ok- so not necessarily to do with my own specialism but to bring out two of my obsessions into our PAPER/CHOICE group project- 1950s and no-domain little paper puppet sets- this is a back blog am in-golly-need-to-catch-up-quick-blog-mode having just come back from SUNNY (missing it already-the sun that is, the lack of culture-no) sydney
here's the original idea which i first put into the pot when we were talking about PAPER and CHOICE and hot (distinct lack of choice, conflict, friction) and cold (many choices, calm,) areas, mixed with laura's real life doll dress up idea; i then made the above set for our first walk through on 22nd november with rebecca and andrew, combined with lena's ideas, who renamed it a domestic diorama and made an argos catalogue one for participants to play with and us to watch and learn....
Participants 'controlling' performers in simulated spaces which 'control' us....
Participants would be given a paper prop in their paper bag upon upon entry to the entire group show. Upon finding this CONTROL performance introduce into the model box type 'set' of a space, and integrate with theirs or others' CHOICE of a selection of cut out background, props, unclothed figure, and clothes with tabs on them, within it. They will then be asked to experiment with creating scenes getting little paper cutouts to play out actions in front of a video camera. There will be a live performer 'dictator' either trying to get the participants to make the set based actions 'behave' (to rules and regulations or social etiquette or sterotypes) or 'misbehave' in their chosen scenes. The sets would be projected live (front or back- needs considering- space issues) onto performers who would have real props, clothes,etc same as the cut out ones on the set, and act out the actions controlled by the actions in the set projections. (I liked laura's idea here of the 'rebel' performer that confronts the 'dictator' performer)
Looking at issues of conformity in spaces- public and private- so spaces should be generic, and taken from mass produced sources, such as; 1. a living room with fixtures and fittings, furnishing, appliances, etc etc taken from argos catalogue, with kids or adults in them posing out on the garden chair etc
2. a family holiday in disney world, with souvenirs, sunglasses, holiday maker/tourist outfits
3. an era in which family roles were clearly defined
Is there a script or is there to be a performance living out this action in the scene? or is it just all live?
Is this projected into another 'world' later on when walking round the group show-eg a screen within a gilt frame above a mantlepiece in a steroetyped familty lounge??
this then became two ideas - family portrait and diorama- more to follow
and yet again another fab time at OFFF in may this year. The highlights for me were no-domain, an audio-visual, motion graphics, live visuals, designers collective based in barcelona, full of crazy live drawing, puppets, stop frame animtions, pure filmed visuals without lots of the horror of stereoscopic-tunnel-fractals-mash up special effects, purely devised and created from scratch.these guys have helped me so much in a puppet vj project with students earlier this year. i like the fact that they don't like to call themselves vjs to disassociate themselves with the generic vj scene, they are as much of a live act as the music, with mini sets, be it of 2D puppets,zoetrope, live drawing, anything lo-fi. sometimes digital technology is used simply to get their work on the screen with live feed from drawing. from their website; "they use their full creativity in the shape of distorted lo-tech psycodelic visual pop" sonar,2006. their work poses questions for me about live perfromance in a music gig, when the traditions of screen based concert visuals is viewed alongside watching visual artists performing live, through using low tech sets mixed live with real time and pre recorded film. how and when do you keep the attention on music as opposed to the art and vice versa at the right times? fusing art forms adds a multi-sensory interactive arts dimension to the concert experience, that places like the ICA have been staging for a while now. dave clarke, visuals Add to My Profile | More Videos
i have been insanely inspired by their approach in my teaching (low fi is great as schools just don't have the equipment and it also shows the value in mixing high and low) and for my own live visuals work for gigs, it was a pleasure to meet up with them (now that's one bonus of myspace networking) at OFFF. in a digital saturated age, it was refreshing to meet guys who still have their pencil cases at close hand....
wow!! OFFF Barcelona 2006 made me wake up to a breathtaking world of shut-up-and-watch-the-futures-here experiments and design interactions with often mind blowing use of digital technology, but with a firm hand still using paper scissors glue too. this 3 full days and only £30 festival/conference of international practice billed as post-digital creation culture included the utterly superb zach liebermann and golan levin,known as tmema, including messa di voce an 'audiovisual performance & installation for voice and interactive media' shown below; it also featured their live performance closing the event on the saturday night, drawn. they had an installation as an exhibit you could play with during the conference, drawing with ink, and then moving shapes generating sounds, shown in photo above. Full over view of my experience of OFFF 2006, can be found in my pdf DOWNLOAD FILE
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