take long for my hands to crack and feel sore, so I had to stop and have another job and wrap the salt dough in cling film. The way I will resolve this problem for next time will be wearing gloves.

So for next time we will be buying, probably a little more than we did for the rehearsal so we can have about 400 worth or so. I will be wearing gloves and we will have more a sustain batch of salt dough from the recipe.

Next blog will be talking and evaluating on the rehearsal and what we learnt from the experience…

A Potter’s Development

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We refined our idea of using Pottergate because of its connection as the place where the potters of Lincoln would have plied their trade around the archway set into the city walls. https://flic.kr/p/rxsM4R. Although we decided not to include the ritual of the Queen Anne’s well, we wanted to keep the theme of rituals as the basis for our new journey for our performance. Our permanent sites are now Pottersgate and the cathedral gardens. The gardens are now situated in an area where most of the trading and markets would have been held. Conveniently for our purposes, there is a fire furnace in the garden (https://flic.kr/p/r7Dn9P ) built into the wall and this is where our work will finally take place. We thought about having the audience or participants take the clay from Pottergate to the garden where they will mould it and then place their clay model into the furnace. We discussed our thoughts and ideas with our tutor and explained the route we would be taking for our performance; we also mentioned our idea about letting the people work on their piece of clay in the garden. After some consideration, she suggested some different ways of going about it which would make it flow better. Her main recommendation was that we should use Pottergate more than the garden as our main objective was to highlight the work of the potters of Lincoln. As a result of this discussion, we are now going to base the making of the clay models around Pottergate Arch itself as this will emphasise the feeling of being right in the heart of a historic location. The participants will take on the role of a potter and create a clay figure in exactly the same surroundings as the potters in medieval times; from here they will imagine the market place and then walk to the Cathedral gardens to feign firing their model in the furnace. We are all agreed that after experiencing the actual making of clay figures in a historic location, everyone concerned will have a sense of fulfilment as they take them to the furnace ready to be fired and then sold to the public.

Some artists and ideas that triggered our performance which I will explain further in the other blogs to come:

 

Antony Gormley

http://whitecube.com/channel/in_the_museum/antony_gormley_on_amazonian_field/

http://www.scunthorpetelegraph.co.uk/World-renowned-artist-coming-Scunthorpe-20-21/story-25027646-detail/story.html

Nele Azevedo

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-28621777

http://neleazevedo.com.br/

Do Ho Suh

http://www.upperplayground.com/blogs/news-upperplayground/tagged/south-korea

http://www.lehmannmaupin.com/exhibitions/2014-09-20_the-contemporary-austin-texas/press_release/0/exhibition_work#8

Trying to understand

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Today’s demonstration was to present the range of ideas we have discussed and wish to include in our final piece so we worked on what we thought we wanted and what our work should be based on.

We worked on the writing with chalk task in Pottersgate (https://flic.kr/p/rxyLQB ) and the ritual with St Anne’s well (https://flic.kr/p/qAzbDY ).

The chalk task consists of the participants thinking of a wish or a good memory that they would like to reflect on and then them actually transferring that into a physical mark on Pottersgate. By making this physical mark, they have, in effect, ‘set it in stone’ on stone as that is what the pavement is made of. The participants will have already been made aware that this will not be a permanent mark and that they will be washing it away however, before they do that, the very act of making the mark is a tangible confirmation of their wish or memory being made permanent albeit fleetingly.

At St Anne’s Well, we wanted to make our own version of the folklore ritual which involves walking round the well 7 times and then placing a finger in one of the holes in the door to find out if that person is going to heaven or hell. We wanted to add some new rules to the ceremony so, as the participants went round the well, they might be asked to ‘place your hands on the roof’, ‘turn around and shout the first thing you see in your surroundings,’ or ‘make a wish on one of the bricks’ for example; this would add our own little twist to the whole procedure.

As these were the only things we could come up with, we were aware that we were not fully connecting and linking together so eventually, as a group, we decided on the idea of giving a misguided tour from Pottersgate to the Cathedral garden whereby we tell real stories of the places as well as sham stories that we have created.

Since I did not properly understand the meaning of a ‘misguided tour’, I searched for it on Google and found some very interesting websites one of which included: http://www.foolsfestival.com/2013/misguided-tours/ .

These ‘misguided tours’ are very popular with the public and obviously great fun as they involve the participants listening to ‘hidden stories’. These can only be described as real stories with a mysterious or magical twist that have been recounted by local people or are similarly made up tales. The idea of doing some ‘hidden stories’ really appealed to me especially if we could find some by asking those  people who are longstanding natives of Lincoln.

I still wanted a clear description of a misguided tour however so I found a good explanation:

“We like to blur the distinctions and play across the boundaries of the real and the fake…They will amuse you with their irrelevant insights and entertain you with their opinions on everything but the hard facts.”

