Chloe Doherty – The Collection Of…

Relatable Sources

Chloe Doherty / May 13, 2013May 13, 2013 / Inspiration, Possessed Time, Research, Video Research

“All rooted in an interest to make work that brings together theatre and the visual arts in a single unified vision” (Station House Opera, 2013).

Station House Opera are a site specific orientated theatre company based in the United Kingdom. When looking over their archived work, the thing which I found the most intriguing was their extensive use of multi-media, as it was something which we experimented within our piece. The pieces of work which I found particularly fascinating when comparing them to ours were that of their Ultramundane, Snakes and Ladders and Backwards.

Ultramudane (1983).

Ultramundane’s intention was to present the public with an “inversion of the world” (Station House Opera, 1983) which they know so well. They intended for their performers to be “physically together yet dramatically separate, for they belonged to different parts of the landscape” (1983). This is something which we experimented with within our site specific performance. Although we were all close in proximity, we were apart in terms of aesthetical ease. The costumes we used represented a specific part of the day, so each ‘character’ would make sense at one point during the day, whilst the remaining five would continue to look out of place until they had found their specific ‘setting’. This parallels Station House Opera’s idea of characters belonging to different parts of the landscape.

Snakes and Ladders (1998).

Their use of multimedia appears to be most present in their 1998 production Snakes and Ladders. Snakes and Ladders “traced the external signs of an invisible dialogue between mind and matter” (Station House Opera, 1998). The performers on stage were accompanied by doubles of themselves presented in a video projection format. This is similar to the fact that we used ourselves to create our human clock projection, as we are essentially removing the ‘characters’ from world, into another. By mixing the virtual world with the actual you see two different interpretations of a person. In the recreated image you see a person who can not experience emotion or danger, but in the actual world you see the aftermath, the effects on the performers.

Backwards (2010).

One of their more recent works Backwards (2010) explores the notion of time, with a particularly strong focus on the notion of the distorted. “Do we believe in progress? Do we have evidence that humans improve? Evolution may operate in time, but our sensibilities do not. We must no longer see the world as one damn thing after another” (Station House Opera, 2010). We explored a similar issue within our performance, hoping that watching us would cause the audience to ask themselves similar questions to those seen above. Backwards starts at the end of a day and reverses back to the start whereas in our piece, we start at the beginning of a day but speed it up, condensing it into 6 hours opposed to 24.

Another piece of work which I found to be inspiring is Christian Marclay’s The Clock. “A 24-hour montage of thousands of film and television clips with glimpses of clocks, watches, and snatches of people saying what time it is” (Bradshaw, 2011). The interesting thing about this installation is that whenever the time is shown on screen, it is in fact accurate.

“When I first arrived, I found myself giving a little amused laugh at each appearance of the time. Then the novelty wore off and I became silent” (Bradshaw, 2011). A similar process happened with our installation piece, at first it may have seemed vaguely amusing as the audience had not yet grasped the concept of what we were creating. But, after a short time in the space, much like what Bradshaw has stated, you become mesmerised by the notion and do indeed fall to silence. Throughout Marclay’s The Clock, the image of a clock was not always blindingly present all of the time, sometimes it appeared as a background shot or even an afterthought. This is comparable to the use of the human clock and decomposing pineapple in our performance. Although it is the visuals that draw you in initially, they become a part of the background as the action develops. Another interesting point which Bradshaw makes is that the longer he spent in the space the more fictional the clock became, “I stopped noticing that they were telling me exactly what the time actually was” (2011). Having spoken to audience members about our piece post-production, our use of the concept of time appeared to have a very similar effect. Once you accept that you are embarking on a journey with the actors, much as they do, you lose your grasp on both time and reality.

Author: Chloe Doherty

Work Cited:
– Station House Opera (2012) Station House Opera (online) Available at: http://www.stationhouseopera.com/ (Accessed on 12 May 2013).
– Bradshaw, P (2011) Christian Marclay’s The Clock: a masterpiece of our times (online) Available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2011/apr/07/christian-marclay-the-clock (Accessed 12 May 2013).

