Monday, October 11, 2010

Friday, October 8, 2010

Substances/Textures 10/8/10

Today we talked about using substances such as sweat, blood, flour and water in each 'scene' as certain obstacles/challenges or interruptions.

 

SWEAT


In humans, sweating is primarily a means of thermoregulation, although it has been proposed that components of male sweat can act as pheromonal cues.[2] There is widespread belief that sweating, for example, in a sauna, helps the body to remove toxins, but the belief is without scientific support.[3] Evaporation of sweat from the skin surface has a cooling effect due to the latent heat of evaporation of water. Hence, in hot weather, or when the individual's muscles heat up due to exertion, more sweat is produced. Sweating is increased by nervousness and nausea and decreased by cold.

The process of sweating decreases core temperature, whereas the process of evaporation decreases surface temperature.
There are two situations in which our nerves will stimulate sweat glands, making us sweat: during physical heat and emotional stress. In general, emotionally induced sweating is restricted to palms, soles, and sometimes the forehead, while physical heat-induced sweating occurs throughout the body. [10]

BLOOD


Blood is a specialized bodily fluid that delivers necessary substances to the body's cells – such as nutrients and oxygen – and transports waste products away from those same cells. n vertebrates, it is composed of blood cells suspended in a liquid called blood plasma. Plasma, which constitutes 55% of blood fluid, is mostly water (90% by volume),[1] and contains dissolved proteins, glucose, mineral ions, hormones, carbon dioxide (plasma being the main medium for excretory product transportation), platelets and blood cells themselves.

Blood accounts for 8% of the human body weight,[3] with an average density of approximately 1060 kg/m3, very close to pure water's density of 1000 kg/m3.[4] The average adult has a blood volume of roughly 5 liters (1.3 gal), composed of plasma and several kinds of cells (occasionally called corpuscles); these formed elements of the blood are erythrocytes (red blood cells), leukocytes (white blood cells), and thrombocytes (platelets). By volume, the red blood cells constitute about 45% of whole blood, the plasma about 54.3%, and white cells about 0.7%.
Whole blood (plasma and cells) exhibits non-Newtonian fluid dynamics; its flow properties are adapted to flow effectively through tiny capillary blood vessels with less resistance than plasma by itself. In addition, if all human hemoglobin were free in the plasma rather than being contained in RBCs, the circulatory fluid would be too viscous for the cardiovascular system to function effectively.

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Structure Inter - LOVE - rupted.

Car up alley way

Davina carried and placed in bath

Bath pre-set  (Davinas text – audio)

Phoenix (image and ‘love’ text)

Physical Duo

Davinas ‘dog’ text

Love images  - Antony and the Johnsons – Davinas text re-visited

Phoenix in bucket – sewing organ.  Text – ‘ all we wanted was to find a new form, a new way’.

German text.

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

The sound scape 22/9/10


Finding sounds that compliment or contradict the images, film and bodies in the space ia a central task of mine throughout this performance making process.  I  really am enjoying this as it is something that i have not been able to do so far in other theatre subjects at La Trobe - although this process is at times very difficult and time consuming. I have been using garage band to edit down the sounds and to cut and paste the most compelling elements of each track.
The band 'The Knife' have been really instrumental in helping me to conceptualize what i wanted the sounds to be represent  - a definite move away from melodic or vocally driven music to an electronic soundscape that enhances the action on stage. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=On41Z4qfVE8

The industrial sounds came from my German friend and i know this will be perfect for Davina and my physical piece.

1. Heart beat Sound effect - peeling paper - Bucket text
2. Industrial  Sound - Physical piece
3. The Knife - Origins -  Love images and text
4. Antony and the Johnsons - Love images and Davinas text
5. Industrial Sound (2) my text in bucket with organ (sewing)

Sunday, September 12, 2010

Beating Heart Surgery - 12/9/10 -



This video of open heart surgery will work well . I like the way you can see the hands and the tools come in and out the image - it makes me aware of how fragile we are and how reliant we are on 'others' (in this case the doctors) to keep our hearts healthy and ok.







TEXT:
love is restaurant, love is watching you eat, love is wondering when i can kiss you. Love is a hospital, love is a surgical laser, love is soft tissue exposed, love is the surprise of your skin, love finds me out...


