Experiential

‘Experiential’ Our Installation Exhibition.

Posted on May 17, 2013 by Rosie Owens

On the 16th of May our installation showcase was held at the LSPA theatre from 1-5pm. The studio was set out into six sections:

Section 1: ‘Colour Explosion’ – this section was home to two separate canvas’. The first canvas which the participants could pop paint balloons positioned on canvas using a pinned probe and the second was placed on a table which the audience were invited to use the paints and materials provided to created their own work.

Section 2: ‘Sensory Deprivation’ – this area contained a set of headphones and a blindfold. The participant was tied up so that they could only free themselves if asked. The idea was to have the trust from the participant which allowed us to take over there senses, but only if they approached the area and sat down. The participant was then played music from an mp3 player and then a track was chosen for them to listen to. It was interesting to watch the participant as they sat and listened while other noise of balloons popping and crockery was smashing around them.

Section 3: ‘Lose it’ – This area allowed the audience to smash crockery at a target. The aim was to see if the participants used the crockery to unleash there emotion and see how they felt afterwards.

Section 4: ‘Say Something Nice’ an area which exhibitioned photographs of everyone in the group, either of themselves or with friends. This was a chance for people to say something nice and hopefully make them feel better about doing it.

Section 5: ‘Projection’ – The projection showed good and bad images juxtaposed together and played on a continuous loop. The audience was provided with seating in which they could sit and view the images. This would be an interesting contrast to the music being played along side it and whether the images would be seen in a different mood.

Section 6: ‘Express Yourself’ – this area supplied a corner with several beanbags in which the audience could sit down and relax while they listened to the music or even discuss with other audience members about their experience of the installation.

Our objective was to experiment with objects and technologies and see how this was created by the participants, in the chapter Theatre of Images talks about experimenting: “Theatre has always experimented with new technologies in performance and explored the nature and creative potential of the interaction of the live and the mediated” (Klich, Sheer 2012, p., 13).

Works Cited:

Klich, R and Scheer, (2012) Multimedia Performance, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan

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Experiential Installation

Posted on May 16, 2013 by Samantha Woodhouse

On the 16th of May, we held our Installation piece from 1-5pm in the LPAC auditorium. This piece entirely focussed on the audiences mood and each section was designed to affect their moods, whether it was, expressing, releasing, forced upon or manipulation.

After much discussion and justification, we decided it would be beneficial if we did not perform in our installation piece after all. This is because if the audience members had all six of our group members in the five sections, we thought we might influence their participation. We thought back to experiment of our trip to town when we asked people to ‘say something nice’ and they couldn’t think of anything on the spot, or felt embarrassed in front of us. Therefore, we thought we would let the audience members do all the participating their selves without any influence and pressure from us.

Throughout the installation, we ensured that at least one member of our group was in the performance at all times. This was to not only to make sure everything was running okay, e.g. enough crockery and balloons were set out, sensory derive audience members with blind folds and headphones, but to also experience for ourselves how the audience members reacted to our sections within our piece. Seeing each audience member experience totally different things and genuinely see their mood change was a very important aspect of our piece.

Firstly, we set up all of our five locations in the auditorium and made sure everything was in order. We then set up all of our technical elements and ran some aspects that need to happen in our performance, including blackouts, and the projection starting from the beginning at the same time. We also tested the plate smashing location for the health and safety of our audience members.

The first section was the paint section called ‘Colour Explosion’, this is where two canvases were set out for the audience to pop balloon or either paint on the blank canvas, for us to see how this would affect their mood. This idea was influenced by Franko B’s performance I miss you and Yves Klein Blue. Both of these performances used their bodies and expressed their bodies through paint in order to see how this would affect people in different ways. We originally were going to paint our bodies within this part of the exhibition but wanted the audience to express themselves without any direction.

The balloon and painting canvas was a huge success and audience members kept going back to pop or paint more throughout their visit. The twitter feed expressed some very interesting things about their painting and balloon popping experience. One audience member said ‘they could paint on here all day’ as it made them feel better. As I was relaxing in the Express Yourself section, I heard people laughing and saying how much they loved popping the balloons. This was very reassuring to see their mood change in front of my eyes.

This section was called Say Something Nice, which was obviously influenced by Improv Everywhere’s piece of the same name. We was influenced strictly on the friendly nature and the meaning of this piece and we thought that this would definitely affect someone’s mood as they would feel better that they have said something nice. We asked the audience to walk around the space and if they wanted to say something nice about the pictures we had displayed or if they wanted to write on the floor something nice for the audience to see then they could. This exercise was to make the audience feel good about them after they have said something nice to other members of public or our group members.

