Pearson wrote a book on Site Specific on how to get into the frame of mind as an actor working on a completely different site from a theatre. It entails going to many different places and asking yourself the same questions at each place, for example, ‘Who am I and what am I doing?’, ‘What are the conditions of my access’. On our very first site specific lesson we went around Lincoln and asked ourselves these numerous questions, this was relatively easy as we went to places we had been many times before. However when we first went up to the Usher gallery and done the same thing it became a lot more interesting as we were challenged with the questions and it made us explore the site we were about to spend many weeks rehearsing and finally performing in in a lot of detail. Pearson also states you should become different types of people or characters, for example when walking around a certain site turn yourself into a Tourist, someone who is new to the place. Another example is to turn yourself into a Runner; these tasks and activities really helped us explore the environment we were working in and made us notice a lot of things we previously would not have. It also meant when we chose where our performance was going to be we were definite and had done enough research and wondering around the gallery before making our final decision.
Come up with scenarios for each space, any revelations? What excites us about the space?
W/b 11/2/13
Practical experimentation- people will be watching us! Bring balloons, tin, string, pins, little cards to put messages on and put in balloons.
W/b 18/2/13
Response to feedback. Do the public like it? This is where we can amend and alter our scenarios so far.
W/b 25/2/13
Come in costume. All black. Does it work? We chose black because its a dull colour as we want people to find us hence no bright colours as our theme is subtlety. Rehearse. Check do we need anything technical?
Museums are all about preserving artefacts, and within Gallery 3 we noticed the two plastic pineapples amongst the crockery on display. This led us to explore the idea of decomposition and how time affects living organisms, as our piece focuses on the concept of time in many forms.
Whilst researching we discovered a video of a rabbit decomposing, and we found the concept of the video interesting due to the time lapse.
From this we researched fruit decomposition and how we could incorporate it into our piece and our space. It links well because of the pineapple on display and the notion of time in the room. We found a video of a strawberry decomposing which also involved a clock in the process, reinforcing the concept of the effect of time.
Our research has inspired us to create our own video of a pineapple decomposing and then projecting it onto the gallery wall. We think that this will be effective as it reminds the audience of the effects of time in a visual way adding an interesting dimension to our piece on time.
Authors: Stephanie Jackson, Chloe Doherty, Tabitha Hilton-Berry, George Creighton, James Barker, Shane Humberstone
As a group we have decided to use a soundscape throughout our performance. We are going to have sounds of London playing whilst we run into the gallery and create the Big Ben, after 15 minutes we have the noise of the Big Ben chiming. We would have finished putting the piece together by this point so the chimes will make it extremely iconic. Once the chimes are finished we are going to have some 1920s music playing to represent the time period we are trying to represent. We have found these clips on Youtube (see below for link). We have our own speakers also so the Gallery will not need to worry about any interference with their own music. The volume is going to be loud as it will hopefully startle our audience and make them realize this is a exciting and fast-paced piece and also make them more intrigued in the action which is going on. The noises will also intrigue members of the public into watching our piece.
This is the link to the Big Ben chime we are thinking about using, it is the 3 Quarter Hour one.
This is the second link which is sounds from around London mainly filmed in Oxford Circus. Although we may research and try to get some more sounds, or even over the Easter holidays visit London ourselves and record our own soundscape.
“The idea that time and space are tools of the mind, our source of comprehension and consciousness, is an abstraction” (Lanza, 2012)
It can be said that time is simply an illusion, one which helps us to categorize and express different thoughts, whereas clocks are a manmade object used in an attempt to track the notion of time. Rather than time being a perception in itself, we perceive the process of repetition, much like the ticking of a clock. As humans we are programmed to associate a clocks transition from one number to another with the passing duration of time. This can easily be misconstrued as the physicality of a clock, whether it be digital or analogue, with the concept of time. We do not see time as a physical concept, but we can clearly see that clocks are a solid object which humans are able to touch, move and manipulate. “Measuring “time” doesn’t prove its physical existence. Clocks are rhythmic things. We use the rhythms of some events (like the ticking of clocks) to time other events (like the rotation of the earth). This isn’t time, but rather, a comparison of events.” (Lanza, 2012).
“We also have the sensation of duration: we can even check that sensation against a clock” (Blackwell, 2012). The passage of time is an incredibly difficult concept to grasp without the presence of a physical clock in front of you. In class, we experimented with passing a ball to one another in an open space for one minute, and then passing it amongst a tighter space created by enclosing our bodies again, for one minute (see earlier blog post “Like Clockwork” for more details). We intended to do this for 6 minutes, so theoretically we would repeat each process three times. A timer was set, and after only getting through half of our planned process, it went off. This showed us that not only can time be seen as a concept opposed to something definite, but also that each person’s perception of duration may be different, conflicting with that of a clocks.
With the idea of a clock solely being a physical being, as a group we looked into the physicality of a clock, including the mechanics behind the face. This led us onto the idea of a ‘human clock’, or rather how we could use the shapes in our bodies to represent the hands on a clock to show a passage of time. Whilst researching, we came across this video:
Although this looked incredible aesthetically, as a group of six working in a small gallery, it soon occurred to us that we have neither the capacity
nor the amount of people needed to create such a thing. This is where our search for examples of people creating changed from analogue to digital.
Example 1
Example 2
The first example shown above is what initially inspired us to incorporate an image like this into our piece, but again knowing that we do not have the right space for such a performance we decided to play around with the idea of projecting something onto the wall of Gallery 3, which we would have prerecorded. The performers in example 2 use similar skills to that of the first, but explore the idea in a much more performative way to that of the first, which is for the most part very structured. Although the pieces above explore a similar concept, they both go about it in very different ways, together they have motivated us to experiment with the creation of a clock for ourselves, coming up with something just as inspiring.
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