collaborative response etc.

CONGRATULATIONS to you all on a mammoth effort. I was so impressed by Eleven:Fifty-seven (by the way why was it called that?). It was beautiful, truly, The little room and the dangly chairs and the trees... and the PUPPETS, which were sooo fantastic. The costumes were great, nice and subtle but lovely, and very in tune with the overall design. All in all, you never would have guessed there were so many people involved, the design was very coherent.
I thought Magda's role was wonderful and tied the whole thing together, she was also very good at shepherding us all around - although perhaps this didn't need to be quite so military at times!? The projections looked really professional, my only criticism is that perhaps they were sometimes used unnecessarily (or maybe it was just that the content was too obvious?). There was a lot going on in a pretty short time period and it did cross my mind that some of it was there just because members of the group had the relevant skill-sets, but nonetheless, it didn't seem disjointed or confusing. it goes without saying that the actors were great, and I particularly enjoyed it when they managed to get the audience moving without having to herd us, this was a lot to do with the lighting as well, which was very good. I wasn't always completely taken in by the text - but i think this was mostly improvised, perhaps just needed more rehearsal time (i know this was limited). thought the most powerful bit was mr north's moment of quiet at his mothers grave. particularly loved the (very eerie) child puppet with spooky twins controlling it!
I'm only being critical because it wouldn't be very useful for me to just flatter you all, but I really did thoroughly enjoy the show and am looking forward to seeing what everyone does next!

so much to think about at the moment.
first of all the play at richmond, which (although doug hated it!) went really well. It was definitely my most conventional set to date, but that said it was probably about as unconventional as that play could cope with. Kirstie and I got loads of positive responses about the design and an exciting offer of potential work to look at which i'm thrilled about.
secondly, my own stuff. am thinking about a few themes at the moment which came out of my workshop. i was really inspired by rich's suggestions on my blog and have started thinking about random meetings between strangers and conflicts between the drama of theatre and everyday life. I have also been looking more at the way people present themselves and tell their own stories through the internet. i've become a real myspace addict in the process. i had a really interesting conversation with my friend mel about how long someone could continue to 'live' in cyberspace after they had died for real, assuming no-one knew...
i'm also organising a site for my next mini-project and i am so excited about it. don't want to give the game away so am not going to give too many details, but lots of possibilities for projection and playing with scale again... now to bring all this together much more coherently than i managed last time!
finally i have been working on my paper which is becoming much more focussed and looking at myspace as a kind of theatre and perhaps this idea of virtual life and death. am really getting back into theatre after a while in the wilderness. it's just a name after all and doesn't mean my work has to be restricted... i think i've been disallowing myself to have fun and that is officially going to stop right now!

Just to clarify, a response to rich's comment:

Hi rich, just read your comment on my blog – then re-read my blog.
I realised it sounded like I was complaining about your ‘puppet show’, which I didn‘t intend at all. Just wanted you to know that! In actual fact I found it fascinating how much everyone got into it, and was particularly intrigued by the interaction with the model, which I had only thought of as a stationary thing previously. Even though this playful interaction made me feel really quite awkward at the moment when it came up against a painful memory, I think this was possibly the most valuable moment of the whole workshop because it was the point where the personal element was exposed for me.
If the whole experience had been really easy and fun for me I wouldn’t have got anything out of it and I am thrilled (and a little bemused!) by the fact that everyone else found their own way-in to the project as well!
I think I’ll stick this on my blog to clarify things
See you thursday
cherry

workshop

phew its over! so many issues and interesting bits 'n' bobs raised by it, what a worthwhile experience. hmmm... where to start, probably with the whole thing of me framing it as a 'workshop', which I did for my own comfort really (so i didn't have to call it a show). What I hadn't really considered was that the word workshop automatically assumes a higher level of interaction than i had imagined. i had thought of it as a workshop for ME, not everybody. But that's not to say that I didn't enjoy the level of involvement that actually occurred, although in the end i felt a bit jealous and protective over 'my' drawing, hmmm... that's interesting too...

