Category: Technical

Over and out!

Hayley Misseldine / / CCTV, Home, Rooms, Technical, West Parade

After four days and about 16 hours of performing…the safehouse is closed!
There were setbacks, complications and few expressionless audience members, but overall a huge success.
To lay out the scene – firstly a couple would ring the doorbell, where I would answer and ask them the password/phrase, in all cases they did know it, so luckily I didn’t have to shut the door in their faces, then I would take them through to the waiting room, which was minimalistic and fairly dark as the curtains to the window were closed to stop light filtering in, but also to avoid people from the outside as “it is nearly impossible to prevent your gaze from wandering into the private lives of others made suddenly visible” ((Heathcoate, Edwin, (2012), the Meaning of Home, London: Frances Lincoln Ltd, P.99)) and it would ruin the whole performance if the audience could see into the house before they themselves had even entered, as well as destroying the illusion of the ‘safehouse’ because if you can see into it so clearly – how is it safe?

The most challenging parts of my performance were firstly – being professional yet approachable as I found when I performed in a manner that was all corporate with practically no humanity that the audience were more withdrawn, and not as inclined to divulge any information I asked of them. After I had seen this error, I changed my demeanour and added a little more friendliness to my performance, and I saw instantly that almost all of the audience members seemed more relaxed and therefore were able to answer my questions with more ease. Another challenge I faced were difficult audience members, some were absolutely expressionless! It seemed that no matter what I did or said, nothing affected them. Even when I shine an incredibly bright light in their faces, they didn’t even blink. So to counter these types of audiences members, I cut off any of my friendliness, I treated the situation as if were incredibly serious, and for most of those difficult audience members – it seemed to work.

I also encountered several technical difficulties, I made a 3 minute video for the audience, which explains issues such as safety and audience decorum whilst they were in the house, it features Lizzy, portraying Agent L, she simply talks to the camera explaining said issues –

videoscreenshot

 

The problems I encountered with this were only small, on two occasions the video would not play, and I had to improvise – asking the audience more questions such as ‘what do you know about the art of spying?’ whilst working on the computer, and trying to get the video to play, which luckily succeeded before too much time had passed. Additionally I learnt after the video had been made, that there was only one fire exit, but had stated there were two on the video, which after it had been played, I reiterated back to the audience, but informed them of the new information, and showed them said fire exit on a map so the audience would have no doubts about what to do in the event of a fire. With the video, I was trying to create a sense of anonymity, letting the audience know that this is infact an operation, it is not just me in a room pretending to be a spy, Agent L is a part of the operation, her eyes are covered, her identity hidden. For those who saw performances where Lizzy was not there, her appearance on the video remains a mystery by building “electronic identities: out there, we are disembodied, depersonalised.” ((Pearson, Mike, (2010), Site-Specific Performance, Palgrave Macmillan, P.125.)) Which I believe adds a more realistic element to the performance.

The most problematic technical problem however were the phones – the CCTV room and I had worked into our performances phone calls back and forth, with at one point whomever was performing in the CCTV room speaking directly to the audience via speakerphone. The problem that ensued were connectivity related – occurring more often than I would’ve like, the person upstairs would miss their queue to ring, and I would have to call them instead, but for some reason the calls would not connect, leaving an awkward silence the first time it happened. Of course after the first encounter with this problem, despite not being able to fix the technical side, I prepared more dialogue and more opportunities for the audience to speak whilst the problem was occurring. With enough foresight I managed to overcome any future possibilities of silent moments, which made for a better performance.

The only other problem I encountered were timekeeping related – making sure I let people into the house at the right time, only having two couples in the house at one time. This was difficult if we overran, or were under the time schedule. Making sure I knew where everyone was at any given time was the biggest responsibility I undertook, and making sure everything ran smoothly was probably the hardest part of the whole performance.

Altogether, I feel like the performance as a whole went incredibly well, and I am proud of my participation in it. I have learnt new things about myself, and found a new sense of self-believe in my abilities which I will carry with me in the future.

When you open the cupboard will you ask yourself, when did I grow into this?

Kayleigh Anne Brewster / / Performance process, Technical

With regards to the cupboard the four of us have had many ideas of how to approach it. Is it a space for a performance to take place? Is it a place that should just be viewed by the audience? The answer of how we should approach the cupboard seems to have alluded us so far, but recently we have been discussing the ideas of installation art. The function of the cupboard in its most basic form is to store the possessions of whoever resides in the bedroom. Therefore would it be effective to take that notion of storage and possessions and turn it into an art piece for our performance?

