Behold! The video of The Smell of Rain Reminds Me of You. It’s also on the updated site which contains some choice quotes from participants too.

I thought it would be good to reflect on the process of putting together #rainreminds in a slightly structured manner, as it could be a useful case study in successfully putting together and marketing an event, almost solely online, in a very short amount of time (two weeks). So here we go, headings and everything:

The provocation:

‘We have 100 umbrellas, and a finishing slot in the (pervasive gaming and interactive arts) Hazard MMX festival. We want to do something like a flashmob, we need good pictures.’

This is what I was given to begin with from Larkin’ About and the Green Room, Manchester. The requirements were something impactful in the city, interactive, that involved group action, and good photo opportunities. Having just completed http://walkwith.tumblr.com , the opportunity to work simultaneously with a number of participants was a good next step, so I suggested a soundwalk for up to 100 people. Duncan Speakman’s subtlemobs are the closest to what I was thinking of. The umbrellas led me to ideas and significance of rain that I’d been developing with Walk With Me – the idea of how we used to need rain to make things grow led me also to the idea of spaces like Picadilly Gardens, and how we inhabit these transient spaces differently when young. Then I thought of kissing in the rain, and how it’s quite a ‘young’ relationship thing to do. (as one of the stories I went on to collect put it: “As we get older we tend to get a bit more pragmatic. Instead of lingering on wet pavements, enjoying a romantic embrace, we are more likely to head for the warm and the dry, where we can get on with the more urgent act of fucking.”) So I went and started making.

The process – making and marketing.

I started out by having these as two headings, but really, for the most part, they were one and the same. The very first sniff of the piece in public, was also me testing out my ideas. It all began with a small twtpoll, which discovered that nearly 60% of people (50 answered) had kissed someone in the pouring rain.

From finding this I decided to try and collect some of these stories, so I set up a tumblr site that allowed anyone to submit to, named or anonymously, stories to be shared under a creative commons license. In approaching a piece done by many I wanted my piece to reflect different kinds of experiences. You can see (and still submit to) the collected stories at http://rainonymy.tumblr.com. This is where I first found the title of the piece, people were able to naturally follow up ‘yes I have kissed someone in the rain’ provoking a memory, by then writing down, and the ideas of kissing in the rain, and story telling were tweeted and blogged far and wide.

Looking at the collected stories, Walk Between The Raindrops leapt out as fitting very well with my creative thoughts so far, and I began to write around that as a central thread, whilst also having in my head the sound/aesthetic of Duncan’s As If It Were the Last Time – with the recorded remembrances that sounded as though they came from an answering machine, from a time passed. The writing thickened up as I found my way through, scored through 3 distinct eras – the first kiss, the first broken heart, and the time when you leave the transient public spaces behind for your owned ones. This mingled with 3 key visual moments in order to provide the photos for the GreenRoom – the opening of umbrellas, a moment of precipice – tip toes and first kisses, and a moment on the bridge, telling a story to a place in which they normally only pass through.

I used the hashtag a little cryptically at first, not quite explaining myself, which garnered a few interested questions, and I think those people were the first to re-tweet when I did disclose what it was all about. Roughly a week before the piece went up I released the site, facebook group, and blogged about the project. The facebook group, here, turned out to be the most useful tool, though I don’t like facebook for day to day communications, for ease of inviting people to and spreading events, this still won – especially because it was a location specific event; Twitter spread the event further and to more people, but facebook spread it more usefully. Flickr provided the CC-remix shared image that went on the site, teaser trail, and facebook group.

Because of the different stories I wanted different voices in the final piece, so using friends all over the country and their smartphones I collated readings of some of the stories – I specifically didn’t prescribe which ones, I wanted people to gravitate to ones they liked, as well as making them better readings, it hopefully also meant furthering a degree of universality. I also crowd-sourced 5 minutes of ambient noise from the exact spot the piece was to happen in Manchester, without having to go there, by putting a call out on Twitter. (Do go and read the credits on http://rainreminds.tumblr.com to see all the lovely people who contributed)

The swap teaser was my ‘final push’ bit of marketing, besides all of the tweets. I sent facebook and twitter the offer of a teaser of excerpt audio in exchange for hitting 30 ‘definitely’ attending on the facebook group. This almost doubled the number of invited people on the group, and gave people a better reason to look at the teaser – it wasn’t something I was pushing, but something they’d won. Not that I was thinking that at the time, I was mostly thinking ‘even I’m bored of hearing about this, how can I make it interesting again?’

With a first rough edit tested on my sound engineer brother, and two artsy friends I headed to Manchester to test it in the space intended, for timings and general atmosphere. It was at this point I discovered my big finale of telling stories to the water, which to account for the rare chance it mightn’t rain, I was directing towards the fountains, was well and truly scuppered by their being turned and fenced off. A hosepipe ban. In MANCHESTER. When they split the Higg’s Boson I bet you a fiver they find Sod’s Law written through it like a microscopic stick of rock.

So that night and the following day I re-recorded a new ending (which actually I think turned out more visually interesting, though which also may have made people a little more nervous of speaking out loud as per the final instruction) and re-edited the tumblr site to include the teaser and the download plus instructions. I sent the facebook reminder and tweets, and retired to the lovely sound of silence, highlights of which were not hearing my own voice on loop.

The happening

The event came up at the end of the day, and a very healthy turn out of about 35 people arrived with furled white Green Room umbrellas. Most had the mp3 downloaded and were ready to play, about a 15% had heard about it on the day or were stewards/others who had heard about it as a flashmob only, and grabbed an umbrella to join in. If my next piece offers more of a budget, 10 £5 mp3 players for accessibility and walk-ups will be a must. The piece went ahead, about half the people seem to follow it as I had intended (‘intending’ may have been a mistake) a quarter might have been expecting something else, and played a bit more (no less a valid reaction!) and the other quarter had no track so were a bit bemused by the lack of action, or were sharing headphones (missing the left and right ear specific bits! Lesson learnt on that one). The key visual moments came together beautifully, and the reaction of the crowd was brilliant – “I tell you, they’re recording an episode of Dr Who or something!”

