In his book titled Performance: a critical introduction, Marvin Carlson states how some performance practitioners / artists:
do not base their work upon characters previously created by other artists, but upon their own bodies, their own autobiographies, their own specific experiences in a culture or in the world, made performative by their consciousness of them and the process of displaying them for audiences (2004, p. 5).
This quotation is relevant to us as performers within our multimedia performance for as well as creating certain elements which affect the mood of audience members; we are also looking at the cause and effect of mood on our own bodies.
Some members of the group have already used their own body’s in personal experiment’s which resulted in them seeing how long they could physically go for without eating. This had a massive effect on their initial mood over the days carried out. One of our ideas for our final performance was to have a station that was aimed at the body. Within this section we would have the comments from Abbie and Alex (the people who took part in the no eating exercise) projected on the wall, allowing the audience to read how the deterioration of their mood developed until it got to the point where their bodies couldn’t with stand it any longer and the need to eat became to substantial. We were also thinking of posting pictures of each of them on the starting day with a contrasting picture of them on their final day. This would be so that audience members could see any physically changes that may have affected them over the period of time.
The reason for using two participants for this exercise was to see if there were any differences with the effects of no eating. This is because no two people are the same and they may struggle / cope with certain aspects in very different ways.
It was apparent that this exercise had a noticeable effect on each of the individuals, both physically and mentally.
Work cited : Carlson, Marvin (2004) Performance: A critical introduction, London: Routledge.