Category: CCTV

Teaser Trailer

Lauren Hughes / / CCTV, Documentation

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During one of our recent sessions we produced a teaser trailer for our piece involving placards, similar to the Surveillance Camera Players and shots revealing each room in the house within thirty seconds. We have decided to produce the snippets regularly to slowly reveal more information for our possible audience, for example the location.

 

((Surveillance Camera Players (2001) online: http://www.notbored.org/generic.jpg (accessed 20/02/2013)))

“The door is a crossing, a junction marking the divide between the realm of the public and the private” ((Heathcote, Edwin (2012) The Meaning of Home, London: Frances Lincoln p.25)) We have 18 different perspectives of home within our group, most of them will be similar with personal differences. For these short trailers as we don’t have a concrete idea of what each room in the houses final performances will entail we thought about exposing all types of home for different people, what the divide between the public and private is for them. Home for a lot of people is a safe zone, where you feel most comfort and at ease, however this isn’t the case for everyone.

After brainstorming between us one of the performance ideas we had was to show the idea of entrapment, with maybe a couple of performers sitting watching the television and when getting up to go get a drink their hands are tied behind them.

In our last session session we watched some clips of performances. One that stood out to me was Oreet Ashery’s Say Cheese. Seeing this clip shocked me as to how comfortable the ‘audience member’ felt in this situation. When watching at first I assumed they were lifelong friends confiding in each other. While watching this clip it occurred to me we have been devising ideas on making our audience feel vulnerable or uncomfortable rather than at home and safe which is what a home is supposed to feel like. In one of our trailers or for a pre-recording for the piece it would be nice if we could bring a couple people to the house and sit them in the different rooms and ask them what they think of as home and how it makes them feel. There was something special about seeing two strangers really enjoying each other’s company within such a small amount of time, it would be an idea to try to make one of our audience members feel this.

Image: Online: http://www.notbored.org/the-scp.html (accessed 10th Feburary 2013).

 

Forkbeard Fantasy

Lizzy Hayes / / CCTV, Documentation, Performance process, Rooms

We have been toying with the potential performative use of the CCTV room, whether or not to have a performance occur in the room or only through the eyes of the camera’s in the rest of the house. It has been suggested to me that it could be an interesting idea to explore how we, the CCTV operatives, could interact with the technology to make an interesting performance.

This reminded me of a performance and workshop I took part in a few years ago. With my school we worked with a company called Forkbeard Fantasy- a company of two brothers who interacted with film and screens live on stage in a way that I had then never seen before.

All of their performances to date rely heavily on the projection of pre-recorded and live footage, as can be seen above. In The Colour of Nonsense (2010), among other pre-recordings and animations the company played pre-recorded footage of a woman entering an apartment in an elevator. The recording spoke to the actors and they responded to the screen as though the woman was actually on stage, though she was never physically present. The effect of the well rehearsed interaction was comical and fascinating. The actors explain, ““What we were doing was creating a living dynamic between stage & screen, where the filmed sequences become part of the world on stage into which and out of which the performers can move –from stage to screen and back again… and performers in film or on stage communicate and talk with one another across this Celluloid Divide”.” (( http://forkbeardfantasy.co.uk/new_ffs_use_of_film10.html  (Accessed 3rd March 2013) ))

Another example of artists using film and projection to create a performance is installation artist Gary Hill. Nick Kaye suggests when commenting on Gary Hills Standing Apart (1996) that video recordings add the ‘capacity of having and presence and a distance at the same time’ ((Kaye, Nick (2007) Multi-Media:Video Installation Performance. London: Routledge p. 135 )). I think that statement is true of any video recording in that the person on screen is in the room without being physically present, but it is particularly relevant to much of Forkbeard’s work.
While he uses recordings and projection Gary Hills work is very different from that of Forkbeards not only because the type of performance is different, but the ways in which they use the technology. Hills Installation piece The Viewer (1996) uses pre-recorded images but without sound.  For the piece seventeen men were captured on camera standing still (or barely moving) for ten minutes. These clips of footage were then projected onto a wall at the same time on a continuous loop. The use of video and projection was not to tell a story or to interact with or to represent a character, but was instead to suggest the presence of someone who is not there, to be “fully visible and absent” at the same time” (( Nick Kaye (2007) Multi Media: Video Installation Performance. London: Routledge. P. 131 )) . I think that is notion of omnipresence is one that the me and my fellow CCTV operatives can associate with. During exploration of the house we have communicated with other ‘residents’ about what they are doing or saying though we were never physically present with them.

