Process

Choreographing the Final Dance Routine – posted 17th May

During the rehearsal process, myself and Sorcha took on the challenge of choreographing the final dance routine, in which only blue counters would view when the audience were split. This dance routine reflected our own personal profiles being a ghost almost haunting amongst the spectators. Therefore, we decided to improvise in a workshop, movement which reflected our body shutting down and becoming a dead persona. This made it easier to decide on appropriate movement which would symbolise a ghostly spirit of a shut down profile. We decided to use a motif at the beginning of the dance in which we all performed collaboratively and then adapted for our own characters later on in the piece. The beginning signified us awakening from the deleted profiles. This was suggest by us all performing low on the floor, slow creepy movement, which suddenly sprung up to represent our ghosts awakening. As we broke of from the main motif into different characters, we asked the group to reflect gestures which represent their own character. This was to be performed whilst each group member was travelling through the space using different levels and tempos. This enforced that we were all our own character ghosts. For example, my character was rolling around on the floor as the administrator had dominance over her. This was vital as the administrator had taken over my character and shut my profile down. As I was travelling through the floor on a lower level, I performed gestures of whipping my nose and pushing my glasses up. These gestures represented my previous characteristics in the performance and therefore signified I was still my character, although I was dressed in a different costume.

Each of the characters split of to perform their own gestures and movement. When the audience was watching the video, they were intrigued by the movement. From feedback it was clear that they understood we were still our characters, although in a different world. This showed our change from being a profile in the social networking site.

Our dance routine was improved by the filming and editing of the video. We changed screen shots of certain characters, tempo, fragmentation and colour of shots with lighting. This meant the video was still disorientated the audience as they were unsure what was going to happen. Also the ending of the dance piece left on a cliff-hanger so that we were able to escort the spectators straight out of the building. This gave our intention of a dramatic ending: the audience being chewed up in the narrative and spat out at the end. This ending after the dance let the audience take their own interpretation of the piece.

By Christie Asplin.

Notes – 16th March

The following are rough notes on some of the things discussed in our group meeting

In the meeting one of the key things established was a brief outline and narrative to run throughout alongside the gallery:-

Stairs –

• Masking tape on floor
• Stairs to remain rustic and old looking
• Possibly  move the cloakroom desk to make room for the holding area
• Dim chandelier glow as it may be dark outside and would give an ambient glow
• Glasses of champagne on entry to maintain the awareness of location

1. Crew slump over stairs
2. Jamie leads people in to get stamped etc

VIP toilets –

• Masking tape on floor
• Blue back-lighting in the toilet
• Blue and White Police tape of the entry
• All put one of the toilet doors open, the closed door is where the girl will      be getting fraped and requesting to be logged out

1. Sorcha staggers into toilet
2. Jamie follows
3. Sorcha screams
4. Jamie exits

VIP room –

• Masking tape on floor
• Shots of Blue, Red, Yellow and Green corky’s accompanied by tiddlywink counters.
• Booths to be utilised and assigned corky and tiddlywink colours that audience aren’t      aware of.
• Girl who was raped to be in the corner sobbing and crying, audience not allowed      contact.
• When audience are seated and beginning to feel uncomfortable, the 1950s detective      and assistant come in a quiz barmaid and audience on the disappearance of      individual.
• Projection or iPad used as I.D.
• Detective to get audience participation

1. Becca already in the room
2. Jamie leads people in
3. Sorcha sulks in sobbing
4. Sylvia comes in with Christy
5. Sylvia and Christy leave
6. Emma enters
7. Jamie enters
8. Emma leaves
9. Jamie takes people out

Room 2 –

• Masking tape on floor
• Utilise TV’s – Fake Facebook profiles of the central characters (Detective,      Assistant, Moderator, Raped)
• Blue lights and pulsating red light
• Dumi fully immersed and connected to the sound system, cyberpunk
• Make obvious it is an auction but no actual bidding takes place, more of a      viral advert
• Various other self-referential adverts within; Porn, Private Detective
• Jamie obtains peoples counters/virtual profiles
• Jamie is running the auction with help from becca

1. Dumi already in the room
2. Girls come in an stand on the stage as if to sell themselves
3. Jamie leads people in
4. Becca flirtatious and alluring in obtaining the counters

By Jamie Downes.

Our First Visit to Tokyo – 8th March

We recently had our first visit to Tokyo, the site that we have decided on for our multimedia performance to take place. This was a good experiance for us as a group, as it was an opportunity for us to physically see the rooms and the spaces that we wanted to use, plus other rooms we had never thought of using, like the three bedrooms upstairs and the basement. Along with Jamie’s floor plan, I took some photos of some of the key areas we are thinking of initially using and what elements that they will bring to the performance.

