Nunning sketches.

Check out the "related video" links on my YouTube site for these! Ha!

Taking a stab at an answer. Sound.

So, in my last post I mentioned that I do believe that I walked away from this piece being most interested in the sonic dimensions of it. For me, this means that I'll be moving away from the format I used for the Nunnery show–something I was quite sure was going to happen anyway, but wanted to see out while I learned more about technology I need to learn. Right, so that was vague.

Clues about what I'm interested in: the artists I've come across that excite or interest me, they're all from music backgrounds!

Overall performance and fluid use of technology without getting stuck behind it:

• Laurie Anderson
  Looking at retrospective texts of her work, she has dipped her fingers into all sorts of interesting areas. I'll post a more thorough bit about particular pieces that interest me when I've read, listened, watched more.
  
• Pamela Z (thanks Lucy!)
  Looked at this video and went "yeah, that's essentially what I want to do!" Of course, I don't have a body synth or operatic training; and I want to consider the performance space more than projections, equipment, me. But really, amazingly inspirational stuff and very closely aligned to my interests.
  

Others:
- Meredith Monk (I like the fact that she started as a dancer)
- Christian Wolz (came across him when looking at descriptions of the Giving Voice festival at Center for Performance Research the end of the month)
- the "gibberish" muses from my goth past: Lisa Gerrard (Dead Can Dance) and Liz Fraser (Cocteau Twins)

Initial thoughts on Nunning.

Learned a bunch from the Nunnery show. The overarching impression I've walked away from my piece with is that I've thrown open too many doors and have to figure out which ones are the ones I'm interested in moving forward with. I may or may not get around to organizing them into themes before I post this. Just want to get things down while they're still quite fresh.


So what is the piece about? Let's start with what seems to be there based on observations and audience feedback:

• pretty singing
• minimal, often unconfident live performance
• slippage between live and recorded image. What is actually happening live and what is pre-recorded? (I even saw one woman taking the headphones off in the middle of watching it, which was fantastic)
• immersion of viewer through soundtrack
• alienation of viewer through trapping them in a corner behind a camera and forcing them to watch complicated video piece on a small screen
• a layered piece that was read on different levels by different people
• a vague sense that there was "alot there" but no one at the actual performance who could put a finger on it
• from feedback pre-performance "extremely rich" area to explore. Yes, I'm finding it overwhelmingly rich!
• putting the audience in my shoes behind the camera
• confusing the role of the viewer to those around them who think that the person behind the camera is actually filming. As a result, preventing many possible viewers from approaching the camera and watching the piece.

What I wanted it to be about, or things that I put in there on purpose:

• embodiment in space of both viewer and performer
• performer highlights interesting aspects of space through movement and vocalization
• video reinforces these
• performer ultimately becomes integrated into the different sensory layers of the space
• viewer becomes embodied simultaneously through immersion and alienation. When they walk away from the piece, they have a heightened awareness of the space.
• 3 phases to video that shifted mood, but also shifted weight of foreground/background between the video and the physical space
• mirroring 3 phases live

What seems to be ideal viewing moment for this piece?

• when the place has some people milling around, or walking from place to place
• when I appear live in the space as well, especially when singing. even if the singing isn't the same tune as the video piece.

If I did piece like this again, conditions I would insist upon:

• layered space: a place where there are people walking through, different points of entry and exit. I tried the piece in 5 different locations, both at WCA and at the Nunnery. The most interesting ones had people in different planes from the viewer walking through the frame. The 2 locations that were enclosed rooms were pretty boring.
• 2-3 days in the space before the performance to rehearse and plot out performance sound and movement. The performance side of things continued to be weak for the whole weekend. My performance skills are at a point where I still need to have a clear plan in place ahead of time. I can't wing it and hope for the best, even if I love improv. Sticking to a path and controlled movement on Sunday made me feel like I was starting to get there, and allowed me to find a good pitch to my performance over time. I was hoping that having all this time would do exactly that. However, in the future, I need to have this time BEFORE the actual performance!
• 2-3 full days of shooting with rough edits performed each evening or on the fly. Although I felt good about the work I did in the Nunnery. I ended up limiting my possibilities by only taking half a day there. Things that I thought would work together when reviewing the tape in the space ended up not working together at all. Editing is so easy with final cut these days!

But what exactly is the main point of interest or focal point of the piece?

