Human.Inc –

May 15, 2014 by Sarah Broadbent·0 Comment

On the 10th of May, Human.Inc set up in Zing Café to conduct a market research questionnaire for their new product ‘Reverse’, an anti age skin cream that they have formulated. Here they ask volunteers’ basic questions about their current approach towards health/beauty products, where they prefer to buy them, what is it that appeals to them the most, their price range for products etc. After hearing about the new product ‘Reverse’ they would be asked of their opinion on the product and thing that would help the company greatly, they would then be offered a free sample bottle of ‘Bliss’. Using the information collected from all participants, Human.Inc will then put it towards helping sell their new product and they are given the opportunity to purchase a tub of ‘Silk’, offered to them on their way out. Also they are asked if they would like to leave their email address to find out more about our upcoming products.

After they leave they will receive an email telling them that they actually were an audience member to a Site Specific performance, and asked questions about the company, asking if we seemed legitimate as well as our products. Our aim is to send people away believing that it was a real company and hopefully being surprised when they receive the email telling them otherwise. Depending on how quickly audience members answered the questions and considering extra time for general conversation (designed to make the audience feel comfortable with whoever they are taking the survey with) each participant sat with us for about 15 minutes. This amount of time allowed them to be taken into a world where the company is real.

Our original Site gave us the feel of clinical and professional, hence us turning our performance into a business/company, but one of the biggest challenges was creating everything for that space and environment to then be informed that we would be moving our performances to Lincoln Performing Arts Centre. The challenges of the space in the LPAC was that we had to acquire it ourselves, hoping that it would be available for booking on the day of our assessment and for the right amount of time for us to get enough people coming through. It is also a public area, with people wandering back and forth through the space we would be working in, spoiling the effect of professionalism and atmosphere of our performance, making noise, or making it difficult for people to get to our space. Due to the public nature of our performance it was difficult for us to control our area. We chose to conduct our piece in the least busy part of Zing, minimizing the chance of this happening.

Retail therapy is the title we have been given for our Site Specific module and one of the first ideas that came to me was an image of an old charity shop or storage space, piled ceiling high with books and unopened boxes, layers and layers of unknown items and old belongings that have been on adventures you have no idea about. They could have been to the other side of the world on back, on beaches, buses and planes, in a hundred different cities, in different people’s bags or pockets. The idea that even the smallest item could have its own story fascinates me. Also thinking about shopping in modern day, shops and clothing lines are always trying to put labels on different types of clothes, ‘this jumper is girly’, ‘these shoes are punk’, ‘this headband is hippie’, using this to try and draw people in as they believe that it is ‘their type of clothes’. What if you feel like you don’t fit into a category in today’s society? Image is such an important aspect of people’s life at this moment in time, how do people feel if they don’t fit?

Today we were introduced to the Gravity Fields festival, ‘A festival creatively exploring the physical sciences and celebrating one of the world’s greatest thinkers, Sir Isaac Newton’ (Gravityfields.co.uk, 2014), so now our concept has to be changed, not only do we have to take Retail Therapy into account, we must now integrate an aspect of science out of the 4 categories, 1) Light/optics/electricity, 2) Weather/Astronomy, 3) Newtonian Science/Medical and 4) Alchemy.

After researching all of the sections, I was most interested Alchemy or Medical. The basis of Alchemy is taking something not perfect and making it perfect, like the Philosophers Stone, Emerald Tablet and The Elixir of Life, so mixing the two ideas together, the notion of selling the perfect human was created. Also looking at other aspects of Alchemy were the 4 elements, fire and air (considered to be masculine) and water and earth (the feminine side). With people’s ideas coming into light, our groups are going to start preparing for the two pitches we have to give Jeremy James, the producer of Gravity Fields, another of his co-workers, Rosemary, as well as Dominic.

“Dear Customer,

Thank you for taking an interest in our products and treatments. It is always pleasing to hear such enthusiasm about our company, and always helps us to strive for greatness.

In regards to your request for a brief description of our goals and “Mission Statement”, this is what we have managed to put together for you.

Human.Inc is the beginning of a new era, a new dawn and a new life. Everyone has their problems, everyone has their worries, and everyone feels like they aren’t perfect. This is where we come in. Human.Inc is a movement created to make your insecurities our main priority. With a host of the leading scientists and dermatologists working every day to create perfection, we are happy to bring these bounding leaps in technology forward for human consumption. Combining your DNA, muscles, skin and anatomy with our patented Human.Inc bio-mechanics, we are able to take you one step above human, to perfection. Human point 2. We are also working towards creating fully functioning human counterparts to provide help and company for those that need it, though it must be remembered; that kind of technology still has a while left to go. For now, enjoy our range of ultra-safe products and mechanics soon to be hitting your stores in a few months.

We hope this brief description will help you to understand us in more detail.

Thank you very much,

Hope El-Roi.

Founder of Human.Inc”

The original pitch we gave for Human.Inc is a shop that any person can go to and make their own ‘perfect human’. The human would be a synthetic human, or just ‘synthetic’ for short, it could be created to be your companion or your carer, the main thing we want to focus on is the idea that you can make it look however you want it to, you can pick the face and body shape, hair colour and length, skin colour, height, eye colour and shape, lip shape, freckles, birthmarks even certain trademarks of their personality, all of this programmed into their synthetic, ready for them to live their life with them. I want people to go away from our performance questioning the ethic of it, even in this day and age we have the ability to pay for operations that can change our appearance but to what extent can we go without people questioning it?

Our weekly task, given to us to help our performance develop and receive feedback and criticism from our peers, to have a 5 minute performance prepared, adding another 5 minutes for the 2 weeks after. We have chosen to present Jack and myself as Adam and Eve, two patients after going through a procedure. We see them go through an Post-Op check to make sure all of our limbs are working at the our brain activity is still normal, then go through interviews for jobs at Himan.Inc, where we are officially introduced to Jake, a.k.a Allen Godfrey, the CEO of Human.Inc. We aim to use those names as a representation of new humans, like they are a new enhanced and superior human coming in the imminent future. We also introduced Hope, played by Cherry, we wanted her to be so cheerful and positive that it was almost uncomfortable and unsettling, to question our company. We received positive feedback on our use of video, put together to help create a medical/scientific atmosphere. Another factor they thought worked very well was getting the audience to participate, as we brought them in as visitors to the ‘clinic’ to get a tour. I have been thinking a lot about audience participation, in terms of how comfortable an audience can become with a performance that they are willing to take part or fully throw themselves into the experience, you always worry if your audience will participate but that reminds me of Annie Sprinkles Post Porn Modernist… “You may be wondering why I’m going to show you my cervix. What is this all about? There are probably 1000 reasons. I’ll just tell you three. Reason number one: a cervix is such a beautiful thing and most people go through their whole lives and never get to see one. I’m really proud of mine, and I’d like to give that opportunity to anyone who’d like to have it. Reason number two is, I find it’s a lot of fun to show my cervix in little groups like this.And reason number three is, I want to prove to some of the guys out there that there are absolutely no teeth inside there.” (Sprinkles, 1989)

This just proves to me that most audiences are willing to participate and will be very responsive if you give them the chance.

In week 3 Conan came in to our seminar see our final 15 minute example performances, as our performance relied quite a bit on technology and setting we chose to show some aspects that wouldn’t be in our performance but would just give some more detail into the characters and general feel of the company and what it is we wanted to look at, what makes a human ‘perfect’? Mainly consisting of a conversation between Adam and Eve and a speech from Allan about the company and the products/procedures we offer. The feedback we received changed our performance dramatically, site specific theatre is a form of performance that does not usually feature typical acting styles, it was for this reason we chose to perform as ourselves instead of self-created personas. Also the concept of what our company is selling has been altered, instead of ‘selling humans’, it was decided we should focus on products we could sell to improve and upgrade the human body.

Myself, Jack and Cherry have been burying ourselves in research into cosmetic products to help us try and understand the products we have created for Human.Inc. As our site has been changed, we wanted to make sure everything else was perfect, we created a list of different procedures/products people could purchase but focused mainly on two, an anti-age skin cream ‘Reverse’, and an endorphin high ‘Bliss’.