It's taken me a few days to be able to really think about it rationally because it all became rather personal, which i hadn't altogether expected. There was one particular point when Ming re-wrote one of my own memories and handed it to me and it was a really nasty memory so it was quite hard to keep drawing with everyone watching and rich's puppet show going on behind me. I've had a couple of comments from those of you who made it to the workshop (thanks by the way, I was amazed by the turn-out!). I find it really odd when people say it was 'good', I can't imagine thinking about it qualitatively like that, I can only think about the list of things I got out of it. These comments (not all 'good', also 'f***ing odd' and 'very you') have rather taken me by surprise and made me realise just how selfish i was in the planning of the workshop - I hadn't expected anyone else to get anything out of it!! So, looking forward to getting feedback from all the VLP people soon, thank you all for coming and thank you to the wonderful Ming who kept it all moving and was generally amazing. Here's some pics:

oh and by the way...

i went to see 'blue on blue' at the latchmere (theatre pub in battersea - i think its also called theatre 503). It was put together by The Shotgun Theatre Company, one of whom is Tom Hardy who used to be a student at the drama school where I work. So I went with the director of the drama school and some of the students.

it was really good, which was so lovely because, to be honest, i wasn't expecting much. I know tom's a decent actor, I've seen him on tv in a few things, but i didn't know what he'd be like as a director. So nice to be pleasantly surprised. It was written by Tom's father - Chips Hardy and was a really dark comedy about 2 guys with all kinds of psychological problems who become involved in various ways with a hungarian nurse, leading to a kind of examination of their rather sick co-dependant relationship. What a terrible description. Anyway, i think this one is sold out, but if Shotgun do anything else, would recommend trying to catch it.

thought for the day...

a man who can understand Buddha and has an intuition of the heaven and hell of humanity ought not to live in a world ruled by 'common sense' and democracy and bourgeois standards. It is only from cowardice that he lives in it; and if its dimensions are too cramping for him and the bourgeois parlour too confined, he lays it at the wolf's door, and refuses to see that the wolf is as often as not the best part of him. All that is wild in himself he calls wolf and considers it wicked and dangerous and the bugbear of all decent life.

steppenwolf - hermann hesse

workshop update

please keep those train stories coming, i'm getting together great collection, but not enough yet.

here's a pic (not a very good one) of the memory-space model i am building for my workshop, am getting quite excited about it now...

bad theatre, good food

i went down to salisbury at the weekend to see my mum and go to the theatre. salisbury doesn't have a lot going for it unless you're a japanese tourist, but the theatre is the one reason i still go back occasionally. For a provincial theatre, it does some pretty cool stuff, I remember particularly an amazing production of the Bacchae by Kneehigh Theatre Company. However this weekend it let me down! We went to see 'A Woman of No Importance' and even setting aside some unfortunate blips that couldn't be helped (lines fluffed, bits of set falling down), it was really crappy. They tried to throw in some bits of experimental dance stuff, which (even if the actors hadn't looked like they would rather take off their clothes than do them) seemed so completely out of place in the middle of a classic Oscar Wilde comedy. This was compounded by the, frankly bizarre, set design, which just couldn't make up its mind if its was 'period' or something completely different and ended up being just messy. the costumes were very nice but dull. Altogether it was really confused and rather disappointing. The saving grace was that a couple of the actors were really really good. Don't have any pictures to prove my point, could only find the poster image on the net - perhaps they're embarassed!



On the upside i had a very english pub meal of fish and chips and bread & butter pudding in the village pub on sunday and put on about 3 stone in one sitting. yum yum yum.

I HAVE REJOINED SOCIETY

i have finally got a computer! hooray! no more sneaking onto Alan's when he's not looking or blogging at work when i should be drawing...no actually, i'm sure i'll still do that. am also very excited to discover that it seems that the wifi on the train from brighton is free (it says for a limited time - but doesn't say how long), i'm a bit suspicious but i'm not going to complain.

the preparations for my workshop are going well and i am actually beginning to look forward to it. thanks to those who have sent me train stories, keep them coming - there's no limit on how many you send!!

have been reading 'naked lunch' by william burroughs, it has completely blown my mind, i don't really know what to say about it, i am simultaneously revolted and overawed by it. am fascinated by this episode about 'senders' and 'factualists', which is all about use and abuse of technology:

"Artists will confuse sending with creation. They will camp around screeching "A new medium!" until their rating drops off..."

made me feel very small and stupid for a while... i think that's probably a good thing.

trains trains trains

its been a long time since i blogged, so lots to catch up on...

well, i've booked the film and video room for a workshop on 16th november. i was putting it off but finally thought of a way of progressing my work that i could actually achieve in the time and space available. i'm getting increasingly frustrated at my own inability to perform in my own work and the limitations that puts on what i can actually do, but on the other hand i don't want it to become too 'theatre'. I know it must seem strange to those who do perform, but really it is an inability - i was shy as a child and its taken twenty years to get over that in social situations, i don't really have that kind of time here!

so what am i doing? well, i've become really interested in the way i produce work and the people who influence me, as well as the subject matter/site of the work itself, so i'm going to produce a sort of drawing which will be an amalgamation of visual information about the site and stories and memories about train journeys which i have been collecting. I want the whole thing to be directed or curated by another person (hopefully an actor doug knows, who - like my dead person on the train - is an elderly gentleman).