“Home is where the heart is…”

Faye Rose Mcdool / / CCTV, Documentation, Home
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Taken By Faye McDool

Home is “the place of one’s dwelling and nurturing, with its association” ((Little, W (1969) “The Oxford Universal Dictionary”, London: Oxford University Press.)). Entering the house, I got the complete opposite feeling to this definition of home.  My first impressions were that the house was cold, damp, dirty and therefore a perfect performance space for a site specific performance.

From the reading, Pearson lists the differences between a performance on a stage and site specific. “At site, it is always as if for the first time” ((Pearson, Mike (2010) Site-Specific Performance, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. p17 )). Gaining the unique opportunity and experience to devise a piece from the house made everyone begin to have ideas for the final piece.  Using the CCTV equipment installed in the house, the idea was said to prerecord some material and play it during the live performance causing juxtaposition. This could be used to a great extent as we could play with the audience and their reaction to the performance by filming it.

Learning how to use the CCTV system  was very interesting to see the rooms from a different prospective . I found Govans Revisioning Place “ inhabiting space” interesting reflecting on the CCTV. “Making performance which deals with travel, context and orientation” ((Govan, Emma, et al (2007) Making a Performance, Devising Histories and Contemporary Practices Oxon and USA, Routledge p121)) From watching the groups in different rooms and how they adjusted to them to make a performance made me think of this as they all explored the rooms and what was in them. They also played a lot with props and explored the cupboards so they became more familiar with the space after their orientation.

When watching the groups, I was reflecting on how I could see everything in the rooms and what performance rehearsals were occurring. “From a different disciplinary standpoint” ((Pearson, Mike 2010, Site Specific Performance, Palgrave p23)) I had an inspirational idea from Eve Dent. Her work involves adjusting her body to where ever she decides to hides and only being able see her if you’re looking for her but to most people, she is invisible. This gave me the idea of the audience to explore and challenge them to find places to hide around the house. Some should be obvious that other but in some rooms like master bed room, there is a cupboard where you can fit at least two people and it would be interesting to see if they open the cupboard to find the performers. “Organic connection between art and the environment.” ((Govan, Emma, et al (2007) Making a Performance, Devising Histories and Contemporary Practices Oxon and USA, Routledge p133))

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Event Dent ((Eve Dent, Tel Aviv,, Google Images Accessed 1/2/2012))
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Eve Dent ((Eve Dent, Bird in the House,, Google Images Accessed 1/2/2012))

While I was watching the other groups on the CCTV, I had become familiar with listening in to their conversations. Making this productive we recorded it on the CCTV then writing down creating a script which we then went to that particular room and repeated it to them. This is the use of Verbatim. “The term verbatim refers to the origins of the text spoken in the play. The words of real people are recorded or transcribed be a dramatist during interview or research process…actors take on the characters of the real individuals whose words are being used.” ((Hammond, Will & Steward, Dan , 2008. Verbatim p9)) We tested and their  reaction was just what we was looking for. This also links back to the reading and the Last Supper. “gives voice to the voiceless.” ((Govan, Emma. Nicholson, Helen & Normingtion, Katie 2007 Making a performance. Routledge p115)) As an audience member, one usually may think they are not allowed the speak during a performance and giving the the realisation that they have been watched. However, we had the idea of listening in to their conversation when none of the performers are in the room and repeating it to them when they least expect it.