We are still planning, swapping and changing our interview questions, wanting to be certain that we ask the right questions, getting all the necessary information, whilst giving them a good idea of what the company does, also explaining the science of our products too, making it seem like a believable company. Being confident we are getting the science right is one of the trickiest concept, as our products haven’t been created in real life, even though the science is correct. As the final performance is getting closer and closer, and due to the change of location from Grantham to the Lincoln Performing Arts Centre for the 10th of May performance, we have suddenly had to change a lot about our performance and modify it to the Zing Cafe in LPAC. Whilst everyone was given their spaces in the LPAC it was our job to secure the Zing Cafe space ourselves, after being told we were allowed the small space we were able to get, it was then clear that we had to make it look a lot more professional and clinical, as that has always been the aim that we have been given.

Researching our Market Research questions has been a challenge, knowing which questions to ask that would give us the most insight on what people would think of our products, of our company. I would have liked to have asked more questions that would have made people question the ethics of what it is we were trying to do, to question if it was okay to modify yourself so dramatically. Ethics was always something I wanted to explore a lot more but as we were told at the beginning of this term, our ideas would always change and we would probably end up with a performance a lot different than originally planned and we certainly have done that.

The Products that we are going to be showing are the skin cream, unnamed as that is one of the points of the market research questions, and ‘Bliss™’, inspired by Endorphinate® a product that has been developed that ‘dramatically produce a state of calm, comfort, and well-being as well as increased energy and concentration’ (Pondera 2014). So basing the idea on that it is one of our ’emotions in a bottle’ lasting for just an hour as it is a free sample, the emotion we will be giving away is happy.

We have discovered that if we wanted to print off the posters we want, the size we want, in the quality we want, it is going to be difficult. Once again our dilemma is that is won’t look professional enough, we cannot have it looking less than perfect, unfortunately we do not have the resources or the money to be able to achieve this, so once again we are having to compromise. We have the choice of trying to print of the bigger version again, which we have accepted probably won’t work but it’s worth giving it another go, or we will change the posters to a smaller format and create a lot more new ones and put them in the space where the original poster would go. We have also decided that the bigger posters may be able to be used behind a desk or just further away so you cannot see the quality as clearly.

The day before the performance, it was suggested that we make a big change, by adding another product in, something we could sell so we came up with ‘Silk’, a hair removal cream that would be put on display and offered at the end of the survey.

During our final performance, we had around 50 people come through to take our survey/participate in our performance, a number we did not expect, given that our performance was not based on the site we were originally given. People mainly came in bulk, this meant that some would end up waiting in our waiting area and be able to see our videos and read the leaflets we had set out, a different experience to the people that would just come up and get seated straight away. We did our best to adapt the performance to work with the space and we believe it worked very well. Zing café actually helped with the clinical feel that we wanted the audience to experience but also a relaxed attitude as well, which we tried to put across in every aspect of the performance. Instead of desks we used tall black tables, with stools for the participants, including laptops on the tables, as well as using electronic tablets, showing a wide range of technology, once again giving off the professional vibe we were aiming for.

The audience participation was everything we could ask for; they were very willing to take part and extremely responsive. “…and I was sucked into a world in which companies like yours actually exist, and products like Silk and Reverse have actually been invented.” (Brook, 2014) “I feel as though you were all very professional and sold the product well without making me buy anything upfront!” (Ford, 2014) “…the design of your products are very sophisticated” (Ochi, 2014). These are just a few examples of emails we received in response to our email, sent to them explaining that it was a performance and asking them to respond explaining why they felt comfortable leaving their email with us and if they believed our company/products are real.

In terms of feedback and improvement, everything was very positive, apart from changing a pen being used, as we wanted to keep a theme with the colour green, but it was felt that Jake, our acting CEO, would not use a green pen, he would use something a lot more professional. A few grammar mistakes made on the video being played on a screen and on the leaflets laid out on tables in our waiting room and that the quality of the leaflets were a let-down after our big posters looked so professional, but we were already aware of this problem as it was just due to lack of money. We were told that we adapted well into our new location and handled the move well and that each of us gave of a friendly and professional attitude.

The element we have had to focus on most during Site Specific is believability, to make it seem so real that people leave confused as to if they have seen a performance or if they’ve had a pitch from a real company, this is what we have always aimed to do and I believe we achieved well.

Word Count: 2,953

Works Cited

Broadbent, S (2014) Retail Therapy [blog] Lincoln: University of Lincoln. Available from https://sitespecific2014dsy.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/ [Accessed 15 May 2014]

Brooke, L (2014) Human.Inc Silk Product Description [email] Sent to Jack Tullin, 10 May.

Ford, S (2014) Human.Inc Silk Product Description [email] Sent to Jack Tullin, 10 May.

Gravityfields.co.uk (2014) Gravity Fields Festival 2014…. | The Gravity Fields Festival 2012. [online] Available at: http://www.gravityfields.co.uk/ [Accessed 19 Feb. 2014].

Ochi, K (2014) Human.Inc Silk Product Description [email] Sent to Jack Tullin, 10 May.

Sprinkles, A (1989) Post Porn Modernist: A PUBLIC CERVIX ANNOUNCEMENT. [online] http://anniesprinkle.org/ppm-bobsart/script.html [Accessed: 21 April 2014]

Human.Inc – The Promise of a Healthier Future.

May 15, 2014 by Jack Tullin·0 Comment

On the 10^th of May, 2014, Human.Inc conducted its first official market research session in the public café area of Zing. The company has always strived for perfection from day one of its conception, and the only way it would be able to reach this was through direct interaction with their customers, refining and perfecting their brand new product – ‘Reverse’. The company invited the general public into their space from 12pm until 8pm to answer a few questions based on ‘Reverse’ with the promise that they would receive a small sample of another product called ‘Bliss’. Human.Inc would then be able to use the information collected to find out where they are going right or wrong to improve their product.

Of course, due to the fact this was a site specific performance; the company was made of fiction. However the science behind the products was entirely real and the performers were still performing as themselves. The performance itself was set out to convince unsuspecting members of the public we were a legitimate company and also question ethics behind the idea of how easy it would be to change yourself for something better. The audience would be greeted into an initially familiar territory before being slowly introduced to themes and ideas that followed a more science fiction feeling. It was left to the audience to decide how long they wished to stay but the actual market research section was to last around 10 minutes with inclusion of a video introduction.

Human.Inc was created out of the idea of shops and science, two usually unlikely partners. The University had been asked to produce a set of site specific performances for the Gravity Fields Festival; “A festival creatively exploring the physical sciences and celebrating one of the world’s greatest thinkers, Sir Isaac Newton.” (South Kesteven District Council, 2014) It was this inspiration of science that is used to influence all parts of the festival, and this is what was commissioned of us by Jeremy James in the outlining letter he sent to us. “The current second year students will create four ‘mini-laboratory’ site themed performance environments” (James, 2014). He also gave us the topics of “1) Light / Optics / Electricity, 2) Weather / Astronomy, 3) Newtonian Science / Medical, 4) Alchemy.” (James, 2014) to work with and from these suggestions our group chose the idea of Alchemy.

Human.Inc therefore found itself being created from the two headings; shopping and alchemy. When we were first introduced to the site specific module we were told that our site performance areas were ‘unoccupied shops in Grantham town centre’ and that we were given the working title of ‘Retail Therapy’. It was then left to ourselves to figure out what we did with the spaces, and how we could incorporate both shopping and alchemy into them.

Retail therapy is an odd yet charming concept. The idea that one can go through a simple bad day, heartbreak, or bad news and fix it with a new pair of shoes that you can’t really afford but it’s okay because “I deserve it!” is an odd one to me, yet it constantly keeps me completely fascinated. Material goods in replacement for emotion? Ridiculous. But imagine if shops sold actual emotions? I don’t mean you pay some little old lady to tell you an uplifting anecdote from her past to liven your mood. I mean somewhere between the drug dealers in the season 3 episode of Doctor Who, ‘Gridlock’ (Doctor Who, 2007) and the famous ‘Drink Me’ potions of Alice in Wonderland (Geronimi, 1951). Shelves upon shelves of ‘Happy’, ‘Sad’, ‘Love’, ‘Anger’ and so on. Would it be the cure for all humankind or the beginning of its decline? We already have the monstrosity of date rape drugs; imagine getting drugged with ‘love’. You could even slip a bit of ‘generous’ to your mean boss who won’t give you that pay-rise. In a time where the phrase ‘retail therapy’ is thrown around between varying levels of need, how far would people be willing to go to feel just that little bit happier?

