SITE SPECIFIC PERFORMANCE – Page 2

Final Blog Submission – Rebecca Elizabeth Bierton

Rebecca Elizabeth Bierton / May 15, 2015 / Rebecca Elizabeth Bierton

Framing Statement

Site Specific is a second year drama module that focuses on creating performance or performative work that is relevant in terms of history or culture to a location that has been previously allocated to each group. The site allocated to me was the University Library, also known as the The Great Central Warehouse/Library. This location used to be a warehouse, alongside a railway, used for transporting goods around Lincolnshire, and this is the idea that I have based my work on. My work is a performative series of creative art pieces to represent each individual station that the goods used to be transported to. These pieces were displayed on the third floor of the University Library on the 7^th May for four hours to help encourage students to look into the history of their library and pay attention to architectural features they may have previously ignored.

Research and Process

During my research phase, I found instantly inspiration from an artist called ‘Phlegm’ who creates artwork on buildings in and around Sheffield. He is a street artist, who draws inspiration from the areas around him and their past, present and future issues. The result is often beautiful artwork to symbolise what is happening within these areas. Phlegm offers no explanation for his artwork and remains anonymous. This means his pieces take on a different meaning for each viewer, giving them incentive to think about what his piece is about. His artwork is always preserved, and is a great feature of the city. Here is a piece of artwork Phlegm created in Mosborough, Sheffield. This is believed to have been created as a response to the council and their plans to remove the site this painting has been made on. This piece really changed the way people responded to the site, and so the site was not removed but preserved to keep the artwork upon it. This piece of art changed the views of the council and public perspective, and this is what I would like my piece to achieve.

(Phlegm, undated, cited in http://www.phlegmcomicnews.blogspot.co.uk/, undated)

I wanted my piece to also be symbolic of the past, present and future of the University Library, and so I looked for inspiration around in and around the library, starting with the organisation system.
The alphabetical system is a main feature of the library, it creates an easy organisation that students are familiar with. I wanted to look at this concept when I started creating my piece.
I had thought about using the alphabet as a starting point. Having the letters A-Z in board-like forms, each containing a word that relates to the library. Whether this be the library structure or the way the library is used. You could follow the boards, in alphabetical order, on a trail-like adventure through the library, causing you to visit and look at places you may not have been aware of.

Although Conan and Dan liked my idea in the proposal meeting, they did feel as though I could push myself further and push the boundaries I had created for myself. I could have been more ambitious and worked on a bigger scale, been more daring and creative with my work.
They suggested I could have made the boards bigger and more visual, to put them at eye level and make them more appealing by using interesting and different materials. It was suggested that maybe I could look at old warehouse produce and the railway. I needed to emphasise the architectural features more and explore hidden areas of the library, encourage the audience to use and explore the full space.
It was also suggested I don’t use the whole alphabet for my work, and I only focus on a few letters, focus on making them bigger and using different more diverse materials. This gave me more time to make those fewer boards bigger and better, as I would not be focusing on twenty six different boards, but rather a few simpler boards. It was suggested I lead the trail myself and take on a performance role, leading the audience around the library and taking them on the journey.
I took inspiration from Tim Etchell’s letters within Nick Kayes ‘Site Specific Art’ book as he talks about asking members of Sheffield city for their answers to certain question. Except I took a group of my friends from different courses and asked them one question, ‘where have you been within the library?’. Most of my had only been to the floor where their course books were, and a majority of them had never been to the third floor. This would come to be my final location.
I later had a progress meeting with Dan about my ideas and the progression of my piece. My idea had changed to using the third floor as my location, particularly the back wall of the third floor. This was because the third floor is an interesting space in general, as there is an unspoken understanding that you do not speak up there. I could play on this idea of silence and have no sound made within my piece. The audience will be purely focusing on the work I have created. The back wall is made from the original brickwork from when the library was a warehouse, and as my piece was about drawing attention to the unnoticed areas of the library, this would be ideal.
I wanted to build on my idea of an illustrated trail, but make it specific to the third floor. I wanted the brickwork of the back wall to be a feature. One way to do this was to look at the railway, and use a literal railway as the basis of the trail. I thought about having it circulate around the wall of the third floor, leading you to different ‘boards’ and ideas presenting information about the warehouse and its uses. I had the opportunity to use solid materials, like grain, IT equipment, books, brick, and pages to help create these boards and make them a sculptural piece rather than an informational piece. These ‘boards’ could be styled like a railway station to fit in with a railway theme.
My piece progressed to focus on the idea of the railway and the warehouse’s uses. I thought about having a literal railway that would run around the back wall of the library and would carry a small amount of grain. This would be a play on my idea of a trail, as you can follow the railway from board to board. My boards further progressed to being representative pieces based on the old railway stations.
I used ‘The Book as Art’ as part of my inspiration for the pieces that I had created. I liked the diverse images within the book and the different things they represented. I was inspired by this and wanted to create my own representative artwork. Obviously my piece had to be site specific, and with my site being the University Library, I set about researching the Central Warehouse and its uses.
I discovered the train line used to run by the side of the library, and collect goods and grain to take to different areas around Lincolnshire. These areas were Lincoln, Coningsby, Tumby Woodside, New Bolingstoke, Stickney and Midville. This gave me the idea of having six different art pieces to represent each station.
I wanted to use and explore diverse and unusual materials for my piece, this would help my work to stand out against any usual paintings or drawings that could be considered ‘uninteresting’ and fail to capture the attention of passing students.
Each station gives focus to a different aspect connecting the library and the warehouse. This idea has developed from my proposal meeting with Conan and Dan and their suggestions on how to make my work bigger and more ambitious. By having my boards develop into visual art pieces, this made me focus more on the materials I could have used and also work on a bigger scale. The pieces would be at eye level and would capture the attention of library users and bring their attention to the back wall of the library, which is my overall aim.

My Artistic Piece
The first board I created for my piece was the ‘Book Spines Frame’. I wanted to this piece to sit in the first window on the back wall, facing out over Lincoln. This meant the window would encourage the audience to look out over Lincoln, which many people do not do on the third floor of the library. This window showed a beautiful view of Lincoln, over the marina and right up to the cathedral. However, in an initial trial run of my piece, I discovered that this window was not suitable and so I had to move to the right and use a different window. This meant my piece lost its desired effect although it was still looking out over Lincoln, as I had intended. I drew neat sketches for each piece, as a rough idea of how I wanted each piece to look.
Here you can see my rough sketch of the ‘Book Spines Frame’:

I originally wanted my piece to be made entirely out of book spines.

I achieved this and my piece looked almost identical to how I had drawn it. I took this piece to the library to trial this on site. I discovered my piece was too small and looked pathetic in the window. People were ignoring my piece as they walked past, which was not what I wanted. My piece was also flimsy and unable to stand alone. I needed this piece to stand upright alone and be able to support itself. After trying to strengthen my piece and extend it, it became apparent that I needed to rethink my idea and ensure my piece was strong and supportive of its own weight.
I took my piece home where I began to rebuild this idea. I decided that book spines were too weak of a material and were unable to stand without the book backing it. I then decided to use hardback book covers. This material was strong and sturdy, they were also bright and bolder. They stood out and were capable of catching audience attention. The book covers were also able to stand on their own without support, and so I began to re-create my piece using this material.
I used thin pieces of wood build a supportive frame and wood glue to stick the book covers on to this frame. I took this back to the library to trial and the piece was able to stand freely alone within the window and was quickly catching attention. I decided to leave this as one of my final pieces.

I quickly began work on my second piece, the ‘Book Pages Collage’.
Here you can see my original sketch for the piece:

This piece was to be created entirely out of book pages, backed on to corregated cardboard to keep my piece sturdy and still. The word ‘Coninsby’ was cut out of the cardboard, this is so that when the board was mounted against the window, the light will shine through the word and be visually appealing to the audience. This would draw direct attention to the back wall of the library, which was the main focus of my piece. The book pages are used as a direct and visual link to the library, as well as being a material for me to explore and be creative with.

I took this piece to the libary for a trial run. I quickly discovered that although my piece was attracting attention, it was not big enough to cover the whole window and so was losing some of its visual impact. I took this piece home and rebuilt it using a bigger frame made of wood. This covered the whole window and had its desired impact upon the audience members.

I decided not to use my sketches as a basis for my work anymore, as these sketches seemed to be slowing me down. I revisted the library with a few friends late at night and they helped me to accurately measure each window to ensure that I did not have sizing problems again.
This is my third piece for ‘Tumby Woodside’

This piece is made out of cans to represent the industrial side of the warehouse. I wanted this piece to mainly speak for itself and have the audience question the use of cans. I wanted this piece to be minimal as the main focus is about the cans and the industrial side of the warehouse. The minimal effect of this piece is also to represent when the warehouse was abandoned for a while after its usage for the transportation of goods, this is why there is only a few cans standing, to help indicate that they have been left behind during the period of absence.