If you put your feet into a really hot bucket of water, you can hear your heart beat in your toes.

When i met you i was moving like a blind arrow shot in a time of need. I did not want to seal myself against life. What to make of all these fragments?  Time has been here before...History has had you ....and me.


LOVE INTERRUPTS MY LIFE

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Reflection (pre show)

With a month of the rehearsal process left the piece is definitely starting to take shape. The 'world' Davina and I seem to be creating is one where love gets  - interrupted-  through a series of miscommunications.

In taking on a theme as broad as 'LOVE' we seem to be adding complexity through negotiating a series of 'events' that reflect our different interpretation of the theme.

I think in embracing these differences we will make the piece more engaging and hopefully create a 'moving' piece of work.

I guess where I would like to go from here is to revisit some of the earlier ideas about 'representation' and 'hyper realism' - to infuse the piece inter textually. Multimedia was central to our original thoughts on creating this work as was themes  of cultural jamming.

I hope to make a piece of work that affects, engages and moves. I want to confront, inspire and open spaces for dialogue , thought provocation and reflection

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Second Language Me - text

This text will be spoken in German by Davina and i will speak it in English. I hope this text shows more of the complexity of the relationship between love and language and the way it is interrupted when things are misunderstood or re interpreted between two people.



Before you there was another. Simon. He loved my second language German. All of it’s mistakes and grammatical issues. I thought he was strong. Language strong. Saying things I’d never heard before. We’d been together for awhile. Never speaking English. He hated English. I wanted to better my German. It worked. He loved how some of the words came out wrong. How I accidently said goat instead of show and cleaning vacuum instead of vacuum cleaning.

He said that English speakers had forgotten what the word love meant. He didn’t understand how we could say we ‘loved’ objects. I thought it was romantic. The love he spoke of.

Then my friend came and stayed. She didn’t speak German so we all had to change our routine. He said he’d never heard someone say fuck so much. He said my voice went down 4 octaves when I spoke English. I lost my, femininity. I spoke in a prettier way in German. Mistakes and all. He said my English was crass, masculine. He loved second language me. First language me thought he was a cock.

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Intitial Ideas - Simulacra and Hyper realism 9.7.10


 
Simulacra is never that which conceals truth  - its is the truth which conceals that there is none. Simulacra is true. " Jean Baudrillard



'It is the generation by models of a real without an origin or reality" - Hyper-reality!



'What the consciousness define as real exists in a world where a multitude of media can radically re-shape and filter the original event or experience'

'Hyper- reality tricks the consciousness into detatching from any real  emotional engagement , instead opting for artificial simulation and endless reproductions of fundamentally empty appearance"





Examples Of Hyper -realism


A magazine photo of a model that has been touched up with a computer.

Films in which characters and settings are either digitally enhanced or created entirely from CGI (e.g.: 300, where the entire film was shot in front of a blue/green screen, with all settings super-imposed).

A well manicured garden (nature as hyperreal).

Any massively promoted versions of historical or present "facts" (e.g. "General Ignorance" from QI, where the questions have seemingly obvious answers, which are actually wrong).

Professional sports athletes as super, invincible versions of the human beings.

Many world cities and places which did not evolve as functional places with some basis in reality, as if they were creatio ex nihilo (literally 'creation out of nothing'): Disney World; Dubai; Celebration, 
Florida; and Las Vegas.

TV and film in general (especially "reality" TV), due to its creation of a world of fantasy and its dependence that the viewer will engage with these fantasy worlds. The current trend is to glamorize the mundane using histrionics.

A retail store that looks completely stocked and perfect due to facing, creating a world of endless identical products.

A life which cannot be (e.g. the perfect facsimile of a celebrity's invented persona).

A high end sex doll used as a simulacrum of a bodily or psychologically unattainable partner.[12]

A newly made building or item designed to look old, or to recreate or reproduce an older artifact, by simulating the feel of age or aging.

Constructed languages (such as E-Prime) or "reconstructed" extinct dialects.

Second Life The distinction becomes blurred when it becomes the platform for RL (Real Life) courses and conferences, Alcoholics Anonymous meetings or leads to real world interactions behind the scenes.