The feedback:

Timings were an issue when there were more people, what worked for me on my own, when I know what I’m doing and where I’m going, will less so for a group of people new to it and nervously checking if everyone else is moving too. In situations where there is no discernable leader, group action is more hesitant. Syncing everyone up is still problematic too. I thought a single air horn blast would fix the issues with mistimed watches that I’ve encountered with other pieces, but it didn’t, and it also meant that people clumped a little too much to begin with. The pictures and video look good though, there was a real buzz and audience as the piece culminated, and Larkin’ About and Green Room seemed quite pleased.

Here’s some nice things participants said:

“I overheard one of the other participants describing it as one of the most peaceful things they’d ever undergone.” - Sam Evaskitas

“It was a perfect blend of anticipation, mystery, cohesion, anonymity, observation, reminiscence, poignant melancholy, beauty and tranquility.” - a facebook comment

“Some lovely moments of reflection – about our relationship to transient, ambient ‘non-spaces’, especially as we grow older” @thederminator

Also someone called my voice ‘narcotic‘. I think that’s nice. I’m not sure.

My thoughts

You can’t predict people, you can guide them; with audience centric work, testing is key. Always add on a bit more time than you think. Find a better way to describe what a soundwalk/flashmob cross is. Find a better way of beginning things. Supply mp3 players on the day wherever possible. People are nice, and generally open to new things as long as you support them. Part of supporting them is not letting the track get ahead of them. People are awesome at telling other people about things if it is intriguing, if they like you, if they get some value out of it, or if they have put some value into it.

Want to listen to it? Right click, save as: The Smell of Rain Reminds Me of You

Thanks for EPIC READING.

Image of my gormless face taken by and shared with the permission of @documentally

The beginning of my week was spent at Shift Happens 2010, where I had the very awesome and slightly scary opportunity of giving a 10 minute talk on where I think theatre and digital tech are going. A brilliant couple of days, with inspiration abound, and some really lovely little pieces of performance woven in. I’m still not really up to long bouts of typing yet (the cast comes off in T-minus 12 days), so have embedded a couple of things here to give you a taste of what I took to the event, mostly in flash though, apologies for that.

The first a slideshare version of my talk – with me actually talking (apologies for the pops in the audio) through my ideas on it, and the second is a phlog done by a local community radio station talking to me and Babba Israel from Contact Theatre in Manchester. I’ve also put on Contact’s weekly video blog, the second half of which covers Shift Happens, which should at least give those of you on iPhones a sense of it. You can also download a pdf of the talk here, and for links to other presentations and sources mentioned, check out this very useful post by Matthew Linley.

It will be interesting to see where the next Shift goes. There was much less dissent this year, which although at least means the arts industry is catching up, perhaps means we now need to be pushing further, aiming to (as Andy Field had it)

“dream stupid, impossibly grand visions of what the future might look like”.

Do we now need an arts and tech conference which is more than just entry level? And that also challenge the conventions of a conference? I’m doing a joint paper with my supervisor for the TaPRA 2010 Conference which seeks to interrogate the failings of the top-down conference form in properly communicating the wholeness of performance and academic thought. To move the arts/tech world on do we need to find something that falls somewhere between festival, workshop, conference and digital and performative playground? What do you think?

Finally, I’ve got something exciting and performance-y to announce this weekend, which will be happening in Manchester on the 17th of July, so keep your feeds peeled, and watch out for the hashtag #rainreminds on Twitter.

“According to UNESCO the UK is the world’s largest exporter of cultural goods. Now there’s something. When have we been the world’s largest exporter of anything recently? And this is achieved with a tax payer investment which is 0.1 percent of the recent HBOS bailout. Not only that, with this tax payer investment we generate more economic activity than tourism, and we do this without a bonus culture, and without a ‘talent drain’. Now is the time for banks to have artists on their boards so they can understand how to use public money properly.”

Talking Birds are an awesome company, for more reasons than the above statement. I think every theatre, arts and culture company should have this on their website. Talking Birds did so just after the credit crunch hit.

Lots of blog posts are flying around at the moment about funding. Arts companies, used to the abuses of Tory rule, are battening down the hatches and readying their defences. Then, today came that expected announcement:

“Conservative MP Jeremy Hunt has been appointed as Culture Secretary – and he has already signalled that the arts are in line for up to £66 million worth of cuts as part of the drive to reduce the national debt.” (Source)

As DanRebellato Retweeted “So much for Vaizey’s ‘the Arts are safe with us’”.

This is a foolish move in the extreme. The Arts are largely seen as an easy cut, not necessary, and granted health and education sound much more important… if you believe the arts aren’t a part of either. However the truth is worse than that, the truth is that this action is at best, gesture politics, and at worst, extremely damaging to the economy. As Marcus Romer points out here

“Arts funding spend [only] amounts to 7pence out of every £100.00 of public spending”

The actual amount of public spending accounted for by the arts is minuscule. And then there’s the money it brings in. Following a recent question to Ben Bradshaw (the previous Secretary of State for Culture) Alexander Kelly of Third Angel found that:

“Last year, at London theatres alone, VAT on tickets generated £75m in income. Arts Council England invests just over £100m in theatre.

One way of reading this would be to say that the government doesn’t subsidise theatre, theatre more than pays for itself out of VAT alone”

It doesn’t just pay for itself, it brings money in, especially with the VAT hike that’s largely expected.

“The DCMS also point out the wider, and better known, arguments for seeing subsidy of the arts as investment that produces a massive return.

“However the economic impact of theatre and the subsidised arts is much greater than just VAT. The creative industries, including a number of subsidised sectors, account for 6.2% of the UK’s Gross Value Added (GVA), £16.6bn in exports, and 2m jobs.” (source)

All this on an investment of 0.1% of what we gave to HBOS during the banking crisis, for an amount that wouldn’t even register on this infogram of UK money

When Winston Churchill was criticised for investing n the arts during heavily increasing war time debt he simply replied ‘people need something to come back to’. The arts are how a culture examines itself. The science of humanity. The arts and play are at the very root of our inventive potential, and increasingly important to the future of science and tech as the areas between arts and tech are blur in the light of a connected world. By cutting the arts budget so drastically, not only are you removing one of the soundest and most profitable investments a country can make monetarily, but culturally too.

