Through exploration in class, we learnt what was meant by space, boundaries and thresholds. It got me thinking of what we actually mean by the term space. I never truly thought about the spaces we can identity in life, for example-dream space, the sub conscious space of our dreams, real-space-the here and now, the I-space- we are constantly learning about ourselves and things around us. But, the space that stood out for me was a transient space, whether that is a hotel, airports, train stations or even a shop. People are constantly passing in and out throughout time, with no one staying, making their mark on history and leaving the memories behind them as they pass through it.

As we are performing in a disused shop, we also need to work out how the audience move around and explore the space as ‘emptiness is an illusionary category and performance may have to work had to assert itself’ (Pearson, 2013, 156). It just reminds me of the time lapse videos you get of people just walking and going through the motions of day to day life, what if we actually stopped and truly appreciated the space we are in and as a group we should explore more that ‘there is inside and outside, with thresholds to be crossed and contracts to be made’ (Pearson, 2010, 158). The entrance to the shop brought us a new meaning as entering a threshold into a potentially new world and it will be interesting to explore this further when we see our site on Monday.

Through exploring the concept of Nowhere as being  Now here it brings me to think about the shops within Grantham,  we may be in the middle of no where familiar but we are here in the now, so our performance will be appropriate to the here and now of the time such as Gravity Fields itself. But what is place and space… Martin Heidegger refers to it as ” space is a nowhere concept, place is something we have constructed from space to mean something”

Developing on our previous ideas as a group the idea of using mirrors in a way to explore the boundaries of performance and site specific itself has developed more in a sense that we have researched different tricks or lets say illusions that can be used to create the idea of anti-gravity  and also how projecting on to the mirror surfaces would allow us to explore the boundaries of performance such as performing on the ceiling. the idea of core vs core is also a good way to explore these boundaries.  over the next week I shall be exploring different ways to progress from just projection, and to find ways into the technology needed to create our illusions of  defying gravity.

So our group has begun work on the idea of Alchemy. Alchemy was something that Newton looked into while he was alive. It is quite simply at it’s heart the search for the philosophers stone, the development of the elixir of life and the attempt to create gold from base metals.
My group was having some difficult times attempting to try and find any form of performance that would have worked in this field of information as it felt like everything we researched just took us back to the idea of making a science class in a shop. Something that would be both un-interesting for an audience, but also un-interesting for us as performers.
Myself and Sarah got together one night to take some pictures using some of the imagery from the more wiccan style of alchemy to get a better grasp on a form of aesthetic so we could continue with. This very simply took the form of fire-lit Gothic make-up with black hairspray, black clothes and a bit of Photoshop to add more Alchemy tables.
Whether or not we continue this kind of aesthetic is unknown to us, but it did help to make our group feel more comfortable with creating something theatrical out of the simple title ‘Alchemy’

So it’s been a while since I actually wrote a blog, and I’ve never done one worth noting, so here’s my best academic attempt.

To begin with I shall examine what exactly is site specific? Patrice Pavis proposed in 1998 that a play-as-event belongs to the space. The observations relate specificall to practices origionating in theatre. He resists distinguishing common features, focusing upon process rather than object. Fiona Wilke on the other hand argues that the performance is a reaction against the site, instead of being comfortable merging with the resonances of the site. Essentially she is saying instead of peforming something  fitting with the setting (a religious play in a church) one should consider performing something contrasting (sci-fi in a church).

Taking this into consideration, the retail setting no longer seems so daunting. Intergrating ideas relating to science, specifically physics, into a performance becomes easier to comprehend once an understanding of site is achieved. Therefor, the group have collectivly colaberated to establish aims and objectives of the piece.

The key concept is Newtons law, specifically gravity, which leads to the idea of core vs core, refering to the core of the earth i.e. gravity, and ones personal core aka core strength. It is suitable to recognise this project as an opportunity to stretch the transferability of performance into other industries, creating a fluidity; a clean transition , crossing the boundaries or limitations separating Performance and Science through interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary means; that is to suggest an integration of knowledge and methods from different disciplines by means of a pre-conceived synthesis approach or indeed individuals  of differing disciplines drawing on their disciplinary knowledge forming into a pseudo-amalgamation of vision or perhaps of a development of a ‘bank of knowledge’.

As a group we have managed to develop many ideas, born from the simple concept of breaking the rules of gravity. Initial thoughts and ideas consisted predominantly of creating a room on the walls/ceiling of the shopping unit walls, exercising our bodies and pushing them to limits that will alter the reality of gravity e.g. sitting on a chair that is attached to the wall. Of course, we have to respect the space that we are occupying – whilst it would be very entertaining and visually stimulating, the incurred potential for damage is something that will need further exploration to ensure that we avoid breaking our space.

We have considered the numerous ways in which we can create the illusion of an alteration to the gravitational direction within the space, e.g. applying mirrored paper to the walls. By doing so, we can stretch the limits of the space – visually tricking the audience into believing there is more performance and action throughout the space. One of the foundations for our concept has been constructed on the idea of limits; something that site-specific tests in a lot of it’s practice. We want to test the limits of not just the space, but our concept and our physical bodies; we can achieve this through the application of Pilates exercise to test and strengthen our core strength against the core power of gravity.

“ of site- specific theatre there is a “tendency to treat site –specific theatre work as a means of moving away from the strict codes of the traditional theatre and encouraging creative freedom” ( Wilkie, 2002, p.249)

Our concept allows for much exploration and trial/error practice our aim follows thus:

– It is suitable to recognise this project as an opportunity to stretch the transferability of performance into other industries, creating a fluidity; a clean transition , crossing the boundaries or limitations separating Performance and Science through interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary means; that is to suggest an integration of knowledge and methods from different disciplines by means of a pre-conceived synthesis approach or indeed individuals  of differing disciplines drawing on their disciplinary knowledge forming into a pseudo-amalgamation of vision or perhaps of a development of a ‘bank of knowledge’.

This marks the initial construction of our ideas, and following our experimental approach to this performance we may find there are more ideas applicable and some that may fail.