i don't want to say any more because i am looking forward to getting everyone's reactions and don't want to prejudice them too much!

work sucks, i am trying to plan the most efficient route for my final escape from architecture. if only there wasn't that horrid issue of money...!

looking forward to having simon vicenzi as my tutor, he came to talk to us last year and his work really struck a chord with me.

new term, new ideas

my blogging activity has been a little slow recently because i didn't think anyone was reading, but doug assures me that he, at least is keeping up-to-date, so here goes...

having spent loads of time reading and scribbling over the summer, i feel like my practical and theory work has come back together again, which is really exciting. In fact, it has merged so much it gets hard to talk about the two separately, but to clarify i will try...

theory - my working heading (which needs some serious editing - more of a description at the moment) is "investigating the construction of cyberspace as a virtual reality through the performance of the journey". I know it doesn't sound like it, but i have spent the last few days on a major mission to narrow down my field(s) of interest to get to this! But there it is, I've planned out my certificate stage hand-in and am trying to get it written before term starts so i have the whole term to edit and re-edit and to lay it out beautifully! I've split the cyber-journey down into five areas of discussion: preparing to leave (home, anticipation, desire, preparation), departure (crossing boundaries, delegation to cyber agency), moving/travelling (navigation, motion, vehicle), anticipating arrival (negotiating the process of arrival, separation from the cyber-body), arrival (destination, ending). Central to the whole thing (at the moment) is an idea I am working on about the nature of cyber-space as an extension of self (cyber-self?), so the whole cyber-journey as a construction of space-self. hmmm... need to think this through some more, I have time though - for a change. What a relief not to be doing things at the last minute.

practice - had a break-through over the summer, found an old notebook where i had drafted a methodology of my practice for an application form. It was great because I have felt so lost about what it is that I DO, now that I am not doing architecture. But reading this thing, I realised that the whole reason I am tring to get out of architecture is that I never really did architecture in the first place and that there is nothing wrong with the way i work, just the context I was working in. So following this methodology, I have found a site in Brighton that I love and am in the process of documenting and researching it. I am planning to use this as a virtual site for a workshop performance in November. I will build onto it, a collage of 'real' and virtual forms. I don't want to say too much more right now because I am still formulating it in my head, but here is a picture of the site:




ok, that's it for now. See you soon Doug and anyone else who might be reading...

heating in august

oh, i love english weather, it really keeps you on your toes. on monday i walked into work in a t-shirt and jeans, then yesterday evening we were so cold we put the heating on!

i hope everyone's preparations for the show are going well. If you need any help, please just let me know. I am doing my best to ensure I am free for the whole week leading up to the show, so i can be on hand as general dogsbody...

have been doing a lot of reading recently, since i came up with a (perhaps a little too ambitious) plan to finish half my paper before term starts in september, so i can focus on my practical work when doug and jordan are more available to me. Anyway, its going well so far. I'm still at the stage of reading around the subject where everything you read makes you realise just how little you know about it, but I am sure I will break through in a couple of weeks and then i can start writing. Have been reading this text by Deleuze and Guattari called A Thousand Plateaus which is scarily brilliant, how do people get that clever? The whole thing is written in this structure like hypertext, so you can dip in and out, the order is not rigid. And it seems to cover everything, psychology, philosophy, politics etc etc. I hope one day I can go back to it and think - 'Oh, it's not that clever'. Right now it makes me feel very small and stupid and gives me a headache after every few paragraphs - in fact I've got one now just thinking about it!

What else have I been reading?... Donna Haraway - A Cyborg Manifesto (which was strangely far less impressive than i had expected - i think so many of her ideas, which were radical when she wrote them, have been absorbed into popular culture - so they don't seem shocking now), Marcus Novak - Liquid Architectures, can't remember other names right now - don't have the books to hand, but lots of interesting stuff about cyberspace as a military enterprise and then a place for fun, and about rhizomes and hallucination and representation etc....

I have become such a nerd!

moving on...



I have just got in from the airport after a great weekend in seville, i'm feeling totally relaxed now (although i'm sure one day in the office will put paid to that!). So I am starting to look forward and have only just realised how soon the interim show is! No matter, would like to use it to try out ways of using the sounds I have been recording, I have been thinking about various possibilities since Diana brought it up at the progress meeting last week. I wonder if its too late to get a space for the show?