Here is my piece for ‘New Bolingstoke’:

I wanted to use the materials I had sourced for my piece. I had originally intended my wooden train track to run infront of the windows, however after discussing with the Library Staff they made me aware that this would be a potential tripping hazard and it would not be practical to set this up. I then spoke to them about having a grain trail to create a train track, instead of a wooden rail and they emphasised this again would not be practical due to cleaning up the mess on the silent floor. I instead used my wooden train track to create and art piece to represent ‘New Bolingstoke’. This is a literal representation of the train track and fits as a substitute for my original idea.
I wanted the railway to be emphasised, although it did not work out how I had planned. I feel this piece shows the railway in a literal sense and brings to light the idea of the railway and it’s uses.

Here is my piece for ‘Stickney’:

This piece is made entirely out of grain. The grain sticks to the back of the board, having the word ‘Stickney’ the only part that is not covered in grain. The grain is to represent the agricultural side of the library warehouse and how the railway used to carry grain and goods around the county.

Here is my piece for ‘Midville’:

The book backs are a direct link to the literal library as we know it now. They also end the ‘journey’ as they are made out of the same material as the first piece, the Book Frame. This is a kind of framing for the piece, having the piece start and end with book backs.

Evaluation

I did find there to be a lot of flaws with my project and the site I was using. The first problem I encountered with my site was the journey to the library. I had to create all my pieces at home as it could not be done on site, this was because making my pieces on site would be impractical due to the rules of my location. Making my project would mean making extensive noise and I would need a lot of room to set it up. Noise was my main issue as the third floor is a silent floor and having space is unachievable on the third floor of the library during dissertation time.
I had to bring my piece ready-made to the library, this meant I would need to travel 6 art pieces across Lincoln from my house, this proved a difficult task on my own. I opted for a taxi instead, and asked originally for a minibus to take my pieces safely across to the library. The taxi company could not offer me a minibus at that time of day and instead offered me an estate car. I told the taxi company about my project and gave them the exact size of my biggest piece (48 inches by 48 inches). They assured me an estate car was big enough to fit my project and so I booked the taxi for 5.30am.
I had no problem moving my project from my house to the taxi. I did however, have a problem when getting my project into the taxi. After being assured multiple times that I did not need a minibus and an estate car would be big enough for my pieces, I then discovered that the piece in fact would not fit in an estate car. This meant I had to break part of my project to transport it to the library.
After getting my pieces to the third floor and setting them up without a struggle, I sat down to keep watch over my pieces until they were being assessed. Around 7.30am, the cleaners came to clean the area. I do not think the cleaners had been informed of my project as one of them tried to move my ‘Coningsby’ board. She was little and could not reach the top, so she pulled the board from middle, resulting in the material being ripped slightly and the wood frame becoming twisted. After spending a few hours trying to fix my piece with tape, I discovered it was unfixable and the only way to perfect this was to redo the piece. However, it took me three days to make the piece in the first place and I did not have the time or resources to re-create my board. This means my board would not stand in the window and would have to be placed below the window.
My audience varied throughout the day, as at the start of the day there was barely anyone there but during the afternoon a lot of people came to view my piece and took time out of their studies to look and interact with my piece. I could not gage any particular reaction to my piece as we were on the silent floor, but a number of students left my piece to bring their friends up to also look at my pieces, which could either be taken as positive or negative.
My final performance worked well as it attracted some social media attention throughout its duration. I feel my piece achieved its aim of drawing focus to the ignored areas of the library and also led audience members to think about the old warehouse and its former uses.
I feel I could have improved my performance by adding in a descriptive piece of text to thoroughly explain the concept of my piece, as this was not immediately obvious. Although the absence of this could have either helped my performance by encouraging the audience to look deeper into my piece, or also have hindered my performance by causing the audience confusion or misunderstanding. If I could perform my piece again, I would defiantly look at adding this feature in. I would have also started building and editing my pieces much earlier in the process to allow myself much more time to change and adapt my piece as problems, such as sizing, occurred. This would save me time and mean I had longer to perfect each of my pieces. My engagement with site specific theory and practice has advanced my understanding of performance in a non-traditional venue by encouraging me to look further into the history and features of locations to better understand their value. This could also help inspire my performances for future projects.

Word Count: 3293

Bibliography

Kaye, N (2000) Site Specific Art: Performance, Place and Documentation. Routledge: London.

University Of West England (2014) Book Arts [Online] Bristol: University. Available from: http://www.bookarts.uwe.ac.uk/ [Accessed 14^th February 2015]

Phlegm (2014) Phlegm Art [Online] Available from: http://www.phlegmcomicnews.blogspot.co.uk/ [Accessed 14^th February 2015]

101 Things to do with a Library Trolley Final Submission Post

Jake Lewis Hastings-Eldridge / May 15, 2015 / 101 Things to Do with a Trolley

Framing Statement:

My group’s Site Specific Performance of a “101 Things to do with a Library Trolley” was an interesting

task to think and develop. The idea to work with trolleys stemmed from wanting to have fun in the

library, while also maintaining the original use and rules of the building. The library trolleys themselves

made all of us in the group think outside of the box, because we basically had a blank canvas that we

could do anything with. The first thing we had to do was come up with the tasks, and then split them off

for people in the group. We all decided to take 25 each, with Paul getting an extra one. The 25 tasks I

was in charge of were:

Conversations via the trolley

Obstacle course

Dining Experience

Pac man

Taking the trolley up and down the stairs

Hotel Trolley

Stack the trolleys

Pushing it upside down

Trolley race inside

Sleeping

Play football

Trolley race outside.

Music trolley

Barricade with trolleys

Lion King

Pick up trolley and carry it.

Trolley taxi

Writing a book while riding a trolley and explaining your ride

Nerf gun shield

Rehearsing a play

Mime

Trolley bin

Make a musical instrument

Planking

We performed on Friday 8^th May 2015, between the hours of 9.30pm and 3.30pm. We originally were

going to perform from 9am until 6.40pm, but as the day went on we gained more and more noise

complaints. This was partly due to the fact that our ‘basecamp’ was in Group Room 3, so we had to keep

disturbing people whenever we left the room. Something that we could not help, or stop was the noise

coming from the trolleys. One moment they were quiet, another minute they were screeching around

the 1^st and 2^nd floor.

Due to the complaints we decided to speed our way through the rest of the tasks, and we finished them

all in the room and/or in the corridor next to the group room. In the rehearsals for said tasks, we

identified problems so tried to work around them. The ‘audience’ we had started off laughing and

enjoying the performance, but as the day went on they became more and more annoyed. We wanted

the audience to become part of the piece by inviting them to take part in the different activities, but

most of them wanted to focus on their work instead of a drama performance. Even when we offered

free food, and water people just ignored us. As a group we expected all the students to dislike our piece,

because we knew how noisy the trolleys were, and also the fact that students were writing their final

essays and dissertations. It wasn’t a good combination, but it was something that we had to do and

couldn’t avoid.

Analysis of Process:

When we first started the module, we decided to walk around the library trying to find where we wanted to base a performance. One day after our weekly Site sessions, I and Naomi Jones took a walk up to the Third Floor and we found it very atmospheric. The only thing we could hear when we sat down was the quiet tapping of the keyboards, and the whirring of the computers. This created a sort of eerie yet concentrated environment that reflected the hard working passion of the students that inhabited it. Compare this to the history of the building and it would have been a very different story. The typing and flicking of pages, would have been swapped for the banging and crashing of the Railway Goods Warehouse. From the picture below, you can see the clear time jump between the past and the present. The way they have managed to maintain the history of the building, while also adapting it for modern day use. This combination of old and new creates a unique location for performances. As a group we realized that performing on the Third floor wasn’t a viable option due to the strict silent policy. With this in mind we decided to go to the second and first floor, here we discovered shelving that wasn’t being used and were just empty. We all sat around in Group Room 3, and spoke about the ideas that we could do with the shelving. A few ideas were thrown around, but the idea that we decided on was a ‘Food Library’. Something that fed from the saying “Food for Thought”. We had so many ideas on how to approach this, from turning a complete row of shelves into a mini supermarket, or having the food as books that people had to check out. The idea that we settled on was cutting off a row of shelves in the library and putting a piece of food, with a riddle onto said shelf. If somebody wanted to check the item of food out, they had to answer the riddle which was found in one of the books in the library. We tried the task in class with a group. The group involved Jess, Ruth and Harry, who were tasked with finding a book about a blonde haired girl who falls down a hole into a wonderland. Their prize was a muffin. This links in with the story due to Alice eating a cake. We linked this to ‘Blast Theory’ who’s mission statement is “Blast Theory is renowned internationally as one of the most adventurous artists’ groups using interactive media, creating groundbreaking new forms of performance and interactive art that mixes audiences across the internet, live performance and digital broadcasting. Led by Matt Adams, Ju Row Farr and Nick Tandavanitj, the group’s work explores the social and political aspects of technology. Drawing on popular culture and games.” (Blast Theory, 2015) we also linked the food with knowledge idea, because we all agreed as part of a group that students like to reward themselves with food if they manage to complete a certain amount of work. However, once we went to present the idea to the class we were told that the idea was too fun, and that we did not have reasonable evidence to prove that students reward themselves with food after doing a certain amount of work. After talking to Conan, he managed to give us an idea that hadn’t been done before in the library. He told us that the trolleys within the library, were something that were always overlooked and maybe we should try and get them involved in our idea. We were tasked with doing ‘A 101 things to do with a library trolley’. The idea sounded difficult, and we had a lot of problems with not being able to come up with 101 things without thinking of the same idea twice, however after 2-3 weeks we finally had an idea of all the tasks we wanted to do. These were:

Conversations via the trolley

Obstacle course

Dining Experience

Pac man

Take trolley up and down the stairs

Hotel Trolley

Maze

Stack the trolleys

Pushing it upside down

Trolley race inside

Sleeping

Play football

Trolley race outside.

