mind’s eye

mind’s eye

Intention and Aims

Explore the relationship between live and media, in particular looking at the digital double, live body and virtual body.

How to achieve?

A performance, incorporates digital media in live performance. Onstage acting combine with recorded and live camera projections through two main projection screens and two-plat TV screens. Main focus is the usage of digital double.

Video and live camera projection:

1 Insert images in different perspectives and scale, POV shots and close-up shots.

2 Digital double works as reflection, represent character.

3 Digital double as alter ego present another side of character.

4 Digital double as representations of thoughts convey emotion.

5 Utilisation of videos working with time and space.

mind’s eye is my lastly work, a performance incorporates video and live camera images, which closely connects to my research area. Its another experimental practice by which would would be built up my MA show.

And thanks Jeanne’s excellent performing.

mind’s eye

below are photos from the performance

HANDS ON EYS

Hands on Eyes

A cooperate exhibition with Kappa, Marouso, Jeanne, Dora and Cherry at The Ray Factory, on 24 Jun 2010.

This event offers myself a great opportunity working in a team and presenting my own work, also it achieve my another aim that get different type of audiences and present to them.

Photos outside our exhibition room and performing space.

Advertising for our MA show.
Sign to the exhibition room:


Myself and Cherry ’s performing space:

mind’s eye

A performance at EYES ON HANDS.

Cherry’s performance will be co-operated in.

Open studio

A poster of VLP for open studio

video installation for MA show

Last Thursday is private view of BA show. In order to promote our MA show in September, MA student have a open studio presenting our our works. I presented a 2 min video clip which reviews two work I done, Connection and i Thinker, which co-present with Esteban, Kappa, Sandy, Dora, Marouso and Cherry.

And I found this, video installation, is a good way to show our work at MA show. The idea is, each of us make a video preview / review our works, and show during our MA show, which can give audience a idea of what VLP is. What is more, since we are not putting on our performance for the whole week, audience who come for our MA show but miss our show time, the video installation could represent VLP.

physical/virtual interaction

Currently I read an interested article about Blue Bloodshot Flowers, ‘The Jeremiah Project”, written by Susan Broadhurst (2004), which is a performance, basic on a love affair.

I am interested in how practitioners incorporate technology allowing both humans and objects to be located and tracked seamlessly and in real time. Particular, how does a performer, a avatar, Jeremiah, perform and communicate in the project.

My understanding of how Jeremiah works technically:

The basic way is that a camera sees things, and the computer generates different faces for Jeremiah, depending on what the camera sees. This is an example of simple 'if' logic.

If the camera sees moving objects, the computer gives Jeremiah a happy face

If the camera sees still objects, the computer gives Jeremiah an angry face.

This is the 'emotion engine', the computer programme that creates Jeremiah's visual changes. Note, these 'if' rules are decided by the director.

However, the computer also has some basic AI, artificial Intelligence, which means that the basic 'if' rules develop and change a little over time, and this change depends on what the computer 'experiences'. This is why the reactions of Jeremiah are sometimes random. It is because the computer is changing the basic rules that it was first given.

This is quite interesting, because it actually starts to break the Director's control of the performance. If there is no AI, then Jeremiah is controlled in the same way that the images that you choose for your productions are controlled - by the director. But, with the AI, Jeremiah begins to do things that the director has not controlled or planned. Admittedly, the director gives Jeremiah his original simple brain and reactions, but over time this changes in a way that the director cannot predict.

I think: 'Jeremiah is unique in that he embodies intelligence that is no way prescriptive. Therefore, the performance is a direct and real time interaction between performer, audience, and technology.' (The point is that Jeremiah begins to escape the first rules he is given)

'As well as questioning conventions of authorship, ownership, and intertexuality, the digital technology that created Jeremiah subverts assumptions of reproduction and representation because in every performance Jeremiah is original, just as an improvising artist is original. Jeremiah is literally reproduced again and not represented’.

In conclusion, Jeremiah is a visual 'facial' way to show emotion in a projection, with the emotion determined by real body physical movement. But, because of the AI of the computer, the emotion that Jeremiah shows is not always predictable and controlled by the director, which raises interesting questions and possibilities.

The project analyzes and explores the interface between physicality and AI technology in practices. The manifestation of this AI technology would take various forms which will be explored and investigated over time, demonstrating both visual and aural physical/virtual, also Susan Broadhurst talks about representing emotion on the screen, because the avatar, Jeremiah, shows emotion on its 'face'. (2004)

Here, the usage of digital body certainly a way of showing emotion that I have not considered in my research before. (It actually gives me a potential idea for my final performance in which I could return to my earlier interest in gestalt and colour theory and emotions.)