Where else should cuts be made? How about Trident, for a start, I hear that’s worth £130billion, the ACE entire subsidy is 0.076% of that.

#dontdoitnick #dontcutartsfunding

I’ve been meaning to write a post on the Unlimited Theatre (@untheatre) show which I went to see at Curve in the middle of April for a couple of weeks. I am currently struggling to blog with other commitments crashing into my schedule, including (but not limited to) the preparation of the material for my first year PhD progress panel, but I really wanted to talk about Ethics of Progress. Not in a traditional ‘review’ sense, but more in terms of my personal reaction to the subject matter. So here I am. Bear with me.

At the age of 16, and having got the same grades across the board at GCSE, I found myself facing a choice – the local science specialist 6th form – to do Maths, Chemistry, and Physics, or the specialist performing arts 6th form, to do Performing Arts, English Lit and Fine Art. Being young and unburdened with worry, I left it to chance, and gravity, and tossed a coin. The arts it was. I don’t regret that, but I regret being made to choose, and I am lucky to have in some degree returned to it in my PhD.

If you know one thing about me, know this: I work hard at learning.

I passionately believe, above all, that there is nothing that you cannot understand, and that knowledge and understanding are two of the most subversive tools at our disposal.

There is nothing you cannot understand, only the voices of others instilled in your head that tell you some kinds of knowledge are not for you.

The recent forcing through of the ignorant and immensely damaging Digital Economy Bill did not speak to me, as it did to many, of a broken democracy. It spoke to me, ultimately, of a society that fetishes technological ignorance. A society that contains within it whole swathes of people who will proudly declare that they’ve never sent an email. Politicians who will believe the monied hands of lobbyists over the people interacting in online worlds every day and who understand them. A country who will believe the tabloid journalist over the eminent peer-reviewed scientist. Pretty is stupid. Clever is dangerous. How many people have you heard utter the phrase ‘I just don’t understand politics’?

A democracy is really broken when the people are convinced that it is beyond their understanding.

A society is fractured each time a person considers any of its contents beyond their comprehension.

I have found in my reading on the history of computing that the biggest advances in science and technology are driven by the military. Turing‘s work at Bletchley Park, VR, pioneered first and foremost as a flight and war sim. As Unlimited Theatre intimate in Ethics of Progress: “follow the money”. Who’s in charge of these leaps in technology? Quantum computing will mark a massive advancement in computing power, it will also allow whoever develops it first an incredible upper hand in encryption and decryption of intelligence (it’s all about the prime numbers).

Ethics of Progress was about quantum physics, it tackled 3 main concepts, superposition, entanglement, and the possibilities of teleportation.

Teleportation.

Imagine a truly green method of travel. Imagine a safe and immediate way to evacuate people from disaster areas. Imagine working in Hull but living in Cairo. My friend who was caught with illegal pamphlets disappeared yesterday. She still looks the same, she can move and act in all the same ways. But they disappeared her. If you are simultaneous destroyed in one place, and rebuilt in another, you may be made of the same particles, but are you the same person?

Theatre, performance, the arts in general, I believe are a society’s way of questioning itself. They imagine, they experiment, they test theories of the human. They are how we examine our culture and challenge the ethical assumptions we make every day. I believe that science and art are both in pursuit of truth.

Truth is important to me. (This is why I am sometimes a tad difficult to talk to, I tend to reference my inaccuracies or omissions as I go). Scientific and ethical truth. What Ethics of Progress spoke of, beyond the scientific content, was the fact that these ideas were not beyond comprehension. In fact it urged us – out of responsibility – to understand, challenge and consider the implications of the ideas that it discussed.

The arts and science have too long been told that they are incompatible. I believe the most powerful thing that the age of collaboration being brought to us by technology can offer;* is the reconciliation of the humanities and sciences. Ethics of Progress lights the touch-paper under that concept.

*Superposition and string theory I get, the proper use of semi-colons, I’m working on.

Image shared on Flickr via a creative commons license by Stephan Geyer.

This may start off sounding like criticism, but it isn’t, more like a lack of an applicable critical language.

At the point I started writing this blog post, in my eyes #suchtweet had lost a lot of its artistic and realistic credibility – the characters were tweeting at a party, about secret things, to each other, about each other, knowing that everyone can see them. There was earlier, hideous, product placement (more later), and the language had turned from the irritatingly truncated to an odd kind of a poesy, apart from Juliet, who got even more screechy

It was really unrealistic.

But so’s Hollyoaks, lots of people watch that.

There’s a danger my criticism becomes irrelevant, and that’s the point at which it’s not about language skill, understanding of the form, theatre or performance. It’s just a story everyone knows, threading into people’s lives.

Such Tweet Sorrow is no longer about the quality or nature of storytelling (art), this is about the power of familiar stories and love.

People love, love. They love the idea that they might give up so much for something so beautiful. They love the idea of love at first sight, and that someone as simple, or normal as they might be fated for someone. And they love to see this in a place they visit, an intimate and constructed space that they go to each day – it’s more inside them (I believe that as we reconstruct ourselves in these online spaces we build others into us), their lives, than film or theatre ever is.

We go through our lives feeling not enough, half of what we should be, the stories shilled by marketing, capitalism and the gaps left by the loss of what the post-modernists termed grand narratives (religion, class, the state) make sure of that. To want to believe in completion is understandable.

Maybe that’s what Romeo and Juliet should be about.

Is there a point at which realism isn’t relevant? Could #suchtweet be considered a piece of expressionism? The way people often act or talk on stage is heightened, why does #suchtweet have to imitate life? Or do the majority of Twitter users use Twitter like a text messaging service – do they tweet about the people they pull, knowing their family see each tweet? Perhaps they do. None of the 600 or so I follow, but by the fact their chosen by one person, not many, they can’t be seen as a representative bunch.

There are still some points on which I feel wholly vindicated in criticising #suchtweet, the lack of response and engagement with anything apart from positive critique is a shame, especially considering their interactive intentions. The biggest want has been for a forum, a place where discussion about the project can happen – look at the engagement with my previous blog post for example – if you involve people in the experiment so deeply, I think it’s right to involve them in the evaluation.