Music trolley

Barricade with trolleys

Bank

Pick up trolley and carry it.

Trolley taxi

Writing a book while riding a trolley and explaining your ride

Nerf gun shield

Rehearsing a play

Mime

Trolley bin

Make a musical instrument

Planking

Train trolley

Food Trolley

Jousting

Car trolley

Dodgems

Create a rowing team

Walk around like the grim reaper

Self-moving trolley

Curling

Bowling

Use it as a canoe

Surfing

Steps

Follow someone and use the trolley as a disguise.

Dancing

Aeroplane trolley

To not push the trolley but get it around the floor in a way

Trolley conga

Card game centre

Homemade theatre system

Safari

Thumb wrestling arena/Arm Wrestling

Magic station

Tea trolley

Stationary on the go

Chair

Make Facebook on the go

Doll house trolley

Re-create classic film scenes with the trolley as your set

Wardrobe

Building a fort

Writing an essay while riding a trolley

Wedding of the trolleys.

Meditation

Tetris with books

Advice trolley

Inspiration trolley

William Shakeshelf

Composing a poem as riding a trolley

First aid trolley

Take it for a walk

Waiting staff trolley

Hiding with it

Cuddly toy zoo trolley

Movie quote

University facts

Check how you look trolley

Use as a sun bed

Taking selfies with the trolley

Shoes Shelf

To carry books

Wrap up the trolley with someone in it like a present

Wrap in book pages

Make the trolley a piece of art

Fill lift with trolleys

Wrap it up with newspaper

Secret mail

Yoga trolley

Place the trolleys out side

Collect objects around the library to make art in the trolley

Fish – Aquarium

Wrapping trolley in toilet paper

Trolley wash

Books out play dough

Paint while riding a trolley

Construction sight trolley

Bag trolley

Replace the books with props

Replace books with clothes

Replace the books with food

Comments about the library

Reading while riding

Great literature trolley

Put a large box over the trolley

BFF TROLLEY FOR LIFE

Just walk around with them

After we decided on all of the tasks, we then had to break them up into which ones we wanted to do. This proved pretty easy, because we did most of the ones we made up ourselves unless people wanted to change. We then had to rehearse the tasks to make sure one they were safe and two they were achievable. We managed to get a few strange looks for example with the sleeping task people asked my group if I was ok because I was just asleep on the trolley. After trialling few of the more abnormal tasks, I feel we began to gain in confidence about performing the other stranger tasks in front of the whole library. We wanted to maintain a sense of fun while using the trolleys, so audience members could join in if they wanted to. With some of the tasks that involved props we tried to use things that could be related to the library. So in Sarah’s task of wrapping the trolley in pages, we used the idea of stories and books to reflect the sole use of the library. With the conversation trolley, I personally wanted to maintain the library’s silent rule, so made the trolley into a sort of text service where each member wrote a message to another and I had to transport it to the intended recipient. This is the link to the final performance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbS_O70DEl0 , in the final rehearsal for the performance we tried most of the tasks like ‘stack the trolleys’, ‘sleeping’ and ‘planking’. With the sleeping task I wanted to personify how people feel whenever they do all fighters in the library. With every task, we tried to think about the members of the public and what they would gain from it. For example, with the food trolley and free water trolley we know that some students get hungry while at the computers but don’t want to leave their desks in case they break their concentration or their ‘work flow’, this is why we decided to offer out free food and water. We tried to link back to the buildings history by bringing in the ‘heavy lifting’ tasks such as carry the trolleys up and down the stairs, carry the trolleys instead of pushing them. One piece of work which inspired us was Cie. Willi Dorner`s project Bodies in Urban Space. A group of dancers placed themselves in certain spots around a city as if to become a part of the architectural or utilitarian structures of the city, thus underlining or contradicting them (Cie. Willi Dorner, 2007). This performance called attention to ordinary items around town such as signs, stairs, doorways and benches. We hoped for our performance to become something similar to this. But on a smaller scale. The point of the piece was to take something that people see every day, and make it do more than just the one purpose it was created for. We followed in the idea of Bodies in Urban Spaces because we only did tasks for a few minutes so people saw it once and then never saw it again. We decided to schedule the whole day to make the whole day run smoothly. This is the timetable for the day.

Event	Which Trolley	Other Equipment		Where	Who’s Needed
09:00	Arranging trolleys outside		Any	N/A	Outside	All
09:10	Washing trolleys		Any	Wet wipes	Outside	All
09:20	Trolley race		Any	N/A	Outside	All
09:30	Comments trolley		Any	A Comments box, paper and pen’s	Ground Floor	All
09:40	Obstacle course & Try and get the trolley round without pushing it		Flat & 2-Sided	N/A & N/A	Any Floor & Any Floor	Jake and Sam & Paul and Sarah
09:50	Car trolley & Hotel trolley		Flat & 2-Sided	Torches, Horn sound etc. & Toiletries	Any Floor & Any Floor	Paul and Sarah & Jake and Sam
10:00	Compose a poem & The library trolley		Any	Pen, Paper & N/A	Any Floor & 3rd Floor	Sam and Jake & Sarah and Paul
10:10	Conversation trolley & Props-on-the-shelf trolley		Any	Pen, Paper & Props	3rd Floor & 1st Floor	Jake and Paul & Sarah and Sam
10:20	Pac man		2-Sided	BOOKS!!	Any Floor	All
10:30	Pushing it upside down & Hiding with it		Any & Flat	N/A	Any Floor & Any Floor	Jake and Paul & Sam and Sarah
10:40	Funeral & Toilet paper trolley		Any	N/A & Toilet Paper	Any Floor & 1st Floor	Paul and Sarah & Jake and Sam
10:50	Haunted trolley & Barricade & Music trolley		Any	Fishing wire/String & N/A & Speakers	1st Floor & Under Stairs	Paul and Sarah & Jake and Sam
11:00	Fort & Drawing trolley		2-Sided & Flat	N/A & Paint, brushes, canvas?	Under Stairs & 2nd Floor	Sam and Jake & Sarah and Paul
11:10	Train Trolley & Clothes-on-the-shelf trolley		Flat & 2-Sided	Conductors hat, sounds of train & Props from prop cupboard	Any Floor & 2nd Floor	Paul and Sam & Sarah and Jake
11:20	Play dough trolley & carry books		Flat & 2-Sided	Clothes & N/A	3rd Floor & Any Floor	Sarah and Jake & Sam and Paul
11:30	Dancing		2-Sided & Any	Food & Speakers	Ground Floor	All
11:40	Stack the trolley		Flat & 2-Sided	N/A	Ground Floor	All
11:50	Jousting		Any	Wrapping Paper Tube	Ground Floor	All
12:00	Dining & waiting trolley		2-Sided	Plates, Cutlery, Glasses, White Sheet, Candle?	Any Floor	All
12:10	Follow someone with a disguise & Musical instrument		Any	N/A	Any Floor & Any Floor	Paul and Sam & Jake and Sarah
12:20	Magic station & Card game centre		Flat	Cards & Coins	Any Floor & Any Floor	All
12:30	Tea trolley & Cuddly toys zoo		Flat & 2-Sided	Tea, Kettle, Paper Cups & Cuddly Toys	Any Floor & Any Floor	Paul and Sarah & Sam and Jake
12:40	Wedding trolley		Flat & 2-Sided	Veil, Top Hat	Ground Floor	All
12:50	William Shakeshelf & Novel pages trolley		2-Sided	N/A & Pages from books	2nd Floor & 3rd Floor	Sam and Paul & Sarah and Jake
13:00	Trolley taxi & Aeroplane		2-Sided & Flat	Cardboard	Any Floor & Any Floor	Jake and Sam & Paul and Sarah
13:10	Aquarium & safari		2-Sided & Flat	Blue Tissue Paper and Cardboard Fishes & Binoculars, Explorer’s Hat	2nd Floor & Any Floor	Sarah and Sam & Paul and Jake
13:20	Conga		Any	N/A	Any Floor	All
13:30	Writing an essay & Reading trolley		Any & Flat	Pen, Paper & N/A	Any Floor & 3rd Floor	Sam and Paul & Sarah and Jake
13:40	Secret Mail		Any	Pen, Paper	3rd Floor	All
13:50	Pick it up and carry it & Doll House		Any & 2-Sided	N/A & Doll House Items	Ground Floor & Any Floor	Jake and Paul & Sam and Sarah
14:00	Chair & Planking		2-Sided & Flat	Cushions & N/A	Any Floor & Any Floor	Paul and Sam & Jake and Sarah
14:10	Movie quote & Classic Literature		2-Sided	Movie Quotes already written & N/A	3rd Floor & Any Floor	Sam and Jake & Sarah and Paul
14:20	Steps & Shoe shelf		Any & 2-Sided	N/A & Shoes	Any Floor & Any Floor	Paul and Sarah & Sam and Jake
14:30	Wardrobe & Mime		Any & 2-Sided	Clothes, White sheet & N/A	Any Floor & Any Floor	Sam and Sarah & Jake and Paul
14:40	BFF trolley & home theatre		Any	N/A & Laptop, Speakers, Black cloth	3rd Floor & Any Floor	Sarah and Sam & Paul and Jake
14:50	take it for a walk & Food-on-the-shelf trolley		Any	Dog Lead & Food	Any Floor & 3rd Floor	Sam and Jake & Sarah and Paul
15:00	Arm Wrestling		Any	N/A	Ground Floor	All
15:10	Titanic		Any	N/A	Stairs	All
15:20	Yoga trolley & Advice trolley		2-Sided & Any	Playdough & “Advice” quotes already written out	3rd Floor & 1st Floor	Sarah and Paul & Sam and Jake
15:30	Meditation & Piece of art trolley		Flat & 2-Sided	N/A	Any Floor & 3rd Floor	Sam and Jake & Sarah and Paul
15:40	create rowing team		Flat	Wrapping Paper Tube	Any Floor	All
15:50	curling & first aid		Flat & 2-Sided	Coins & First Aid Kit	Any Floor & Any Floor	Paul and Sarah & Jake and Sam
16:00	Gift trolley & thumb wrestling		Flat & Flat?	Wrapping Paper & N/A	1st Floor & Any Floor	Sarah and Sam & Paul and Jake
16:10	stationary & Newspaper trolley		Any	Stationary & Newspaper	Any Floor & 2nd Floor	Paul and Sam & Sarah and Jake
16:20	Lion King		Flat	N/A	Any Floor	All
16:30	Bag trolley & food trolley		2-Sided	Items from Bag & Food	1st Floor & Any Floor	Sarah and Sam & Paul and Jake
16:40	Parcel trolley & Maze		Flat & Any	N/A	Any Floor & 1st Floor	Sarah and Sam & Jake and Paul
16:50	taking selfies with trolley & Surfing		Any & Flat	Phone & ???	Any Floor & Any Floor	Sam and Jake & Paul and Sarah
17:00	use as canoe & use as sun bed		2-Sided & Flat	Paddle/Wrapping Paper Tube & Sunglasses	Any Floor & Any Floor	Paul and Jake & Sam and Sarah
17:10	sleeping & inspiration trolley		Flat & 2-Sided	Pillow/Cushion & Inspirational Quotes already written	3rd Floor & 3rd Floor	Jake and Paul & Sam and Sarah
17:20	bowling & Tetris		Flat	Plastic Bottles, Small ball & Objects	Any Floor & Any Floor	Paul and Sarah & Sam and Jake
17:30	Construction site & Dodgems		Any	Working tools & Cushions!	3rd Floor & Ground Floor	Sarah and Jake & Paul and Sam
17:40	facebook on the go & trolley bin		Any	Facebooks Statuses Written out & Bin Bags	3rd Floor & Any Floor	Sam and Sarah & Jake and Paul
17:50	rehearsing a play & Trolley Lift		Flat & Any	Play’s & N/A	Any Floor & Lift	Jake and Sam & Sarah and Paul
18:00	writing a book while riding trolley & check how you look trolley		Any	Pen, Paper & Mirror	Any Floor & Any Floor	Jake and Paul & Sam and Sarah
18:10	university facts & nerf gun shield		Any	Facts already written out & Nerf Guns	3rd Floor & Any Floor	Sam and Sarah & Jake and Paul
18:20	play football		Any	Football	Ground Floor	All
18:30	Complaint trolley		Any	N/A	Any Floor	All
18:40	Pushing Trolleys		Any	N/A	Any Floor	All