Weak virtual reality which is greater than any possible simulation of physical reality.[13]
 







Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Post- modern theatre and stuff... 1/9/10


In conceptualising the work in LOVE INTERRUPTED I have found it beneficial to understand that the type of performance making that I am undertaking is indeed post-modern. From this perspective it helps me to understand the mechanics of the mode of this particular production while understanding its place within the wider context of contemporary performance making.  Post modernism is something that I feel a lot of people take for granted when creating contemporary theatre. Having an intellectual understanding of the theory behind it allows for a more self aware engagement with the act of making ‘work ‘. This theoretical understanding will hopefully infuse the work on the theme of  ‘LOVE INTERRUPTED’ with more scope and potentialities. I see post-modernism and its continuum of meanings as being central to my engagement with this performance although I do not believe this is a shared value I have with Davina which makes working together at times quite challenging as she comes from a more linear narrative focused  or conservative understanding of theatre, and I seem to want to deconstruct those modes in my approach – this is where things get tricky - However,  regardless of outcome I feel more grounded in myself knowing that I have this as a resource which will hopefully  unconsciously and consciously inform  the process of making the work and indeed the way I embody it come performance week in October

With the collapse of the modernist boundaries, post-modern theatre takes on pluralism and multiplicity in style, approach and over-all process.

 Another important post-modern theatre practice is the use of inter-text, or what Jameson calls a culture of quotations, where various texts could be used to comment on each other – This resonates with me very strongly and I have found Frederick Jameson’s work on post modernism particularly stimulating and his theory of the culture of quotations as being highly informative in the exploring of the theme ‘LOVE INTERUPTED’
The deadening effect that swallows our highly revered icons of our culture. E.g. .The Mona Lisa – we can’t see past the cultural baggage attached to the imaged – I want to explore the symbol of ‘love’ in context of the way it is ladened with cultural baggage and then sample and remix these images or ‘signs’.  Nothing is ORIGINAL –LOVE INTERUPTED needs to be fragmented and pieced together from many different sources so that it gets a its energy from the links and echoes that are set up between the different elements.

I think that the multiplicity and circulating cultural production of the images and meanings associated with  ‘love’ have altered any claim to ‘truth’ in terms of its originality.
I have found it a relief to abandon the idea of originality in this process of making work in favor of this ‘shared’ approach –  what has not been said about love already??

Perhaps it is in the way I construct or re-interpret these representations or indeed make visible the cultural baggage attached to ‘LOVE’ that I can expose and reveal the potential problematic tendency to adopt any absoluteness of the concept,  instead embracing and exploring the complexity and diversity of these cultural representations. I hope this knowledge will mediate any possibility of an over simplification the theme ‘LOVE’.  What I am finding important to my process is to embrace multi-dimensionality and simultaneity.

All the theatrical elements in this piece are interconnected. I want to use multi media to show how each signifying element - lights, visual design, music, etc - stand to some degree as independent form me as the performance maker, but also intrinsic to the overall experience.   Indeed the way the audience is engaged in a post modern theatre is different from conventional or classical modes of ‘reading’ performance. The challenge is to change the relationship between myself and the audience  (as offered by Deborah) - and this is still very important to me in this production. I hope that I can fulfill that challenge in  both literal or more symbolic ways. This shifting of audience/performer relationship sits perfectly with a post-modern inquiry as post-modern theatre is required to go through a dialogic process of taking theory into practice and back to theory for it to be able to express itself and so the post-modern audience then is also called to go through this process of meaning-making.  Here, post-modern theatre forces its audience to always take on a critical stance in watching.  Language-creation and meaning making in post-modern theatre is never a simple one-on-one correspondence mode of cognition.

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Ideas for "LOVE" - textual 24/8/10


 why is the measure of love loss?
   
