People have been telling me stories, and I will get to them. But I want to start with the silences. The inarticulacies. The people who don’t feel like their lives are worth putting into words. The people who asked ‘why me’? The lack of light, the darkness on the edge of city nights, the things on the edges of saying.

Event details for the first soundwalk will be released on Monday…

videos!

First up, a 7 minute taster of the WHOLE DAY

And for the more dedicated or mix&match viewer, a playlist of videos of each provocateur:

Another fantastically busy week has been and gone, I’m saving one half of it to talk to you about next week, but I think if you follow me down any particular path of the interwebz, you will have noticed that on Thursday I helped convene the ‘Flash Conference‘ at the heart of the ACE/RSA State of the Arts Conference. The Flash Conference was conceived of by myself, Andy Field, and Laura McDermott out of a reaction our awareness of the general dissatisfaction with last year’s format, with some of the problems of scale often faced by such a large event (i.e., missing any address to the smaller scale), and finally, from my point of view at least, with the language and the questions that the conference was shaped around. That last point is perhaps a little impolitic to say (nor very clearly said, my brain is mush this weekend) but the shift into, for example (what turned out to be entirely rudderless) conversations about art and the Big Society rang rather uncomfortable with me, personally. Partly because of my own politics, but also because it felt like a program that pandered to government, not one that brought all to the same table for what could have been a more valuable conversation.

I’m being a little careful with my language here (‘careful’ for me, anyway), and that’s because, entirely to the conference organisers’ credit, when we approached them with our idea to run a companion conference in a nearby pub they actually invited us into the conference itself. Though, as Lyn Gardner put it we were slightly “banished upstairs” – the fact that we were there at all was brilliant, not because we ourselves wanted to talk to the top table types, but because it enabled us to bring so many other voices to that top table – people who couldn’t afford the travel or the ticket price; artists, students, performers and makers for whom the conference really did not feel like a welcome place; or single parents without childcare. I hope that the great deal of interaction that we enabled showed the organisers, and indeed any organisers of any event, quite how much people are dying to have a two-way conversation rather than a one-way panel-driven selection of monologues.

Over 4 days the flashconference.co.uk site had 1273 individual visits from 27 countries, 52 videos, images, texts and sounds were submitted to the blog, 1827 tweets were exchanged, with the majority of that activity falling on the day of the conference. We were inundated not just with contributions, but also thanks, for allowing people who had felt excluded to sound in on the debate. Certainly this was not a perfect format, but it was hopefully a spark, a small static shock. Our industry deserves such large-scale spaces for discussion, but they will only begin to be truly discursive when they speak to the whole of the arts ecosystem, and from a place in not above the world that we all live in.

I co-wrote a paper delivered last year at the annual Theatre and Performance Research Association conference. This paper was essentially on how conferences are, well, completely useless at truthfully representing either thought, discourse, or artistic practice. My section began with a quote from Foucoult:

We are in the era of the simultaneous, of juxtaposition, of the near and far, of the side-by-side, of the scattered. We exist in a moment when the world is experiencing, I believe, something less like a great life that would develop through time than like a network that connects points and weaves its skin (Foucoult, The Essential Works II, 175)

The best art is collaborative, built in its simplest expression, out of dialogue between the world and the artist. Gatherings to discuss our industry need to acknowledge both this and the shift from media consumption to interaction, from marketing to communication being driven by the de-centralising effects of the digital world. We are woven together, you can’t examine a whole of a piece of fabric by only examining four pulled-out threads.

Next year’s conference has been announced as happening outside of London, moving it away from London is a good start, but I also hope that they think more about how they form their questions and how and with whom they discuss them. How would I do that? More artists, a sliding scale of ticket prices, greater responsivity, open manifesto sessions, a room full of remote contributions, art installations as reactions, and a selection of themes and concerns picked by both the organisers, and the wider arts community. Allowing the Flash Conference to exist in the wider conference space was a brilliant step in a positive direction, here’s to more of them.

You can view all of the provocations delivered on the day in this Youtube playlist, or on the flashconference site. You can also look through the archive to see all the contributions put forward by many others, and view the slides which we built through out the day of highlights from tweets and submissions. Thanks to Andy and Laura for wanting to work with me, the RSA and ACE for inviting us in, the excellent provocateurs, and all of the wonderful discussions and contributions put forward by people who couldn’t be more than tele-present.