Post-Performance Reflection

Chloe Doherty / May 5, 2013May 13, 2013 / Development, Possessed Time, Public Responses, Video Research

Having completed our durational piece of theatre at The Usher Gallery yesterday, it can be said that our project, for the most part, was successful. Here’s a snippet of our finished product:

The movements within the secion you see above are both relatable and inspired by dance practioner Yvonne Rainer. Rainer was known for the way in which she “threw herself into a kind of anti-dance which favoured banal movements, non-expression, randomness and disconnectedness”(Roy, 2010). She focussed on the mundane movements of everyday life, much like the concepts which we experimented with throughout our piece.

As we intended, each audience member had a different experience from one another depending on what time in the day they visited Gallery 3. Our performance ran for 6 hours, after every hour slot the mechanical movement which the actors ‘performed’ would change, whilst two projections ran consistently.

These were that of a pineapple on a constant cycle of decomposition and rebirth and the countdown of a 24 hour human clock:

Pineapple projection in Gallery 3

Initially we decided to project a pineapple due to the fact that our gallery of choice already had two very quaint, porcelain pineapple dishes on show. As we developed this idea it became apparent that the fast paced decomposition of the pineapple made a beautiful contrast to that of the slower paced human clock. Although the image of the pineapple appeared somewhat distorted projected onto the back wall of the gallery, it helped to represent how our piece shows how misconstrued the nature of time itself can be when presented as an abstract concept. Looking back how effective our use of decomposition, while we felt that the image worked effectively, we still could have made much more this. If we were to create a projection similar to this again, I would like to decompose the pineapple over a longer period of time to show a clearer definition between the decomposition and the rebirth. It would also be interesting to see how the projection would have been percieved with the use of a fade opposed to that of a flash between images.

Projection of Human Clock on the doors of Gallery 3

The Human Clock projection was set to countdown by one minute every 15 seconds. In order to fit 24 hours into a 6 hour day, the time period which it is set in must be warped. The white clothing used in the filming of the human clock showed up incredibly well in comparison to the midnight blue door that it was being projected onto, making the image all the more powerful. With both of our projections in mind, we effectively managed to create a multi media installation; some entered the room to look directly at the images, whilst some merely stood by the door watching from a far. (See previous blog posts ‘The Pineapple Experiment’ and ‘Human Clock’ for more details on our projection concepts).

Throughout our performance, I managed to capture snippets of audience members reactions and opinions:

“You see, that’s the thing about time, you can’t always see it” – Middle aged man, whilst showing his two daughters the projection of the human clock.

“It feels like another world, it’s alien, like a matrix” – Group of audience members regarding the atmospheric ticking of a clock had created as they debated whether to enter.

“Can you guess what they’re doing?” – A mother to her son, during the mechanic movements representing the ‘dinner’ section of our piece.

The fact that the mother tried getting her child to work out what we were doing shows us that we presented a clear enough image for her to have already worked out the message that we were trying to communicate with the audience through the use of our bodies. We adopted mechanical movements to represent everyday activities that may usually go unnoticed, the repetition of the action emphasises this. We decided to include ‘eating’ sections due to the vast amount of ceremonial crockery displayed in Gallery 3. All of the objects on show were designed to be of practical use, yet are locked away without the chance of fulfilling what they were created to do. We repeated the same gesture in hope that the audience would understand that we were presenting what the objects in the galleries casing should have been used for.

In terms of the atmosphere which we created, some people embraced it and some shied away. Once we had ‘woken up’ from the first sequence of our sleeping freeze frame, it was a real pleasure to see that some members of the audience had engaged with our piece so much that they were sitting down, waiting for the next sequence to begin. This also occurred when we started to create the clock puzzle at the climactic moment of our performance. People sat and watched, engaged by the fact that they did not know how long it would take us to complete. During a two hour period in rehearsals we would repeat the piecing together of the clock puzzle twice, but with the adrenaline of a performance and a live audience we repeated this three times, due to the speed in which we were working at. During the section where we walked across the room to the beat of the clock, audience members did enter the room, but stayed much closer to the door than we would have liked in fear of getting in the way or perhaps interrupting or concentration.

The puzzle clock fully formed

In retrospect, the clock puzzle was the most powerful part of our piece, because it was the most real. Rather than performing, we were doing. If we were to experiment further with the concept touched on in our performance I would like to develop this particluar section of our piece. This would enable us to experiment with durational theatre in the traditional sense of the word. If we were to spend the 6 hours putting together a much more complex puzzle, it may have been more engaging for the audience, which would perhaps encourage the audience to interact with our performance much more than they felt comfortable doing in our previous performance.