The room is not mine.
    One window frames an ash tree. One window lenses the world.
    From the wide lens of your window I can see an album of ordinary life. There's a woman unfolding a music stand with metallic determination. She picks up a flute, begins to play, and soap bubbles of notes break against your glass. The music is floating but the woman is standing very still. The strange thing about her is that she is naked. Yes, quite naked, her spine as long and straight as her flute, her vertebrae like the keys of the flute.
    I pushed up the window to let in the music. We were floating Mozart. Why is it that the real things are fragile and tough, destroyed so easily, but never damaged? Lost to us endlessly -  stupidly, unknowingly -  but in themselves always found again, when time opens like a door.
   
I walked into you.
    
    Where is the green door in the green hill? Summer and winter I marked paths that led me nowhere, blind trails that tunnel ground the way moles do, sniffing it, scenting it, digging it sideways with both hands, reading the ground like the palm of my hand.
    Upturned, I have tried to follow the heart line, but the way has been closed. Wait patiently, without hope, for the miracle that cannot be coaxed.
    All the stories advise me that one day the hill will open, in the shining hour, when time and space and desire hinge the solid world into a door.

  The white room is a chapel
 Like all sacred spaces, it does and does not exist. It has joists and floorboards and damp and doorjambs. It can be bought and sold. At the same time, what is valuable here cannot be traded in the market place. What is valuable here is a quality of light. Light that changes as we do. Light as subtle and uncatchable as human beings
   We are fallen angels netted in light.
    The white room is a hospital.
    It happens on the borders between healing and pain. The light is as surgical as a laser. The light finds me out. My soft tissue is exposed. Parts of me have been cut away.
    I had a wound that would not heal. You rummaged your hands through it and it bled again. It bled clean this time, and the poison left me. That wound has been infected for years. It will never heal but it is not infected anymore.
    My body is clean.
    The white room is a rendezvous.
    Past and future meet here, if not as friends, that at least not those old enemies, the hostile brothers, warring over the same girl.
    I am jealous of the present. The present is a lover always slipping away. The present comes chaperoned by memory, and lottery to desire. The present is a bartered bride.
    How to love what is now? How to make love to time?

      Time is what stops everything from happening at once
     It's a good explanation but not enough. My life is simultaneous - whatever the artificiality of time. I experience life as calendar, as diary, as anniversary, as event, but when I remember it, - the walls between are as thin as stud partitions.
   The house and its staircase and its rooms have been divided to provide a number of apartments. Here I am in the basement. Here I am on the top floor. Here my lives are living quietly apart, but always in earshot. Here I am subdivided into tenancies that call themselves separate but remain one house. One staircase is all I have - forget the dividing doors. One staircase, and these locks and keys.
    Past, present and future are separate apartments in the same house.
    The white room is a mystery.
    The owner is often away. Time sleeps here - among the sixteenth century furniture and the twenty first century life. Some people buy antiques because they are old - other people buy them because they are still alive. 
    Time can be caught in objects.
    When I touch this table where a woman counted out her past like money, I too start to bargain with life - what will this cost me? What can I expect in return?
     She tells me the old story, her fingers stroking her memories. Time is tarnished, but not where she touches it - where she touches it, time is worn thin from being turned over Time thin enough to lose between floorboards. Time worn bright with love.
    Love is the story. This story. This time.
    The white room is where we nade love.
     
     What is desire?
     Desire is a restaurant. Desire is watching you eat. Desire is pouring wine for you. Desire is looking at the menu and wondering what it would be like to kiss you. Desire is the surprise of your skin.
    Look - in between us now are the props of ordinary life - glasses, knives, cloths, Time has been here before. History has had you - and me too. My hand has brushed against yours for centuries. The props change, but not this. Not this single naked wanting you.
   Sacrifice time to desire.
    This current of desire was underground and cold.
     Love has sun-warmed me.
     I had been subterranean for too long. I didn't know it, but the river was moving towards the surface. There was a space, an opening, and you were there. The river burst out of its secret waterway, and you were there. 
    My body is a river - swim in me. My body is deep enough for diving.


    She's beautiful - oh yes. Golden and dappled and played over with light. Touch her, and together we unclothe time. Kiss her, and time yields.
    Put out my hand, and time is bone - life's frame, but not its flesh. The flesh is here - on her body - this living moment -  and ours because we claim it.
     Inside her, and time is gone. She is open and empty and free. 
    Inside her, and time liquidises into love.
     Make love to me.
    We lie together, skin close enough for grafting. When I kiss you, I give you all the words that room in the roof of my mouth. When you kiss me, you give me the shape of silence.
   
