Author: Tabitha Hilton-Berry

Responding to our time…

Tabitha Hilton-Berry / / Audience, Evaluation, Possessed Time

In our performance, we found that although we did not have a constant audience at all times throughout, we were noticed and intriguing to the members of the public that visited the museum that day. People would drift in and out and then come back later to see the progression of our piece. It was almost as if they thought they might be missing out on something and wanted to know what we would do next, which I found very encouraging for the overall reaction that we got from the public.

At the beginning of our piece, there was quite a considerable audience for the first hour as they watched us awaken from our fictitious slumber and start our day,controlled by the sound of a ticking clock. it was interesting to see the people who wanted to see more was generally families with young children, as the children found it either intriguing and as I remember, kept asking their parents questions about us.

‘Who are they, Mummy?’

‘Are they real?’

‘What’s that sound?’

It was encouraging to know that we were being noticed in the way that we had hoped to be and that, even though they were young children, we were being observed and questioned, not just passively watched by an uninspired audience. Not only did the children ask questions, but in order to educate their children more, parents were asking questions so together they could work out the meaning behind.

‘What sounds can you hear?’

‘What’s that on wall? Is it a clock?’

‘Do you think the sound is coming from those watches in the cabinet?’

‘What do you think they’re doing now?’

The audience response was overall very good and even when the clock puzzle was being formed by ourselves, people were walking around us and peering in to the centre of the circle to see how the puzzle was coming together. If we were to change something with regards to the performance, I would suggest audience interaction would be good, especially as a learning technique for young children. They could be incorporated into helping us put the puzzle back together, as even for us it was a fun task that we could all co-operate in.

There were a few audience members that did not appreciate what we were doing in the space. Some people would walk to the doorway, glance in, and then quickly turn around and head to another room. One woman laughed as she stood and watched us, another asked her husband ‘Is this even worth looking at?’ while her husband replied with a brief ‘Let’s go somewhere else.’ We of course did not expect for everyone to fully appreciate what we were doing as performance is not everyone’s ‘cup of tea’ and it was actually good to see that people were still observing us and questioning what we were doing even if they quickly decided that the did not like it.

 

The Final Performance

Tabitha Hilton-Berry / / Evaluation, Possessed Time, Space

After months of preparation and hard work, the performance was finally put into practise and we felt it was very successful. Enduring a 6 hour performance was an extreme test for us but we found ourselves captivated by the continuous sound of ticking clocks which made the rhythm in our movements easier to achieve.

The start of the day proved to be a little stressful as we set up the projections and puzzle pieces ready to start at 10 o clock but found that everything came together well as we started. We only had one mishap throughout the entire performance which occurred in the first hour when an alarm clock failed to go off to notify us it was ‘time to get up’. Luckily, this was resolved quite easily and went unnoticed by the audience we had at the time.

During the first hour, we ‘slept’ against one of the walls in Gallery 3, which I found the hardest task of the performance as we had to keep very focused and could not relax like you do in reality when you sleep. After we had woken up from the sleep, we began the start of our condensed 24 hour day which included the motions of brushing our teeth, washing our faces, eating breakfast and walking to work, all for 15 minute sessions. Due to the practise for these movements that we had done prior to the performance, the movements were easier to control and physically were not as gruelling as we had expected them to be.

In the third hour, the focus was to be at ‘work’ which we had decided would be a clock factory as it reflected the ideas of James Usher’s clock collection and his views on industrialism. We decided that we would create a floor tile puzzle in which we drew a clock onto it and then during the ‘work hours’, we would work together to put the puzzle pieces back together, as if we were putting the components of a clock together in a factory. I found that this particular part of performance was successful as it seemed to intrigue a lot of visitors of the museum to follow our progression. This lasted for 1 hour and 45 minutes and then we moved on to the last two hours of our performance.

The final hours consisted of using movement to portray watching television, relaxing and eating dinner before then returning to our starting position of sleeping against the wall in the gallery.

Overall, I thought that our performance was successful and that the projections we used, which included a fully working digital clock that we had made using our bodies as the numbers, and a decomposing pineapple that we had filmed over a series of weeks, they were both an important and intriguing aspect.

I feel that we could have improved the movements we used and maybe incorporated more movements to the piece to make it more of a statement in the space. If we were to develop this further, we could consider extending the time in which we performed and perhaps consider performing for the complete 24 hours. However, due to the space we were in, it was not possible to do this as it is a public museum which has opening an closing times that we had to abide by.

 

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Tabitha Hilton-Berry / / Possessed Time, Research

“I must govern the clock, not be governed by it”

This is a statement from Golda Meir, a Prime Minister of Israel about how life has so much to offer us and we have so little time if we work to keep in time with the clock. Instead, we should embrace what we want to do, when we want to do it and dictate to the clock how fast or slow we want time to go. Clocks are a man-made object that were created in order to structure a day according to the sunlight so this poses the question Does time really exist? We were born and educated to recognise that time exists in our lives and this is passively accepted by everyone so we unconsciously live in the control of time.

time-warp.jpg.scaled500 Our performance has a main focus around clocks and time which is why I found this a particularly interesting concept to consider. We are  controlled by the sound of a ticking clock and move in time with this through our condensed working day. This is emphasising the way in which people can become consumed with their daily routines and captured in mundane repetition every day because they are focused on  keeping up with time.