The manner of tweeting before the party scene and morning after had got a lot better – @Jess_Nurse had made considerable improvement in the subtlety of her delivery (I liked this example particularly). I enjoyed the mask trying-on session via tweetphoto, and although @Romeo_Mo’s sudden switch from playa to emo jarred with his previous behaviour, it did feel like a response to some of the criticism, and so forgiveable.

The product placement, however, is not.

Because of how intimate the experience is, because of the way the experiment sets itself up, it is shameful, dangerous, offensive that they would insert advertising into that space. When people have opened up. When people have made themselves vulnerable in two ways – in the way we do when we reconstruct our selves in online spaces, and in the way we suspend our disbelief and trust these actors as real people – to place advertising there, breaks trust.

I’ve taken the #suchtweet characters out of my feed now. I have listed them, and to be honest I think that would have been the best approach from the start. Whether or not it’s chosen to be so, #suchtweet is not for me, or most of the arts folk I’ve spoken to so far. That doesn’t make it bad, art is not a synonym for ‘good’, I do however think it could have been more artistically managed, and still have drawn its current audience, and more.

Should I still be looking at it critically? The fact that the piece is in association with theatre companies tells me ‘yes’, the content and reactions from the fan base ‘no’. What do you think?

To see my previous thoughts on Such Tweet Sorrow, click here.

image shared on flickr via a creative commons license on by SarahMcGowen

Act One.

Over the past week and for 5 in total, several people in the Twittersphere will be playing a part in one of the greatest love stories in the English language. Such Tweet Sorrow is Romeo and Juliet told in 140 character installments. The piece is 24/7, and includes audioboos, yfrog pics, youtube videos and an awful, awful lot of tweeting.

There are several really interesting aspects to this bold experiment, which is a collaboration between the RSC and a multi-media company called Mudlark. The project is 4ip funded, the basic story line (transposed into a modern setting) is plotted and then the plotted occurrences are handed over to the actors daily, who then improvise their reported actions.

People who follow the characters on Twitter can see the conversations happening in real time, and are often asked to contribute, aid decisions, lend reactions. This interaction is producing some intriguing results, some people playing along, and others determined to break what’s left of the ‘4^th wall’. The project even has its own ‘fanboy’ playing with the story, to which the official @such_tweet account have been alerting people to (and blocked, but that’s a whole other kettle of fish).  The idea of a piece of performance infiltrating your daily feeds is a fascinating one, and the interactive aspect also invites its audience to be performers. When you interact with the characters you are interacting with them as a character yourself – a version of your self, one who pretends that these characters are real.

However despite the interesting questions the work is raising, truth is I’m feeling incredibly let down by the #suchtweet experiment. It is entirely right that it exists, and that people should explore these new forms, but aspects of the characterisation, logistical errors, as well continual formal misconceptions are really beginning to grate. The question is, how and when is it appropriate to raise these criticisms. During? Or after the event has finished?

I disagree with this idea – a film is a finished product, performances grow. A traditional theatrical experience is usually a closed down one, this ongoing project is describe as interactive. Surely this should go for the criticism as well?

Another pertinent question, certainly, is how to deliver criticism. Due to the amount of interaction invited, do you talk directly to the performers, in character? Suggest that the way they’re delivering their information is heavy handed (TMI!) or their characterization offensive (#uploadthatload case in point.). As it is a project largely delivered through Twitter that was my first reaction. I’m not sure it was the right one. It’s hard to phrase ‘I think your characterisation represents unfair assumptions about teenage boys’. Best I managed was “have some respect.” My next reaction was to tweet about my dissatisfaction publicly, engage with (what is ostensibly) other audience members. Some suggested waiting to see how it worked out, though most of my followers that responded (by no means a bunch necessarily representative of the rest of Twitter) shared my concerns. Mixed sample:

However, after a character RT’d some of my ‘in character’ criticisms (attracting attention outside of the context I had given) I feel like I should set out exactly what I think. So here I am, outside of Twitter, long form. Let’s dance.

Act Two.

I want to make myself clear, I certainly don’t think that this performance experiment is in any way sullying the name of Shakespeare, or that it is in any trivial way attempting to engage dramatically with the tech or (as it’s often misrepresented) ‘youth’ community. I think it’s an excellent concept. The problem is all in the execution.

Gender.

The level of gender stereotyping that has been occurring in #suchtweet has been painful to behold. The boys tweet pictures of girls breasts, make fun of the ‘ginger mingers’ they pull by accident, and generally fight and swear. The female characters moan, cry, and go shopping to relieve their tension. I was pointed by the official @such_tweet feed to consider Shakespeare’s own gender characterization. I have two answers to that 1) when you transpose a story to a modern setting, it makes sense that characterisation should follow 2) Shakespeare’s characters were much more interesting and nuanced than are currently being played out. I also think it’s entirely possible to be nuanced individual in a reduced, 140 character format  – everyone else on twitter manages it.

Age.

This is a small one, but important, I think, and plays a part in the previous problem. I came across this quote from the actress playing Juliet which sums up the problem:

“I’m nearly 20 so I would normally type in quite a sophisticated way, but a 15-year-old today will use a lot of text speak.” (Source)

So she’s 19. 4 years seems more the younger you are. I’m 25. But I have a brother and sister at 13 and 11. I also remember being 15, me and most of the people I knew made a concerted effort to avoid text speak, we felt like it was an adult stereotype of our lives (though perhaps didn’t articulate it like that), these days texts can be as long as you like, much more used are internet acronyms and emoticons. Also, young people do not feel more simply, they just sometimes don’t have the tools with which to articulate it – that’s why I find the broad brushstrokes of Mercutio and Romeo’s carousing so insulting. I know some teen boys do it, I know some that don’t, but they sure as hell wouldn’t tweet about so much of it. They’re not that foolish.

Story

This is a minor qualm, but really? A car crash? That was the best modern analogue for warring families that you could find? At one of my friend’s schools the Muslim and Hindu kids had a horrible ongoing vendetta which ended in a stabbing. My brother’s girlfriend had to keep him a secret for a long while because he wasn’t Chinese. And while I’m pretty sure that though my mum wouldn’t disown me if I fell in love with a Tory, it’d be pretty hard for her to fathom. Perhaps ignore that last one, but the previous feel much more relevant, and there’s so much less EXPLAINING to do.