Site Specific performance can take many different styles; it is not dictated to just follow one style of performance. For example, you can have a performance like ‘Seedbed’ by Vito Acconci in 1972 which featured “Acconci beneath a ramp built in the Sonnabend Gallery. Over the course of three weeks, he masturbated eight hours a day while murmuring things like, “You’re pushing your cunt down on my mouth”” (Saltz, 1972) Whereas on the other hand you could have a performance like Gob Squad’s 2003 performance of ‘Super Night Shot’ in which they show a film that has been recorded “exactly one hour before you come to watch it when the four performer/activists meet, arm themselves with their video cameras and start them simultaneously.” (Gob Squad, 2003). Although these performances are both thought to be site specific, Andy Field wrote “All of these fascinatingly diverse and brilliant shows are subsumed under the suffocating umbrella of “site-specific”. A piece of shorthand that crudely shackles together artists whose work couldn’t be more different” (Field, 2008) which questions whether the broad sense of ‘site-specific’ is right, and perhaps the concept has become too widely used. It became our concern to make sure we used the empty shops as part of our performance.

Through a number of discussions we had come up with two very different performances that would work for the brief given to us, the first of which being solely based on Alchemy. Although alchemy never really achieved what it set out to do, which was the creation of the philosophers stone, the ability to change base metals into gold, and to create the elixir of life, it did explore many other possibilities.

When I was younger, my school used to take us on many science museum trips, and one of the most memorable (probably because it was so terrible) was Magna. Magna was a “Science Adventure Centre packed with interactive exhibits and fascinating displays to help you explore the wonders of science and the laws of nature, with over one hundred hands-on exhibits designed to help you explore the four elements – AIR, WATER, EARTH and FIRE!” (Magna, 2014). Even though admittedly this place was truly terrible, the aesthetics of the rooms and the 4 elements fascinated me. These themes influenced our first idea. Using ideas found in the classical scriptures of alchemy, we thought to create a performance of physical theatre inspired by the four elements. Using epic orchestral music (such as this one) we could create a multimedia performance viewed through the window of our store. Moving our bodies in time with the music as projections are blasted around and onto our bodies we physically become the elements, until a climactic finish where we end and with our four separate symbols of air, water, earth and fire coming together thus creating the alchemic pentagram that is made up of the symbols for each (as seen in the image below). The only problem with this idea is that it only encompasses the idea of alchemy and ignores the idea of shops.

The second idea we had was of a make believe corporation that works to make humans better. This idea combined the idea of shopping and alchemy (in the sense that they were hoping to find a product that could take something not perfect and turn it perfect). To get ourselves into the mood of a big corporation, we introduced the idea in the form of a formal email;

Dear Customer,

Thank you for taking an interest in our products and treatments. It is always pleasing to hear such enthusiasm about our company, and always helps us to strive for greatness. In regards to your request for a brief description of our goals and “Mission Statement”, this is what we have managed to put together for you.

Human.Inc is the beginning of a new era, a new dawn and a new life. Everyone has their problems, everyone has their worries, and everyone feels like they aren’t perfect. This is where we come in. Human.Inc is a movement created to make your insecurities our main priority. With a host of the leading scientists and dermatologists working every day to create perfection, we are happy to bring these bounding leaps in technology forward for human consumption. Combining your DNA, muscles, skin and anatomy with our patented Human.Inc bio-mechanics, we are able to take you one step above human, to perfection. We are also working towards creating fully functioning human counterparts to provide help and company for those that need it, though it must be remembered; that kind of technology still has a while left to go. For now, enjoy our range of ultra-safe products and mechanics soon to be hitting your stores within the next few months.

We hope this brief description will help you to understand us in more detail.

Thank you very much,

Hope El-Roi. Founder of Human.Inc

There’s that famous saying; “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade” coined by Elbert Hubbard in the original phrasing of “He picked up the lemons that Fate had sent him and started a lemonade-stand” (1915). The phrase is used to describe a situation where something seemingly goes wrong, but you make the best of what you have been given. We were told that our original site area, Grantham, was no longer available for us to perform in on the 10th of May and we were to make use of the LPAC to perform our performances. Determined not to lose all meaning of this project, our group wanted to gain a space that was more than just an empty studio with 4 black walls. We started looking into emailing the local council in the hope we’d be able to use one of the empty shops on Lincoln high street, but it was soon suggested we attempt to gain the Zing cafe in the Lincoln Performing Arts Centre.

After a short exchange of emails we were granted access to the area at the end of the space (shown below). The space comes ready set with varying things I felt will actually make our performance more interesting than if we used the empty space in Grantham.

The Zing cafe area has;
– A TV we can play some form of information or promotional video on
– Sofas and other furniture we can make use of if we see fit.
– A notice board we can put posters on
– A Book shelf
– Leaflet rack we can put information booklets in.

After spending time in this space getting used to this area, we have come to the decision that this performance area will possibly be more beneficial to us than the empty shop in Grantham, as we are using a ‘non-theatre location’ (Wilkie, 2002) which just so happens to still be in use as a space that works in the retail industry on a daily basis.

It was around this time that Human.inc finally started becoming real. Actual things were made to convince our audience we are real. Over the Easter holiday Sarah Broadbent and I worked furiously hard to create everything physical for the performance. We had completed our market research questionnaire and had made a start on creating and printing some of the products’ labels and posters we are using in the space. However, some of the creation of these materials proved harder 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 it was decided that we should give away a small vial of ‘Happy’, but what was the science behind the possibility? Short of selling an illegal drug, we looked into the science of endorphins, but found that artificial creation seemed impossible. However, we did find a product by the company Pondera Pharmaceuticals called Endorphinate which sells itself with the description; “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 shows that creating a liquid version was more possible.

Now for the negatives that happened… 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 large images at a small price. Our first attempt was perfect quality, only it printed half the image. 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. In the end we managed to get the images printed at the quality they needed to be, however the hassle was unbelievable.

When it came to one week until the performance day I started questioning myself. Did I feel ready? Of course I didn’t. I felt like all we had was still just ideas and nothing concrete. We had everything sorted. I’d spent many nights making the videos and posters and leaflets, and the group as a whole had worked hard finding the information and science, all we needed was the audience. The only problem I was having was wrapping my head around the idea that it was a performance. We have been told that for site performance we still have to play ourselves, yet I didn’t see Jake Allsop, the 20 year old drama student, being the chief executive of Human.Inc. Mike Pearson wrote some exercises related to site, in which he asked questions such as “What would you have remembered had you gone there without a camera?” and “Write a text of 50 words describing one location you particularly remember” (Pearson, 2010). These kinds of exercises are solely looking at the idea of site, whereas due to the fact we’ve been taken out of our site, and we’re not doing something based on the shop we saw, I felt the performance for the audience would be too jarring and they may be left questioning what the point was. It all feels too safe. We’re mimicking what a real life company would do; it didn’t feel like Site Specific performance, it felt like a business simulation.

When the actual performance came around, it went well. Suited and booted we dressed our space into the style we wanted it to be and spent the day inviting what turned out to be around 50 audience members to take part. Due to the style of performance we gave, every member of the audience experienced something different, some people were left in the waiting area for longer than others and were able to experience the aesthetics for longer. We invited people at the end to leave emails in case they wanted more information about our product ‘Silk’. It was at that point we asked for feedback.

“I was sucked into a world in which companies like yours actually exist” (Brook, 2014), “I feel as though you were all very professional and sold the product well without making me buy anything upfront!” (Ford, 2014) “The design of your products are very sophisticated” (Ochi, 2014). These were the kind of remarks we received from people who came to the performance. Due to the fact our survey was hosted on a website called Zoho, we were able to process the results into online statistics

We found that 72% of participants were aged 20-29, meaning that we would have to conduct the session again in a space with a more varied selection of public. However, we have gathered that most people buy health products from shops like Boots or Superdrug, people would appreciate a smooth texture and a fruity scent, and the maximum price range they would pay for a pot of reverse would be around £41-£50.