Overall, I am happy with the experimental product which we created. If we were to perform again, I would like to create a soundscape of alarm clocks, set to go off at particular moments throughout the day, as during our performance the physical alarm clock which we were using as a prop did not go off or work as effectively as we would have hoped. Looking back at it now, I would say that we created more of an installation piece rather than a traditional ‘show’. That being said, it does not make what we presented any less of a performance. After all, can you ever really define art?

Author: Chloe Doherty

Work Cited:
– Roy, S (2010) Step-by-step guide to dance: Yvonne Rainer (Online) Available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2010/dec/24/step-by-step-yvonne-rainer (Accessed on May 13).

Human Clock

Stephanie Jackson / April 17, 2013May 12, 2013 / Possessed Time

Focusing our work on clocks and time, we are in the process of creating our own digital clock to project throughout our piece onto the doors of Gallery 3. We photographed ourselves in the positions of each number from 0-9, and using an animation software, these photographs will become a clock, ticking down from 24 hours.

The reason for us wearing white is in order for our clock to stand out against the midnight blue of the Gallery’s interior. The digital clock will contrast the traditional Grandfather clocks which are present in the Gallery, and will structure our piece which represents a 24 hour day. Our piece is also physical with lots of mime and movement, so making a clock using our bodies will be an interesting visual addition.

We were inspired to create this from watching similar work by other artists, finding it both interesting and highly effective to watch.

‘Putting the pieces together’

Tabitha Hilton-Berry / April 10, 2013April 10, 2013 / 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.

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.

Automaton Movement

Chloe Doherty / March 25, 2013May 13, 2013 / Development, Experimentation, Inspiration, Possessed Time, Research

Having been given feedback after showing a snippet of our durational performance to the class, it occurred to us that we may not be able to continue referring to what we are doing as falling under the sub-title of ‘miming.’

mime
/mīm/

Noun
The theatrical technique of suggesting action, character, or emotion without words, using only gesture, expression, and movement.

Verb
Use gesture and movement without words in the acting of (a play or role).

By no stretch of the imagination are we attempting to create characters, or emotion through our incorporation of choreographed mechanical gestures. Our use of costumes will suggest a time of day, opposed to that of a fictional characters wardrobe. The gestures which we have constructed consist of ordinary movements which everyone inevitably comes across throughout the duration of their day. We will include one simple action for each period and repeat it over the course of 15 minutes at a time. The gestures being the hand moving to and from the face with a clenched fist (brushing teeth), both hands with open palms moving up and down in front of the face simultaneously (face washing) and lastly a cupped hand, whilst the other moves to the mouth and back down again (eating breakfast).

Our intention is to show the effects which a structured concept comes across when exposed to the notion of time. Repeating the same action for a period of time obviously much longer than intended can turn something very ordinary into something abstract, some might even say into a piece of art, much similar to those on show in both The Usher Gallery and The Collection. Although this may seem like quite a laborious task, it’s incredibly intriguing to see how warping such a simple thing like the amount of minutes it takes to brush your teeth can have on your outlook on the gesture used, the movements incorporated or even how strenuous it may be to experiment with something so unnatural.

When choreographing the movements which we decided to use, we tried to keep in mind the soundtrack to our piece, and our chosen galleries theme; the ticking of a clock. In order for a clock to create a sound, the cogs inside of it must be working together both effectively and efficiently together. In The Usher Gallery there is a skeleton clock on show, where all of the cogs are extremely visible. We hope to achieve the same kind of structure that a clock holds by the use of our mechanical gestures.

Automatons are a self-operating machine. They adopt a series of movements, or sometimes even just the one key gesture (similar to that shown above). The mechanisms inside of each automaton are similar to that of a clock, and are even used to produce to ‘cuckoo’ in a cuckoo clock. Automatons take a gesture which we are familiar with and have the tools to distort how we view it, their fixed facial expression and lack of inhibition express no life like characteristics, yet are still created with a somewhat human appearance and the ability to mimic a human gesture.

So, rather than us disregarding the use of props in order to create a convincing mime, we are currently experimenting with the use of mechanical expression. That being said, we fully intend on exploring what it will look like to use the same task, with the ‘robotic’ movements, whilst attempting to incorporate relevant props.

Author: Chloe Doherty