This section was also influenced by Franko B as we focussed this section on body originally but instead of using our actual bodies we used pictures of our bodies instead.

This section finished off with numerous comments upon each picture, quotes written on the floor and also people drew picture of rainbows and flower on the floor. Even though this wasn’t asked of the audience, it was very nice to see that the audience members used their own imagination of how to express what mood they are in. After reading the comments people left for us on the pictures, also changed my mood, as instead of picking out the negative things about our bodies what we personally don’t like about ourselves, reading nice things about our bodies make us feel better about ourselves.

A member of the audience came up to me and they said, when they were in the ‘say something nice’ section, she was writing on all of the photo’s that she will miss us and started off doing it very happily, until the music then changed into a sad slow piece, which made her feel upset towards her seeing us leave.

This section is called Express Yourself where the audiences was invited to sit/lay down on the beanbags provided and listen to the music we played for them and relax. This was influenced by all of our group’s enthusiasm towards music and how we all use it to change our mood on a day-to-day basis. We thought that this section would allow the audience to escape from their own personal lives and find a minute to think about their selves and listen to the music and how it helps to change the way you feel, even if your sad, stressed, angry, calm, happy, tired.

This section finished off more successful than what it first started as, due to it becoming busier towards the end so more people was using it to laugh, joke and talk about the music that was being played and how it made them feel. Also people was talking about the memories they had from the songs as it goes to show you, even if the actual song tempo, lyrics don’t change your mood, the memories you had with song will make you feel emotion which will change your mood.

This section was called Sensory Deprivation. This is where the audience member was tied up and blindfolded on a chair, with music played through the headphones that were available for them. This exercise was based on how removing the senses and listening purely to the songs that was played to them affected their mood.

Within our performance I left one audience member for five minutes tied up in the chair and gave her one of my favourite songs to listen to called Chocolate by The 1985. This song makes me feel much happier as it’s an uplifting but tranquilising beat to it. As I untied the woman in the chair, she stated that she could’ve sat there for ages as she felt so relaxed. I am surprised by her response as I personally didn’t think she would like that type of music due to the age difference. It goes to show you that the music can have a same affect on someone that you lest expected it from.

The last part of our installation was called Loose It. This section was simply an X labelled on the floor where the audience members were asked if they wanted to smash a piece of crockery on the floor. This was designed for the audience members to release some anger or tension to make them feel better.

Some audience members seemed very on edge about the whole smashing plate effect and jumping with the sound of it; whereas I witnessed most audience members enjoy smashing the crockery and releasing some tension. I saw one audience member smashed five pieces of crockery straight after each other with a huge smile across her face. This part of the piece was the most interesting for me personally as you could see the audience members feeling very unsure about the whole idea before hand and then as soon as they smashed the plate you could see how satisfying it was for them. Unfortunately, this section had to be cancelled after the first hour due to technical problems, as the crockery was damaging the auditorium. We all still got to see what we wanted from this section though, so I am not completely disheartened that it didn’t go on for the whole duration.

Overall, I am very happy with how successful the installation was and I believe it ended up with a better outcome than what I first expected, due to it being 100% audience participation I was worried that we was not going to get as many audience member than what turned up. All the audience was fantastic and did entirely what we hoped for. They also all remembered to tweet their experience and how they felt. The paint canvases are now going to be displayed in the LPAC cafe for other people to see.

If we were going to further our cause and affect experiment I would love to go out to other communities and see the different outcomes we would get. This experiment was mainly only drama students, so it would be extremely interesting to see how the outcome would differ in the centre of Lincoln town or designed for specific communities e.g. religion, homeless people, hospitals etc. It would be exciting to see how their painting canvas would turn out like and what specific words and pictures they would incorporate.

Anthony Howell talks about a performance that took place in Kentish town in 1975 called The Street:

‘Everybody on the street, which was a sort of mixture of working-class and middle-class people, externalised their sitting rooms and put them out on the pavement. But it was all conceptual. It involved participation in concepts which we found that people of all walks of life immediately related to and enjoyed without feeling patronised.’ (1998, p.131)

He states that people would participate in the streets as they won’t feel patronised and they can relate to it and enjoy it, this could be maybe somewhere we could do our next piece of work, if we ever get the opportunity to do so.

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My Reflections on ‘Experiential’

Posted on May 16, 2013 by Demi Morrison

Experiential – that was our performance. An experience. Not only for the audience members but for me as well. I will always remember what happened in the LPAC Stage on the 16th May between 1 and 5. The performance was much more successful than any of us thought it would be, I believe – more in the turn out of audience we had.