“This sense of evoking the invisible is increased through a number of devices, including the director’s encouragement of ‘non-performing’, … Indeed, the whole status of the performers is ambiguous. Are the actors themselves? (they are named as such in the script.) Are they personas? Are they momentarily representations of the people whose words the speak?” ((Govan, Emma. Nicholson, Helen & Normingtion, Katie 2007 Making a performance. Routledge p115))

 

 

CCTV- Dance like no one’s watching

Lizzy Hayes / / CCTV, Home, Performance process, Research

For me home is a place where you feel safe and comfortable, not only in your surroundings or company but also within yourself. It is a place where you can be yourself without fear of judgment, where you can do and say the things that others might not appreciate or understand…even if you are only saying them to yourself. I think this is why I am most drawn to the CCTV room on our site- because it breaches the contract of safety and privacy I associate with a home. As I mention in my ‘Meet the residents’ section, the CCTV room makes me feel slightly omniscient, and I’m not sure I like that. We have all heard stories or seen films where CCTV is used in a perverted manner to breach privacy or capture some horrific and disturbing ordeal. These influences make it very easy for us to see ourselves using the CCTV in our performance to create negative or disturbing scenes and use them to inject a sense of unease or fear into our audience.

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Image by Jozey Wade 2013

But what if we contradicted the norm? What if we used the CCTV to capture the normal, funny, peculiar little things we all do when we think no one is watching. Again, as I mentioned in my ‘meet the residents’ section, “I have always found human behaviour fascinating, so having the opportunity to see how others behave in an environment where people watching is normally prohibited is exciting: especially when the environment is as intriguing as its inhabitants”. Because you can deny it all you want, but we all talk to ourselves, we all dance like no one is watching, sing like no one can hear you and apologize to inanimate objects for bumping into them. We all do these things when we are alone (and I have only listed a few things) and our guard is down. We do them in a place that we associate with safety and ONLY when we are sure no one is watching, because for others to see us act like that would make us vulnerable.

I believe that scene’s like this could be used very effectively used to create a mood or atmosphere in our performance. They are comic because every one can associate with them: but is it not also disturbing knowing that someone has seen you do those things that no one else is meant to see? Could it instil a sense of panic in the audience who hope no one has seen them like that? Could we watch and see how many people admit to having done the same thing once they know another person has? And would it not contrast nicely with a live performance of a completely different topic or nature?

I know I earlier spoke against using the CCTV for darker scenes but could it be shocking to see one innocent scene turn into one of domestic violence? What if the person on camera wasn’t just talking to themselves in a seemingly empty room?

 

First impressions and ideas

Lauren Hughes / / CCTV, Rooms

When I first wandered the house I sensed an eerie atmosphere as I’m sure others did to, which potentially could work to our advantage when devising our piece. The use of CCTV in the house is a great aspect we could play on which we discussed in the session such as pre-recordings used in the performance to be played on the television and in various rooms around the house, to make the audience aware that the house may have a history within its walls.

I chose to sit in the room with the CCTV screens in to explore and brainstorm ideas of what part that room could play in our piece (if at all). I liked the idea of the audience seeing this room towards the end of their exploration around the house, with the realisation someone has been watching them throughout the piece transforming them into performers. Or do the audience know they’re being watched from the beginning making them part of the performance from the very start? There was also a whiteboard in this room which we could use to our advantage with photo’s or writing about our audience members (if we know who they are) giving that feel they’re always being watched.

While sitting in this room I sat and watched people roaming the house, putting my self in a position where I felt in control. After a few minutes of writing my ideas I noticed people making eye contact with the cameras which suddenly transformed my emotions to a sense of vulnerability, they knew I was there. Could that be a feeling we want our audience to feel when in that room and in the performance as a whole?

Each room in the house gave me a feeling of exposure especially as each room has a camera in other than the toilet for obvious reasons.

“Whilst site-specific art might constitute a form of institutional critique and more intense engagement with the everyday world, it has the capacity to articulate and cultivate local particularities, accentuating difference in the face of globalizing tendencies.” ((Pearson, Mike (2010) Site-Specific Performance, London: Macmillan p.12)) There are many other performance ideas you can see within the house that can relate to this such as a party atmosphere. Bringing the audience in as visitors to ‘our home’ with footage on the television of what really happens behind closed doors (which someone mentioned in the session) contradicting what is happening for the audience, portraying the performance people put on for visitors into their home. I really liked this idea as it applies to everyone, everyone puts on a show for visitors entering their home; the welcoming into the home, maybe offering a beverage, asking how their days been etc. Researching the house’s history may trigger more ideas or help us develop on our own ideas further.