Evaluation of the Performance:

Overall, I feel the performance went well. We started the day feeling confident but as the day went on and Paul got taken to one side to be told that the library desk had received many complaints I feel it knocked our confidence a little. We decided to stick to the basecamp we had made in Group Room 3 one to save on noise, and two we were out of the way but with the windows people still looked in and were intrigued. I personally was expecting to annoy a few students, but not as many as we did. But as I said before, it’s something that we couldn’t help.

Works Cited:

Blast Theory (2015) Blast Theory: Our history and approach. [online] Brighton: Blast Theory. Available from http://www.blasttheory.co.uk/our-history-approach/ [Accessed 15^th May 2015]

Cie. Willi Dorner (2007) Bodies in Urbana Spaces. [online] Paris: Available from http://www.ciewdorner.at/index.php?page=work&wid=26 [Accessed 15^th May 2015]

Shelve-d: The Good, The Bad & The Wonky. Final Post.

Billy Cummock / May 15, 2015 / Billy Cummock

Billy Cummock.

13383042

Framing Statement:

Shelve-d was a performance created to be presented within the Free Zone of the Great Central Warehouse Library on the University of Lincoln grounds. It was an analysis and exploration of the history of the Great Central Warehouse and its inner workings as a library. We set out to explore the definition of a library and what it would be like to invade the space with different types of work, such as for example, building shelves. This motif was used as a way of exploring the culture of a library and how it stands as its own society with its own laws as such.

A quick look into the library's history. — A quick look into the library’s history.

It was clear after little research that the library had in fact lived more than one life, coming to prominence as a railway goods warehouse as well as spending the second half of the 20^th century as a builder’s merchant before falling into disrepair in 1998. Our group decided that the exploration of the rules of the library as well as mirroring that against its history was of great interest and we felt that we needed to take it on for our project.

We decided to build shelves in the Library’s free zone, whilst in the process we would be sending out a live microphone sound and video feed to participating audience members to allow them to share in the journey with us.

The performance took place on the 8^th May 2015, a peak time for potential audience members as we were right in the midst of exam season, and it was a weekend, so we were placed at the peak possible date to be able to have maximum participation. The performance was quickly scheduled to be 8 hours to represent the normal running hours of a working day; unfortunately 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. wasn’t available due to unforeseen circumstances so we decided to go with 11 a.m. -7 p.m. in order to allow our assessors the privilege of seeing our defining piece, having the time frame of 8 hours during a large and busy time during the day would be a great advantage to us because the amount of time going by as to the amount of students working in the library are (usually) directly proportionate, you get me?

Nothing like a re-furb to draw the punters in.

Our target audience consists of mainly university of Lincoln students, those of which primarily use the library as their public domicile when exam season comes around. The audience themselves do not participate in any of the activities themselves but they are a vital part of the performance due to their knowledge of, and presence in, the library.

Analysis of Process:

The purposes of fluidity now request that I start from the beginning in order for you nice folk to be able to get an inkling of just what we did throughout our time studying site specific performance.

Library:

A building or room containing collections of books, periodicals, and sometimes films and recorded music for use or borrowing by the public or the members of an institution: a university library. (oxforddictionaries, 2015)

A quick look into the warehouse's more rebellious, teenage years. — A quick look into the warehouse’s more rebellious, teenage years.

In the beginning, I explored the GCW library in many different ways, collecting documentation of its walls and trying to respond to its architecture were key features present in my mind when starting out the process in which to create a performance that was site specific. As a group, we decided that an exploration of the library’s architecture was a perfect starting point for us to work on our piece; we set out originally to build a scale model of the library (around 3 feet tall) in the silent study room on the 3^rd floor. We wanted to explore the rules of a library whilst also breaking the status quo of conventions associated with one; libraries are usually quiet, studious places in which people gather in order to read so that they may educate themselves or lose themselves in a book. We wanted to break the usual convention of having a library as a place where you only study through the reading of books; we wanted to challenge the library by asking a simple question: Why can I not study construction practically?

This produced a working experiment conceived in the group study room on the 3^rd floor of the library in which we wanted to see how a working dynamic would affect the 3^rd floor environment if we were to suddenly invade it by building a half model of the library using cardboard. Our objective was to be able to invade the space so that our piece ‘somehow activates, or engages with, the narratives of the site’ (Morgan, 1995, cited in Pearson, 2010, 35) so that we could find out as much information about how our piece affects the site we are working in. The hope was that our exercise would draw attention and lead us to have ‘juxtaposed diverse elements to generate interpenetrating and multifocal frictions’ (Pearson & Shanks, 2010, 112) The sad conclusion to this experiment, however interesting it was, is that we were asked to leave for being too loud, I know right? In hindsight, I still don’t know why we had gained complaints, we were really trying to hush down, but alas poor group room, we knew you so well.

Another hurdle we were soon to have to accomplish was the trickiness that was building a scale model of the library in such a small space; was it possible? The room itself was indeed much too small to be able to create such a mammoth of a model and making it even smaller would deteriorate the quality of such a model. However, the biggest hurdle facing us was that not one of us had any real experience in model making, and we didn’t exactly do a great job when it came down to making one out of cardboard, the prospects for a miniature library were slowly, but surely, drawing to a close.

‘Site-specific performances are those conceived for; mounted within and conditioned by the particulars of found spaces: existing social situations or locations, both used and disused’ (Pearson, 2007, cited in Pearson, 2010, 35)

To put this statement into context, our performance would have to be quiet, dead quiet; we wouldn’t be able to even speak on the third floor (as demonstrated) and we would have to try our hardest to dampen any sound we produced if we were to create any sort of site specific performance whilst on the 3^rd floor, I started to believe that the possibilities for the group room had slowly started to dwindle. They do however state that every cloud has a silver lining and that little piece of Ag is Sound!