It would seem that “The final decade of the 20th century saw the passage of installation art form a relatively marginal art practice to the establishment in the current central role in contemporary art. ‘These days installation art seems to be everybody’s favourite medium,’ wrote the influential American critic Roberta Smith in 1993.” (2003, P.13) Thus the four of us have decided to experiment with converting the cupboard into an installation piece, using its function for storage in an artist way. If we mix objects from our childhood with objects that we own as adults will the mixture represent the different connotations of the bedroom?

A bedroom, as mentioned earlier, has two clear purposes, the child’s bedroom which seems so innocent, and an adult’s bedroom that is viewed with sexual connotations. “To create a piece of Installation is to make it with a direct correlation to the environment with which it exists. There must be a direct physical relationship to its location.” (Schaefer 1994) which is something we have considered when thinking about using the cupboard as a piece of installation art. By putting objects that are found in a typical bedroom, whether it is a child’s or adults, we are creating a physical relationship between the bedroom and the function of the cupboard in an artistic way. “A form of art that is not defined in terms of any traditional medium but in terms of the message it conveys by whatever means.” (2003, P.14) So we must now consider what message we are trying to send to the audience with our installation art.

As I seem to have mentioned in my previous posts, perhaps the mixing of adult and child like content is to signify the chaos that is associated with growing from a child into an adult. After all the book that we have chosen to read to our audience members, Alice in Wonderland, is often considered to be the story of the how the girl Alice is growing up, and how the author misses the innocent girl that she used to be. (Maata, 1997) Perhaps that is another of the messages that we would like to convey, the loss of innocence as we find ourselves growing up.

As each person grows they don’t notice the changes that occur within themselves. They look in the mirror every day, they think about different subjects’ everyday, and so the progress of time isn’t noted. They are unable to see themselves change because everyday they face all of their smallest changes head on. It isn’t until someone we haven’t seen for a long time, or spoken to for a long time, tells that we have changed do we notice it ourselves. We don’t necessarily realise we’re growing, both in mind and in body, until we specifically think about. So when you are faced with a cupboard filled with items from your childhood, and from your adulthood, will it make you think about how much you have changed? When you look into this cupboard where there is no middle ground between what you were as a child and what you are now. What happened to make you who are you are? What is the difference between who you were as a child and who you are in the present? Perhaps you will wonder when exactly you began to change. Will you wonder when you began to realise the world wasn’t black or white, but grey? Will you ask yourself, when did I grow into this?

 

Works cited:

 

De Oliveira Nicolas, Oxley Nicola, Petry Michael (2003) Installation Art in the new millennium London: Thomas & Hudson. Ltd

Maatta,Jerry, (1997) http://www.alice-in-wonderland.net/explain/alice841.html Sweden; March. (last accessed 8/4/2013)

Schaefer, Janek (1994) 6 Elements of Installation http://www.audioh.com/press/6elements.html (last accessed 9/4/2013)

Room of Screens

Faye Rose Mcdool / / CCTV, Performance process, Rooms, Technical

We have decided to allocate the CCTV room as the room of screens. In here, we will place all the Night filming footage with the recorded narratives played screens scattered around on the desk, book case and tables with the large TV screen showing the live CCTV  split 9 screen . Each screen will be allocated a different room from the filming with head phones attached to some devices and speakers to others. When the audience enter the room, it shall be blacked out with no natural light leaking in and only the light pollution from the computer, laptop and IPad screens.

For the narratives for the night filming footage, we have decided to base it on feminism and edit the original text which were written in the researched books. I have chosen to write the text for the Bedroom, Cot Room angle 2 and the Waiting Room. However, for the waiting room, as the images is so strong, I have decided to leave it silent without any text but with a strong static sound. The narratives for the other two rooms read:

Bedroom

Lying like this, I felt as if I had become part of the fabric around me, absorbed into the earth like a dead woman I had no individual existence. At that moment, I suddenly felt as if I had connected heaven and earth like a bridge. By trial and error I had found the position that enabled me to exist fully in that particular space. ((original text from: Oida, Yoshi. Marshall, Lorna 1997, The Invisible Actor. Cox & Wyman, Reading Berkshire))

Cot Room 2nd angle/Half and Half Face

Being invisible and without substance, a disembodied voice, as it were, what else could I do? What else but try to tell you what was really happening when your eye was looking through me? And it is this which frightens me as the interior. Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you. ((original text from: Rattray, David 1993 How I Became Invisible , Semiotext,U.S.: Central Bks))

The ordering of the clips depends on the audience and which video/screen they are attracted to first. The sounds on the video will be played into headphones and speakers on which the narrative printed out and placed near the screen so they can read the text also. The audience members will not be able to hear any noise pollution from outside and from the rest of the house.