Referent

Susan Broadhurst 2004 (Winter), Vol. 48, No. 4 (T184), Pages 47-57

Posted Online 13 March 2006.

(doi:10.1162/1054204042442044)

© 2004 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Directing audience’s gaze

Electric Hotel is an experimental dance performance, which natives story through body language. It presents the facade of the hotel, and the wall faces the audience is made of glass, so that the audience can see into hotel rooms and corridors. Action takes place in the different rooms at the same time, and these story lines for each character interconnect during the performance. However, various actions are presenting at the same time, how do Electric Hotel communicate to audience? Which room to view?

This piece makes interesting connections to ideas of voyeurism and to how to direct the audience's gaze in a performance. Audiences are sitting outside wearing headphones, watching the performance like voyeurs who voyeur a hotel’s residents in their private room. This is very similar to the arrangement in Alfred Hitchcock film 'Rear Window'. The audience are deliberately placed in the position of voyeurs. This is normal in theatre, but in this piece that position was clear.

In Electric Hotel, the director has used this design to engage with the basic human desire described by Freud as ‘scopophilia’, which is the pleasure of gazing at people’s bodies as objects, and this is connected to voyeurism and notions of the gaze..

Here, it connects to the notions of the gaze, Lacan states that not only is the object of our gaze something we desire, but also that the act of looking is also what we desire. The desire to look, and desiring what we look at, should inform the understanding of the use of multiple viewpoints and multiple screens.

What is more, the viewing conditions, Electric Hotel, as Chandler points out that, emphasise voyeuristic nature because there is a sense that you are not observed, in the dark room, by anyone else (Chandler 1998). The viewing conditions in Electric Hotel emphasise this even more because the audience members are isolated from each other by the wearing of headphone sets.

In some ways, Electric Hotel is similar to an outdoor movie because the audience is outdoors wearing headphones and watching action take place behind a glass wall. However, it is more complex because in fact the performers are live, and because, as mentioned before, the action takes place in different rooms at the same time. So, which room to view? In this point, sound from the headphone is the medium drawing audiences’ attentions.

Although the audience member can choose which part of performing to focus on, or which performer to favour in terms of gazing time and identification. Interestingly, audience’s gaze is still heavily controlled by the sound, by directors and they are very selective in what they reveal.

These sounds direct the audience gaze to a particular room or performer, and when the sound changes to the one from another room, the audience gaze is moved to that new room. So, although there are many simultaneous actions to view in different parts of the hotel, the soundtrack controls where to look for the audience.

Here, the way that direct audience’s gaze remind me to my research, how to utilize digital screens in onstage action communicating to audience. Video and live video projections through flashbacks, POV and close-up shots could lead the audience to experience story or emotion through the gaze of screens, a gaze that can be very controlled by the director, especially when the gaze upon the live performance is less controlled.

3rd CCW Salon

What’s my purpose of outside exhibition?

These two days I took part in CCW 3rd Salon showing a video installation, i thinker. This time the form of presenting is slightly different from interim show, which is presenting three videos in small scale screens in a box, and view through a hole.

What’s my aim of this exhibition?

1, Present my work to different audience.

2, Get feedback from people from different blackground.

3, See other students’ work.

During the Salon, I chatted to some audience who from others colleges in order to get feedback. Totally different perspectives and feedback are got from the people I chatted with. Although only few discussion are related to my research area, I found it is very interested getting various perspectives, which would help in my next work.

Way of seeing & visual effect

Different scales of image could dominate audiences’ gaze in different level. Like this exhibition, way of presenting my videos in small scale, making audience viewing images through a hole, which give audience another feeling, a private view. And here it connected to the gaze, the pleasure of gazing at people’s bodies as objects and voyeurism . Mulvey, in Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975), describes how gazing at a screen does two things. It involves the voyeuristic process of objectification and the narcissistic process of identification with an ‘ideal ego’.

After this exhibition, also because I am going to put on a performance in Jun, there are questions for me. What’s the aim for presenting a show outside? Getting different audience? What do I expect getting from them?

supermarket Shakespeare

Supermarket Shakespeare – 05 may 2010

Supermarket Shakespeare is a play, based on a story by Shakespeare, which performed in a non-theatre space, a Sainsbury’s supermarket during normal open hours. The play, 20 minutes long, was repeated three times, so audience members could watch it again, but following a different character.