Because we are performing the piece again in Grantham in September, we have the lucky advantage of being able to change anything we felt needed improving. It was decided that apart from a few minor aesthetic changes, and an odd grammar mistake, the only major thing that may need changing is implementing a sense of danger. This aspect was something we lost during development. The introduction of something sinister behind the company would make it more interesting for an audience member, and maybe more meaningful once they leave.

I think throughout the module, I have learned about how diverse site specific performance can be. This is described by Andy Field when he wrote “the term is now used to describe almost every show that isn’t put on in a purpose-built auditorium. That’s missing the point” (2008) I find I agree a lot with what he’s saying. As interesting as the idea of site-specific performance can be, it’s been turned into something that it shouldn’t be, it’s become too broad, and I’d like to see it come back to where it belongs. Performances directly based on where they are set; the history, its surroundings, and the feeling.

WORKS CITED

Brook, L. (2014) RE: Human.Inc Silk Product Information [email] Sent to Jack Tullin, 10 May.

Doctor Who (2007) [DVD] Series 3, Episode 3. London: BBC.

Field, A. (2008) ‘Site-specific theatre’? Please be more specific. [online] The Guardian, Available from http://www.theguardian.com/stage/theatreblog/2008/feb/06/sitespecifictheatrepleasebe [Accessed 12th May 2014]

Geronimi, C. (dir.) (1951) Alice In Wonderland. [film] United States: Walt Disney.

Gob Squad (2003) Super Night Shot [online] Nottingham. Available from http://www.gobsquad.com/projects/super-night-shot [Accessed 11th May 2014]

Hubbard, Elbert (February 1915), “The Fra: A Journal of Affirmation”, The Fra (Elbert Hubbard) 14 (5): xxiv–d, archived from the original on September 13, 2012

James, Jeremy (2014) Gravity Fields Festival 2014 Collaboration with University of Lincoln Students [letter] Sent to the University of Lincoln.

Joseph, N. (2014). a basic idea for retail therapy. [Blog] Retail Therapy. Available at: https://sitespecific2014dsy.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/2014/01/27/a-basic-idea-for-retail-therapy/ [Accessed 11 May. 2014].

Magna (2014) Magna – Science Centre [online] Rotherham. Available from http://www.visitmagna.co.uk/science/ [Accessed 11^th May 2014]

Ochi, K. (2014) RE: Human.Inc Silk Product Information [email] Sent to Jack Tullin, 10 May.

Pearson, M. (2010) Site-Specific Performance. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.

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

Saltz, J. (1972) Seedbed [online] New York. Available from http://www.virtual-circuit.org/art_cinema/Acconci/Acconci/Seedbed.html [accessed 11th May 2014]

South Kesteven District Council (2014) Gravity Fields Festival 2014 Homepage. [online] Grantham. Available from http://www.gravityfields.co.uk/ [Accessed 5^th May 2014]

Tullin, J (2014) Retail Therapy. [blog] Lincoln: University of Lincoln. Available from https://sitespecific2014dsy.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/ [Accessed 15 May 2014]

Wilkie, F. (2002) Mapping the Terrain: a Survey of Site-specific Performance in Britain’, New Theatre Quarterly, 18, 2, 140-60.

My final blog

May 15, 2014 by Kayleigh Newberry·0 Comment

Site specific performance to me is a performance that is built around a specific location. The location we were given was shops in Grantham. We will also be doing our performances at the Gravity Fields festival in Grantham. The festival first came to Grantham in September 2012. The theme of the festival is science due to Isaac Newton being born there.

I decided to join a group about gravity as I felt my knowledge of dance could potentially link with the science of gravity. Isaac Newton’s theory on gravity is, ‘if an apple can fall from a tree why can’t something of a larger mass like the orbit of the moon and earth be due to gravity’. http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/history/newtongrav.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. The four strength exercises I shall be doing are: the superman, the plank, knee extension and the bridge. Each time we do our exercises we will try to beat our last time. Therefore we will have a stopwatch projected on the wall timing how long we can hold our exercises. Our times will then be put up on a PowerPoint presentation so we can see if the duration of our exercises are increasing or decreasing. The audience will also see the physical effects it will have on us performers. We will also each be lit so the audience will see us clearly.

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

Process
When I started the process of site specific performance I first felt uneasy and strange as I am used to performing in a conventional theatre space. In Erving Goffman’s Presentation of self in everyday life he states, ‘in Ichheiser’s terms, the individual will have to act so that he intentionally or unintentionally expresses himself and the others will in turn have to be impressed in some way by him’. (Goffman, 1959.) He thinks that we perform everyday in our everyday lives and people put on a ‘performance’ particularly in different social situations. For example, you would ‘perform’ differently to a friend as you would to your boss at work. In site specific performance some performers find it strange as they are used to performing in a conventional performance space, usually a theatre. However if we think about performance being an everyday occurrence and something we do constantly it shouldn’t actually feel that strange performing in an unconventional space.

I decided to start the process by researching into the Gravity Fields festival. The festival is inspired by Sir Isaac Newton who is most famous for his law of gravitation. The festival also explores the physical sciences. I also wanted to do this by exploring gravity through performance. The gravity fields festival is also keen on audience participation so we originally wanted our piece to be quite interactive but due to our piece now being extremely physical and having health and safety risks we thought it was best if the audience just watched.

As I knew our performance was going to be about gravity I decided to look into the science behind gravity. ‘Gravity hurts, you can feel it hoisting a loaded back pack or pushing a bike up a hill. Gravity is not just a force, it’s also a signal that tells the body how to act.’ http://science1.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2001/ast02aug_1/ We realised doing something as small as holding a bottle of water or trying to lift someone or hold a position is putting strain on your muscles due to gravity. I decided to try and beat gravity for as long as possible by doing strength exercises. During the performance I will also be balancing in some of my exercises which is also a fight against gravity. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CuYx9mZCQA

As Isaac Newton is the scientist who came from Grantham and inspires the Gravity Fields Festival I decided to look into his law of gravitation. ‘Newtons law of gravitation is F=G x (m1+m2/r2.) The force (F) between two objects is the same as their masses (m1+m2) divided by (r2) the square of the distance between them. G is the gravitational constant. Weight is not the same as mass. Mass is a measure of how much is inside an object. Weight is a force acting on that. Weight is measured in Newtons. Mass is measured in kilograms. The mass of a given object is the same everywhere, but it’s weight can change. Weight is the result of gravity. The gravitational field strength of the earth is 10 Newtons per kilogram. You would weigh less on the moon because the gravitational field strength of the moon is one sixth of that of the earth, but your mass would stay the same.
Weight (N) = mass (kg) x gravitational field strength (N/kg).’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/science/add_edexcel/motion_forces/forcesrev4.shtml

An original potential title for our performance was An experiment to challenge Newton’s law. Our initial thoughts were to ‘defy’ gravity in our performance. I thought one of the ways we could do this was to use mirrors to trick the audience into thinking we were going against gravity. We could also use our bodies to show attraction which links with gravity, as gravity forces all physical objects to attract to one another. In the end we decided to name our performance Sustain as we are sustaining the positions and we thought the name sounded professional, serious and scientific like our performance.

Through many weeks of over thinking our performance and adding too much to the performance, we decided to strip it back. The main theme of our performance is gravity and we realised something as simple as trying to lift somebody or trying to hold a position for too long is tiring on the muscles and the muscles will slowly start to deteriorate due to gravity. Gravity affects water in our bodies, on earth fluids are being pulled down by gravity and our muscle movement helps to move them back up.

I soon learnt that site specific performance is not acting and that characters are not needed to create a performance. This is similar to Carl Djerassi’s opinion on ‘science in fiction’, he says ‘for me the most important characteristic of science in fiction is that all the science and behaviour of scientists should be impeccably accurate … just because a play contains some allusions or even a few deliberate references to science does not make it science in theatre.’(Djerassi 2002, p.193.) I knew for our performance to look interesting and make an impact that we would have to literally fight against gravity for our piece to be accurate. When doing our exercises we are literally feeling the effect on our muscles and the audience will see the effects. There will be nothing fake about our performance. The audience will also learn about gravity and the human body through our performance like Carl Djerassi suggests ‘people do not pick up a novel or go to the theatre to be educated but to be entertained… but literature should delight the reader at the same time as instructing’. (Djerassi 2002, p.193.) I agree that people go to the theatre to be entertained but that doesn’t mean the audience can’t learn something at the same time even if they don’t realise it at first. I think going to the theatre or watching a performance is one of the best ways to learn because it is exciting to watch and keeps you engaged which is what the Gravity Fields festival tries to achieve.