• is it about the space?
• is it about the performer? in the foreground or the background?
• the viewer? alienated or immersed?
• the articulation of space through movement? sound? alienation? interruption? integration?
• my embodiment as a performer within my body? surroundings? in relation to the technology? the viewer?

Other things I felt or heard repeatedly:

• When I think back on this weekend, I feel like I'm playing a conceptual tennis match. Except no one's keeping score.
• live performance was chaos until Sunday. On Sunday, I had time to find something to do with myself that seemed to hold things together more. I created a walk for myself around the gallery walking backwards and forwards as if I were another person just looking at the art. However, once in a while I would stop and study something that wasn't the art, or start singing. If someone blocked my path, I reversed direction.It was interesting and seemed to make the piece hold together better.
• the whole piece "worked" on Sunday, but what do I mean by that?
• at what point do I give up and get someone who is a trained performer to do it for me? This question makes me really angry. I feel like there is some assumption that if you're not really good, you shouldn't put yourself in your work. How will I learn if I'm not in the work? And yet ultimately, when does my lack of performance skill get in the way of me communicating what I want to with the piece? I can't answer this right now. Still narrowing down what the piece is about?
• is it really important that people sit behind a camera? What would be other ways of doing this?
• soundtrack was fab.
• I realized that I was most interested in the sonic dimension of the space.
• I am also most interested in exploring the sonic dimension of video. I think. The one piece of this I can clarify right now is that I think the true power of video rests in its marriage of both sound and image.
• most people wanted to sit with the piece longer than one cycle. This is good. However, the underlying criticism of this is that I should have made the piece longer, chosen maybe 1 mood, or made each section longer.
• The discussion on Saturday kept coming back to the idea of audience expectations. This was most interesting because it made me think about all the unexpected, or extraneous things that audience members might focus on with my piece. For example, the whole thing about people spending ages in the space and not touching my piece because they didn't really it was a piece and the signifiers for a camera on a tripod are not to approach. This throws a whole new debate about my piece out there. And I need to be careful about such things because it can detract from what I am more interested in communicating with people.
• The other thing that comes to mind about being trapped behind the camera is that one of the interesting things about Janet Cardiff's video walks was that even though the viewer is behind the camera, their bodies are in motion, which seems like a freer way of experiencing the piece and perhaps enhances the viewer's embodiment of the piece. (I do believe Harriet made some comment along these lines when she viewed my test piece!)
  
• The piece was TOO hidden. I didn't want the performance to be in your face. But I wanted people to be aware of it. People were aware of my presence more than they were of the video. Sadly, my presence was nowhere near as interesting as the video.
• Do I need to be in the space to make the piece "work"? Are people walking away with what I intended when my presence in real time isn't there?
• Do I need to control when the viewers encounter me in the physical space?
• Is it interesting to have it unravel completely differently for every viewer?

Nunning.

Hi Blog! How are you? I have been neglecting you.
There have been things that I felt the urge to post, but wanted to elaborate on. I regret that this has led to nothing being posted in a month?! Good grief.

And now my performance at the Nunnery is imminent. I'm really curious to see how it goes. It's been very interested to be present during the curation of the show. I tried to throw in my two cents here and there, but of course I know nothing about these matters. Overall, I feel like my presence over the last couple of days was appreciated and there's been a great, casual collaboration amongst us as we run our thoughts and ideas past each other. I think it's also been invaluable to just be in the space so that I'm not walking in tomorrow night only having spent a couple of hours in there previously.

I'm terribly nervous about the private view tomorrow night. My main fear is that the whole place will become hushed when I start singing. Now that I'm typing it, I can see how it might actually be incredibly bizarre and powerful. But the assumption that I have about my audience is that they're expecting a Performance, a prepared song, something worth shutting up and listening to. I'd rather they just kept on talking. I like the disjunction that my piece is creating with this weird, out-of-time thing people and the space are just doing their thing in the present tense around it.

Other than that, I think it's going to be a fantastic experience and exhausting and that by Sunday I'll have a rhythm to it. I'm happy with the video, with the voiced and unspoken reactions my "test audience" has been having to it. Wish the private view was Sunday...must go in tomorrow early and just try some things out and continue to get to know the space.

I really want this to go well.

The Emancipated Spectator

Just finished reading the article "The Emancipated Spectator" by Jacques Rancière and wanted to recommend it to my fellow VLPers who don't have Amanda as your reading group tutor. A copy of it is in the folder in the studio.

It's an interesting walk through different ways of interpreting knowledge and ignorance , and roles that 'distance' can play in our understanding. All this with theatre as the framework that he uses to argue his points.

