Hannah Nicklin » audioboo

Nightwalks

Hannah Nicklin — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 23:33:00 +0000

In lieu of a working writing arm, I’m taking to a few different strategies to make sure I can keep working, one of which has been recording my voice. I’ve been using this as a way to keep more fluid notes than I can with dictation, and the same has gone for my creative as well as academic thinking. In some new experimenting with a creative piece that (just today) found a name – Nightwalks – I’ve been taking my normal note-taking-before-forming-full-creative-ideas onto audioboo. At first I was a little frustrated with the fact that I couldn’t shape and edit before the words flew out into the big wide world (as I can on a piece of paper), until I allowed myself to see the meanderings, ums, and corrections as just like papered crossings outs, footnotes and refinement. It feels refreshingly bare to lay out my thinking in such an open way, and very in fitting with how I think tech and art can work together – opening up processes, hopefully in a vaguely interesting ‘DVD extras’ kind of way.

You can catch all of my recorded meanderings on audioboo under the tag ‘nightwalks‘ or play them on the boobase map, below – you can zoom and drag to move as you normally would on googlemaps, and click on the flags to open the option to play the audio. The thoughts and feelings therein will soon be morphing into an idea for recording… so, as they so anachronistically say: stay tuned.

Such Tweet Sorrow, a Blog Post in Two Acts.

Hannah Nicklin — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 23:46:26 +0000

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.

“Educate Yourself”

Hannah Nicklin — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 17:20:27 +0000

Listen!
A woman protesting with UAF, who had escaped Nazi Germany as a little girl, sole surviving member of her family, explaining why she thinks it’s important to stand up to the EDL, the BNP, and other far right organisations.

I’m posting (in a more collated manner) the content which I took from the Unite Against Fascism protest against the English Defence League march on the Houses of Parliament in support of the screening of Geert Wilder’s inflammatory and anti-Islam film. The protest clash was this Friday (5th March). You can read more about Geert Wilder’s politics here, and about the EDL here. I went to support UAF in protesting against the EDL, but I would like to say that I would never suggest the EDL shouldn’t have the right to protest. They certainly should get the opportunity to speak their views, so that they can be listened to and tackled. To dismiss a member of the EDL, or any other nationalist organisation as ‘Scum’, completely dehumanises them, and says that we are somehow fundamentally different and unreconcilable. Nor are they working class victims of an education system and cynical right wing tabloid press, they are individuals, who believe what they do because they have come to it by a reasoning process as valid as our own. In the same way as terrorism, race tension and unrest works in the favour of a police and media state, and against us, all of us, justifying stricter laws, guns on the streets, and an infinite loop of press coverage.

“The spectacle of terrorism provides a socially cohesive common enemy, legitimises needs for vigilance, security, and new forms of police repression, and encourages the opinion that even the faultiest of democracies is superieor to the reign of terror.” Gianfranco Sanguinetti in a 1978 text On Terrorism and the State.

50 people arrested according to the BBC, most of them were UAF, as the EDL had only announced their march two days before it went ahead the UAF were unable to officially sanction their counter protest as required by the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 which states that:

6 days notice must be given to the Metropolitan Commissioner [...] He must then allow the demonstration but may impose conditions upon it. The conditions can be changed without notice on the day by any senior police officer. One of the considerations is ‘disruption to the life of the community’ – a catch-all category that allows the police to stop almost any protest. Loudspeakers are banned except for use by those in various positions of authority. (Read More)

Because the UAF hadn’t had the time to have the counter-protest approved, anyone protesting was effectively breaking the law. I can see why it’s necessary for the police force to be informed about protests in order to provide for the safety of both the protesters and the public, but at the same time think that it was right that the UAF were opposing the EDL. It was necessary for the police to clear the protestors, but necessary isn’t always the same as right. Though the police, for the most part, were just doing a very difficult job, they were also, at times, poor at communicating what was happening, some people though people were being arrested when they were just being moved, kettles were set up to split the UAF protesters which people were unwittingly allowed into, and then refused the right to leave, and people were arrested without being told why. I will say that some of the UAF are just as guilty as thinking in black and white, however, and some of their shouts and behaviour went beyond the peaceful protest principles of hold on, sit down, make yourself difficult to move. The EDL were mostly pretty offensive and violent.

Here’s a selection of videos and audioboos – the audioboos as links and the twitvids followed by links that should work on iphones (damn flash/apple).

Audioboos:

Kettled
Boo Through the Bars
Arrested for No Reason
Educate Yourself
Why are we here?

Videos:

Being Moved.

Restrained.

Talking with the Police on why people were arrested.

Loading the anti-EDL people onto buses.

This is what the EDL look like.

Eismas Reading

Hannah Nicklin — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 22:44:50 +0000

Blog posts are thin on the ground at the moment – a combination of Christmas frivolities, PhD work culminating into a body of writing for January, 2 play redrafts, and my being asked (and thus needing to prep) to talk to students at Leeds Met and Nottingham Trent about arts, tech, and audience participation in the New Year. So here’s some media to tide you over:

These Audioboos make up the full 30 minutes of the reading of my piece Eismas – currently being redrafted. Track 01 is where you want to start.

I also grabbed some video from that evening which I’m sure I’ll get round to editing soon. Sure…

Reclaiming the Night

Hannah Nicklin — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 22:52:47 +0000

This is just a quick post to give you a feeling for the RTN march this Saturday – you can find all of the interviews, images and video I took over at this Posterous. It was a really brilliant, strong, and empowering event. Sadly, however, we were reminded how very necessary the march was at the same time as someone was sexually assaulted whilst actually on the march.

Keep fighting.

A Video or Four

Hannah Nicklin — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 19:26:31 +0000

Just snapshots of my travels again, taken with my iPhone.

A snapshot from the #booparty

Sheltering from the rain, @maggiephilbin @documentally @quitexander @ihatemornings @philcampbell @barnstormed and more…

Hovercraft!

And Paddling ^_^

Pictures from my weekend’s wanderings

Hannah Nicklin — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 18:43:10 +0000

Nothing spectacular, just images taken on my iPhone during my travels 6th-9th August. Click to see the stand alone image, hover to see the title. You can also view them with PicLens, but I’ve reduced the quality a bit too much to make that a pleasant experience. I’m still working the gallery stuff out, but you can read my comments on the pics if you view them that way, will leave them at 66% rather than 33% next time!

[View with PicLens]

People pictured include @maggiephilbin @documentally @quitexander @ihatemornings @philcampbell @wbbigdave and Tim Gentry