Form.

This is the big one, despite the new form, the fundamental point is the old playwright’s adage: show don’t tell. These characters should not be offering us the dialogue as it happens, but snapshots of a much bigger picture – the interactive part is piecing it together. What the performances so far represent is a fundamental misunderstanding of the potential of the form. A recent example of this is that last night (Saturday) Tybalt and Romeo had a fight. 3 characters told us this.

How to make this performance and not reported literature? Show, don’t tell. Plenty of kids record fights and put them on Youtube, heck they probably livestream them now. A twitvid taken by Mercutio of Romeo and Tybalt fighting amongst chaos in a pub would have been thrilling. Also, dramatic.

Another example: the way the characters actually use the tweets. This is the advice I give to all of the theatre companies I work with on social media in practice or process: make it interesting. Saying “I am so angry” isn’t interesting or interactive; linking to angry music you’re playing, is. Saying “my eyes are so red from crying” is not interesting, but asking people if cucumbers on the eyes bring down puffiness because you don’t want your dad to know, is. Don’t tell me your brother was just arrested on the telly, show me a fuzzy twitpic of it.

Characters are tweeting things that it is unrealistic to tweet just to get the information out there. Twitter is a public space, would you announce your problems to everyone in a pub? No. But your sadness or anger might seep through, become apparent.

Perhaps not everyone on twitter is interesting, but this is not real life, this is art embedded in real life, it should still be artful.*

*Never talk to me about Live Art.

Finally,

Language

If you can’t fit it into a tweet without taking out all of the spaces and using c’s and u’s find another way of saying it. Or blog it, live journal, audioboo, twitpic, video. The skill of Twitter is learning how to make pertinent points in short bursts. We can’t always succeed at that, but that’s the fullest expression of it.

I think that #suchtweet is a bold experiment, but all involved seem to be working on the misconception that a smaller form requires broader brushstrokes, that they have to squeeze everything in, that there’s no room for nuance. Is this because of the 140 character form? Would you consider a haiku fundamentally less expressive than a longer poem? What about iambic pentameter? Shakespeare’s nuance was in his language, #suchtweet needs to find it in its form. The actors are working hard in unexplored territory, I completely respect that, but I consider that a greater reason to offer criticism, not a lesser. I also acknowledge that perhaps this experiment is not aimed at me, theatre academic, playwright, blogger. Maybe it’s aimed at people who don’t use these forms, but are growing up living them. And that (of course) the piece could get much better.

Do you think I’m being too harsh? Do you think that I should have waited until the end to critique? Do you think I should review each week? I’d be interested to know what you think.

Epilogue.

How would I have done this? Much more mean-ly. I would have cast the piece from existing and well established Twitter and socmed users, secretly, and then let the story play out without announcing it, to have people we previously thought of as ‘real’, fight, fall in love, die… Imagine finding their blog suspended? A tweet from family announcing that they had died? Playing with the boundaries of the real is dangerous, but an investigation of these online spaces – how they pretend to liveness and truth – and of how we all reconstruct ourselves, play a part, an analogue of our self on them each day? Now that’s interesting.

For my week two post on Such Tweet Sorrow, click here.

Last night I finally got to see some of the work coming out of Andy Field’s Forest Fringe. The microfestival at BAC was a vibrant and buzzing combination of short experiences, fuller scripted pieces, sound work, music, installations and intimate performances. Some of the pieces were more ‘finished’, whilst others just setting out on their first period of R&D. The whole event fitted into the nooks and crannies of the BAC building, and filled the spaces in between with live music and discoveries aplenty – one highlight being the items of clothing dotted around, inviting you to take them in exchange for you’re an item of your own, and it story. Like any good festival, there was more than you could see in one night, and each attendee built their own experience.

Pieces I encountered included Search Party’s Growing Old With You, in its early stages of an R&D process investigating how our society is changing with its aging population. The issue was approached on a micro-level in a one to one experience that exposed the performer’s approach to their aging, before asking you to exchange your own story for a small birthday cake. Though this was the ‘newest’ work that I experienced, it was also the one that affected me in the rawest manner. I’m definitely going to be looking to hear about what it grows into.

Mamoru Iriguchi did the best sideways step in heels I’ve seen a man in a dress do, as he held your hand in the dark, asking you to investigate the house you share during a power cut, illuminated only by a head torch (projector affixed to a helmet, projecting a rich animation, which moved with you.)

Tania El Khoury’s Fuzzy asked an audience of up to 5 to act as her and her (absent) partner’s therapist. The piece felt like it was erring on an interesting clash of cultures as seen through the relationship of a Lebanese woman and a man from the Midlands. Though the performance perhaps felt like it was playing to a larger crowd, how we adjust to more intimate performance styles (does a more expressionist approach alienate in a useful or destructive way in intimate performance?) is definitely something that bears investigation.

Charlotte Jarvis’ video installation All American Hero wafted the smell of cold Chinese takeaway and stale popcorn towards you as you slumped on a sofa, watching the video diaries of the world’s first All American Hero. Something between X Factor and the Million Dollar Man, it felt all too plausible.

Throughout the night, I dipped in and out of the Travelling Sounds Library (pictured), which featured the work of Blast Theory, Unlimited Theatre, Duncan Speakman (and more). The library invited you to settle onto a sofa, open up a book, and discover an mp3 player and headphones containing a selection of several phonic experiences lasting from 2-40 minutes. Kaleidoscope by Abigail Conway was a particular highlight for me, a piece that asked if you could change anything about yourself, what would it be?

Finally, I investigated the Waiting Room, where you were able to peruse the emails that scored the process of putting the festival together. Stressed, funny, and often personal, this view into the ‘back channel’ of the event gave the whole evening the feeling of ‘opening up’ rather than ‘presenting’, which fitted perfectly with the fringe ethic.