Reception/Staircase

 

 

One of the big draws to performing at Tokyo was the idea of the building having this old and grandeur feel to it, mixed with an urban outlook. Nothing describes that atmosphere more than the sweeping staircase cascading through the building. We really wanted to encorporate the stairs into our performance as thier seemed to be unlimited possiblities to how we could use them, and one idea that was experimented and discussed was it would be the start of the performance. Our ringmaster perfomer and another performer would be outside asking for our audeinces ‘virtual I.D’ (being a phone or anything technological.) As the audeince enter the rest of the performers would be draped over the stairs singing a song (possibly Imogen Heap’s ‘Hide and Seek’) in an acapella style. This would create a haunting and slightly ambigious image and atmosphere for the audience to walk in on and would juxtapose (hopefully) our costumes that we will have on. We experimented with some interesting movements and styles on the stairs while we were there, which are shown below.

 

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 VIP Room

                                       

 

                                                                

The main idea behind the VIP room will be the ‘Heaven room’ or the ‘Judgement room.’ Initially, the idea was that the room would be completley virtual and show CCTV images of people partying and facebook/twitter profile photos. It would be like a cinema and have a film noir-esque feel to it. It could act as a safe haven compared to what would be the cold reality of ‘hell’ in the basement, to almost lure our audeince into a false sense of security with the luxurious feel in the VIP room before we carry on with the rest of the performance. There was also an idea to experiment with, with that each booth would represent either Facebook/Twitter/Myspace/Tumblr and play some sort of game with the audeince. But this is something we can explore in the rehearsal process.

VIP Toilets

     

 

The VIP Toilets was of interest for our group to use in the performance as it happens to be one of the first areas the audeince will see. We had the idea for one of our scenes to take place in them, one of the performers being locked into one of the VIP Toilets and being Facebook raped or “f-raped” by the ringmaster performer. Facebook Rape is contemporary slang to describe when someone hacks into your account and changes your profile in a number of ways, commonly status’s and your personal information for comedic effect. However in our scene, and throughout the rest of the performance, we want to aim to highlight the dangers behind social media and virtual identies. Showing a (girl) performer being ‘f-raped’ and screaming to be ‘logged out’ and ‘deleted,’ translates the virtual world, with the use of technological slang, into a horribly realistic situation that can happen in the real world. The audeince wouldn’t see the ‘F-Rape’ taking place, just hear the girl scream, and would be diverted by the other performers into the luxurious and safe haven of the VIP Room. We would experiment more in the devising process, to encorporate the mirrors somehow, maybe they would literally reflect upon the real life situation.

Basement

                        

 

                                                                    

The Basement room is ideally where we would have our contrast to VIP’s “Heaven” Room. It would be named as “Reality” World, or “Hell.” An idea we are currently devising and experimenting with is that it would be like a total wasteland, and us as performers would be in there acting like addicts and “junkies” – However instead of being addicts to drugs or alcohol, we would portray being addicted to our phones and technology, in a no-man’s land, where technology and social media do not exsist. We would be totally deprived of access to our virtual identies. This room would be focusing on the very real idea that living your life in the virtual world, will lead you having no concept or grasp of the real world, highlighted in virtual reality games like ‘The Sims’. The idea that you would be making yourself irrelevant in the real world, just to create yourself a lie in the virtual world. The idea of Hell being no-one having access to our virtual identies on a 24/7 basis.

Main Room

                                         

                                                                          

 

The one thing that really struck a chord with us as a group was how we could use the space creatively in this room. The ideas that flowed from this, was that this room would be the last room the audeince will be taken to. A work-in-progress idea for this was that the ringmaster performer would walk up to the D.J Booth whilst the other performers are dancing, and it will gradually start to look like he is controlling the other performers, who will be ‘malfunctioning’ and destroying certain items of technology or unplugging themselves. The song ‘I need a Doctor’ dubstep remix will be played in the background, Urban music to juxtpose the old and grand surrondings. The performers who will be physically disintegrating and metaphorically dying before the audeinces eyes. There would be robotic voiceovers, for example “your account has been blocked” ” you are being deleted” and “your laptop has caught a virus and has 10% remaining” to show the idea that these virtual identies that are being created have gone, but because they were to lost in the virtual world, there is nothing for them in the real world. The idea of the ringmaster destroying them, was s/he would be the representation of the media circus that surronds social media and technology nowadays, and how it has contributed to the postmodernist society that we live in today.

Other Rooms/Possibilities – The Bedrooms

                                    

 We discovered that there were 3 bedrooms upstairs. They were sparse and had an urban, tight and claustraphobic feel to them, and we would like to somehow incoproate them into our performance. However, I believe for health and safety purposes, that won’t be feasible. Instead it may be where some of our filming for the perfomance take place.