Half way through he process our site was changed. McAuley states ‘in site-based performance, the site becomes the dominant signifier rather than simply being that which contains the performance, as the theatre building does in traditional theatre practice.’(McAuley 2005, p. 4.) Even though the actual place where we will be doing our performances, is in shops I felt that the actual site for our performance is the Gravity Fields festival and that science could potentially be our site and that it doesn’t have to be a physical space a website is classed as a site but is not a physical space. When our place was changed to the Lincoln Performing Arts Centre I felt the essence of our performance could stay the same due to the Science festival being the actual site. The core of the performance could be put in any room.

We had a lesson on Pilates to physically prepare for the performance and we were going to film this lesson and have it projected in the background of our performance to show pre-performance but we realised it was not needed and was taking away the authenticity of the performance. We also considered having a soundtrack to our performance but we realised that you don’t need conventional music to have a sound or rhythm to our performance. Henri Lefebvre thinks anything can have a rhythm including our bodies, ‘our biological rhythms of sleep, hunger and thirst, excretion and so on are more and more conditioned by the social environment and our working lives. We train ourselves, and are trained, to behave in a number of ways.’ (Lefebvre, 2004.) Even cities can have rhythms for example the traffic lights have a sequence to follow. Noises in a city can be like a musical score. Everybody has their own individual rhythms. The sound of heavy breathing and panting will be heard during our performance due to the physical strain we will be putting on our bodies and these noises could in fact be a musical score.

We were also going to let the audience walk around so they could see the physical effects of our performance up close but we have now decided to have the audience sitting in a conventional space so it is more inviting for the audience. Another challenge we faced was whether to allow ourselves and the audience to talk. We decided to do it in silence as it looks more professional and has a bigger impact and creates tension. We decided the best way to invite the audience into the space was to have chairs set up like an audience, even though this is how it would be done in a conventional theatre space, we felt that the audience would engage with the performance better and a seating area encourages the audience to stay. During our performance we decided to have two people performing at one time and the other two would be timing. As we didn’t need two people timing we decided to have one stood at the door letting audience members in which also encourages them to come in and watch.

The actual performance space we originally wanted to look like a laboratory due to our piece feeling very much like a science experiment. We were going to achieve this by putting up scientific diagrams around the room however unless done professionally it would take away the credibility of the performance. We decided to strip the performance space back like our performance and have a simple set up. We each clearly had our own performance space marked with either a chair, mats or tape. The rest of the room was clear apart from the chairs for the audience and we each had a single spotlight shining on us so the audience could really focus on our bodies during the performance.

Our performance is a durational piece as there is no time limit as we are testing to see how long we can hold the positions and how long we can fight against gravity. We will each have four exercises and once done we will keep repeating the cycle so if the audience wants to they can leave at the end of the cycle. Also when we repeat them we will try to beat the previous time. This will also test if the more you do an exercise, do you get better each time? Or do your muscles start to weaken making your time lessen each time? We also used a bit of pre-performance by showing previously recorded times for our exercises, we did this mainly so we would have a time to beat for our first performance of the day.

Evaluation

We had a lot of audience members show up to our performance. We had nine seats put out for the audience but it was evident that we needed more when some people had to stand up. The feedback from our audience was really positive as they said that they understood that it was about gravity, and because the performance wasn’t very interactive for the audience, they said that it added to the tension of the piece and they were on the edge of their seats thinking ‘is Gemma going to drop the water? Is Kayleigh going to drop her position?’ One audience member suggested that we do get the audience involved by having a guest slide on the PowerPoint presentation and challenging audience members to try and beat your time, obviously this can only be done with some of the exercises for health and safety reasons. This would make the piece more interactive which will be good for the festival as it is a family festival so the children will want to get involved. Something as simple as having a guest slide can change the dynamic of the performance from tense to more exciting and interactive. The tense approach I felt worked for our performance at the Lincoln Performing Arts Centre but the more interactive approach will work better for the festival. This again proves how the site of as performance can change the dynamic.

During the day we as performers started to feel like the performance was becoming repetitive and a bit tedious however the performance would be new to the audience so they wouldn’t get the same feeling plus the more we did the piece the more tired we became which looked effective to the audience. If we did want to change the piece so it didn’t feel so repetitive we could have extended the exercises each time. For example when doing the knee extension I could have my arms out as well so I’m not only having to hold my leg in position but my arms too, making the exercise harder and different to the last time I did it, so if audience members do stay for more than one cycle it becomes less repetitive.

On the day of the performance we were worried that being on the top floor that people wouldn’t find us. We put posters up to try and lead people towards our performance. We could have however used the lift to our advantage by having one of us stood in the lift encouraging people to come up to our performance and we could have used some pre performance in the lift by telling people a bit of what our performance is about. For example we could have read out Newtons theory on gravity to the audience.

I have learnt through engaging with the theory of site specific performance that a performance can excite and educate an audience without having to have the conventional characters and storyline. Site specific performances are best kept simplistic to create a really authentic piece. Space and time are also key components to a site specific performance and the core of a performance can be put in any room and can be adaptable to different places which our performance will be when we take it to the Gravity Fields Festival.

Works Cited
Djerassi, Carl (2002) ‘Contemporary Science in theatre: a rare genre, Interdisciplinary Science reviews, 27 (3) p.193

Goffman, Erving (1959) Presentation of self in everyday life, Doubleday anchor books, Doubleday and company inc. Carden city, New York.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/science/add_edexcel/motion_forces/forcesrev4.shtml (accessed April 15th 2014.)

http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/history/newtongrav.html ( accessed March 7th 2014)

http://www.hsc.csu.edu.au/senior_science/options/space/2968/ss993.html (Accessed March 7th 2014)

http://science1.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2001/ast02aug_1/ (Accessed April 14th 2014)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CuYx9mZCQA ( accessed April 14th 2014)

Lefebvre, Henri (2004) Rhythmanalysis, space, time and everyday life, ed. Stuart Elden, trans. Gerald Moore.

McAuley, Gay (2005) ‘Site specific performance: place, memory and the creative agency of the spectator,’ The journal of the Sydney University arts association, 27: p.4

An Exploration into Apples… The Final Submission.

May 15, 2014 by Kate Newman·0 Comment

The Creation

Our Site specific performance is not exactly how you would define site specific. As our performance has been inspired by several different venues including abandoned shops, Grantham’s Gravity Fields Festival and a studio in the Lincoln Performing Arts Centre. Our assessed piece would be more accurately described as a piece of Site-inspired theatre. I was inspired by Isaac Newton and the theory of how he discovered gravity. I took the simple apple and came up with 101 things to do with an apple. Why 101? The number 101 has many cultural references, as does the apple. 101 is used as a marketing tool to imply to a customer that a particular product gives you that little bit more, or goes that little bit extra. There’s’ 101 Dalmatians, Room 101 in George Orwell’s Nineteen eighty four, Route 101 and now 101 things to do with an apple. The apple is rich with cultural references, the two biggest being its link to Isaac Newton and more recently the Apple company that has provided us with some of the most in demand and smart technology to date. I thought to link these to ideas together would create a unique and interesting piece of drama never seen before. The piece centres round a list with all 101 ways and the audience would view the piece and see how many they could spot. To do this we compiled a range of different ways to show apples to keep the audience engaged. For example we had 40 pre-recorded videos of apples, 30 pieces of set that we performed around that showed other ways of using apples and the remaining 31 we performed live in front of the audience during the performance. On the 10th of May 2014 we performed our piece twice at 2:30 and 5:15 both performances were durational and we just performed until we had completed all 101 ways. The first time the performance lasted about 2 hours, 10 minutes and the second time about 1 hour and 20 minutes. The vast difference in time was because of the whole piece being controlled by a bell that would start and end each use of an apple. Sometimes the change would be very quick, other times there would be large periods of time where no one was doing anything, and was simply allowing the audience to look around. This performance was inspired by the Yorkshire tourist attraction The Forbidden Corner (which is woodland with various statues and buildings that you have to look and tick off as you find them) See Below a picture of the attraction;

The piece was also influenced by Brecht, as this performance had no actors or scripts, although tightly structured, our actors are the apples. Brecht said of theatre making ‘new things familiar and familiar things new’. (Willet, 1978, p, 23)

The seeds of an apple.