Anyway, we went to see an exhibition called "One of Many - Origins and Variants" by Allen Ruppersberg and the Andalucian Centre for Contemporary Art, I found it really inspiring - isn't it strange how, without any deliberate planning, you can so often find something in other people's work which relates to your own? He has done a whole series of pieces where he has recorded fragments of conversations on postcards and displayed them with related photos, there was also a room full of canvasses covered in writing which seemed to be a story written from everyday life. But the bit that grabbed me the most was his 'singing posters':
Inspired by a 1959 recording of Beat poet Ginsberg’s epic poem Howl, Ruppersberg transcribed the words phonetically on to some 200 bright posters and interspersed them with adverts. The effect is such that, to read the words, you must sound them out - otherwise they are difficult to decipher. (www.24hourmuseum.org.uk)

just for the record my blogging activity has temporarily moved to http://mypage.cooeey.com/fromtheretohere
this is just for the duration of my collaborative project, please have a look

must sleep

the last couple of weeks have been manic, research proposal, presentation, application for centre for drawing, my job, my other job, oh and my other job... and it doesnt look like letting up in the very near future. But I'd be lying if i said i didnt like it like this, the pressure is really good for me as long as it doesnt go on indefinitely.

i'm really excited (and also a little nervous) about getting on with my collaborative project. We got three weeks in the end, but mostly based in the postgraduate research room (don't ask me where that is) and Avis Newman's office. Only the last two days are in the centre for drawing, but moving around is no bad thing, since the whole thing is about the journey.

I'm also really excited about some possible progress in my own research. We had an old friend round for drinks and late-night poker (!) yesterday and he was telling me about recent developments in the world of cyberspace - his brother is a programmer. Apparently the latest thing in M.U.D.s (Multi-user dungeons) is that people are trading in real money, buying virtual property - houses, cars, space ships, works of art etc. Supposedly there's something like £1billion dollars currently invested in virtual property. Of course, this means there's all kinds of new dilemmas about ownership and fraud etc. Anyway, ed and i figured this all sounded kind of fun, so we are going to try and get on the virtual property ladder! Watch this space...

Real work is quite exciting too. In the new office, building work is almost complete and it looks great. We got delivery of our lovely new IMacs and have spent several hours just stroking them and saying "oh but its just so beautiful". We have a couple of great projects on the go already (including a refurbishment of an amazing Art Deco house in central London) and more in the offing. Work on the next play at Richmond (Midsummer Nights Dream) has also started. There's a lot to do, but it's so nice to be able to have a break from using my head! Kirstie and I pretty much finished the design work over the holidays, so I'm just making donkeys heads and walls and fairy costumes (dungarees!) etc.

Finally, thanks to everyone who presented last week. It was a fascinating day - no, really! It was really interesting to see how Amitesh's research has progressed and I am intrigued by the way his research translates into his pratical ideas - can't wait to see it. Lushan blew my mind (almost literally!) with her intensive research and I really hope she can pull everything together for the interim show because her ideas are so lovely. Karen, wow, what a performance - i learnt so much and enjoyed every minute. I am always fascinated to see how different Kirstie's approach is to my own, because we so often see things in a similar way. I love the way her research is so personal.

ok enough, i'm going to bed

long time no blog

congratulations to karen and amitesh, i really enjoyed your workshop. It's really exciting that everyone's work is starting to take off, a great way to start the new term.

karen's performance drew you in one minute, letting you really get into it, then the next minute spat you back on the outside and made you really aware of your role as a viewer (voyeur?). I didnt get bored once! i loved the bacchus mask bit, the lead-in really stressed me out (in a good way!) with the projections and that noise like an aeroplane taking off, and the contrast was really strange - in that it almost made sense that karen should suddenly come out with a cow's head on! I didn't get the Bacchus thing (having missed the explanation), maybe it might have occurred to me later, but it didn't really matter. If we all interpreted everything in exactly the same way it would be very boring. I couldn't make out a lot of the words in the readings from the psychology text books, not sure if this is because of sound quality or my deaf ear, but I got the general idea and liked the balance of the different levels of interaction with the projections and the audience. The scale and simplicity of the projections were great, although I was a bit distracted by the green haze, but that's probably just me being anal. Overall, I was really impressed by how much had been achieved and really enjoyed it, I was particularly inspired by how pared down and clear it all seemed. If you guys feel like you don't really know what you're doing, you did a bloody good job of concealing it!