Sound was a defining factor when researching through our performance, we wanted to use sound in order to create a soundtrack to the library you don’t usually hear; the sounds of labour would ring throughout so that the library would be filled with a different background noise. It would still be a soundtrack of study; however it would be the sounds of saws cutting through wood and nails being hammered in. We had decided that we would dampen the sounds of our tools in order to adhere to the rules of the library, the dead silence that rings throughout aside from the turning of pages and the tapping of keyboards. We would create a soundscape that would explore work creating a different perspective on the other parts of the library; our soundtrack would replace the normal cohesive nature of the library. Much like the library is awash with sounds that reflect the hours of studious work that go on in the library, our sound would be used so that it too ‘reflects the manufacture of society; it constitutes the audible waveband of the vibrations and signs that make up society’, (Kelly, 2011, 91) the society here however being the students working in a library.

Just so we're on the same wavelength, yeah? — Just so we’re on the same wavelength, yeah?

Meanwhile, in a separate dimension I was thinking of a quick and easy alternative to building a model, one that would require little thinking time and have no complicated dimensions. Ideas floated around amongst the group whether or not it would be a good idea to create a chair or a table; however these ideas quickly fell flat because of their individual complexities. Finally, we had decided upon THE MOTHER of all easy designs, the thing that made Ikea what it is today, the shelf! The shelf is ergonomically designed (I use this term loosely) to hold things to a much higher standard than most people, as well as it being an absolute doss (simple) to make. Voila. We had our project.

Through the use of the visual workings of the manufacture of a shelf and harnessing the by-product that is the sound created from the vibrations when we work; we were able to ‘enact a spatial history, mediating between the past and the present […] as well as between a sense of nostalgia for the past and a sense of otherness possibly felt in the present and anticipated in the future’, (Harvie, 2005, 42) through the use of sound alongside the visual of building.

Our performance was coming together nicely, the structures we were building were set and the exploration of sound was going to be a huge part of our performance art. However, we were having difficulty reasoning with ourselves about where we could potentially put our performance other than the group study room, ideas were floated around about where we could potentially set up however most didn’t come with a view into the room that was substantial enough, seeing as we couldn’t let any one into the space because of the toxicity of the sawdust that would eventually come off of the medium density fibreboard (MDF). The free zone was the most obvious choice, it had a view from the outside and it was on the ground floor, it was open to all and easy to access, so we chose it. The space was a good example of an area where we could efficiently build whilst still aiming ‘to make political interventions in relation to [our] audiences’ (Allain & Harvie, 2006, 149) as well as with the library.

Moving to the free zone had posted a new obstacle to overcome; how would the audience be able to hear us from within a room that is nearly soundproof to the outside world? I had thought that maybe setting up some speakers outside of the free zone as well as a microphone inside would mean that we would be able to allow the outside to hear us; however we soon discovered that would draw away from our focus of adhering to at least some rules of the library as we would no doubt definitely break the sound rule by playing speakers. So it was set out that we would set up many different microphones inside, 3 to be precise, in order to be fed live through a mixing desk and wirelessly outside to the eager beavers outside. This was inspired by Janet Cardiff’s 40 part motet in which she had recorded the individual voices of a choir and played them back through as many speakers in order to create a sound harmony without visual stimulus. (Wisco, 2013) We would use sound in this way as to create a soundscape from 4 different noises being recorded at the same time, allowing the audience to hear the sounds of work through the headphones in a different light. If they so should choose they could wander off into the library wearing them as to get the auditory experience without a visual aid, allowing the audience to see the library in a completely new light; It would be like discovering the library for the first time through the sounds you hear, a little bit like daredevil if you ask me.

Other problems arose with the muffling of the sound when we discovered that it would nearly impossible to muffle any sound which came from sawing or hammering. The Sanding of wood and varnishing itself was quiet enough to be left alone however we were at a disadvantage with the sound produced from the heavy labour involved in the building of many shelves. This is when we decided to scrap the idea of muffling sound as the free zone itself was quiet enough to produce no sound outside of the room so as to adhere with the rules of the site. The main focus of the performance would be exploring the library’s rich heritage and ‘the extent of [it’s] historical occupancy’ (Pearson, 2010, 104) through our performance as well as the honing of the sound in order to create a different soundscape for the library.

The live feed mics in action. Proper Sahnd (Sound).

Another influence of ours after was the Spill Festival’s Bone Library in which Sarah Jane Norman took the bones of animals and inscribed ‘dead’ aborigine words into them in order to show the connection between these two dead things, people were allowed to take them out as if they were a book and then bring them back after words as though they were a part of a normal library. (Spill Festival, 2014) We took this as an inspiration for our piece as we wanted to create ourselves a new type of library, the building of the shelves itself are a metaphor as to represent the creating of a library, we were building our own miniature library.

The progression of time was a key feature we decided to use next in our performance as we wanted to have a representation of how much time was going by as we were building our library, the shelves were going to be labelled as to represent the exact amount of time since the beginning of the project it took to create them, a fair representation of the different stages of the life of the Great Central Warehouse, it’s transformations from Railway to Builder’s Merchant to a renovated library, an exploration of the architecture of the building much like that of the Wrapped Reichstag. (Scando, 2010)

Lastly, we decided after our work-in-progress that the collection of the saw dust left over from each shelf would be a good representation of the by-product of every action, much like the sound is a by-product of any action, a collection of vibrations; we were going to use the sawdust as a metaphor for the by-product of labour, the left over remnants of the build as well as a representation of information that isn’t absorbed by that of a student reading a book.

Performance Evaluation:

We got to the site at 11 a.m. ready to set up by laying down tarp on the floor and setting up all of technical side of the performance. When we were ready to begin we saw nearly no audience members for the first 3 hours, apart from a few smoking students that sit outside of the free zone. This had become a destabilising feature of our performance as we were losing hope that anyone would take any interest in the auditory section of our performance.

As time went by and we got into the start of the afternoon, we saw numbers rise in the amount of people taking notice in our performance from students entering and/or hanging around the library. The numbers of people participating with the headphones started to rise as the day went further on until we had a number of responses from many audience members as well as questions on what our performance was about. Most audience members seemed to get the gist of what we were doing as well as some even understanding that our piece was an exploration of the library’s history, architecture and social connotations.

Overall, the visual element of our performance went down like an ice cream truck in the middle of summer; it went down a treat. Audience members reacted really well to our performance; there wasn’t a post on Yik-yak in sight. The overall production line method we used could have used a lot more work as we were struggling to keep things going simultaneously however we resolved this for when our assessor’s came, so as to give them the full experience of what we were doing. The lending of the headphones could have been thought out more thoroughly as we had only one person wander throughout the library wearing the headphones gaining the full experience of the auditory section of our performance, listening in to our artificial soundscape of work.

In order to improve our performance, we could have done more research in to how to muffle the sounds of work we were doing so that we could have gained a better aesthetic experience for the audience members; perhaps using a different range of materials, such as felt, in order to better soundproof the sounds of labour.

We took a 'shelfie' to mark the occasion. — We took a ‘shelfie’ to mark the occasion.

My understanding of site-specific theory has gained ground since the beginning of the module as I have discovered that performing in a specific location is moulded by the history and social connotations of the site itself; the boundaries in which we perform can forever change whilst working with the site, whether it be responded to the site as a whole or the change of context when entering a different room or perhaps a stairwell.

Working with the library has been an enlightening experience in which I have seen the different connotations of every aspect of it, even down the mere definition of the word itself. A library is no longer a place where an archive of books is found and borrowed; it is simply a location in which people gather in order broaden their minds, as well as lose countless amounts of sleep.

The real question however, is what will become of this fine piece of architecture? Will it be born again in a decade’s time? Will it become a representation of life around it? Or will it be swallowed up by the earth around it when all is gone from this place?

(I am philisophibill)

Word Count: 3197

Bibliography:

Allain, P. & Harvie, J. (2006) The Routledge Companion to Theatre and Performance. Abingdon: Routledge.

Etchells, T. (1999) Certain Fragments. London & New York: Routledge.

Harvie, J. (2005) Staging The UK. Manchester & New York: Manchester University Press.

Kelly, C. (ed.) (2011) Sound. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Klich, R. & Scheer, E. (2012) Multimedia Performance. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Oxforddictionaries. (2015) Library. [Online] Available at: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/library [accessed May 12th 2015]

Pearson, M. (2010) Site-Specific Performance. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Pearson, M. & Shanks, M. (2001) Theatre/Archaeology. Abingdon: Routledge.

Scando. (2010) Wrapped Reichstag – quickmotion – Christo and Jeanne-Claude. [Online video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esiErDm62E4 [Accessed on 12^th May 2015].

Spill Festival. (2014) Bone Library. [Online video] Available from: http://spillfestival.com/show/bone-library/ [Accessed on 12^th May 2015].

