Human inc is finally taking shape. Actual things are being made to convince our audience we are real.
Over the past week I have been working furiously hard with Sarah while other members have been home for easter to create things to go into our performance. We have completed our market research questionnaire and have made a start on creating and printing some of the products and posters we are using in the space.

However, saying this, some things have gone a lot better than others…
I’ll start with the positives.
We were told that creating some form of small token the audience can take home is the right thing to do, as not only will it draw in audience, it will also make our company more believable. But what were we to put into these small tubes? Water is the only safe thing we can give our audience for fear of allergies in case anyone actually drinks it. One of the original ideas we had was ‘Emotions in a bottle’, so we could sell a vial of ‘Happy’ or ‘Calm’ or ‘Forget’ and so on. It was decided that we should give away a small vial of ‘Happy’, but what was the science behind the possibility? Short of a company selling an illegal drug, we looked into the science of endorphins, but found the actual creation of such a chemical seemed from research, impossible. However, we did find a product by a company called Endorphinate by Pondera Pharmaceuticals which claims to “Imagine finally being able to naturally experience the sense of calm, comfort, and well-being that leads to joy and happiness in life.” (Pondera, 2014). Knowing this kind of thing is on the market and available, led the believably we could create a liquid version was more possible.
We then found small vials online and bought 200 (very cheaply) and I printed over 200 tiny stickers with our logo on to create the small vials we will later fill with water, or what we have called Bliss™.
I then moved to buy 3 cheap pots of hand cream as to demonstrate the product we are market researching for, and since I printed more than enough little logos, I put one on each of the pots.

Now for the negatives… Printing big.
The only way we will have a professional looking space is with professional looking posters. I spent a few days looking at various Pharmaceutical websites. I came across the company VRTX who on their website (https://www.vrtx.com/) had classy pictures that changed near the top of their page featuring people looking very happy with the company’s slogan as part of the image. This was the inspiration I used for Human Inc’s images, with our slogan ‘A Promise of a Healthier Future’.

We decided to use the pull plotter in the library as you can print a huge amount of only £5. Perfect, considering our group are all low on funds at all times. Our first £5 was wasted as something went wrong with the sending across to the printer. Although perfect quality, it only printed half the image. (see below)

On the second attempt, we used a different printer and although it came out the right size, the image quality is dreadful and it pixelated the whole image.
We then did the same settings on the original printer but it came out pixelated again. So that makes it £15 wasted.
We’re going to see the technitians tomorrow in the hope of a refund, if we can get a refund then great, and we’ll attempt a different method as to getting them printed. If we can’t get a refund.. well our company is going to have rather pixelated images.
Hopefully people don’t stand too close.

(Below: The full sized pixelated image. Before anyone assumes – it was not because the image was low quality, the image is more than big enough, it was a mess up on the printer.)

Pondera Pharmaceuticals (2014) Why Endorphanite? [online] Available from http://ponderapharma.com/why-endorphinate/ [Accessed 27 April 2014]

We decided to keep our performance as authentic as possible. We have decided to have no time limit so you will see the real reaction to us holding our given exercise for as long as possible. For example if Rory gives in to ‘gravity’ first he will cool down and wait for the others to ‘give in’. We will then have a short break and resume with the next performance. We also liked the idea of no boundaries which is something we liked from the beginning and was included in our original mirror idea. We are going to allow the audience to walk around as they will want to see the effect of gravity right in front of them. Our muscles for example will start to shake and that is something that will be better seen close up. We will also allow the audience to talk as this will get rid of the conventional theatre feeling. Allowing the audience to talk could also lead to an audience member challenging one of us, for example we could see if an audience member can hold a two litre bottle longer than what Gemma can. At the end for a bit of post performance we will let the audience members write on a post it note what there thoughts were on the performance and they can stick their post it note on the wall.

We are going to have a session where we take part in a Pilates class as we think this will help with the duration of our exercises. We will record the Pilates session to show the process and pre performance, as pre performace was something we are interested in. We will have the video playing in the background of our performance. We liked this idea for our pre performance as it doesn’t affect our actual perofrmance. We were going to record ourselves practicing our lifts and exercises but we thought it would take away the authenticity of the performance. We will also use the video as a soundtrack for our performance as you will hear heavy breathing, our voices etc and this stems away from ‘music’ which you would hear in a conventional theatre performance.

The aim of our performance is ‘to show how gravity always wins’. With every situation eventually gravity will take place. In our case gravity will deteriorate the muscles sustainability in the body. Gravity affects the human body from our blood flow to our sense of balance. It is actually due to gravity why we have to exercise, ‘when astronauts are in micro-gravity, the muscles of the body that keep the torso up right don’t need to support the weight of the body, so atrophy (shrinking) occurs. This muscle wasting is similar to that which occurs to people on earth when they do not get exercise, such as when they are bed ridden’.

http://www.hsc.csu.edu.au/senior_science/options/space/2968/ss993.html

We have decided to keep the concept of our performance simple. In our performance there will be a duration of time and exercises. We will be split into three areas, Chelsea and Rory doing lifts, me doing strength exercises and Gemma holding a two litre bottle of water up. Five of the strength exercises i shall be doing are: the ‘superman’, the plank, knee extension, bridging and leg lift. We also had the idea of having scientific diagrams on the walls. We could have a diagram of the human body and we could highlight which muscle groups we have been using in each of our exercises.