The Colour Explosion section was a resounding success and since having the audience pop the balloons, we have been asked if the LPAC would be able to keep the canvas to hang for further students to look at. I had friends, tutors, fellow students come up to me during the installation and talk to me about how they were feeling. I was relaxing in the Express Yourself section when one of my closest friends came up and joined me. All of sudden, a certain song came on and she turned to me, saying “I feel like I should go paint something with this song on”, and so I said to her “Why don’t you?”. It was very pleasing for me to see all the audience respond in different ways to each section.

My favorite section was Lose It, however unfortunately, due to the preservation of the stage floor, we had to stop that mini experiment just over an hour into the piece. Yet this was the most popular of all the sections to begin with. It was pleasant to see people scared to break something and then all of a sudden they came out of their ‘shells’ and began acting in a way that is seen to be acceptable in a performance frame work.

If I could re-do the performance I would change small things, like the projection, which was showing good and bad images throughout the four hours on loop. After receiving feedback from audience/spectators/participants it was evident that a majority of people did not want to see some of the bad images. Therefore, in order not influence the audiences mood before taking part in the experiment too much, in future I would not have the projection showing, but instead just have the music to create the atmosphere.

If I was to take the performance further, firstly I would look into creating a gallery piece where other audience members could explore the space, being shown how people reacted and being shown the tweets about how it changed their mood. From there I would experiment with each section on it’s own. Especially the section we name ‘Say Something Nice’. I would focus on this section because, during our rehearsal process this is what people struggled with the most.

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Audience participation and interpretation

Posted on May 15, 2013 by Rosie Owens

It was important within our thought process to consider the participants and let them interpret the objects in the performance space. It is important not for us to spectate how the participant should partake in the areas because the effect will not be true. Our aim is to see how our participants mood reflects the way in which they behave in the areas and hopefully it allows them to express themselves more freely given the opportunity to. In the book Multimedia Performance by Rosemary Klich and Edward Sheer talk about Immersion in performance:

“The perception that immersion in theatre involves ‘losing’ oneself in the drama, that is, an understanding of immersion as a purely cognitive faculty, is limited as it disregards the potential for a sensory, corporeal experience such as that which spectator might have in ritual or contemporary performance art or perhaps even in post-dramatic theatre” (2012, p., 128).

Are aim is to get the audience involve themselves with the materials in the space and see how they react in relation to their mood and ‘losing’ themselves within the space.

The idea about ‘community’ in our research is important. It is about coming together and being in one place at the same time. A community is built up of loved ones, family and friendships. How does the way we feel determine the way in which we function with our community? Are we happy? Angry? Frustrated? Are we shy? Confident? All these behaviours contribute to the functioning of a community and how we respond around others and the things around us too. We hope that our participants work to create a positive outcome and an interesting end product using the materials around them.

Works Cited:

Klich, R and Scheer, (2012) Multimedia Performance, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan

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The Performance

Posted on May 15, 2013 by Demi Morrison

Ultimately, in a group of six people, it can be quite difficult for everybody to settle on the same idea, same experiment and the same wants for the outcome of a performance. Luckily, after lots of discussions, we managed to come to a performance idea that we were all happy with.

The performance ended up being an installation piece, where the audience were invited to take part in activities. We had five different sections in the end result, and these were:

1. Colour Explosion

Here we invited the audience to partake in popping paint balloons onto a canvas and then also painting on a separate canvas, depending on their mood. This section was originally created to help create the atmosphere of childish behaviour.

2. Sensory Deprivation

Here we invited the audience to sit down and place headphones on, and we (acting as audience members and performers) then were given the chance to blindfold the participant, and tie them to a chair – so that they couldn’t hear, move or see anything going on. This was to see if the audience would trust us explicitly with themselves and how their mood would alter.

3. Lose It

Here we invited the audience to smash crockery onto a target on the floor. The section was created to help release and anger or stress from the audience and allow them to feel like they were free to do what they liked.

4. Say Something Nice

Here we invited the audience to walk around the space looking at pictures of ourselves (hung from the ceiling) where we had said nice things about each other. This was influenced by Improv’s piece entitled Say Something Nice. This section was to encourage the audience to say something nice about our pictures or even to walk away from the performance with the intention of saying something nice to the next person they see.

5. Express Yourself.

Here we invited the audience to sit down, relax, listen to the music playing and see how it affected their mood. There were beanbags on the floor for the audience to sit on and the music continued to change throughout the performance – ranging from sad to happy to angry. This was to allow the audience a break from reality in a sense and to just experience the music and watch all the other audience members taking part.

This was the end result of our performance and personally, I believe that together they worked on a whole to create a range of affects on the participants mood and this was then logged on our twitter account.

I would also like to point out that invitation is one of the most important aspects of our performance. We did not want the audience to feel like they were told what to do, and so we invited them to do what they felt. What they think they should do.