Will fill you guys in on my own work next time... when I've done some

exploding head

i have been trying all day to write my research proposal and so far I have written the following:

Performing Virtual Space
Performativity of non-physical architecture
-journey, domestic space (public/private - window, door etc.), language (text), imagery, culture

But none the less, I do feel like I am getting somewhere. What with the crit and chatting to drawing students about my work, trying to explain my model (the bits of which are stuck on my wall at home) to ed's dad (my new landlord - owner of said wall) and now writing this proposal, I have found it rather necessary recently to be able to talk concisely about my ideas. This has forced me to narrow it down a bit, or at least to identify which bits are the most interesting. I have noticed how my work often goes in cycles, which i have always enjoyed because it means i can keep adding to it, improving it. Anyway, I seem to have come back to this thing about performativity, but in terms of this virtual space rather than real space. So I'm going to frame my research proposal in the same way in September (well similar), i.e. examining the performative impact of virtual space through the zones of language, domesticity etc (as listed above).

I am still battling with this architecture thing, which must be very dull for you all, but am starting to come to some conclusions about that too. I think I have spent far too much time worrying about it being a safety blanket, whilst at the same time feeling rather lost as I didnt feel i had a 'medium' through which to express my ideas. I realise now that although architecture, as a career, is definitely a safety blanket, I always felt like I could take it into more interesting places outside of the confines of that career. So whilst I don't want to restrict myself to just doing architectural stuff, I am not going to avoid it either. This makes me feel much happier, because I was feeling like the performance element of my work was really forced and unnatural, but by taking this approach I think (hope!) it will just happen.

look at me

oooh check me out, posting two days in a row.

spent the afternoon helping lushan with her workshop. whilst i am perfectly happy to do this, i am slightly confused about the what the workshops are really all about. Are they supposed to be a showcase of our individual work or a learning experience for the group? If its the former, then lushan's is very successful, we had a lot of fun rehearsing it with her and i think it will be great when it all comes together tomorrow night. However, I thought that Kirstie's was more what I was expecting, as it gave me an opportunity to learn something myself, whilst also getting to understand more about her project. What a pity Doug wasnt able to attend it.

anyway, this evening i went to the drawing show at Trinity Buoy Wharf with Karen. Was really just interested in one person's work (although it was all great - always love Doris and Mat Cahill's stuff)- Emily Speed, who was in my crit with me . Our work seems to have so much in common it almost seems silly we are not working together. So we are - as of tonight. Hooray. we are putting together a proposal for the centre for drawing (next deadline is in may), so we will hopefully have some time there next term. Doug was keen i did a bit more of this collaborating business, so i am. can't wait. watch this space.

sorry no pics this time.

dickens and dreams

wow what a day. tara arts, tate britain, sleep centre, first night at Richmond Drama School. whew.

always interesting to see how other people work, although tara arts don't really have anything in common with my work. Nonetheless, enjoyed seeing them, liked the chairs! Thanks Doug for organising.

Gothic Nightmares - amazing. Has really got me thinking about fantasy and fairy-tales, the virtual in terms of our imagination not just the internet. This was much closer to what i think of as fairy tale than the LePage thing. Need to read something clever on the subject of fairy-tale, any suggestions welcome!

Sleep centre - fascinating (well done Kirstie and thanks!). Ok so the guy was a bit of a prick, but I learnt something, a few things actually!

Nicholas Nickleby - well what can i say? the design-work was fantastic and the acting was not bad. No, seriously, I was thrilled with how it looked. Working with Kirstie is a dream, we both understand each others ideas completely and it makes the job so much easier and therefore more fun. So many positive comments about set and costume (especially costume, which came together so well) and I loved the way it worked together. Kirstie mentioned ed's painting which we used as the basis for the colour scheme, so i will use that as an excuse to show off his brilliant work (ok so i'm biased, but it is good!):

smile



i am so happy with the way my crit went, i felt like i did my work justice because i planned what to say and present etc., so all the questions/comments etc, were really relevant and helpful. I need to have a big think about it all before i decide on the next step, but i think the crit came at exactly the right time. Apart from everything else, i find the pressure of the crit is great for forcing you to get your thoughts in order about your work.

Things that were discussed:
Possibility of recreating the model as a virtual space
Am I really looking at 'space' (i.e. is this my 'medium') or am i using it as a safety blanket because I find it easy to understand/talk about?
Building models and fantasies as a method of control/empowerment
'Sims' and chatbots
The insularity of working at the hypersurface, is this interaction with the virtual something that can happen in anything other than an intimate environment - i.e. one person and their computer/imagination.
Why I don't perform myself...
Alter-egos, role-play and disguises
fantasy and fairytale - how important is this to my work?
Possibility of making a 'model' of my mind-space, in terms of rooms and furniture - let people in!
Dystopia and Utopia

Am really excited to get on with it now.

