my first post
so we have to prepare a proposal for our research project, i am glad we are getting stuck in so soon, but it has thrown me into a bit of a quandry. i need to get on and write this thing, but i am stuck between two different starting points. One is pretty safe for me, as it is something I started to explore years ago and will involve developing on ideas that i have already started to formulate. the other is something that has really just cropped up for me in the last couple of weeks, but i think it has potential. on the other hand, they are both quite broad subjects and perhaps need narrowing down....
so let me elaborate:
starting point 1: performativity - how our social and physical environments dictate the way we act. in an effort to understand this for myself and put it in the context of "theatre", I am looking at a notion of 'acting' in three stages, the first is a base state, when we are at our most comfortable and are not put on any pretences; the second is the performance of everyday life, the show we put on for the people we pass in the street; the third is when we consciously create a performance - public speaking, acting in a play etc. obviously, there are loads of layers in between, but just for now i need to simplify.
i would begin by attempting to isolate that second stage and look at ways of shaping that subconscious performance, investigate the nature of the audience (after all we are always being watched aren't we?) and then see where it took me from there.
starting point 2: image - coming from a background of design, i am very conscious of image and graphic. i only really noticed this recently, but i think it almost verges on obsession! i buy books and cds because they have a nice front cover, i spent ages looking at all the different templates for this blog before i picked this one, i could go on.... i guess that really the significance of the image is something i have looked at in my work before without really doing so consciously, but i would like to take a more deliberate approach to it. what does it mean to think in images? is it like thinking in french? this is an image-driven society - how do we understand/interpret images?
i'm also interested in the reproduction and deconstruction of images and the relationship between the image and the written/spoken word. Can these things co-exist? hmmm

any thoughts?

cherry