You may have spotted a brief rant by me on Twitter the other day (1, 2, 3) in response to this article on the effect of the internet and other digital technology on theatre audiences. The article itself is balanced, reasoned, and puts forward a point I very much agree with:

… ultimately, we should avoid looking at the net as either intrinsically good or bad. Rather, we should see it as a tool, and like all tools, it is only as good as the person or people using it. (source)

The piece was responding to criticism of how the “constant feedback demanded by interactive technology can, in effect, become like a “giant focus group” that challenges “the autonomy of the artist”.” (ibid) and that “these digital and virtual connections, [… are] not particularly human.” (ibid) by which the artist being quoted means not of interest or destructive to theatre/artists.

There is a misconception, I believe, that technology is driving us apart. In fact (and as I put more thoroughly in the paper I recently delivered at the recent TaPRA postgrad symposium) I believe we are living in an era that is coming to be defined by the removal of the interface. Of the removal of the sanctioning of knowledge and of the mediatisation of our relationship with the information and entertainment we consume.

Likewise with 100% of 6-10 year olds gaming (Source (PDF)), and as a nation our spending 30% more on video games than on the consumption of film, we are also now a generation of people becoming much more used to being closer more embedded in its stories. This is political as well as social, adverts and didactic politics are also able to embed themselves in the player or person at the centre of these stories, and less perceptively so, so we also need tools to allow us to interrogate that embeddedness. Theatre, is a powerfully political form, it embodies the question what if. The question that has been so evolutionarily important to us, and the question which is the basis of all politics. For theatre to preserve it’s political power/relevance (see The Player as Poltical for more) I believe it needs to be wading into Technoculture, examining how it is changing the way we live, and who we are.

After all, how is anyone who wishes to make theatre about people who live now able to do so without acknowledging that way that we are mediated and the ways that we communicate are integral to the way we live? If Michiko Kakutani is able to admit that his audiences have changed, perhaps he should consider who it is that we make our art for, about.

Acknowledging technology in your art doesn’t have to mean using it. It can, and powerfully so, but it can also be about understanding living in technoculture, about how you open up your processes, how you market your work, the processes by which you make it, and the way you approach the telling of it.

Let me introduce you to the future. We’ve always had it. It’s always been perceived to be degrading us somehow. By all means sign off on your own obsolescence, but know this: to investigate our digital technoculture is necessary. To discount its cultural relevance is at best ignorant, at worst, dangerous.

It’s time to stop having this conversation about if it’s right that theatre should embrace digital technology/technoculture, and instead start looking about how it’s being done. If you are scared of it, if you believe it is degrading how we live, that is exactly why you should be examining it.

Blog posts like this are just as guilty of continuing this conversation. So this will be the last I write on the matter for a while – of course it’s always necessary to reexamine your assumptions – but for the next few posts I do RE the arts, I’m going to stop talking about how and why the arts and tech should/can work together, and instead talk about the tools and ways they’re being used. If we should be looking at digital technology “as a tool, and like all tools, it is only as good as the person or people using it” (source) it’s time for me to stop blogging about why, and start looking at who and how.

]]> http://www.hannahnicklin.com/2010/04/what-if/feed/ 0 http://www.hannahnicklin.com/2010/03/belonging/ http://www.hannahnicklin.com/2010/03/belonging/#comments Wed, 24 Mar 2010 03:09:01 +0000 Hannah Nicklin http://www.hannahnicklin.com/?p=1458

“A strong-minded woman! Much like her mother, eh? Wears green spectacles and writes learned books … She wants to upset the universe, and play dice with the hemispheres. Women never know when to stop … “ William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, The Difference Engine.

A large part of the history of the struggle for women’s rights has been the fight for participation in the public sphere; for the vote, for a say in politics, economic rights, for a voice, and worth in the public arena. We hear again and again that technology is a powerful tool, that blogs and social networking phenomena such as Twitter are becoming more and more involved in politics, and that people gather, communicate, and agitate from online. There is no doubt that as a forum for discussion and a place to co-ordinate action, technology is an invaluable platform. New online tools are creating a new public sphere – in such a fast moving medium, we simply cannot afford to be left behind. Women need to be on the front line, both participating in and originating new technology, and whilst women represent roughly 55% of the people online, and a 2008 study by Tesco’s Computers for Schools initiative found that from as early as seven years old, girls are outstripping boys when it comes to computer literacy (Taherreport, 2008), this isn’t being born out in the tech industry itself:

While women influence 80% of consumer spending decisions, 90% of technology products and services are designed by men [...] Women make up approximately 20% (and sometimes less) of panelists at major tech conferences. Even fewer are asked to be keynote speakers. Furthermore, women in tech are rarely quoted and sought out as experts by the mainstream media covering technology. (Kapin, 2009)

Women are hideously underrepresented in the tech world, this is due to more universal problems encountered by women in and en route to the work place, but it is also down to the pervading myth (and it is a myth, but one that unfortunately one that is woven into our education right from the kinds of toys that children are given to learn from) that women just can’t do tech as well as men. What is largely accepted as true is that role models are one of the best ways to break down that misconception. Enter Ada Lovelace Day – A day named after the world’s first computer programmer – countess of Lovelace, Ada. Ada Lovelace Day brings bloggers together to share stories and role models of women that are important to the/their history of digital technology/computing.

There are plenty of excellent programmers and engineers which other people are going to do much better justice than I. The person I have decided to talk about is a bit different, but the kind of person who I think also makes a big difference. I’d have to, really, because she’s an academic.

Theorists are often seen as derivative of the do-ers, but Ada Lovelace, devoid of the hardware that could run her code, was in essence a theorist, some of the biggest imaginative leaps can cause the biggest scientific and technological pushes. This short blog post today is dedicated to Sadie Plant.

I discovered Sadie Plant first as a writer on the complex and revolutionary artistic ideas of the Situationist International – looking at how advance capitalism can be tackled by the revelation of the spectacle, before discovering that she founded the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit at the University of Warwick, and then getting my hands on a (signed, no less, thanks go out to @toodamnninja for that find) copy of Zeros + Ones.