two ticks on my list

day one of the get-in was successfully completed. stage is built, table built, costumes sorted, stage painted (first coat), backboards painted, wobbly stage blocks secured... More info about Nicholas Nickleby on previous post

but most excitingly, my little experiment is complete! I have to say I was pretty amazed by the speed at which the whole thing descended into anarchy (helped along by one participant in particular)! Terrifying stuff really since i said they should think of their characters as alter-egos, exploring parts of themselves they normally keep hidden. We had an alcoholic by the end of session 1, a nymphomaniac, a rapist, a man with a midlife crisis (played by a girl in her thirties), and a psychic! I have to say it backed up doug's whole everything is sex and death theory, since they were all either having sex or trying to blow each other up. Anyway, here's some pics:

here goes...

manic week ahead, i have stage 1 of the get-in for the show at richmond this weekend, as well as my own 'experiment' which i am really looking forward to (although i'm kind of nervous as well). At last count i have 5 actors who have definitely said yes and one maybe. Fortunately, with this format, I can afford to be flexible. More about that after the weekend...

Just wanted to give you all the details for the show at richmond which is running 15th - 18th March, with (as always) some fantastic design work by me and kirstie. Its been great fun doing this one (Nicholas Nickleby adapted from the Dickens novel by David Edgar), Kirstie has been indulging her love of victoriana and I have been fiddling with the layout of a traditional theatre space. I hope what we will end up with is a really contemporary look constructed from elements of traditional victorian design. Anyway, hope you will all be able to make it...

model pics update

eek

today was so helpful and but has also left me really confused. I totally agree that i am detaching myself from my work and being a bit of a snob about the people who inhabit this virtual world I have been looking at, but on the other hand, doug's suggestion that i tell steve that i am the 'wandering minstrel' is totally unfeasible (although i understand why the suggestion was made) because I have to keep up a professional relationship with him. On the other hand, what am I doing on this course if I am not going to really invest myself into it fully? And can i do this if i am still doing what is, effectively, my safety option, by working in architecture part-time? I do have to earn a living and there are people depending on me - but is that going to dictate my work forever? am i an artist or a designer? does it matter? AAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!

well my model fell apart on the way home, so i'm not going to fix it, i am going to reconstruct it in a different way... let's just see what happens.

still going!


am feeling really motivated at the moment, which is so great, have been waiting for this to kick in and am so relieved. Have been working on this model - although its not really a model, because its really an end in its own right, rather than a design tool. Not quite sure what it is, but i felt the need to somehow make real the spaces i have been moving through virtually... Also have been thinking about this film i started, and this whole liveness thing, am not quite sure where its going next but its definitely heading somewhere!


I loved the Simon Vincenzi talk, I thought he was fascinating, I wish i could climb inside his head for a day. I think it was that that really kicked off this sudden motivation. hmmmm...

The Andersen Project, on the other hand, i was rather disappointed by. I thought the imagery was a bit crappy, the use of space pretty unexciting and the content not particularly gripping, although it was semi-interesting to learn about hans christian andersen, having been a huge childhood fan. i cannot deny however that LePage's performance was very good indeed. would love to know if i missed the point somehow... Also the subtitles kept missing their cues which was really annoying!

at last...

I am DOING rather than just thinking. A rather tentative beginning, but a beginning none the less and now i feel ready to take on the world! Having spent a few days sketching and pretending that was work, I finally went out this morning with ed to bishops park in fulham and did some filming. I haven't finished yet, but i wanted to see how far we'd get using as a script the print-out of the events in the 'kingdom of the candles' on this forum i mentioned before. So ed very kindly took on the role of my alter-ego - the idea of putting myself in front of the camera was just too much when it came to it - in fact i found it quite interesting as i realised that a lot of ed was invested in the construction of the 'wandering minstrel'. So, as in the forum, he entered the 'kingdom' (park) with relative ease and having failed to attract any attention at the gate house, he went to investigate a side gate. The Bishops Palace in the park is currently undergoing refurbishment, so the only other people around in the grounds were builders, who ignored us completely, so ed wrote a note to the queen (following the 'script') and posted it (well, he threw it over the gate), then he went to sit in a tree and wait for a response. Surprise, surprise, none came...

Next i want to look a bit closer at this idea of alter-ego, but I don't want to make this a piece of self-exploration... anyway will continue to build this 3d map of the kingdom of the candles and might look at some element of costume and see if i can do a bit more filming before i give the camera back on thursday

what a relief to be working at last!

nearly nearly

i am still feeling a little bit frustrated, but i think i have almost broken through it. I have started to construct a language for a kind of online performance, in the forum I mentioned last time. Unfortunately I used so many links that the administrators closed down the thread (conversation) I was 'performing' in. Obviously that made me really popular with the other people using the same thread. But, fortunately, I printed out my performance before that happened (and some of the reactions to it). I even have an online admirer! But I decided to take a break from that forum, partly because I have a life and these things take serious time commitment and partly because they were threatening security checks on all new members after the 1st thread got closed down - i don't want these strange people knowing my true identity!