Take this nugget that is the call out on the last page of the article:

Theater should question its privileging of living presence and bring the stage back to a level of equality with the telling of a story or the writing and the reading of a book. It should call for spectators who are active interpreters, who render their own translation, who appropriate the story for themselves and who ultimately make their own story out of it. An emancipated community is in fact a community of storytellers and translators.

Looking forward to the discussion tomorrow. All sorts of thoughts bubbling through my head.

Loopy Logic

Doug sets up a scenario in a program called Isadora for the Group Show "family" portrait studio and says that it's a great program for live video manipulation, etc.
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I start researching Isadora and other object oriented programming
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My brain hurts, so I start researching artists
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I find out that Laurie Anderson worked with a video artist called Mark Coniglio on her current project (which I am seeing April 30! wee!)
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I think "hm, Mark Conigilio, that sounds familiar."
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Mark Coniglio wrote Isadora (see above)

Enough of this annoying format:
Conigilio is also one of the artistic directors of a multimedia/dance company called Troika Ranch. Their most recent piece is called "Loop Diver." I want to read the blog they have about it in more detail, but I have an initial reaction to some videos they've posted on YouTube. It seems like in their video BKLYN and in devising the choreography in Loop Diver, they are using the technology to drive what the human bodies are doing. In descriptions of other works on their website, the have developed tools that trigger sound, video and graphical images that respond to the shape and movement quality of the dancers, but aren't necessarily of the dancers. Particularly sound seems to be some pre-recorded composition that isn't based on the sounds coming from the performers.

Contrast to some of my interests:
- the body of the performer triggers the sound and video
- that sound and video content is the performers' body (movement, sound, speech), not just triggered by it.

here are some of Troika Ranch's video sketches (I also like the fact that they're posting sketches of their process):






This last one is a bit bausea inducing as it goes along and not recommended if you are seizure prone. Otherwise, very interesting experiment and the first bit before it gets all manic is so beautiful.

The Creative Habit

Amongst other things, I have picked up Twyla Tharp's book the Creative Habit. I am enjoying parts of it and appreciate that Tharp gives you some exercises and examples that have helped her in her own life that sound very prescriptive, but is careful to reiterate throughout that these are simply suggestions and that we all have our own way of working most effectively. That said, when I came to this questionnaire (below) in a section about our "creative DNA", I started to feel like a failure and a fraud because I couldn't think of clear answers for many of the questions. I have never had a singular or clear vision about the path my life would take. Add to this a general reluctance to follow prescribed exercises like this, and there was no question that I had to try and answer this questionnaire.

Here it is. I will post responses in another post to follow. Would love to see what you all think about it and if you end up taking it, if found it at all interesting or useful.

*******
Take the following questionnaire. If even one answer tells you something new about yourself, you're one step closer to understanding your creative DNA. There are no right answers here. The exercise is intended for your eyes only, which means no cheating, no answers to impress other people. It's supposed to be an honest self-appraiseal of what matters to you. Anything less is a distortion. I include it here and urge you to answer quickly, instinctively. Don't dawdle.

Your Creative Autobiography

1. What is the first creative moment you remember?
2. Was anyone there to witness or appreciate it?
3. What is the best idea you ever had?
4. What made it great in your mind?
5. What is the dumbest idea?
6. What made it stupid?
7. Can you connect the dots that led you to this idea?
8. What is your creative ambition?
9. What are the obstacles to this ambition?
10. What are the vital steps to achieving this ambition?
11. How do you begin your day?
12. What are your habits? What patterns do you repeat?
13. Describe your first successful creative act.
14. Describe your second successful creative act.
15. Compare them.
16. What are your attitudes toward: money, power, praise, rivals, work, play?
17. Which artists do you admire most?
18. Why are they your role models?
19. What do you and your role models have in common?
20. Does anyone in your life regularly inspire you?
21. Who is your muse?
22. Define muse.
23. When confronted with superior intelligence or talent, how do you respond?
24. When faced with stupidity, hostility, intransigence, laziness, or indifference in others, how do you respond?
25. When faced with the impending success or the threat of failure, how do you respond?
26. When you work, do you love the process or the result?
27. At what point do you feel your reach exceeds your grasp?
28. What is your ideal creative activity?
29. What is your greatest fear?
30. What is the likelihood of either of the answers to the previous two questions happening?
31. Which of your answers would you most like to change?
32. What is your idea of mastery?
33. What is your greatest dream?