Zeroes + Ones is a magnificent piece of writing, a glorious, hubristic, and enthusiastic look at women in digital technoculture. It moves from science fiction, to the history of zero, to Freud, Frankenstein, and Ada Lovelace in her own words; tracing the history of women as portrayed in technoculture, and women as the body of digital tech. Plant looks at weaving and the Jacquard Loom‘s punched cards as a precursor to the analytical engine,  the notion of binary sex/gender, and how the way women have had to exist in the workplace places them ideally for the way workplaces are reconfiguring in a digital age. Through a complex and incredibly varied text Plant allows Ada herself to emerge as a kind of guide, the book progressing as an almost ode to Ada’s mind:

“‘nothing but very close & intense application to subjects of a scientific nature now seems at all to keep my imagination from running wild, or to stop up the void which seems to be left in my mind from a want of excitement’”

Plant looks at how women, given the task of interfacing throughout history – the secretary, the PA, the typist, the telephone operator – find themselves ideally suited to the future of tech, as well as woven throughout its history:

“When computers were vast systems of transistors and valves which needed to be coaxed into action, it was women who turned them on. They have not made some trifling contribution to an otherwise man-made tale: when computers became the miniaturised circuits of silicon chips, it was women who assembled them. Theirs is not a subsidiary role which needs to be rescued for posterity, a small supplement whose inclusion would set the existing records straight: when computers were virtually real machines, women wrote the software on which they ran. And when computer was a term applied to flesh and blood workers, the bodies which composed them were female. Hardware, software wetware–before their beginnings and beyond their ends, women have been the simulators, assemblers, and programmers of the digital machines.”

The first computer programming language was named Ada, after the founder of modern computer programming; Ada Lovelace. Women played a key role in code-breaking at Bletchley Park during WWII, in 1942 the ENIAC (the first general-purpose electronic  computer) was programmed by six women and Grace Hopper, the second programmer, inspired the development of the COBOL programming language. Women are the majority of online users (55%) and tech consumers (80%).  When I speak to my programming friends they have no clue about any of this. The battle (as ever) for women in tech is reclaiming our past as well as our present.

Plant then looks to the future, touching on Donna Haraway’s Cyberfeminist manifesto and at ideas of consciousness and cyborgs in fiction, theory, and reality:

“Only the most highly coded and perfectly integrated machines are unable to see the extent of their own programming. The bladerunner’s blind conviction in his own humanity proves only how efficient the programming can be.”

Zeroes + Ones was written in 1997 and is an invaluable book for all people interested and working in the world of technology. Looking back, as well as far forward the ideas, facts, figures and concepts shifting under its covers slowly reveal a full picture, pregnant with the full potential of a powerful, feminine, digital age.

Buy it, read it. Laugh, smile, disagree, but above all, feature this fuller history in your mind and in your deeds, because, as an excellent blog post I read today puts it:

“the problem is […] thoughtlessness, a kind of – oh, God, I’m going to say it – institutional sexism, where nobody thinks to notice and object because nobody realises what’s happening. […] it’s not what we believe and value that counts. It’s not what we think in our head and hearts that counts. It’s what we do, often by mistake and often without knowing that we’re doing it. It’s what we do when that effectively runs counter to what we believe that needs attending to.” Colin Smith

My Ada Lovelace Day is dedicated to Sadie Plant, because nothing has shown me that as a woman I belong in tech – and that it belongs to me – better and brighter than this book.

In scattered and barely noticed ways, the desire to construct one’s own life was shaping the twentieth century (McDonough 2004, 10)

From the bypassing of human interface devices (HIDs) such as mice and keyboards represented by the iPhone and the iPad, to the removal of a media interface represented by the increasing popularity of social media, the current trend in digital technology centres around the removal of the interface. This trend has recently been seen as becoming increasingly prevalent in theatre and performance.

[A] key ’09 [theatre] trend was the removal of performers from performances altogether. Whether directed by headphones or left to negotiate for themselves […] increasingly the spectator was becoming the spectacle. (Haydon 2009)

In 2009 the biggest selling entertainment item on Amazon.co.uk was a video game – COD:MW2 outsold both Harry Potter and Twilight on DVD. We spent 30% more on video games last year than we did on going to the cinema and purchasing DVDs combined. And in a recent survey done by the BBC, 100% of 6-10 year olds gamed regularly.

With gaming you’re involved and in control. With other things you just have to sit back and watch. I’ve been gaming for most of my life. – Callum, aged 10 (BBC 2005 Source (PDF))

Although digital strategies and ideas have been examined in a performative context since the 1960s, this technology and these strategies have reached a point where they are ubiquitous enough to form a real trend in narrative consumption. As thus ours is a culture becoming much more used to being embedded in its stories, political as well as social. In Theatre and Performance in a Digital Culture Matthew Causey discusses the political move from simulation to embeddedness, suggesting that

The site of power has shifted from the exterior screens of simulation to the interior body of the material subject. (Causey 2006, 179)

The example drawn by Causey contrasts the illusion of Gulf War I – of cut together clips, narrators, and news packages – to the rolling embedded coverage of Gulf War II. ‘This is happening now’, the spectacle says, ‘there is no room for editing, cutting, or simulation; this is reality’. In our age of so-called reality TV, 24-hour rolling news, and the advent of the ‘real-time’ and ‘social’ web, we are witnessing a corruption of the data-flow of contemporary life. We are led to believe that the data we receive is live, uncut, unmediated and true. As thus we lose the critical tools afforded us by distance and reflection. It is the ‘interior body of the material subject’ where the political battle for subjectivity must now be fought, in our selves.

Pervasive gaming and interactive theatre takes the digital idea of player-as-protagonist, and applies it to the lived body of performance. Pervasive games are ‘playful experiences’ which combine aspects of childhood parlour games and video game ethics and t to be played in groups across large urban spaces, interactive theatre moves these ideas into thicker narratives. Both forms allow the audience to become agent, and can be seen to expand their storytelling over space, technology, and/or time.

“All theatre is interactive. To call this diverse spectrum of work ‘Interactive Arts’, is only to suggest that it acknowledges that relationship and seeks, in some way, to interrogate it.” (Field 2010)

The player-as-protagonist form borrows from the actor of theatre and the avatar of online worlds, but removes the interface, allowing the user to play with aspects of the double and the void in the self. Allowing us to interrogate our selves as constructs, the player-as-protagonist format brings us back to a truer sense of self and reality, through their present absence.