Wisco, A. (2013) The 40 Part Motet by Janet Cardiff. [Online Video] Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncWFLzVrwU4 [Accessed on 11^th May 2015]

The Final Blog: Set in Stone.

Eleanor McHale / May 15, 2015 / Eleanor McHale

The Final Blog: Set in Stone.

Eleanor McHale.

Framing Statement.

In this blog I am going to show the process and final instalment of the piece ‘Set in Stone’. Body in Architecture has constantly influenced many performers throughout the ages ranging back to the BC era with the pyramids and monuments built in Egypt and long before that. The reasoning for the piece is to show how performance built in body and arcitectecture is such a beautiful and present piece of art and history. The beginning of a performance is never thought to be about the stage and making the performance because of the stage; this is just usually a useful inanimate object where the stage is used almost like a prop. The architecture of the student university library is one of the most interesting of library’s; as the students go there to further themselves and gain experience and knowledge.

Ever since a child is born it is in and out of architecture and confide spaces without even realising it. From card board boxes, Wendy houses and play areas then into a school building where they will spend at least 13 years of your life and then into an office building or a job environment; which then eventually will end in a wooden box in the ground. No matter what the outcome or where you are in the world you are surrounded by architecture from wooden huts in Kenya to the Taj Mahal in India, although different types of buildings are still architecture.

The library is a place of learning and education and among the books lives creativity and flare. However what the students fail to realise is that the library was not always that, but a grain factory. The methodology of our ideas was that if you can fit any part of the human anatomy in a space it can be deemed as performance and it can take place anywhere. We wanted to explore what makes a space a space and how can something’s be classed as architecture that is not living yet has life inside it; yet the human body is a building that houses living organisms, so by definition is architecture on its own.

An Analysis of Process.

“All the worlds a stage; and all the men and women merely players” (Shakespeare, 2000, Act 2 S.7) The fact that you can perform anywhere at any time completely is forgotten about by performers I am guilty of doing it, thinking that you can perform in a space but not really thinking about what is actually going on in the space you are in.

What gave the group the motive for exploring the library was that you never really noticed what was going on around you and all the different places that are forgotten about. The stimulus came from images of bodies in confined spaces around the building. The performance started at every half past the hour and ran for roughly 20 minutes, this was timed by the sound that had been played and when the sound ended the actors knew it was the end of the twenty minutes. The piece was performed on the back stairs of the library; the stairs we chose were the less used stairs by the students. The stairs consisted of three floors but seven sets of stairs with 4 platforms connected to them.

Four of the group members including myself went to the Arboretum to explore confined spaces which we have never been too. Taking the trip to the arboretum started our ideas by performing on the band stand. This made us explore the many things you can do just performing for the space instead of in the space. The group originally started as a four and gained two members who came with different ideas.

The piece consisted of body moulds made with clay, alginate and mod rock cast; alongside of the performers who were casted into the library and the other half of the group walking up the stairs in different pace’s and variations of movement. But mostly we wanted the audiences reaction to what was going on, on the stairs; there reactions varied from interest in what was going on, too confusion and out right determination to ignore what was going on. All the reactions however is what we deemed would happen; it was interesting to see if the audience acted on their impulses and to see if they spoke to us in curiosity. Out of the six performers three of the performers will be mod-rocked into the building while the other three will be walking up and down the stairs.

The process began with the first exploration of the university library to access all the places we don’t usually visit or use in the day to day basis. Originally the first idea came from using the elevator as a place that you never really notice; but you use it on a day to day basis without realising. Exploring the elevator proved to be difficult as when it came to wanting to really explore it; the library staff who would be constantly transporting books to different floors on the library trolleys and needed to fit in the lift also the wait for the elevator came to be quite disheartening as people would need to use it constantly.

An exercise of exploration came with the senses task which consisted of finding a place in the library where you have never been before and choose from one of the senses to describe what is happening to you. I chose what I could hear and listened to a conversation that involved two students and their subject worries.

A: Did you do the draft for the seven questions for Thursday?

B: I haven’t yet but I am thinking of staying here tonight and doing it when Richard gets here

A: I wanted to go out tonight but.

B: I’m probably not gonna be leaving here.

A: I can’t wait for this year to be over.

This was only a snippet of the conversation but really opened my eyes into what strangers who may have no similarity’s to myself except being at the same university and in the same building with me right now. What interested me was this person was going to spend the majority of his day in this building and probably would not notice that he was sat next to a sign that mentioned some of the library’s history and the date it was built. Another interesting thing I realised was that mostly the only reason the students went in the library was for the academic reasons consisting of deadlines, essays and exams.

From there I thought of an idea of doing small performances of conversations heard in the library. But reading them as if they were from a story in a book. The complication came from if the members of the public were speaking about other students in a gossiping manner. From this I decided to move on with the sense of vision and describe everything I can see. Using a voice recorder I would describe certain parts of the library and make the audience guess which part of the library I was at. This idea stemmed from showing the audiences places they would never have thought off and also make the students finally realise their surroundings.

It only started with the body in architecture when we as a group finally explored the stairs at the back. What made the stairs interesting to me was that they were barely used. But they held so much beauty in the way that they had full length floor windows so you could see them completely from the outside. But also the people on the stairs can see out to the public which casts almost a gallery feel. The windows create a framing effect round the stairs which reminded me of live theatre this then began the idea of being part of the actual building and it being live theatre. Our first day in art consisted of using the mod rock in which casts are made off. For the first body part we mod rocked was my arm from my fingers to my elbow. As we merely mod-rocked the arm a performer was able to go in and out of the mod rock. Discovering what cast can do was one of the most interesting experiences through the process.

The Mod-Rock (what the performer could put on): Mod- rock (Cast) and water.
The Intricate casts (what can be used as props): Mod-Rock, Aliginate, Clay and Water

The reasoning for using the mod rock was to show that all the props were linked; from the feet and hands to the books that we stored on the stairs shelves. The alginate creates a more detailed cast where you can see veins and the intricate characteristics of the body parts.

The body in Mod-Rock, was an idea that transpired with the library and not only ended with just the body as mod rock but we used books as well; but had to do these differently to the other items. We had to use latex and a straw like substance to keep the books intact. “If we are going to try to find ways in which mimesis in architecture might promote a questioning of societal norms and prevailing ideas about reality” (Rufford, 2015, p. 20) this then made us question what the books meant to be when mod-rocked. What the group thought would be a nice image was to leave the mod-rocked books on the shelves to see if anyone touched them or in fact noticed them after. Firstly we started Mod-rocking the groups hands and then we moved on to feet which worked better in my opinion as it was a little more detailed. The books came around to be difficult as they were covered in latex and would need a natural light so they took longer to dry.

The use of the other three performers was that to mimic the students walk up and down the back stairs. The variations of pace and style escalated from a dance like pace. Another way of walking down the stairs was the slow walk up; one of us attempted to make it up the stairs so slow it would have taken the full twenty minutes. The idea of the slow stairs crawling has come from a clip of an actress who crawled down a pair of stairs in a public place. The reason we wanted to do this was to explore how the students actually walk down the stairs and in rehearsal we explored how we would walk up and down the stairs. What we noticed was that the audience started mimicking how we walked. This was what we wanted to explore and even the actors started mimicking how the audience walked. What was interesting was these students who normally would not even think about getting down the stairs had an obstacle in the way. The performers ended up blocking the path of the students to make them realise that the stairs were not just a way of getting from each floor.

“Even theatre that is ostensibly unconcerned with architecture is powerfully conditioned by it none the less” (Rufford, 2015, p. 3) This was quite important as when we considered doing our piece on the stairs it was not completely in our minds how the mod rock would look in the stairs it was more about how the mod rock could enhance the beauty of the stairs. In this we realised that the stairs did not need a massive performance, we could have even left the casts just laid around the stairs and it still would have made the students stop and notice the stairs a little more. The reasoning of having the live performance of walking up the stairs was more for a personal reflection on the ways that we as humans do not realise the simple privileges we have all around us.

The costume we chose to wear was a white outfit that consisted of white tee shirts and white jeans to blend in with the white walls. This was chosen because we wanted to become part of the building. This worked well due to the white casts that were on arms and feet. The group’s hair was scraped back to hide the sexuality and personification of who we were; however we did not want to look theatrical with too much white. Body image was very important as our faces were drawn blank and the only way we could communicate with the body.

In one rehearsal we went to the stairs and just listened to everything we could hear around us; from the clicking of a keyboard on the library floors, too doors slamming, people chatting and generally just the sound of life. So I thought wouldn’t it be great if you could make the audience hear these sounds and realise what was going on around them that they didn’t even notice. The sound scape consisted of people walking up the stair and muffled voices what the aim was is to create a sound that if you closed your eyes you could take a guess as to where you were.

An issue arose when we could not decide as a group where we wanted to start our piece between the elevator, the stairs or the free space we did at one point try using all three of them however it helped as another group used the free space. This by process of elimination and as well of a certain spark towards the back stairs made the first move.

Personal Evaluation.

My overall opinion on the final performance; I think went really well due to the work ethic of the group. Originally when we first got into a group of six we all had found different places in the library that we wanted to further explore so this started the idea of interpreting all the different ideas into one. But the process really was a long but rewarding one; however it came with its great difficulties. At one point we were unsure if we were going to have enough alginate from the order we had made and if we needed more we wouldn’t have time to make more body casts. However we over budgeted and had some left to give to the art department. What I think went well was that in the group each member of the group all brought something different in ideas and opinions.