After an enlightening chat with Jeremy from Gravity Fields Festival, this performance has already morphed from looking into shops but to looking into science, but the most important element is the fusion of those elements. So without any more ado my 30 second elevator pitch is this… I want to create a piece based on Newton’s imagination and thought process when the apple fell from the tree and he discovered gravity. (Myth or no myth it is directly related to Newton and his theories) This piece would come about through the interactivity of a simple shop owner selling apples in a vacant shop in Grantham during the festival, the audience would enter the shop and be convinced of sampling an apple, the owner could tell the story related to Newton, and various other performers come to life and re-enact the moment and his relative teachings. For example the performers could recreate space within a space, having the apple in the centre, mimicking the sun. …. My thoughts on this are still vague but I like the idea of playing with the myth of the apple. It feels like the perfect blend of science (Newton’s life) and drama (creating a story)

Steve Jobs, has nothing to do with Grantham. He also has nothing to do with Issac Newton, although there are definitely parallels between them. Both Newton and Jobs made us view the world differently and that’s what Site Specific is all about. This week we learned about space and what it actually means in relation to us. There is space all around us but our eyes simply view it in mundane ways. I am sat in my room – that is space. In Lincoln – a bigger space. In England – a large space. In the world and even the universe and beyond – spaces that seem unimaginable. Sat typing this blog up I am looking at the space bar, which is in a space all of its own. I reflect on this now because I very much like the idea of non-space, i.e. an area that doesn’t correlate with you and what you might be presently doing. In my performance I would like to create a minimal installation, which perhaps forces an audience to eventually see the non-space surrounding it.

However getting back to Steve Jobs and why I picked him in comparison to Newton. There is one thing that links these two geniuses and that is… Apple. The word ‘apple’ has two completely different meanings to these two individuals. To Jobs it is technology and science, to Newton it is gravity and myth. It is these two individuals that have fused together my idea and subsequent pitch for Gravity Fields, 101 things to do with an ‘apple’. The idea is to create an installation that turns the myth of an apple falling and allowing Newton to explore gravity, into educational science. Having already discussed as group various ways to use an apple we plan on creating scientific experiments that would make even Newton himself proud.

Polishing the apples

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 re-enacting the tale of an apple falling and hitting Isaac 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.

So for our second week of performance extracts we created an apple circus. I was the ring master character, whilst other characters consisted of; apple juggling, apple mime, apple poi and various carnival games that used apples instead of balls. What we tried to do achieve in this performance was injecting fun and humour into a performance by almost satirizing circus performing but at the same time showing something new and exciting by replacing circus equipment with apples. However what became apparent in this performance was that even when creating something to be laughed at, it doesn’t necessarily mean an audience will laugh at it.
So far we have been at a disadvantage, in the sense that our audience are our colleagues and friends. Erving Goffman says that ‘Society is organized on the principle that any individual who possesses certain social characteristics has a moral right to expect that others will value and treat him in an appropriate way.’ (Goffman, 1959, p 24) This relates to our circus performance, as we as a group of performers have, whether consciously or unconsciously created and tailored a performance that will make our friends and peers laugh. Our moral right in this case is that our audience will laugh, which of course they will because they are of our social group. Goffman goes on to tell us that humans, when interacting avoid conflict wherever possible and take precautions to prevent disruption, so therefore negative feedback among friendship circles is often sparse. Although special interest in these disruptions plays a significant role in a social group in the form of ‘Practical jokes and social games are played in which embarrassments which are to be taken usuriously are purposefully engineered.’ (Goffman,1959, p, 25) In other words, when performing a piece of comedy in front of an audience that knows you well, they will not take faults in the performances seriously, and take it in more of a practical joke way. In terms of the amount of laughter our circus performance produced you would think our presentation would have been a raving success, but allowing time for self-reflection I can see that in front of different audience our piece would topple like a precarious tightrope walker, whose only previous experience had been with a safety net.
Through this discovery, as a group we have decided to look again at how we can make the relationship between audience and performer different between the traditional spectators that would enter a theatre with certain expectations. After all Mike Pearson comments that ‘Audience need not be categorized, or even consider themselves, as ‘audience’, as a collective with common attributes.’ (Pearson, 2010, p, 175) In a conventional theatre the actors have the power; they are the ones that are the sole captives of the audience’s attention. What we have decided is to give the audience the power. By performing our whole piece in a shop window with no sound to attract audience, it is the passers-by who have the power to stop and view the performance, or even to turn their head and acknowledge it. We realized we don’t need to ‘spoon feed’ audiences and entice them into a performance space, as human interaction is more complex than that. If we as performers create something engaging it won’t go unnoticed. ‘All three sets of relationship, performer/performer, performer/spectator, spectator/spectator, become part of an active matrix of interaction and available for negotiation.’ (Pearson, 2010, p, 175)

Our last performance in lesson, we decided to strip back. We decided to show the process of turning an apple into apple juice (it’s not obvious but I guess that transition is showing science) We sat in a line and began the performance by each in turn eating an apple in synchronization. The feedback we got from this and what we really liked was the silence albeit the simple crunch of eating an apple. Then each performer took it in turn to pass down an apple and each performer (slices/chops/mashes) the apple to turn it into apple juice. We were hoping to achieve an almost factory manufacturing line. Once the process was completed we decided to show a video of a decaying apple, this idea of showing the live and the mediated comes from Phillip Auslander’s book Liveness, Performance in a Mediated Culture. ‘ In all forms of society, there is one specific kind of production which predominates over the rest, whose relations thus assign rank and influence to the others.’ (2008, p, 1) We used this to show an apple decaying/being dissected in two ways both live and mediated, it was then the idea to show the ‘rebirth’ of an apple by then using the apple in more visually exciting and innovative ideas. However by doing the latter we introduced elements of acting which is not what site specific performance is about, we need to make the piece real by doing rather than pretending. Evan Eisenberg mentions a similar situation is the music industry, in regards to recording music rather than playing it live. ‘Stereo… arrays the musicians before you in an empty space… The introduction of stereo… changed the phenomenology of the phonograph by adding a spatial and visual aspect.’ (Auslander, 2008, p, 85) Eisenberg’s point here is that when sound is divorced of the visual through mediation, the experience craves/creates a visual. In other words, if we act and perform as characters in our performance, we are cheating our audience out of another visually stimulating experience. In order the produce a successful performance we must do and not act.

As for the set we agreed on having a cluttered set, since we found out we were going to be performing in Studio 1 which is a relatively large space, we decided to make a cluttered space in the centre of the room, essentially creating a space within a space. We chose to do this because we originally wanted to perform in a small space so even though we couldn’t have the space we wanted there was nothing to stop us recreating it ourselves. I have begun collecting boxes and creating posters with various apple references all contributing to the overall performance. See below a copy of the apple eye chart I made and picture of various apple products on display throughout the performance;

Peeling back an apple.

In one of our last seminars, we were asked to discuss about key things that we have learnt so far on this module that we have found interesting or wish to research further. I discussed the seemingly simple point of, why do we perform? This question has fascinated me for so long, and is possibly one of the contributing factors as to why I am sat here now blogging for my university degree in drama. Every day we perform; we perform in front of one another all the time. It is from this point that we can also begin to question what performance is. At first glance, a person might not recognize that simply going to your favourite restaurant, is an opportunity for performance and yet it happens and will happen every time you enter an establishment of that sort. There is a certain set of guidelines you have to follow in order to function in society, an unwritten law that we are shepherded to obey, but why?

To try and fathom why, I have been reading The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life by Erving Goffman. So far I have found the reading enlightening. I completely agree with his points about when an individual portrays himself in a certain way, he is asking that person to ‘believe that the character they see actually possesses the attributes he appears to possess.’ (Goffman,1959 p, 28) And that that, in conjunction with a person’s appearance, they do to gain a higher (or in some cases lower) status than the person they are performing for. For example a customer may enter a restaurant and sit straight down at an unclean table. Here the customer is in charge as he is undermining the waiter’s authority. However if the waiter then comes over and asks to clear the table, it is socially unacceptable for a customer to sit at a table that is not clear of plates. Therefore the customer must answer ‘yes’ and therefore the power shifts as the customer gives in to the requests of the waiter. Perhaps this idea of power and status is something to be played around with in our ‘Apple’ performance.

