Knowing that we want to do an instillation piece for our shop, being given the task of a weekly performance seemed initially quite difficult for our group.

Nevertheless, we persevered and developed a piece around the concept of a brain implantation designed  to recreate and replace damaged brain cells. Thinking more about how our “company” could benefit humanity we decided to work around the idea of Alzheimer’s Disease  and focus on the positive effects of ‘medical upgrades’. Obviously this involved a lot of research around alzheimers including the affected areas of the brain, current treatment options and the way in which our product could theoretically treat the disease. Based on the reviews and comments from our peers, this piece was well received and I’ll focus this blog entry on some of the comments and advice given (warning, this could be long).

• The main point was that Alzheimer’s Disease is often (though not exclusively) seen in older people. Being only around 20 ourselves the notion of us having severe Alzheimer’s  was unrealistic and we were encouraged to think of more age appropriate conditions.
• My own ‘overly happy’ persona was met with positive criticism, some saying that it gave the piece a creepy feel seeing as the situation was quite serious.
• It seemed a good idea to the class that we included a lot of research regarding the disease and the possible practical functions of the implant. It made the scene look more realistic despite futuristic undertones.
• Some suggested that we follow a more ‘vain’ route, focusing our products on things such as eye colour, age reduction skin creams and vocal enhancements (all ideas we had concocted previously but not fully explored).
• Some claimed that the idea of testing products reminded them of animal testing and made them question our morals and intentions. I feel we need to make the suggestion of vanity vs. medical aid clearer in future performances.
• It was pointed out that the audience participation was a good idea (we treated the piece as a tour of our labs) but this was lost slightly as we were only in one room.

Overall the 5 minute piece worked well, particularly with some media work, but most of our peers requested a more realistic approach and a further look into our ideas for vanity enhancements.

So progress in the creative process so far. We’ve pitched our idea and have started experimenting with performance, last week we put together a five minute performance reenacting the tale of an apple falling and hitting Issac Newton. This short piece of drama looked into the historical connotations behind apples. In this short extract we were able to inject comedy into the performance making the piece engaging for all age ranges whilst remaining as historically accurate. This week we are broadening into even more entertaining ways to educate our audience and make full use of 101 apples. Our performance this week is an apple circus. incorporating juggling with apples, a apple joke telling clown, mime artist and carnival games involving apples. We have come up with the idea to have several` performances as a sort of flashmob amongst other more static uses of the apples, these performance based flashmobs will consist of the historical, the entertaining and the scientific. As next week we plan to demonstrate actual science using apples.

For this site specific performance to be successful it has to be varied, I see it as a talent/variety show with apples instead of contestants. All of us involved in this project are currently in the process of experimenting. So coming up with ideas, rehearsing them, getting feedback. This process will allow us to collect the most interesting and polished 101 things to do with an apple.

Other important updates… As a group we are now called The A Team!! (No copyright intended)

In our performance we want to take the audience on a journey. This journey is going to be personal and differ for each audience member. Initially, it may be slightly unsettling for the audience as a shop is quite an unlikely place to see a performance. This is why it will be important to grab the audience’s attention and make it eye-catching for families. Originally, there was an idea for all the audience members to have headphones as soon as they enter the shop, which will guide them around the space. But then it was decided that there should be more an emphasis of independence and self discovery of audience members so different types of music will be playing in different areas of the space.

For one of the parts of the piece, the intended aim is to use a microphone and through this project sound wave onto the wall, to show the audience how sound waves are produced through noise. When researching into music as well, we found that primary chords link with the primary colours. Then we discovered more and researched into minimalist music as it uses patterns. Another reason why we love the idea of using minimalist music is because the beat is constant, with only subtle changes and phase shifting; similar to the beam of light which is constant.

N. Hughes (2011) Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNnGVqW0pvA (Accessed 16th March). This piece of music we used in our performance last week and it was just an idea of the piece we might want to use for our actual performance, after feedback-it may be more change and progression. This is something we are aiming to work on in the next couple of weeks.

Our performance seems to be taking a different direction to what we had originally thought. Although the site is still an abandoned shop in Grantham, we are now adding an element of science to the performance rather than relating it to retail. This is because the final performance is going to be part of a festival held in Grantham called ‘Gravity Fields’. The festival is inspired by the work of Isaac Newton and includes ‘a dynamic and creative programme of science, arts and heritage events’ (Gravity Fields Festival, 2014). As the performance is being commissioned, we were sent a brief from the festival organisers. This included four different themes that each group would have to adopt; Gravity, alchemy, and two groups focused on light. I had decided that I wanted my final piece to involve the science behind sound and so it made sense to link this with the theme of light. Part of me saw the festival as a positive as it meant our piece had a starting point that we could develop. On the other hand I felt that this could have restricted us and our ideas that we already had due to the specific audience and nature of the festival.

Groups were formed based on interest in the different topics and once in a group, we knew we had to research Isaac Newton and his theories in great detail. After hours of thorough research, I found out that he discovered light is not a single colour, but a combination of all the colours on the light spectrum. He backed up this theory by shining a white light into a prism; the light which came out the other end was multi-coloured. This experiment had been completed before, making people believe that prisms were responsible for the colour change. Newton extended this experiment by using another prism which the multi-coloured light shone into. This time the light which exited the prism was white as the colours had refracted together, proving that the prism did not colour the light. ‘…Newton refracted sunlight with a prism into a colour spectrum – each coloured ray with a specific refrangibility, or angle of refraction. With a second prism, he demonstrated that each refracted ray of the colour spectrum is dispersed to the same degree as with the first prism.’ (Marcum, 2009, 458) Newton also went on to discover that light is made up of particles rather than just being a wave.