So now I am starting to bring these experiences into real space and time. First I am trying to construct my own 3d mind-map of the 'kingdom of the candles' and the events that happened there. Second, I am going to reconstruct some of these events in the 'real world'. I am hoping to be able to create something which I can look at as a finished piece quite soon, so that I can move on - I feel I need to do this but i know that the concept is only at an intermediary stage, so i want to get it done a.s.a.p.

Am feeling very refreshed after spending the weekend in Spain with my brother and am keen to get on. Am just a bit annoyed to find so many interesting things on our schedule over the next couple of weeks when I am working, I suppose that was inevitable. I have to be quite restrained, as I now have so many things on the boil, each of which could take up 7 days a week if I let them.

what exactly am i trying to do here?

have been doing lot of soul-searching recently! I think i have been trying to achieve too much and in the process am not really doing much at all. I keep jumping from one idea too another, i get bored really easily. Then I had a big chat with ed and another with a good friend and they both said 'why are you so keen to completely abandon architecture?' and it made me realise that i have been having this big reaction against anything architectural, to the extent that i have pared my work right back to an entirely text-based environment. So I need to re-introduce some kind of real space and act on the reason I like performance - because the body activates the space. I still want to keep working with this idea of real and virtual and constructed identities, but i need to create some kind of hypersurface (an interactive zone between the real and virtual).

I have also realised that I am being... not lazy exactly... but quite unproductive. I am thinking constantly (its driving me mad!) but whilst i am already quite clear about the why and the how, I am still completely clueless about the 'what'. So I have thought about how I work best and decided I need to create some kind of brief for myself with some specific deadlines. Even if it changes loads I need to make a decision now about what my final thing is going to be and what intermediate work I am going to produce.


So my plan of action is as follows:

1. Complete the exercise i have begun - performing in virtual (fantasy) space as my alter ego 'wandering minstrel'
follow link: http://community.channel4.com/groupee/forums/a/tpc/f/4960006333/m/2260043983/p/13
AND work out why i decided (without any forethought) to be a man when I constructed my alter-ego!

2. Roughly plan my final piece (Sept 2007) and schedule of events/deadlines leading up to it

3. Plan first stage piece (July 2006) as a performance in its own right, but also as a stepping stone to next year

4. Build stuff around/in which to create a series of small performances (this term) which will test my ideas for the first stage performance.

5. Plan workshop to help fill the gaps in my knowledge (i.e. directing/acting) as well as further things I do know about

Ed says I am obsessive compulsive because i plan too much... he's probably right, but i'd have a nervous breakdown if i didnt!

embracing my inner nerd

I have really started to immerse myself in this cyber-culture stuff now, but it seems like the more i find out, the less i know! I have joined up to this cyber city game -type thing. It describes itself as follows:



CyberSphere is an RPG MOO set in a dark American future. Your virtual journey begins in New Carthage, the denizens of which range from the benign eccentric to the malicious psychotic. Shadowed alleys conceal dark secrets, and gleaming towers of urban wealth hide fantastic conspiracies.

Past the skeletal buildings of the anarchic New Carthage outskirts, beyond its armoured city wall, a vast Wasteland of post-apocalyptic Hell awaits the truly brave. Its glowing sands crawl with the horrific mutant champions of natural selection, and are stained with the blood of the weak.

Delta-winged shuttles crisscross the scarred planet as reconstruction continues under the control of emergent superpowers in a new world order: megacorporations and crime syndicates. Bangkok harbors shadowy black markets of cybernetic technology, while orbital colonies turn serenely on axes of money, power, and privelage.

As the physical landscape still smoulders from the ravages of global wars and environmental disasters, an alternate reality glows brightly in the worldwide matrix network. Deckers and console jockeys swim the depths of this data sea, knights rendered in chrome on battlefields formed in the cognitive nonspace of a collective consciousness.

The pulse-pounding excitement of our virtual world is but a keystroke away.

NOTE: Cybersphere's creators would like to caution you that its violent realism and graphic nature may not be appropriate for all audiences.

Sounds exciting doesn't it? hmmmm.....

It is completely text based so I am having arguments with myself about the importance of visual media in terms of understanding and imagining space. I also have an aching brain from trying to learn all the text commands so i can actually communicate with people, interact with objects, move through space and (perhaps most importantly) kill people.