In the final piece we did three performances; where three members of the group started by being mod rocked into the building I was in the first group to be part of the building on third floor. I had my feet casted into feet moulds so I could slip them on and off; I had a foot mould in my hand to portray a gallery type feel. The first piece went well the issue I found was that people tried to talk to me to ask what I was doing but I could not reply. After the first twenty minutes I made my way to the group; as the stairs are opposite windows into the library and I could see students looking into the stairs with curiosity. When the second performance commenced we realised we had the least amount of audience members. In this the first time I walked up the stairs I walked with my legs kicked behind me to show the effort foreshadowing the workers from the grain factory. I then used the face cast in my walk up and down the stairs at one point I held it in front of my face to juxtapose wearing a mask. I shaped the mask around my body and tested it with different styles of walking. This was to show that slowly even my face was being taken over by the library. In our final piece we adapted the book casts into our piece to show that the body was part of the library. The books were moved from the shelves; I placed the books under me to use as a pedestal to mark the library being all around the students. Overall I feel like the audience understood why we were doing the piece to notice the beauty of the stairs. But more importantly I feel it opened my eyes to what a performance space is and how it can be used.

Bibliography:

Rufford, J. (2015) Theatre & Education. London: Palgrave. P. 3-15
Shakespeare, W (2000) As You Like It. NEW YORK: BARTLEBY.COM. Act 2; Scene 7.

Final Blog Post – A Guide To The Library

Josh Curran / May 15, 2015 / Josh Curran

Framing Statement

My performance piece A Guide to the Library is an audio guide that instructs listeners to use the library in ways that are less idealistic than what is normally considered to be proper usage of an educational library. In the guide, I speak in an artificial manner whilst instructing and regularly repeat phrases throughout the chapters, such as “Pause this recording, until you are prepared” (Curran, 2015a) and “For this recording, you should be…” (ibid) Yasunao Tone writes, “Audio guides have a performative function.” (Tone, 2011, 102) My audio guide upholds this as it instructs listeners to perform tasks that range from the mundane to the impossible.

Below is a list of the names of each chapter:

A Guide to Listening to ‘A Guide to the Library’.
A Guide to using Facebook while Pretending to Work in the Library.
A Guide to Doing an Essay the Day Before it’s Due.
A Guide to Using the Library Turnstiles.
A Guide to Using the Library Toilets.
A Guide to Being Quiet on the Silent Floor of the Library.
A Guide to Dealing with Stress in the Library.
A Guide to using the Library to Escape Loneliness.
A Guide to Self Loathing and Hating Other Library Users.
A Guide to Reconsidering All Your Life Choices in the Library.
A Guide to Who You Are.

This was distributed in the form of MP3 files hosted on Soundcloud that could be downloaded or streamed at any time convenient to the listener. Marketing was done through a Facebook event page and these three posters which were displayed in various parts of the Library.

I wanted to create a performance that could engage with a diverse group of library users, not just Drama students. To do this, I wanted to make something that combined humour with commentary about the lives of the listeners. This was partly inspired by the work of Andrea Fraser, an American performance artist most well known for her work, Museum Highlights. Another influence was my previous experience of audio guides. I have found in the past that instructional audio guides often came across as patronising and overextended. I thought that this would be a suitable style for my performance as I could parody the style of audio guides and satirise the idealistic views on how the library should be used.

I wanted my performance to comment on the people who use the library instead of the building itself, because as Sue Palmer writes, “It’s not just about the place, but the people who normally inhabit and use that place. For it wouldn’t exist without them.” (Palmer, 2002, 145) I wanted it to reflect the student experience of the library, ranging from the playfully defiant, such as hiding Facebook, to the harsher truths, such as self loathing and loneliness.

The final chapter of the guide explains my aims behind this performance whilst still in the character of the speaker of the past chapters. In it, I talk about the reasons behind the performance and I also comment, “I realise now that all I’ve done is just point out problems and give useless solutions.” (Curran, 2015b) I thought it important to point this out, because even though I comment on some of the psychological and emotional stresses of using the library, I am powerless to change anything for the better.

Analysis Of Process

The Prototype

During one of the earlier weeks of the module, the members of our group were each given the individual task of creating an Artist’s Book based on the title of a potential book we had invented in a previous exercise. As I am more confident designing audio work than visual work, creating an audio book was the clearest choice. I initially shortlisted two titles I had invented to adapt into an audiobook: ‘A Guide to Breathing’ and ‘Car Alarms: Ranked by Irritation Level’. I chose the former because I believed that the novelty of irritating car alarms would wear off fast.

Using a very basic microphone, I narrated the guide which included various sound clips of normal breathing and breathing disorders. The recording was well received by the group, which led me to research ways in which I could improve upon this idea. (note: Don’t try and play any of the Soundcloud tracks on a University computer. It doesn’t work.)

Analysis of the Work of Andrea Fraser

One of the main inspirations on my writing style for my audio guide was the work of Andrea Fraser. In 1989, Fraser performed a site-specific piece called Museum Highlights (Fraser, 1989) in which she took the role of a tour guide in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She did this in the persona of Jane Castleton and led tour groups around who were unaware that they were part of a performance.

She initially starts out behaving like a genuine tour guide, but soon starts to analyse the areas of the site that are not intended for artistic observation: “Jane enters the cafeteria: “This room represents the heyday of colonial art in Philadelphia on the eve of the Revolution, and must be regarded as one of the very finest of all American rooms.”” (Fraser, 1991, 121) She keeps the group engaged with surreal humour, referencing both her tour and her true identity:

“For $750,000 you could name the Museum Shop. You know, I’d like to name a space, why, if I had $750,000 I would name this shop, um … Andrea. Andrea is such a nice name. Jane walks a few feet further down the corridor and stops again to address the group: This is our Museum Shop, Andrea, named in 1989 by Mrs. John P. Castelton, a one time museum guide”. (Fraser, 1991, 120)

But behind the humour and deception, she is delivering a piece about classism and elitist views in the art world:

“Well, writing about The New Museum and Its Service to Philadelphia in 1922, the museum wrote that, uh, they wrote: “We have come to understand that to rob … people of the things of the spirit and to supply them with higher wages as a substitute is not good economics, good patriotism, or good policy.”” (Fraser, 1991, 108)

In her persona, she satirises the high class culture that has developed around art and comments on how those of lower income backgrounds are represented in the art world. She does this by portraying a character who is completely oblivious to the disparity between the rich and poor.

“The public, who buy clothes and table china and wallpaper and inexpensive jewelry, must be forced to raise their standards of taste by seeing the masterpieces of other civilizations and other centuries.” (Fraser, 1991, 112)

She strikes a balance between social commentary and humour which allows her to engage her audience while making her message clear. I aimed to do the same in my piece.

Another performance of hers I was influenced by was Little Frank and his Carp. (Fraser, 2001) In this short film, she enters the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and receives an audio guide from the desk. The voice on the audio guide gives obvious instructions and is quite patronising: “If you haven’t already done so, walk away from the desk where you picked up this guide, and out into the great high space of the atrium…Contemporary Art is big, in fact, some of it is enormous.” (Flip Floppy, 2014)

Fraser responds to the guide in a satirically exaggerated way, responding emotionally to whatever the voice is saying. When told that “the museum tries to make you feel at home” (Flip Floppy, 2014) she begins to pleasure herself sexually against a pillar in front of a crowd of people who are unaware that they are being filmed.

The film intends to make a point about breaking free from the controlling atmosphere of the museum, but what I was interested in for my piece was how the audio guide was used to create the totalitarian atmosphere. I hoped that the tone and language used in the film could help me write my audio guide.

Examples Of Audio Guides and their Traits

To capture the style of an audio guide, I examined the styles and traits of three I could find. One audio guide I examined was The Vietnam War: The Ultimate Audio Guide. Its premise is that one character is an expert on everything about the Vietnam War and they are asked questions by a man who is completely ignorant and bombards the expert with questions such as:

“So the Japanese weren’t very popular then?” “That’s an understatement. Many Vietnamese people hated the fact that they were controlled by other countries. Consequently, in 1941, a group called the Viet Minh was formed.” “Let me guess. The Viet Minh, wanted to kick out the Japanese, and, create an independent Vietnam?!” “Correct.” (Revision Rocks, 2013)

The ignorant character is meant to be a representation of the listener, which does not reflect well on the listener. The dialogue from the expert is delivered in a monotonous voice while the ignorant character over-emphasises all his dialogue. Overall, the recording comes across as condescending and poorly performed. However, this audio guide is aimed at sixteen year olds studying GCSE History, and I do not know if they would respond to this in the same way I would.

Another I examined was Meet Your Spirit Guide Meditation. The woman in the recording speaks with a soothing Canadian accent to a background of faint calming music. She instructs the listener what to do using alliteration, such as, “The most personal, private world” (Forrest, 2013) and tries to instil a feeling of privilege in the listener, saying “No-one else can go there with you, it’s just for you.” (ibid)

This guide features a better performance from the reader than the previous audio guide, and seems to focus more on trying to manipulate the listener’s emotions rather than educate them. The information throughout the recording is very repetitive and often just finds ways to rephrase the previous sentence.