Goffman also goes on to explain how friendships are formed, if we are all pretending to be characters. ‘When an individual or performer plays the same part to the same audience on different occasions, a social relationship is likely to arise.’ (Goffman, 1959, p 27) However I’m not sure this metaphor works in terms of the theatre and performance. As my belief is that if you performed a play over and over again to the same audience they would eventually get bored of a performance rather than warm to it. Of course though I am aware that the theatrical world and society are two separate matters, but Goffman does try to connect them as much as possible and through reading his work I wished he didn’t and focused more on performance outside the theatre environment. Still this book is a very useful resource when looking at social ideologies.

Another point that I have found interesting and this case useful to our practical work, is the work of Fiona Wilkie. She has identified site-sympathetic, site-generic and site-specific performance and ‘…challenges notions of easy congruence between performance and site, ‘that the fit may not be comfortable merging with the resonances of the site but might be a reaction against them.’ (Pearson, 2010, p 8) Our performance is site-eventful as our stage is the Gravity Fields Festival. It is also site-generic as we believe we could perform our piece anywhere, all we would need was 101 apples.

The first bite…

We performed our final piece on the 10th of May 2014 in Studio 1 in the Lincoln Performing Arts Centre. Both times we performed we had audience pretty much the whole time but most often in small numbers, pairs and threes. One of the most interesting things I noticed whilst performing was that every member of the audience reacted to our piece differently. Some audience members wandered around the space, some amongst the set. Some members interacted with the set and rang the bell to stop and start the mini performances. It is interesting to note how people interpreted the set and the instructions differently. Outside the studio we had sheets for audiences to pick up and tick off the 101 ways, some people used them and others didn’t. I think audiences reacted differently because they didn’t know what to expect, but I liked this about our performance, it was excited to have to gauge how audiences were feeling and reacting to it. We asked the audiences to leave their sheets behind once they filled them in, and it was also interesting to see what audience members saw and didn’t see, some people did really well and ticked over half of the ways off. Others only had a hand full. What worked really well in our piece was the silent communication the actors had with each other. A bell sound would stop a performance and the person who rung the bell would then write on the whiteboard the next activity, the activity would start with the ringing of the bell again. This structure was very well rehearsed and gave the piece its backbone. Performing this piece again I would change how messy the set was, at the beginning the set looked fantastic and was organised clutter, but towards the end it just got too messy so something would have to be done to prevent that next time. If there is anything that I have learnt from this performance, it is the ambiguity of the word performance itself. A performance is more than a play with a script and actors. Its interactive, its doing and not pretending. It has defiantly opened my eyes to what performing is all about. It’s been a bit stressful at times but overall I am really proud of the work I have created. I’ve worked really hard to bring my idea to life and on the whole I think it was a huge success. See below a picture of the final performance;

Bibliography

Auslander, Phillip (1999) Liveness, Performance in a Mediatized Culture, Routledge: London.

Goffman, E (1959) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, London: Penguin Books

Pearson, M (2010) Site-Specific Performance, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.

Willet, John (1978) Brecht on Theatre. Eyre Methuen: London

Sustain The Gravity

May 14, 2014 by Gemma Steele·0 Comment

When thinking about site specific performance, you first have to think what a site is, as Nick Kaye suggests “What is a site?Is it a space, a place, a symbol or a set of rules? Is it a memory, a stage, a story or a mystery? Is it a territory, a stronghold, an identity or a tenancy? Is it a text? A past? A future? An objective fact or a ‘shifting bundle of mirrors’? To quote the situationists: ‘under the pavement, a beach.’(Kaye, N. (2008) Site Specific Art: Performance, Place and Documentation. Routledge: London.) So with this in mind lets simplify it and look at how to define a 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” with this in mind, it is time to relate it to my site which in my case in two places, one being shops in Grantham during the Gravity Fields Festival which is a science festival which is mainly dedicated to Sir Isaac Newton which has influenced my piece which focuses on Newton’s Law of Gravity and the second site is Lincoln Performing Arts Centre in Studio X on 10^th May 2014. Here is two images that show the different spaces

xd vfcs

with the idea of the two sites 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 nowhere 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. Through looking into the space and thinking about ideas regarding our theme which is Newtonian theory regarding gravity we have come up with the idea of the way that gravity slowing deteriorates the body during endurance tasks, my piece involves me holding a two litre bottle with different parts of my body and trying to see how long I can sustain this exercise, there are 4 different exercises that show how different muscle groups are affected. This piece will be a duration piece which I believe will allow our performance to reach our full potential as this will allow the audience to see how the body weakens over time, and how different muscle groups respond to the strain they are undertaking. In addition to this I have researched about how being in space effects the body and how it is affected when there is a sense of weightlessness. The main way that gravity affects humans is that it keeps us grounded to the earth. If we did not have any gravity on earth we would be floating around and probably would not be able to survive the way we do now. Gravity affects human beings by telling our bodies how strong they need to be to accomplish work. Gravity also helps to regulate blood pressure, cardiovascular function, and other bodily organs. When humans go into space where there is less gravity, they experience muscle and bone loss, and loss of cardiovascular capacity. As I believe that site specific is about breaking the boundaries of the traditional concept of theatre that’s one of the reason that wanted the audience to be able to leave when they want to and not to feel trapped within the performance. As our piece is duration we do expect the audience to change frequently and this is a good way to show that our boundaries are removed as the audience can decide how long they stay for and how they perceive the piece.

Analysis of Process

To begin my process I began to look at videos with the idea of a shop like space, and thought it would be a good way of looking at the space and working with it. I like the idea of having the audience look through a window, as it gives the audience a sense of control, they decide how long they watch for. Also it allows the audience to be looking into the action and allows them to have a critical view on it, just like everyday life whilst shopping, everyone criticises everyone due to the choices they make with their purchases. Also I thought of the idea of consumption and thought of therapy as a singular word instead of being joint with retail, I have looked at how addiction consumes a person. Hi, so this week we started group formations. I am in a group that is focusing around the idea of Newton Law of Gravity and pushing the boundaries of performance. Though at first I was reluctant about the idea, from researching ways to push the boundaries of performance such as showing anti- gravity by the use of mirrors, I have found myself excited about the project. There are many ways to push the boundaries of performance, in our case we have discussed the idea of having items stuck to walls and ceilings to symbolise the idea of gravitational pull. We have discussed the use of projection and mirrors to make what could seem impossible i.e. performing on the ceiling or wall possible. The practitioner Mike Pearson, discusses the relationship between archaeology and performance. He states that for the performer it is a ‘series of physical, sensual and extra-daily experiences as alterations of perception and life strategies which may or may not be made explicit to the spectator, as sequences of tension, relaxation, and acceleration, changes of consequence and innovation.’

So last night I watched a performance at LPAC called Caramel this gave me so many ideas regarding aspects of movement that can be used within our piece. The performance was based around the idea of what choreography would taste like. This has allowed me to explore the idea of synaesthesia what would emotion look like, or feel like or even smell like. The aspect that our group has chosen to focus on is how emotion can be seen via colours. This brings me onto my next point about the art of Rasa which is associated with Indian dance. Each different element within the Rasa have a set colour;

Love and Attractiveness are represented by light green

Laughter, mirth and comedy represented by white

Fury represented by red

Compassion and tragedy represented by grey

Disgust represented by the colour blue

Horror and terror represented by the colour black

Heroic is represented by a golden colour

Wonder and amazement represented by yellow

Peace is represented by white

[Archive.org. 2014. Natya Shastra of Bharata Muni Volume 2: Bharata Muni: Free Download & Streaming: Internet Archive. [Online] Available at: https://archive.org/details/NatyaShastraOfBharataMuniVolume2 [Accessed: 13 Mar 2014].