In reality, we go through the day doing the things we need to do at specific times and constantly looking at clocks, whether they are watches, digital or analogue, without actually taking notice or questioning why we do this. The argument could be that we get older as time goes on and the years pass so time is one of the only things we can be sure of. On the other hand, clocks are a machine the human race created to measure time so did it exist before the creation? Or is it a concept we created to make some sense of the world we live in?

Dr Robert Lanza, a scientific officer at Wake Forest University of Medicine, has some interesting notions about the existence of time and space and claims that “space and time aren’t physical things. They’re forms of animal intuition. They are modes of understanding, part of the mental software that molds sensations into objects.”  This supports the idea that time does not actually exist but has been created as a way in which people can structure their days and measure the period of time a process takes. For example, the length of time it takes for an ice cube to melt, or, in the case of structuring the day, when to meet for lunch ‘2:30pm’.

Time is such an intriguing concept to consider as it is naturally an extremely important part of our lives no matter what lifestyle you have. There is strong evidence supporting both sides of the argument but what do you think? Does time really exist?

 

Works Cited:

Lanza, Robert. (2012). Does time really exist?. Available: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/biocentrism/201202/does-time-really-exist. Last accessed 17th April 2013.

‘Putting the pieces together’

Tabitha Hilton-Berry / / Development, Experimentation, Possessed Time

As part of our final performance, we have decided to incorporate a teamwork exercise of putting together a puzzle, which will reflect the work of James Ward Usher’s clock collection and his ideas on industrialism. Our piece displays a condensed working day in to a six hour performance that will provide the experience of each significant task that we perform every day in our daily routine, highlighting the time it takes and how it is an integral part of our day-to-day lives. As Dion Boucicault remarks “Men talk of killing time, while time quietly kills them.” We do not appreciate or realise the time in which we waste performing important but mundane tasks as it becomes second nature to us, therefore, this is one of the points we try to accentuate in the durational piece.

The reason that we have decided to include a puzzle in our performance is because we wanted a section of the performance to contain a teamwork aspect that could reflect the mechanism of the inside of a clock. All the components have a part to play in order for the clock to become fully functional in which each of our group represents.

We have decided to use 9 carpet tiles measuring a square metre each as the material for the puzzle in which we will draw a skeleton/outline of a clock onto before we cut the tiles into puzzle pieces. The carpet tiles we have chosen are a light beige colour which contrasts to the dark midnight blue flooring and walls in Gallery 3. This will make the puzzle solving stand out to the audience and will require us all to work together as if we were in a factory assembling a clock for production.

               puzzle

The process of putting the puzzle together will be the imitation of our work/job in a factory of producing clocks and will take 90 minutes to complete, including a 15 minute working lunch break in the middle.
There have been some slight difficulties with the process of cutting the carpet tiles into puzzle pieces as the base that the carpet sits on is a thick plastic which, although it will be more convenient for putting the puzzle back together, it poses the problem of cutting them out to begin with. For this, we had to purchase Stanley knives which are specifically used for cutting carpet tiles and have proved to be a much easier solution for the task.

We are still in the process of discovering if the puzzle will work in the piece as it is quite a daunting task putting together a puzzle that we have created ourselves but we feel that it is an integral part of the performance.

A Micro Day

Tabitha Hilton-Berry / / Development, Experimentation, Possessed Time, Video Research

We have decided to condense a 24-hour working day into a 6-hour performance that incorporates a typical everyday routine. We aim to highlight how time can be both an abstract and physical concept by which we are controlled. On the other hand, we cannot help but manipulate time in this piece as measurements of time are a human invention (e.g. seconds, minutes.)

The performance begins with us inert in a sleeping position for the duration of the first hour; we then are individually awoken by a series of alarms to perform our morning routines in a mechanical manner and in time to the sound of a ticking clock. Each member of the group stands in front of a section of the glass cabinets to perform their own daily routine as if the glass is a mirror. In three pairs, we reflect actions of each other brushing our teeth, washing our face and eating breakfast for 15 minutes per action, each pair performs the actions in various tempo’s but making sure to keep in time with the clock ticking sound still. We have included three videos displaying an example of the various tempos that each pair will use.

The first, shows the slowest speed whilst keeping to the ticking of the clock and the last video displays the fastest speed which still keeping to the beat.

Through the manner of miming, we display how a lot of our daily actions are mechanical and we perform them without thinking about the amount of time it consumes. By the end of the second hour, we will portray the walk to work by using an exercise we previously created as a warm-up. It incorporates using the space in Gallery 3 and moving in a mechanised style.

In the third and fourth hours, we will be aiming to represent a working day through the medium of constructing the puzzle of a clock made from carpet tiles. This serves to act as a reminder of the works of James Usher and how clocks were a key feature of both his public and private life. Between these hours, we will be including a 15 minute lunch break eating pineapple related foods, which is part of the performance, reflecting the exhibition of the ‘Pineapple Dish’ currently housed in the gallery. At the end of the fourth hour we will perform the walk through the space exercise previously used as the ‘walk to work’ but changing it to represent the walk home.

For the final hour, we will represent the evening period of a typical day which will display dinner time, relaxation or recreation time (working as a group to incorporate a game into the performance e.g. a passing ball game) and finally finishing the performance in the position by which we began, sleeping. This position will not be held as long as it was at the beginning of the performance as it is just a brief representation of the end of a typical day.