This great quote is from Fuse Performance who base their work on the events or the place they go to such as Belfast, Glastonbury festival etc. http://www.fuseperformance.co.uk/fuse_Performance/Gallery/Pages/Misguided_Tours.html

I continued with my research and came across a fascinating YouTube video of an interesting artist called Willard Morgan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CMUT53tjNY.  He created a character called ‘Gino Gelati’ who, from the YouTube description, is “possibly the world’s worst travel guide.”  His special ability is that he can make the truth merge with obviously fake ideas that just pop into his head and while it is not believable, it is very funny and quite amusing to watch. I researched him further and found his website http://willardmorgan.com/ only to discover that he is a filmmaker, artist, photographer, actor and comedian and is involved in many different materials of the arts such as music and film.

So, the next step is for my group and I to reflect on what I have researched and then consider the idea of searching out some hidden stories told by the public and/or making up our own interesting stories associated with our chosen areas.

My next job is to look at psycho-geography and myth-geography in urban areas.

Trial performance and Alfred Tennyson

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The statue of Alfred Tennyson was a site that we really wanted to incorporate into our performance so decided to research into his poetry. We each read Cradle Song and then discussed our interpretations and what automatically sprung to mind when reading it. Our performance concept was about perception and imagination and we realised that a Tennyson poem has just as many layers of perception as physical sites around the cathedral.

Cradle Song 

What does little birdie say
In her nest at peep of day?
Let me fly, says little birdie,
Mother, let me fly away.
Birdie, rest a little longer,
Till thy little wings are stronger.
So she rests a little longer,
Then she flies away.

What does little baby say,
In her bed at peep of day?
Baby says, like little birdie,
Let me rise and fly away.
Baby, sleep a little longer,
Till thy little limbs are stronger.
If she sleeps a little longer,
Baby too shall fly away.

(Tennyson, 1933, 5)

Also, over the last week our group delved deeper into people’s unconscious imagination regarding the cathedral. We researched both adults and children’s imagination, and gathered voice recordings of local shopkeepers and tourists about their perceptions of several sites shown to them via a picture. We also got in touch with the local Lincoln schools and inquired about recording children’s perceptions on the cathedral. However we realised that our original concept was lacking depth, we really liked the idea of children’s audio but that alone wouldn’t be enough to create a performance. We began to develop physical and creative tasks that the audience could take part in in conjunction with the audio. Each idea is focused on the creativity of the individual and celebrating and encouraging their imagination. Drawing their ideas in chalk, writing their perceptions on bunting, creating cards and posting them through a letterbox to a statue. All of which stimulate a sense of childlike creativity; hopefully encouraging them to drop their social filter as an adult and let their unconscious imagination come through. However after we tried a (very rough) run through, we realised that it still wasn’t enough. By having a trial run through of our performance, a lot of aspects that we hadn’t thought about became apparent problems. Realising these problems before the actual performance was extremely beneficial!

Watson Bain, A. (1933) A poetry book for boys and girls. Cambridge: University Press.

Finding the Path

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On Wednesday, 2 of us from our group started to put the basic ideas together for our piece however, we found it difficult to formulate our ideas for our sites especially Pottersgate, even though we were passionate to have it in our piece. I discounted the idea of people marking their names in Pottersgate and came up with the proposal whereby the audience use chalk to mark the pavement with a feeling or a memory and then scrub it away as though wiping it from their memory; that way, they start the walk with a fresh mind and a new beginning. This idea was enhanced by an inspired thought from my lecturer who suggested we do something similar to Sand Mandala sculptures.

My notes on Sand Mandala sculptures:

  • Kalachakra Mandala made out of coloured sand
  • Created in 3 weeks
  • This is a lesson about the impermanence of life
  • Practitioners use mandala to visualise in meditation the steps along the path of enlightenment.
  • Kalachakra means ‘wheels of time’.

Source: http://www.buddhanet.net/kalimage.htm

* The key things I picked out are in bold.

We have designed our performance so that we progress around 3 areas in the vicinity of the Cathedral which are Pottersgate, St Anne’s Well and the Cathedral garden. The idea of a pilgrimage came to mind however, we did not want our piece to be regarded as religious although this would be understandable with Lincoln Cathedral looming around us! so, I decided to ascertain the definition of the word ‘pilgrim’.

Oxford Dictionary definitions:

  • A person who journeys to a sacred place for religious reasons.
  • A person travelling to a place of particular personal interest.
  • Chiefly literary a person regarded as journeying through life.

Source: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/pilgrim

 

* In bold are the key things I picked out.

 

Having looked at the definitions of the word pilgrim, I liked the idea of our piece being an adventure of personal interest whereby the performance is unfolding a story and that the meaning of the walk will be told at the end of it; it will be very similar to a learning walk.