 

Corridors

 

There are lots of corridors around the venue and, again, could be used effectively through the meduim of film, and even live film in our performance, like the way performance group Gob Squad use film in thier performance pieces.

All these ideas that sprang to us as a group in one initial visit. They are works-in-progress, that we as our group are currently expanding on and devising with. So watch this space and see what ends up being in the performance.

By Rebecca Britten.

 

‘Missing Posters’ – 6th March

As we were talking about ‘Missing’ ideas for Promo, i.e Posters for advertising?! I thought I would explore different types of posters. Here were the best two which I thought we could all look at to help move with our advertising. Obviously we can move and swop things about but in terms of layout and realism I thought it would be best to try and follow the real thing.

We can explore the idea of a missing person within the social networking site and whether people within the social netwok sites are who we think they are. plus explore the effects of social networking cites. For example, adults stalking children. children being unware of the dangers of social networking. lastly, how children go ‘missing’ after meeting people through social networking.

Yeah the posters and leaflets should have a similar theme running through – These are really good examples of what we can do – It would be cool if we could mess about with the colours and have them in blue and white? to reflect the social networking sites colours, like Facebook or Twitter?. – Comment by Becca

It might be worth using simular designs for leaflets, just throwing it out there!? – Comment by Jamie

By Christie Asplin.

Our Second Meeting – 5th March

Here are the notes I managed to get down from our latest meeting on 5/3/12. Again feel free to comment etc… on anything I may have missed /forgotten.

-Cause and effect – research and look into the ‘Butterfly effect’
… -Postmoden- Digtal and technological advertising
-Performance should explore the loss of identity due to the rise of social networking sites like facebook,twitter,tumblr etc… – If you dont have one of these you dont exsist – if you dont have a phone/laptop to keep in touch/have access to anything you dont ‘exsist’? – our virtual identity has more promience – can people be ‘missing’ anymore?
-The missing person can introduce the piece?- be in a black tee? – the rest of us painted/wearing blue with a white tee (represent social networking?)
-Overlapping Facebook statuses – using the sound wall at the collection? – or do it ourselves? – gain momentum to the piece – could interject facebook/twitter updates throughout the performance- keep some sort of flow and continiutiy – Next time we meet everyone should have 30 facebook status updates for us to play around with?
-Breaking the celluoid divide – the missing person is always seen? everything else / the performance is happening on the screen?
-ADVERTSING – want to get a few virals done to show for our work – in – progress shows in a in a couple of weeks time – a news report with the plug being pulled on it ? – show that if technology fails us, what do we have left? – the posters/leaflets should reflect the police missing people posters – keep a theme of loss identity
– Invite the audeince to come and watch the performance – via our website? advertised on the clock projection? – OR a party – handing out leaflets of our ‘missing’ person ?
– Locations – the Collection? – the Usher gallery? – Tokyo?(Dumi, Jamie, Sylvia look into this?)
– Tokyo – Good place to consider – lots of space to create an art gallery kind of performance, lots of technology at our disposal? – Look at the idea of creating a crime scene? – solving it through facebook/twitter updates? – fragmented performance style – something happening in each room?e to show how fragmented our society/identity is through the bombardment of the mass media and social networking sites.

By Rebecca Britten.

Our First Group meeting – 28th Feburary

These are the notes I got today – everyone feel free to elaborate on them and such as these are all note form!

– Sylvia Stella Entwistle and Jamie Downes are our tech people.
… – Running the group as a collaborative.
– Focusing on the performance of the everyday – CCTV – Consicous and Unconcious descions – looking at cause and effect.
– Postmodern – Disregarding typical theatrical conventions – space,time,platform and audeince – Fragemented performance.
– Inspirations : Gob Squad ‘Gob Sqaud’s kitchen’, Blast Theroy ‘kidnap’, Richard Scherner, Station House Opera, Donnie Darko, The Matrix, Darren Brown ‘Pack Mentality’ – and for Dumi – Family Guy and The apprentice :P.
-Meeting twice a week 3 hours at a time – one for the blog and one for rehearsals and performance – more will be added as the performance looms 😛 – one will always be the monday 12 – 3 as we know we are all definitly free then.
– Marketing strategy – Viral – Our own Website will be absolutley central !! – other avenues is Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, etc … – also posters and leaflets.
– Really looking and focusing on audeince participation – The Spectator can create and complete thier own experiances with an ‘online’ performance – Splitting them up between 2 locations – a house and the collection?
-Projections on Buildings – A clock up in bailgate – time – they can change the duration of the performance – Live feed online of the clock.
– Lots of clues to get the audeince from the house to the collection – 2 seperate performance merge into 1.
– 3 scenearios?
-Focus on getting our viral marketing sorted to show work for the ‘work-in-progress’ show at the end of March.

By Rebecca Britten.