Absences – of meaning, participation, reality, and identity – can constitute useful tactics in the struggle to unmask the social and economic relations of contemporary capitalist society. (Plant 1992, 181)

Though these pervasive games and interactive performances often involve recorded or other technology, which can disengage you, this is countered by the danger of placing you as the avatar in the world-constituting process. These kinds of performances represent:

An embracing of the total impossibility of getting away from the world around us. So much theatre strives to make the stage into an almost sanctified other place […] A space for coolness and distance and clarity. For conveying social messages and great untainted truths. But I don’t think you can hold back the weight of the world. It comes flooding in regardless. [interactive theatre/art] doesn’t just understand that, it relies on it. It swims in reality. (Field, In the World Not About the World 2010)

However it is important to note that one very integral aspect of the political power of theatre is in danger of being lost to immersion.

The major objection against immersion is the alleged incompatibility of the experience with the exercise of critical faculties. (Ryan 2001, 10)

Branding, politics, media and art are all exhibiting a shift towards the immersive, personal – or hyperlocal. A radical or uncritical shift towards the hyperlocal could be incredibly dangerous. If you forward politics only on an individual basis or understanding you lose a sense of the bigger ‘better good’. You lose the politics of community, the politics that acknowledges that in some aspects we are all alike, and should all have equal footing, privilege and rights. How far is the hyperlocal different from a proactive version of NIMBYism? 

Likewise we need to acknowledge the dangers posed to people’s sense of self and belief, by work that so directly involves audiences. We no longer rely on a set, actors, a whole audience to maintain the suspension of disbelief, but one person on whom the whole of their narrative rests. Although we are more and more used to traversing different worlds and identities in virtual and real spaces, we also need to acknowledge that these conceptions of the ‘self’ are still very rigid. There’s something to be said for easing people away from hegemonic visions of identity, encouraging fluidity, but we should also acknowledge that to assume a fluid transition, assumes identity is a blank slate, sculpted, opted. Does this also apply to people who aren’t white, CIS-gered, hetero, able bodied, middle class, developed-world men? What about the majority cast as an ongoing ‘Other’ – to whom identity is more important, or more integral, people who are defined by their difference? Identity is dangerous when it is thoughtlessly fragmented or assaulted.

However within this danger lies a new political power. When the arts immerse people in narrative we are asking them to augment their bodily identity, an action much more powerful and dangerous than its equivalent in a virtual space.

Our bodies are where we experience the intersection of our individuality and the cultural sphere. (Hillis 1999, 172)

There’s something of using our physical bodies to explore aspects of digital, political and mediatised embeddedness which is incredibly important – which seeks to reconcile our lived body with our virtual selves (mediated or performed). This produces a kind of ‘mixed’ or augmented reality that requires a gentler and more playful set of performative tactics to support participants and preserve a connection to community and critical faculties.

These tactics are best exemplified by the work of people and companies such as Duncan Speakman, Coney, and Blast Theory. These works are often locative and site-specific, they are rooted – allowing for the safety of the participant, and for a connection to the ‘bigger picture’. Blast Theory’s Rider Spoke and Duncan Speakman’s Always Something Somewhere Else are self-created and generative pieces of work that use GPS units

[…] to discover fragments of other people’s audio recordings, [creating] a space in which digital tracking equipment can do more than just map our place within a geographical grid. It can remake our relationship to the rich network of memories and thoughts and people that truly make up the city we inhabit.  (Field, Playing Games 2010)

The most effective of this work also uses the more traditional TIE ideas of role-play to explore issues of morality and community on a narrative/micro level, whilst the bodily presence and physical engagement acknowledges the macro/societal. In a recent series of blogs for the British Council, Andy Field describes how work such as Coney’s Small Town Anywhere and Blast Theory’s Day of the Figurines allow us to engage with

[…] a society at a point of fracture and collapse. We engage not by watching but by playing – by becoming one small fragment of this disintegrating world. (Ibid)

This is a profoundly political act, indeed, as Field goes on to say:

Politics is as much about form as it is about content. It is a way of doing things. Interpersonal relationships, the structure of our communities, our reading of and relationship to the place we inhabit. How we understand our being in the world. What [interactive arts] allow us is an opportunity to explore and experiment with how we do things. In displacing or undermining our usual, unconsidered way of relating to the people and things around us, they generate a vital context for reflection and experimentation. (Ibid)

These works deftly combine the intense and culturally relevant player-as-protagonist format with a political power that respects the weight of the immersive experience. The tactics are playful, but this does not mean they are trivial. By writing its stories on the bodies of its participants performance is able to hand people the critical tools to interrogate our culture of embeddness. We are able to locate the battleground of the ‘interior body of the material subject’ and the player-as-protagonist can become the player-as-political.

Works Cited.

BBC. “Digital Play, Digital Lifestyles.” BBC Creative Research and Development. Alice Taylor & Dr Adrian Woolard. December 2005.

http://open.bbc.co.uk/newmediaresearch/files/BBC_UK_Games_Research_2005.pdf (accessed March 18, 2010).

Causey, Matthew. Theatre and Performance in a Digital Culture, from simulation to Embeddedness. Oxon: Routledge, 2006.

Field, Andy. In the World Not About the World. Febuary 25, 2010. http://www.connected-uk.org/join-the-conversation/in-the-world-not-about-the-world/ (accessed March 16, 2010).

Field, Andy. Interactivity. Febuary 10, 2010. http://www.connected-uk.org/join-the-conversation/interactivity/ (accessed March 16, 2010)

Field, Andy, Playing Games. February 20, 2010. http://www.connected-uk.org/join-the-conversation/playing-games/ (accessed March 16, 2010).

Haydon, Andrew. The year in theatre: trends of 2009. December 30, 2009.  http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2009/dec/30/theatre-trends-2009 (accessed January 1, 2010).

Hillis, Ken. Digital Sensations, Space, Identity, and embodiment in virtual reality (. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999.

Plant, Sadie. The Most Radical Gesture, the Situationist International in a Postmodern Age. London: Routledge, 1992.

Ryan, Marie-Laure. Narrative as Virtual Reality, Immersion and Interactivity in Literature and Electronic Media. . Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2001.