My last audio guide is Learn in Your Car: French Level 1. In this, a man says an English phrase, which is then followed by a woman repeating the same phrase in French twice:

“Where”…“où… où”… “Where is”… “où est… où est”… “Where is the Bank”… “où est la Bank… où est la Bank” (Raymond, 2012)

Whilst the woman gives a realistic performance, the inflections in the man’s voice sounds unnatural which makes the recording slightly unsettling. For my audio guide, I wanted to include elements from all of these to make it properly resemble a cheap audio guide.

The Writing Process

Having done all the necessary research, I devised outlines for each chapter and gave them suitable names. I based each chapter (apart from the introduction) on a different aspect of working in the library, beginning with light-hearted chapters, gradually descending into more serious issues. I initially started with fifteen chapters, but whilst writing, eventually cut it to eleven because I believed that many became repetitive or would unnecessarily extend the piece.

The only chapter that required additional research was the ‘doing an essay the day before it’s due’ chapter. To help create satirically useless suggestions for essay completion in this chapter, I took three volunteer drama students, gave them each a University level essay question about Law, Psychology or Geography and told them that they had twenty minutes to research and complete a five-hundred word essay on the question. (If you are interested in reading them, they are published in an earlier post.) Reading through their rushed work, I was able to identify new ways in which to advise listeners to cut corners, such as obvious paraphrasing, repetition and using a single source.

Once I had finished my first draft of the script, I discussed it with my tutor, Dan. Acting on advice he had given me, I made minor alterations to most of the chapters and completely rewrote the final chapter. My original final chapter sounded like a debrief for the participant, and portrayed the guide as a positive experience. But it seemed, as Dan told me, a little out of touch with the other chapters. I instead rewrote the chapter to focus on the limitations of my performance, explaining how little power my voice really had. Once I had finished the final draft, I was ready to record the script.

The Recording and Editing Process

I booked a three hour recording session with Darren, the LPAC head technician. He set up the USB microphone and connected it to my laptop, which would be recording the session using the sound editing programme Audacity. To prepare for how I would deliver each line, I read the script imagining that I was in the library as a listener of the recording. Kim Cascone summarises the experience:

“The numerical meaning of the audio bits is streamed upwards through multiple layers of abstraction, into the hardware converters, out of the speakers and into the user’s perceptual apparatus…the user can now participate in the production of meaning because in non linear (mental) space she/he creates meaning with movement… movement between structures, genres, layers… nomadic movement… think of meaning as a by product of movement.” (Cascone, 2011, 100, sic)

With the listener’s point of view and the relevant locations of the library in mind, I performed the script several times during the session. Darren made sure that each separate recording was saved as a WAV file, an MP3 file, and an Audacity project file, to ensure that there were backups.

When I began editing in Audacity, I took the MP3 files of each chapter and edited them to remove all instances of my breathing, alter the length of some of the silences, add sound effects and correct any mistakes. After I had finished editing all tracks, I saved them as MP3s.

However, after listening to the tracks, I found out that there was a glitch in Audacity which meant that any file saved as an MP3 would lower the sound quality slightly and prevent background noise removal. It was not as noticeable in the original recordings, but was clear after they were edited. Below is a comparison of a glitched edit and the final edit.

I was forced to restart the editing from scratch using the WAV files that Darren saved instead of the MP3s. After doing this and combining my work with extra recordings done at a later date, I was finally able to upload them to Soundcloud.

Performance Evaluation

This was the final count of ‘track plays’ for each track.

A Guide to Listening to ‘A Guide to the Library’. 59 Plays
A Guide to using Facebook while Pretending to Work in the Library. 31 Plays.
A Guide to Doing an Essay the Day Before it’s Due. 23 Plays.
A Guide to Using the Library Turnstiles. 51 Plays.
A Guide to Using the Library Toilets. 20 Plays.
A Guide to Being Quiet on the Silent Floor of the Library. 16 Plays.
A Guide to Dealing with Stress in the Library. 16 Plays.
A Guide to using the Library to Escape Loneliness. 14 Plays.
A Guide to Self Loathing and Hating Other Library Users. 18 Plays.
A Guide to Reconsidering All Your Life Choices in the Library. 10 plays.
A Guide to Who You Are. 19 Plays.

From these statistics, I can say that I likely had 59 unique listeners in total, 10 listeners who listened to every track and by the mean average, roughly 25 listens per track. However, the figures are partially altered by fact that I rearranged the track order after the first day. I did this because of the statistics displayed after the first day:

A Guide to Listening to ‘A Guide to the Library’. 47 Plays.
A Guide to Using the Library Turnstiles. 47 Plays.
A Guide to using Facebook while Pretending to Work in the Library. 16 Plays.

Since writing it, I had always thought that there was a possibility that the ‘Turnstiles’ track might not be as engaging as the other tracks and would not encourage listeners to listen to the further tracks. When I saw this statistic, I thought this confirmed my prior belief and I changed the order to put the more popular ‘Facebook’ chapter near the beginning. From the final statistics, it appears that it helped pick up the numbers, but unfortunately, the first day was when the guide received the most plays, meaning that I likely lost out on a large proportion of listeners.

Some listeners gave positive feedback on the Facebook page and in person. However, most of it was not in a critical or academic form.

However, I also got feedback saying:

I was happy to see praise of the concept and was glad to know that I had made the point of my project clear: “Making ordinary things we do in the building a little more fun and adventurous.” It was also interesting to note the listener’s alternate view on my placement of the ‘Turnstiles’ chapter. As the statistics and audience feedback suggest different things, it is difficult to know whether I made the right decision by restructuring my chapters at such a late stage.

One thing that appears to have worked well was the humour. Many people have commented on that aspect and appear to have engaged with the guide because of it. I was also happy that my project was one that was available for people to listen to at a time that suited them: “After download, the listener is free to choose how, where and under what conditions of time, season and weather to access the material, either at site or elsewhere” (Pearson, 2010, 80)

If I could have changed something, I would have changed the focus of my marketing. The statistics suggest that 90% of the track plays I got were from the Facebook marketing, whilst I spent a great deal more time hanging up posters in the library. If I could do it again, I would have used other forms of online marketing such as Twitter and Instagram.

Another small issue I noticed was that all the track plays were streamed and no track had received any downloads. If a track is streamed at the Library or on any University computer, it often cause issues with the sound quality. Also, Soundcloud is incompatible with the version of Internet Explorer used on the library computers, meaning that some potential listeners may have been unable to play the tracks.

But on the whole, I feel that I fulfilled my objective to create a humorous audio guide that reflected upon the lives of library users. I did not get as many listeners as I felt I could have, and I do not accurately know if I made it accessible to non-drama students, but I feel that I have responded to the site uniquely and expressed it clearly in my piece.

Word Count: 3178

Works Cited:

Curran, J. (2015a) ‘A Guide To Using Facebook While Pretending To Work In The Library’. [Online Audio] A Guide to the Library. Lincoln: Lincoln School of Fine and Performing Arts. Available from: https://soundcloud.com/audio-guides-library/03-a-guide-to-using-facebook [Accessed 10 May 2015]

Curran, J. (2015b) ‘A Guide To Who You Are’. [Online Audio] A Guide to the Library. Lincoln: Lincoln School of Fine and Performing Arts. Available from: https://soundcloud.com/audio-guides-library/11-a-guide-to-who-you-are [Accessed 10 May 2015]

Forrest, L. (2013) Meet Your Spirit Guide Meditation. [Online Audio] Liberty Forrest. Available from: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Meet-Your-Spirit-Guide-Meditation/dp/B00J2BDURS [Accessed 10 May 2015]

Fraser, A. (1991) ‘Museum Highlights: A Gallery Talk’. October, 55, 104-122.

Flip Floppy. (2014) Little Frank And His Carp (2001). [Online] Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auOKsXnMmkg [Accessed 12 May 2015]

Cascone, K. (2011) ‘Residualism’. In: Caleb Kelly (ed.) Sound. Whitechapel Gallery & The MIT Press, 98-101

Palmer, S. In: Wilkie, F. (2002) ‘Mapping the Terrain: a Survey of Site-Specific Performance in Britain’, New Theatre Quarterly, 18, (2), 140-160

Pearson, M. (2010) Site Specific Performance. King’s Lynn: Palgrave Macmillan

Raymond, H.N. (2012) ‘Lesson 2 – Basic Phrases’ [Online Audio] Learn In Your Car: French Level 1. Penton Overseas. Available from: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Learn-Your-Car-French-Level/dp/B008LFJ1H4 [Accessed 10 May 2015]

Revision Rocks. (2015) ‘Long Term Causes Of The Vietnam War, Pt 1’ [Online Audio] The Vietnam War: The Ultimate Audio Guide. Revision Rocks. Available from: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Vietnam-War-Ultimate-Audio-Guide/dp/B00CVYDBYU [Accessed 10 May 2015]

Tone, Y. (2011) ‘Parasite/Noise’. In: Caleb Kelly (ed.) Sound. Whitechapel Gallery & The MIT Press, 101-103