(incidentally, I’m working my way through transcribing and captioning all of the videos, on 6/14 at the moment, if anyone could help me out with the trancription and/or captioning of a video, let me know.)

It was an amazing, chock-full, exhausting (chilly) and exhilarating experience, and I’m still reeling a little. I probably should do a full on summary, maybe a top 5 (or 6, I like even numbers) of shows/events that most affected/ grabbed/intrigued me, but right now my life involves catching up on everything that had to stand still whilst I was in Bristol; PhD, real life, artistic stuff, and also, y’know, Christmas.

But I promise I’ll be back soon, if not with something think-y, then maybe with something like a short story, it’s been a while since I did something frivolously creative.

In the meantime, how about heading over to the live blog at www.ibtlive.newworknetwork.info and checking out what I got up to? There are almost 10 posts per day, plus far more on the New Work Network twitter account. Props (you heard me) to all the amazing people at both New Work Network and Inbetween Time, an amazing lot of people who were fascinating and supportive in equal measure.

And look out in coming days for me frantically trying to fill up my ‘at least four blog posts a month’ quota with some ramblings about it, you lucky folk.

Available on the Youtubes here.

The writing was (as usual) pretty hard until I clicked with a main through-line, something which is hard to find until you actually get writing (I find). So I kicked myself off by writing five stories about different kinds of dark and light; A story about mistaking planes for stars, a story about sitting on a bench under a tree in the streetlight with a stranger, a story of a power cut and light and dark from your childhood, a story about bonfires, and a story about walking at night and being able to breathe better. Then I set out finding out what connected them all. I think this has more clearly become the idea of reclaiming our dark cities – something which I’ve thought about a bit since Reclaim the Night, and the Vampires pervasive game that I played last year. So after testing for timing etc., I shall also tighten the connection up with some additional pieces of writing.

Working with Genuine Musicians this time has been a mix of total awesome and middling daunting. It was so good to have something entirely new and bespoke, but at the same time it’s so beautiful in places that I struggled to believe that I could do it justice. Hopefully I have. How will you find out? By adding yourself or inviting a nearby friend to the facebook event, and checking the website for more info. That’s how.

Finally, in upcoming shenanigans, I shall be speaking at a Pecha Kucha in Coventry this Tuesday on Theatre and the Age of the First Person (which I’m beginning to think should be called the Renaissance of the First Person). You can buy tickets and see who else is speaking here. I’m particularly intrigued by ‘safe sex with robots’. Good title.

Do listen/watch in HD – the sound quality is much better.

To find out more, and to attend #NightwalkYork, follow the hashtag, visit the site at http://nightwalkyork.tumblr.com and join/invite people to the facebook event.

Writing continues, and is somewhere, I think, between a love letter to late Autumn, and a revision of the bad press that darkness gets… I have a feeling the piece will start with a match strike. Fun recording session that I think will involve fireworks to come too. Stay tuned, and do share the piece if you know anyone up North who might be interested.

*cheese and onion, since you ask, and yes I chose an odd place to do so.

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.

(Youtube link here)

So, a couple of days writing, recording, and editing later, here’s a quick taster of the first minute and a half of The Smell of Rain Reminds Me of You.

The Smell of Rain Reminds Me of You is happening (rain or shine) at 5PM on this Saturday 17th of July, at Piccadilly Gardens, in Manchester. For more info go to rainreminds.tumblr.com and join the facebook event at bit.ly/RainRemindsFB for a reminder when the MP3 and instructions are live.

Follow or discuss it on Twitter with the #rainreminds hashtag.

The soundwalk is part of the Hazard Festival, Manchester hazardmcr.org/

A quick taster of my time at Mayfest in Bristol, more detailed blog posts will appear soon. I returned into a very busy time of PhD, so blogging is suffering slightly in the mean time. Do also check out the microsite I set up and liveblogged from on behalf of the Forest Fringe whilst at the microfest.

The Forest Fringe Microfest is a travelling microfestival taster of the work collated under the umbrella of the Forest Fringe – a lo-fi fringe of contempoary performance held at Edinburgh each year. Generally made of win.

People to follow from the video:
@forestfringe
@andytfield
@search_party
@actionherolive
@shellshocknews

And non Twitter folk; Brian Lobel, Tinned Fingers

Check them out.