The theatre is empty. Everyone has gone home. Shall we go home now, to the place where no one is watching? To the place where time stops?
    I love you
    Combing the hill, I loved you.
    Parting grass like an equation, I loved you. I wanted the symmetry and the balance not obvious to counting. I had to work you out, work you until I knew you. I had to solve the problem before I knew what it was.
    What was it?
     This. Listen carefully.
     Enchantment is subject to no release but the breaking of a spell. 
     The enchanted can cook bacon and eggs like anybody else. The enchanted can fill in their tax forms and bet on a winner at the races. The enchanted bear children - who sing in choirs. The enchanted are just the same as the rest of us, unless you catch them by chance - staring into the water as if it were a crystal ball.
 You called me and I came. You unstoppered the bottle and I flew out. I was imprisoned in a tree. I was lost on an island. I had only the memory of desire to guide me. I could not free myself.
    I was walking round and round in circles. The circles of enchantment that are magic and cliché. They are so known, so predictable, even the language we use to describe them is worn.
    Round and round in circles. And then I found the place I had lost. The place where the enchantment started. The place where I sacrificed desire.
    The place where I sacrificed desire to time.
    I thought it would come right. I thought the clock would bring it -as if time ever carries anything in its hands except itself. I thought the seasons might unfold it, but spring can only prompt what is already sown. Summer can only flower what is grown. No tree, no harvest. No stirrings of desire when there is no desire.
    I do not believe that desire is better that love. Desire is not life either. But when desire is so mixed with love and life, that to sever one is to injure all, the wound is too deep.
I should have kept the pain I had, - pain of loss, pain of memory.
  I know I loved and lost. Then I made the mistake of not loving enough, and won.
    How shall I conjure with this? What shall I make of these fragments - each one sharp enough to cut me again?
    When I met you I was moving like a blind arrow shot in time of need. I was flint-sharp, flint-primitive. I was aim, arrow, and target. I wanted to be wounded again. I did not want to seal myself against life. I would rather be cut than dry.
    Is everything in this life about love or its lack?
   I want to touch you. I want the sweat of skin. Salt and blood are better remedies than talk. No talk found me the spell. The need of you and the touch of you found me the spell.
   Time passed. It always does. In the white room there are no clocks. The white room is a lover's room, and we keep time on the run.
    How long have I got? I don't know. The beating heart of our love may stop at any time. How can we hold what cannot be held?  How can we measure what cannot be known?
    How long is a spell?
    But though you enchant me, I am not enchanted. I am free. 
    The white room is a place of freedom.
    No longer love's exile, I claim a closed land. The door is open - pass freely. I never thought to be inside love again. I never thought to kiss the homeland of your body. I know this place so well - I used to live here. My house fell down and I was captured.  Where have I been in these heavy clothes that exiles wear? I am naked now, in the sun of my own land.
    My own land. Not you, love, who none but love can own; but love itself, and you its emblem. Let me wear you on my shield.
    Love has rescued me. Love has carried me home. There is music in the room. You are in the room. Lie down with me under this skin-white love. This love is ours...


Why is the measure of love...loss?

One Minute Piece 25/8/10

HEART SURGERY


 
The idea to use heart surgery footage came to me immediately when conceptually working on my one minute piece for class. I want to have this image playing through the projector while I simultaneously stand in a hot bucket of water.
Both the bucket of water and the open-heart surgery compliment and contradict each other and this is exactly the disorienting effect I hope to create in the simultaneity of showing these images.


THE BUCKET
 



I went to the Japanese bathhouse in Melbourne and this gave me the inspiration for the text to use in the bucket.
I went to many Japanese bath houses while travelling in Japan with my partner during the mid- semester break and in returning to Melbourne we went into a real rough patch and It was looking like we were going to break up - This highly emotional time was intense and overwhelming and my head was so full of noise – I decided to take myself to the bath house as it reminded me of the  good times we had shared in Japan. I bathed in 45c water as well as using the sauna for over 2 hours. This process allowed me time to sit with the grief in my heart and to find stillness. As I was sitting  there my body temperature had risen to such an extent that all I could hear was the deafening thud of my own heart -beat. 