New terms I have learnt:
MUD - Multi-User Dungeon (the originally online roleplaying game environment - based on dungeons and dragons)
MOO - MUD - Object Orientated - usually less of a game and more of a community (i think)
IC - in character
OOC - out of character

I am also trying to work out how to apply for membership of an entirely different cyber-community called MediaMOO, which was set up in the nineties at a university in america. The spaces within the MOO relate to the university itself and it acts as a forum for dicussion of media and visual arts. How come all this stuff has been going on so long and yet i have never heard of it before?

On the one hand, am feeling quite technical, on the other hand have spent 5 hours trying to burn a DVD today and am still having trouble.

bits and bobs

Kirstie and Karen presented their research proposals today, so I thought I'd write a bit about them in terms of feedback and for the benefit of those who missed them.

Kirstie is looking at the aesthetics of the image, although it was really much broader than that, but I got the impression she was most interested in the concept of aesthetics, in terms of use of colour and interpretation of the image through colour. I thought it was really interesting when she talked about social perception of colour and psychological effects of it. She has been reading Barthes, amongst others, and I enjoyed the discussion about how we perform ourselves through our choice of clothes and colours. I was a bit confused, to begin with, about how it related to her practical work (insomnia etc.) but she explained that rather than being a method of justifying or triggering her practical work, she will be re-introducing it to her practical work as a kind of technical element. I.e. she will be looking more closely at her own use of colour within her work on insomnia. I really liked her choice of images and wished we had more time to find out more about her thoughts on each one, I know she wanted to put text with them initially, but I don't think it suffered at all by this omission.

Karen's research is about the stilletto. Her presentation was really structured and well performed. She discussed the stilletto as a fetishistic object, referencing Freud (the mother's penis thing), Judith Butler (gender and performativity) and others (OK I should have taken notes), and questioning our understanding of femininity and how the stilletto comes into this. She explained that she will be using the stilletto as a start point in her practical work to trigger as series of investigations into fetishism. The discussion at the end was really interesting and has really set me thinking about images of women in popular culture and how I (as a woman) respond to them.

Overall a fascinating morning, thank you very much

I just want to throw in a few things from my own reading, as I really getting into this virtual theatre thing. I have so many things in my head, I can't put them all down, so will pop in a few annotated images instead:



Paul Sermon's Telematic Dreaming


The projection (onto a bed) is the artist who is watching the performance from another room and can therefore interact with the audience (the person on the bed) creating this surreal contact between the virtual and the real







Masaki Fujihata's Beyond Pages

The book and the door are projections, you can interact with both by using a pen which turns the pages of the book. On the pages are images and text. 'Beyond the pages' are sound and visual effects, you can turn the lamp on and off by touching a light switch with the pen, listen to running water by touching an image of a pond, write on the steamed-up surface of a glass of water and open the door to reveal a small child who laughs and runs away







Interior of Fresh H2O EXPO (Fresh Water Pavilion), 1997, The Netherlands, Nox Architects

"no distinction between horizontal and vertical, between floors, walls and ceilings...the building and the exhibition have fused: a simulated geyser erupts, water splatters, projections fall directly on to the building and its visitors" (Virtual theatres by Gabriella Giannachi)

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Hope you all had a great Christmas and New Year. I spent Christmas with my parents and my little brother, Laurie. It was, as usual, not half as relaxing as it should be. My mum planned a series of vast feasts starting on Christmas Eve and running through until the day after boxing day. She then proceeded to catch the mother of all colds and i had to do all the cooking... I needed a week to recover after all of that. Fortunately, she had a miraculous recovery the day before New Years Eve, so I escaped to London and after a lovely New Years Eve with a few friends in our flat, Ed and I spent the whole of the next week watching films and eating chocolate whilst tucked up under a duvet on the sofa.

I am so glad to have had a break though, I really feel ready to take on the new term now. I had a chance to really get my teeth into my individual project research. I have been reading all about computer arts and the internet as a virtual space for performance. I read 'Internet Art' by Rachel Greene as a kind of introduction and I am about halfway through 'Virtual Theatres' by Gabriella Giannachi, which is fascinating - I would recommend it to anyone. It is all making me think really hard about how I define theatre and what the difference is between theatre and performance art. So far, and this is something that often happens to me, the more I find out about current and recent practice in this field, the longer my list of what I don't like/want to do. I am still struggling to find what I do want to do. I feel like the research is about a finished/end product, whereas I am practically right at the beginning and am feeling a bit nervous about what happens in the middle. I know that I have to just get started and do something... anything really, I just have to start doing. But I always find this bit rather terrifying.

OK, see you all soon