My key practitioner that has influenced the piece is Jerzy Grotowski and his invention of ‘Laboratory Theatre’ This idea emphasized the essential element of any theatre event: the intensified participation of actors and spectators in a shared space, shaped anew for each meeting between them. This idea emphasized the essential element of any theatre event: the intensified participation of actors and spectators in a shared space, shaped anew for each meeting between them. This style of theatre had a very clinical feel and I believe this is what allowed us to create the idea related to our site which is the science festival and they have a theme surrounding laboratories and the creation of Frankenstein. This relates to our idea of wanting our piece to be in the style of Grotowski and his way of clinical minimalistic style of theatre. Some of Grotowski principles have allowed me to find aspects to relate to my performance such as the idea he had which consists of the notion that theatre doesn’t need music to accompany the plot or that theatre doesn’t need text to be a performance. Furthermore Grotowski believed that the performer’s voice and body needed to be central to the performance. Another key element to my process is Sir Isaac Newton as our site is the Gravity Fields Festival which is very Newtonian influenced and as our theme of our performance is based around his ideas regarding gravity, this was a key element to focus on as we went throughout our performance process. Newton’s law of gravity is the notion of that any two in the universe attract each other with a force that is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. This is a general physical law derived from empirical observations by what Isaac Newton called induction. (Isaac Newton: “In [experimental] philosophy particular propositions are inferred from the phenomena and afterwards rendered general by induction”: “Principia“, Book 3, General Scholium, at p.392 in Volume 2 of Andrew Motte’s English translation published 1729.)

F is the force between the masses,
G is the gravitational constant,
m1 is the first mass,
m2 is the second mass, and
r is the distance between the centres of the masses.

(Proposition 75, Theorem 35: p.956 – I. Bernard Cohen and Anne Whitman, translators: Isaac Newton, The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. Preceded by A Guide to Newton’s Principia, by I. Bernard Cohen. University of California Press 1999 ISBN 0-520-08816-6 ISBN 0-520-08817-4)

Through this notion of bodies attracting each other I research about different types of attraction such as physical attraction, and the definition that I discovered from researching this was: “Physical attractiveness is the degree to which a person’s physical traits are considered aesthetically pleasing or beautiful. The term often implies sexual attractiveness or desirability.” (Wikipedia, 2014) Another aspect of gravity I have discovered is mass and weight I managed to find out what my weight was in newtons is 1120.9518503201634. Through this research it made me wonder does gravity affect the human body, through all the research I have done I came to the conclusion that the gravitational pull of the planets specifically earth does affect our lives greatly. When in the presence of gravity, 1. We don’t fly around uncontrollably, 2. We use our muscles to move around, 3. We get the body shape we have. When there is very little or no gravity, the weight of your body mass decreases, so there is less stress on your muscles and if you don’t constantly exercise, you lose them. This is also why many alien depictions show aliens with skinny body, because they have the minimal muscle mass because of space travel. When astronauts go on missions they have to work out routinely so that when they come back to earth they can withstand the conditions. They have treadmills, exercising elastics, they work better than actual weights because under low gravity even massive weights weight every little, but elastics can keep their elasticity, so if you tie it to something and pull, you’d get more exercise. We look the way we look because of gravity. When we’re constantly under the gravitational pull we’re working our muscles in every action we perform, which is why even an average person can have minimally buff biceps even without working out, because in a sense we’re constantly working out because of gravity.

To prepare us for the strenuous performance we have been using Pilates to warm ourselves up before a rehearsal. Pilates is an exercise system that focuses on stretching and strengthening the whole body to improve balance, muscle-strength, flexibility and posture. It was created by German-born Joseph Pilates in the early 1900s and incorporates elements of yoga, martial arts and Western forms of exercise.

My process through this experience of site specific performance has been a very difficult and challenging one, as my journey has been through many different turns, but this has allowed myself to know that within site specific, you as a performer has to be able to adapt to change. I have experienced these change in the aspect of due to our site changing from the shops in Grantham to Lincoln Performing Arts Centre. , I believe this will be well suited for our performance as we just need a black box nothing visual around us as our performance will create a visually pleasing experience. I have realised that through stripping back to the simplicity of an idea the true beauty comes through. The simplicity of physicality is the title that fits our performance perfectly.Through showing our work to the module leader, we have been told to strip back our idea and see the simplicity of how gravity reacts with the human body, suggestions that we were given was to see how gravity eventually restricts what the body can endure. So for example, having a member of our group lift another for a duration of time and to have the audience witness how the body slowly deteriorate under the strain. With these suggestions in mind I have been working on the idea of different activities/tasks that will show how gravity has an important part in how long the body can endure these activities/tasks. Gravity will win, but this will not be the complete focus of the performance. . Our other ideas have involved music but with a new idea we have decided to stay away from the music and have thought about using equipment like ECG and microphones and this would allow us to have the natural sounds around us and of the body as a soundtrack to the whole performance. I would be able to use live and videoed work and this will allow us to work in a post-performance aspect that we have always have wanted to put into our performance. I looked at the idea of live feed vs pre-recorded and I believe that live feed would work better as it gives our work authenticity and would allow us to have a sense of ownership on our individual pieces. Also we have spoken about the idea of pre- performance and post- performance and we like these elements and have thought for pre-performance we could record the noises we make within rehearsals, so the audience will get a performance that has already occurred but the audience is hearing it for the first time. In addition to this the idea of post-performance is to use a PowerPoint to show the previous times that we have achieved and the audience can see the times we are trying to smash each time, the PowerPoint will always be visible and will be used to document the times that will be achieved within the performance.

Performance Evaluation

So our performance is over, and even though our process has had many turns and ups and down I feel that our performance was very successful, one of my main worries was that the piece would be boring for an audience as they are just sitting and watching the actions unfold, but through audience feedback they mentioned that the performance was interesting because they were watching how the body was shaking and getting excited regarding each performer beating their times. I believe that the strengths of our performance was how focused we were as a group and how we set the performance space to fit in with our idea of clinical/laboratory style performance space which was supported by our research of Grotowski. Our weaknesses mainly were based of the fitness level, we trained occasionally with these tasks but rarely did a full day of the tasks so due to this we did not realise how bad our bodies would feel after a while of doing the tasks. My personal experience was after a while my body started to ache and I began to tire easily after a while, this aspect has allowed us to know how to prepare for our performance at the festival in September. Audience numbers for the performance was about 20/25 people throughout the day, the audience did not have any interaction with us but this was one of feedback notes that we should introduce a guest section within our performance as during the performance many people were like I wish I could of tried the tasks, so this is an adjustment that we will include at Gravity Fields. During set up on the day of our performance we were discussing that there are aspects of the site that we would of loved to include into our performance such as creating a part of the performance in the lift that leads up to Studio X within Lincoln Performing Arts Centre, this would gave the audience an insight into the performance before they watched the main section of the performance. In addition we discussed the idea of having a little bit of writing regarding our concept of gravity and what our performance is trying to show as this allows people to get an understanding of the aim of the performance. The layout of the space worked well as it allowed the audience to be able to see each performer clearly, also as there was always two performers performing at a time it allowed the audience to decide who they looked and when they looked at them. I believe we could have improved the final performance by having our idea sooner so we could polish it and think of every aspect that needs to be considered in order to have a professional polished performance. If I was going to alter anything of our performance it would be to make it look more professional such as having the stop watch projected on the wall instead of being on a IPad and also having more information about our performance as I feel people may have been confused of why we was doing our tasks, also I would make sure they we trained harder and did more warm ups as I feel I was not physically ready for this strenuous performance. Overall my experience with site specific performance has been stressful and challenging but very rewarding, I have thoroughly enjoyed myself within this experience and the idea of being able to performance in a non-traditional performance space has made me want to explore different sites and to think of ideas that are influenced by the sites.

Bibliography

Proposition 75, Theorem 35 (1999): p.956 – I. Bernard Cohen and Anne Whitman, translators: Isaac Newton, The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. Preceded by A Guide to Newton’s Principia, by I. Bernard Cohen. University of California Press

Kaye, N. (2008) Site Specific Art: Performance, Place and Documentation. Routledge: London.

Nhs.uk, (2014). A guide to Pilates – Live Well – NHS Choices. [Online] Available at: http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/fitness/Pages/pilates.aspx [Accessed 14 May. 2014].

Isaac Newton: (1729.)”In [experimental] philosophy particular propositions are inferred from the phenomena and afterwards rendered general by induction”: “Principia“, Book 3, General Scholium, at p.392 in Volume 2 of Andrew Motte’s English translation

Wikipedia, (2014). Physical attractiveness. [Online] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_attractiveness [Accessed 14 May. 2014].