I experienced this as a welcome relief from all the noise in my head. I was left with the sound of the heart and was amazed at its strength and physical presence. The reality that it is beating at all times and yet we are often so removed from this in the hustle and bustle of daily life. I am going to explore the relationship of the physical organ of the heart (open heart surgery) alongside the emotional attachment we have to this organ ‘love’  - 

'Is there any intrinsic connection between the emotional and the physical? or is it an arbitrary signification that we have laced with cultural and historical meaning? 



Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Sapho in 9 Fragments - hope hunger, heart , heat.. 24/8/10


"He seems like a god to me the man who is near you. 
Listening to your sweet voice and exquisite laughter 
That makes my heart so wildly beat in my breast. 
If I but see you for a moment, then all my words 
Leave me, my tongue is broken and a sudden fire 
Creeps through my blood. No longer can I see. 
My ears are full of noise. In all my body I 
Shudder and sweat. I am pale as the sun-scorched 
Grass. In my fury I seem like a dead woman, 
But I would dare" (Sapho). . .

 ( a snippet from rehearsals)



Sapho in 9 Fragments  - 

SAPPHO
MALTHOUSE THEATRE PRESENTS

SAPPHO

…IN 9 FRAGMENTS
WRITTEN AND PERFORMED BY JANE MONTGOMERY GRIFFITHS
STAGING BY MARION POTTS
SET & COSTUME DESIGNER ANNA CORDINGLEY
LIGHTING DESIGNER PAUL JACKSON
COMPOSER & SOUND DESIGNER DARRIN VERHAGEN
DRAMATURGE MARYANNE LYNCH
BECKETT THEATRE
JULY 30 – AUGUST 21


As Sappho herself reminds us: all education is a form of seduction. Your lesson begins now.
2700 years ago, Sappho is the world’s first love poet, the tenth muse of the ancient Greeks, and the inspiration for every lovelorn writer and songster since. But history catches up with her, and over time, Sappho becomes just a gap to be filled with the lusts and desires of each new generation...
Sappho...in 9 fragments is a roller-coaster, tour de force through two and a half millennia of Sappho’s story, weaving together the strange tale of her fragmented reception with a contemporary love story in her own words. As a timeless Sappho relives her uses and abuses through history, in the modern world a heart-broken young woman tries to piece together the fragments of her sexual awakening.
In its sell-out premiere at The Stork Theatre in 2007, Jane Montgomery Griffiths attracted passionate praise for her audacious performance and shrewdly intelligent and sensual writing. In a new staging by Marion Potts (Venus and Adonis), Sappho…in 9 fragments continues Malthouse Theatre's project of re-presenting the boldest and best new works from Melbourne’s independent stage.


MY RESPONSE
Love Desire - woman identified homo - erotocism.  Post - modern non linear script - virtuoso acting.

The language in this play is exquisite! The depth of training and the breadth of Jane Montomery Griffiths  made this piece and absolute theatrical feast.
 
I was inspired by this piece to delve more into the subjective 'truth' or the internal world of myself as a performer. 

The one prop was amazing - a bath ( or coffin) rectangular and filled with red (ish) liquid that seeped from a tap below. 

Jane began her performance in the box of liquid and she was totally submerged and the audience could not see that as they took their seats that she was already contained within - She emerged naked - androgynous - like the body itself became the canvas.



A performance of love, desire, identity - fragmented humanity- the contemporary and the ancient.

It is always about the integrity of the performer and their honesty on stage - their ability to make themselves 'naked' for you.





Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Two Dimensional Life of Her

 ( watch me)  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WO9EXwog2I



A TROUPE of puppets get their clumsy fingers onto a packet of cigarettes and some matches: Puppets + Fire = Trouble. Within minutes, 2-Dimensional Life of Her, a paper based show, roars up in flames. Projected flames, I should say. Black and white turns to colour and boy is the illusion powerful; I sat nervously eying the piles of paper strewn about the set, lest two dimensions leapt into a third. Concealing its own virtuosity with a beguiling improvised feel, this exceptional show explores the labyrinthine space between images.

