For our final part of our performance we want to be looking at how Newton’s theory of the prism reflecting and refracting light can be used in performance. I am particularly interested in the different colours it makes and this will be very visual for the audience, especially children. Whilst researching I came across an artist called Stephen Knapp who produces light paintings. The thing that speaks to me through his artwork and inspired me to what we could achieve in performance is the way in which it looks so magnificent but yet is only made out of prisms and different pieces of glass with light shining in different angles to make the colours bend through.

(2005) Available at: http://www.lightpaintings.com/museum.html

In this photograph, it shows the amazing colours created on the wall, and also the many different obscure angles in which the light comes out. This is also in fact a piece of art made for a site specific museum piece as he is a travelling artist. We aim to use this as inspiration for our final part of our performance and have it bouncing off in different directions into the room. This will hopefully create a sense of discovery and feeling of awe for the audience as it looks so visually stunning but they learn the science behind the prisms at the same time. Although Knapp uses glass and light to create the different colours, we will be using prisms to create a similar effect.

(2011) Available at: http://jeffherrity.wordpress.com/tag/stephen-knapp/

We got to visit our site this week! It was so amazing to see and envisage our ideas in the space. Different ideas that we have been working on over the past weeks are finally being put into practice. The shop we chose is full of mirrors, and is ideal for the type of performance art we want to create, linking in with the science of reflection.  A particular thing that stood out for us as a group in the shop was the use of the windows. In our performance, we want the windows to be blacked out to stop light escaping inside. Therefore, we will have to work extra hard with the shoppers as they will not be able to see inside. Making it really  eye-catching for passers-by is imperative to make them stop and hopefully to want to come into the shop and explore more.

It then got me thinking about the passerby themselves. They are looking into this shop window, wondering about what they might purchase or what is aesthetically pleasing. ‘The ordinary practitioners of the city…they walk-an elementary form of experience of the city; they are walkers’ (D. J Hopkins et al, 2009, 59). Normal shoppers on a day to day basis pass throughout the city, through the monotony of life and yet are participants in a performance which they are completely unaware of; of merely walking. It therefore makes our job more interesting as knowing performers in the window to try and create a new and engaging performance with our audience.

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.

This week we were taking inspiration from other site specific pieces of work which were both challenging and inspiring. The reason for this was because we were exposed to different kinds of performance we have never come across before, some shocking and thought-provoking about how we could work with audiences, and this got us thinking. Personally, my favourite was LIGNA’s Radio Ballet, performed in 2008 (Sofaer, J. 2010, Live Art Development Agency). What really got me was the fact that the audience were just members of the public, and everyone with the headphones was performing the actions in the middle of the city. This gave me ideas of what we could with our performance in regards to giving the audience headphones and giving them instructions of what they have to do, guiding them around the shopping centre.

Furthermore, when researching for some more inspiration, I came across the world famous site specific group Punchdrunk, I was reading their manifesto and this sentence really spoke to me and encapsulated some of the points we want to use in our performance; ‘Audiences are invited to rediscover the childlike excitement and anticipation of exploring the unknown and experience a real sense of adventure’. (Punchdrunk, 2014). I feel like we can really use this  excitement and discovery in our performance through the use of colours and sounds to make it accessible for families, especially children.

After being told this week we were performing in the Gravity Fields Festival in Grantham (http://www.gravityfields.co.uk/), an amazing science festival, sparks starting flying in my head (See what I did there!) It got me thinking about possible ideas, how the use of lights and optics can be used in performance. When we go shopping, there are mirrors everywhere and we become aware of our reflection as we decide whether or not we want that item or not. Furthermore, we could possibly play with the idea of how light is used and reflected onto the mirror, working on images, shadows and reflections? Everyone seems in their own little world when shopping, a world of what? As soon as the customers enter a shop, do they are enter another ‘world’ in which they can escape the trials of life? When researching for inspiration I came across this performance, and thought I would share it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzUv4EedXWU I love how the audience on the outside are looking onto a supposed different world, snippets of different scenarios and the passers by are mere spectators, but could we work with roles being swopped? Instead, we are watching the outside world in their daily pursuits in life.