During my technical set up for my performance I quickly learnt the importance of a good understanding of technical elements within performance. This made this think on a broader scale. If i were to continue this piece and potentially take it to different places. I may not have the technical assistance that i had at the LPAC. This is a problem because if something went wrong and i wasn’t able to fix it then the piece would not work and ultimatley be unsuccessful.
Also i found that space was going to be a crucial element. The fact i wanted people to feel enclosed was a priority but with the projectors set as they were, the audience had almost no moving space with jeopardising a projector.
Thankfully with my set up, there was no need for added lighting as the projectors would light the space sufficiently, which again, when touring and requesting funding, is a big help.
Here are some notes on the progress of the visual side to my performance.
I am sticking to the installation idea i have encompassing audience members in a box of four projectors.
On the first of the four walls will be my evolution of the Bittersweet Symphony music video. It will start with just fields to symbolise the ‘started from nothing’ mentality , which the song represents. This will then g into a darkened tour of the Holocaust memorial (Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe) in Berlin. The memorial is 2711 concrete slabs of different sizes. I am taking the visual of bleak concrete blocks as a sign of change, and arguably progression, from the plain flat fields. It will finally finish with my Lincoln version of the music video. I will film myself walking from the cathedral, a symbol of grandeur and hope, to the less fortunate parts of Lincoln. This will hopefully show the struggle and difference of different people throughout a single city.
The second of the projections is less complicated yet also less set. It will have archetypal pictures of people of today ranging from the Upper Class Kings Road “gentleman” to the East End street boy. I will remove the face of each picture and will stand in my boxers in front of it. This will play with the idea that we are all equal when we are naked. This is also playing hand in hand with the idea of other people’s projections on others.
The third I want to be both comical and shocking, polar opposites if possible. This projection will be showing people failing. It could be silly failing like falling off a skate board or more serious issues such as murder. Its intention is to show that whatevr we may expect there are going to be unforeseeable boundaries and challenges. this challenges may be so great that our dreams may not materialise. Furthermore it is inspired by a mantra made famous by the rapper 50 Cent, ‘Get Rich or Die Tryin”.
A Still from ‘Get Rich or Die Tryin”. Taken from www.imgarcade.com
The final projection will be a selection of Tweets and Facebook status’ expressing peoples dreams. It will show what the goals of our society are.
As all the films will be playing simultaneously this will create individual experiences as oppose to a unified audience collective experience. People will be able to pick and chose as of when then watch each of the videos.
From the sessions that we have had so far I have been inspired to use certain aspects of both post-modern and multimedia to create an installation to take place in studio three.
I have been excited by the use and reuse of old material and collating it with other old and also new ideas to produce and post-modern esq piece. In order to help create this I will be using multimedia as i feel it can create certain dimensions and produce different aspects for the audience to pay attention to.
I have given myself the the of lost hope and will be using the song Bittersweet Symphony as my muse to guide my performance. It is a song about being stuck in the mundane and the idea that you can break out of any situation, any state of neutrality you find yourself in. This fits in with my piece with the sense of denial that comes along with it. Running along side this idea is homelessness, redundancy and anything else that can leave someone losing hope where maybe there once was some.
Not only does Bittersweet Symphany run parallel to my theme it has also come under scrutiny of plagiarism. The Rolling Stones The Last Time was covered by Andrew Loog Oldham’s orchestra and a subsequent sample was used by The Verse. However, this sample eventually became the whole song and eventually The Verve had to give credit to Mick Jagger.
In terms of what else the performance will entail i am not too sure of. I know that sound and projection will be used to guide the audience through the experience but what sound and projection are still in the pipeline at this stage.
The floors are cold. The noir has your shoes #lincolnnoir
It has been discussed for years that a performance does not need to take place in a theatre. it can take place anywhere, from a shop, to a warehouse, to an office, as long as there is someone doing something a performance is taking place. Now with technology become literally part of us, i am referring to mechanical limbs, joints and even glasses, is the human necessary for a performance to take place.
We tried to find out. Using just our phones, twitter and the streets of Lincoln we tried to produce a performance on line on a twitter feed. The premise was to roam the streets creating scenarios and characters from the things we encountered for someone, in this case Dan Hunt, to watch live on a twitter feed wherever they may be in the world.
With the use of our pictures and our tweets we collated a collage of aspects but not necessarily a cohesive plot. Not that a performance needs a plot but if the agenda was more widespread and understood i believe this could have been a huge success as oppose to an insightful exercise.
with this being said it really interested me how much of a performance you can get out of everyday things. I suppose this is what Andy Warhol and alike were trying to discover. This has definitely inspired me for my own work although i now live in fear of The Noir.