2-Dimensional Life of Her is the creation of Australian artist Fleur Elise Noble. Using multiple projections, Noble lets the audience in on the world of her studio. While it’s sophisticated in its questioning, the show does not lose the ‘work in progress’ feel of the artist in her private space with her materials. The projected Noble rebels against 2-D existence by walking around the studio with a mop and bucket; with simple but effective sound design, we follow her footsteps as she traverses the empty space between screens. Traditional rectangles are not the norm here; the screens onto which the show’s live action films, animations, pen drawings, and puppets are projected are irregular and layered. One surface is a cut out of Noble, another is a table covered in studio disorder (including a wine bottle and glass), while a third undulates – the paper momentarily held up by a live actor (Erica Field, Noble’s collaborator).

Projected Noble works hard; the mop isn’t just for show. When she scrubs a surface, a new image is uncovered. The show explores the possibilities of perception and the 
Projected Noble works hard; the mop isn’t just for show. When she scrubs a surface, a new image is uncovered. The show explores the possibilities of perception and the chimerical nature of images. A determined puppet repeatedly rips through a sheet of paper. Quizzical and slightly superior, he stares down the audience, seeming to ask us what we are doing looking at him. Another puppet with a concussion-wish dips his head in ink and creates portraits by beating his head against paper. Each smackdown produces a different line drawing. The process of creating an image can be violent, it seems. In addition to the projection of multiple media, live theatrical incursions – which varied in the two performances I went to - remind you of the show’s real time setting. Like the sound design, the live bodies draw the images into the space, stretching the frame of visual art. 

Multimedia works can get caught up in their many strands, end up amorphous. Not so with 2-Dimensional Life of Her. The show’s various modes coalesced into a performance that had formal power. Original is an overused word, but this was. I saw the show twice. The first time at an architect’s studio on Egmont St and the second in Toi Whakaari’s large basement space. In the latter venue the diffuseness of the audience and the size of the space didn’t quite recreate the immersion of the first performance. 




My Response


great use of projection , lighting , sound.
the audience was made active by the use of all these mediums rather than passive.
by using more than 5 projectors the audience was never sure where the action was going to take place next. 
What inspired me about this piece for our performance is that we can use the projection of images and video to disrupt the traditional audience/actor relationship.
Davina and I discussed of pre- recorded material that not only operates a set i.e still of space that we interact with, but also film ourselves and project ourselves into the space ( on cardboard cut outs) as well as being physically present in the space as well. 
This multiplicity would continually shift the focus for the audience and also expand our presence in the space. 

Friday, August 6, 2010

Enter The Void.



"It is not cinema anymore - it is sensation".
This film brings into focus both an experience of sensory over load and sensory depravation. I saw this as a part of Melbourne International Film Festival and it blew any other cinematic experience i have had to date out of the water. I felt like the images were literally throwing me around. A roller coaster ride that was experienced bodily. This film break ALL convention and taboos without apology, it was truly shocking at times - and i cant say a very pleasant experience - though that does not seem to be high on the directors priority list.  My body was tense for the entire 2.5 hours of the film. The setting being in Japan and the design of the film itself was totally inspired by hyper realism as discussed in earlier blogs. In Enter the Void drugs bring about the internal rupture  - breath, pulse, organ, carnal, sex - all things dark, bodily, human.


see clip from film below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpHw20xMbUU

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

THE WALL ...4/8/10


Butchers paper covering the back wall.

Projection onto paper – perhaps on all three sides of the space.

Multiple Projections – creating an entire ‘world’ through sound and image - immerse the audience.

The white paper to elucidates the sterile environment of the hospital, which will then get overwhelmed, with visual representations of the heart surgery that pulsates and ‘assaults’.



The image above reflects the idea that I am trying to create with the set. I want to really layer the paper - over and over -  to create a visual textural landscape and an aesthetic that is  reflective of the collage. Also the idea of layering the paper correlates to the post-modern nature of the performance as well as being an effective tool to work with on stage.  The more layered the paper the more the projected images will take on a 2 dimensional effect creating a more engaging visual experience.

Text:  - Love interrupts my life -


Bits and Bobs..


More IDEAS   

- Using graffiti (spray paint) onto white paper wall.

- Cultural jamming – (definition)

- Creating obstacles.


Constraints


In each section of work we are going to explore implementing constraints.


- Foreign Language
- Silence/ stillness
- Media
- Meat (raw)
- Blood
- Shopping trolley
- Nudity
- Sweat
-Flour
- Water


THEMES (ideas)


FRAGMENT

HTML

DEBRIS

INTER – RUPTED – BRAIN- STORMING - internally ruptured, connection, inter – relationship, interiority, dramatic shift, altered state, explosive sound, alcohol/drugs, pause, segmented space.


WHAT REMAINS?

APARTMENT 

Sunday, July 25, 2010

Madeleine @ Arts House - my response

Arts House and Black Sequin Theatre present the second work in Melbourne-based writer/director Jenny Kemp's triptych on mental illness, Madeleine, which follows the sell-out Melbourne Festival season of Kitten in 2008.
Madeleine is a  schizophrenic tragedy where Maddy’s internal, delusional world is played out on stage. It tells the story of Maddy who is turning 19. Her world is becoming increasingly bizarre as psychic forces beyond her control take hold. When her sister returns to the family home for the birthday she finds Maddy at a point of crisis, with the parents unable to cope. Maddy, desperate to obey the demands of her inner voices is pursuing a new and better world, dragging the whole family towards a tragic outcome.
Madeleine is presented as part of Arts House Future Tense programme.
 "The programme includes six premiere seasons and represents a snapshot of exhilarating contemporary theatre practise from emerging artists alongside established artists from both Australia and abroad. " says Arts House Artistic Director, Steven Richardson.

“Future Tense continues Arts House's bold commitment to art that challenges our preconceptions and values,” Richardson continues. “We celebrate artistic practise that expands the traditional relationship between artist and audience and introduces an element of creative exchange."
Black Sequin Productions is listed as being a small cutting edge company that creates performance works, predominantly about women and women’s consciousness, that investigate the human psyche and it’s ability to function creatively in a contemporary world.
Madeleine certainly fits this template as does the philosophy of Madeleine's writer and director Jenny Kemp as she talks about the creative process behind this very sensitive work.
"Madeleine has been and is a very complex piece to work on because of the nature of the content. In the writing stage I have attempted to express both the internal and external world of a schizophrenic woman and the impact of her illness on the rest of the family. The play explores the very different responses individuals have to mental illness and shows how behind closed doors families struggle to deal with this often hidden and taboo mental illness.
Jung has said that as humans our main fears are always of one of the following:
MADNESS / ABANDONMENT / DEATH = MAD. Madeleine is going M A D and those around her have to deal with it.
The following questions are raised: What is madness? Why do we become insane? Does it make sense? Is it a valid reality? Should the world of the insane be dismissed, as unreal or invalid? What can we ‘the sane’ do for, with or to ‘the insane’? How do we cope when a loved one goes insane? Is insanity contagious? Might we the ‘sane’ also go ‘mad’ one day?
Madeleine does not pretend to have answers, but attempts to bring this world of uncertainty into a presence, for contemplation. To provide a space within which these concerns can become a poetic reality – of both beauty and horror – through which to examine our responses."
Madeleine exposes the uncertain world of mental illness for open contemplation in a poetic reality of emotional depth, dark humour, beauty and horror. This highly researched and deeply moving drama reveals the inside world of a schizophrenic young woman and the traumatic consequences for those around her.


MY RESPONSE


Davina and I should attempt to let go of familiar traditional dramatic conventions of 'cause' and 'effect' that leads to one culminating point, and instead embrace the complex map of intense experiences that accumulate throughout the process. As Kemp argues there should be 'countless lines constantly leading off in different directions and connecting intermittently at unpredictable points'.


To layer the textual, visual, aural, physical, spatial, and emotional registers theatre in ways that reflect the multiplicity of the layers of an individuals psychic life.


To place oneself on a plane of intensity upon which anything can happen at any time and from any direction.


Attempt to create a disjuncture between reality and the internal world. To liberate the audience from the usual constraints of linear time and provoke an imaginative and associative engagement with image, action, sound and text.