The play begins with the six characters, wearing everyday clothes or a supermarket uniform, who work or shop in the supermarket, starting in different places in the supermarket, and audience members choose which character to follow as each character walks around the supermarket according to their own storyline. The opening part of each storyline seems independent, but during the play different characters meet in the supermarket and the storylines interlink.

At the beginning of each story line, performers would build up a relationship between audience and character, so that the audience automatically became one part of the play. For example, an actor talked to the audience like they were old friends, or like they were supermarket trainees. The actor then took the audience on the storyline as they walked around the supermarket. The audience members, including ones who didn’t come for the show but for shopping, became involved by answering questions from the character, joining in conversations and sharing the happiness and sadness of the character’s situation. For example, one audience member hugged a character when she was crying.

This type of interactive performance, involving the audience directly in conversation with the character, leads to questions about the role of the audience. For example, how far should an audience member respond to the acting? Should audiences respond to all the questions from actors? The audience is asked to take on a role, e.g. a trainee, so, how much should they act that role during the performance? As an audience member, I personally experienced such questions and looked for ways to find answers.

It seems important whether or not the audience know that a performance will be interactive before they decide to attend this performance. Because it affects how much they want to join the performance. Supermarket Shakespeare did not say there would be audience involvement, This might limit interaction of audience with the actors and also would make audience self-conscious which affected their relationship with the play. It seems that if the audience know interaction is part of the performance, then they can be more freely because everyone knows the situation is not just about the performers, but also about the interaction.

Also, there are some questions relating to performance that should be considered: How to control situations, like the over-interactive and non-interactive audience members, during the performance? How much response should be expected from audiences? This supermarket play, for instance. What is actor’s position when audiences over-respond to the acting? How to deal with a situation that an actor has not audience follower – should the acting be continued without an audience?

There are no certain answers to these and similar questions, but undoubtedly the actor/performer does have different responsibilities compared to a traditional performance in which the audience is totally separate from the performance. The performer, as a character, must work with the audience-performers in way that the performer thinks is correct.

This is one interesting aspect of the effect of interactive performance on the role of the spectator. Of course, it means that every performance is different, and chance is now part of the performance, but also means the director’s control is more reduced. This is because the performer makes important decisions about the final performance, for example, how much to let the audience perform, and the director does not control this.

Digital double

In digital performance, take digital double for instance, Steve Dixon (2008) suggests that performing with live video projection, two performers, physical and digital, explores the relationship between their real and digital, body and mind. The live performer and her digital double reflect and copy one another. Also, the digital double is a self-reflection that could effect its live double as well.

And here the use of screens in performance seems to echo Lacan's mirror stage because they can be used to separate a virtual, or abstract, world from the real world of the performance. For example, when a screen shows a body double of the performer, is the world on the screen similar in role to the reflection in the mirror? Also, it seems that the reflection in the mirror is in some way imaginary, that the understanding of the reflection by the subject is connected to subjective and internal thought processes. This seems similar to the use of projections to communicate performer's inner states to the audience.

In my last piece, iThnker, a video installation, I focus on exploring the relationship between projection and onstage acting. In particular, I am looking at the usage of a ‘digital double’, how this double works with reflection with the real body, and showing inner states, dreams and fantasies.

From Descartes, Mind and Body Spilt, our body contains our mind, however our mind might be limited by our body and self. In digital performance, in one way, video projection seems could free the Mind, separate it from the body, and present it in visual ways, showing the abstract worlds of dream and conscious fantasy.

Here, this idea has a connection to Lacan’s ideas about the mirror stage and how we form ourselves, our self-identity. In addition, Dixon suggests that dreams and fantasies, unconscious and conscious, may be seen as a reflection of human beings' true self’.

This seems the usage of screens showing images of dreams or fantasies of character, in some level, could fully present a character.

iThinker

Video installation

Location: Theatre corridor, WCA

Time: 22-23th April 2010 (star from Thursday afternoon)

what I look at is never what I wish to see

” what I look at is never what I wish to see” which is Lacan’s gaze theory, we can never see ourselves from the point from which we view others. He divided human seeing into vision and gazing, and there are many forms of the gaze.

I am looking at the usage of digital screens in live theatre, and there is a connection to Lacan. Like the Mirro stage and how we form ourselves and identity, and the gaze. But my work is not about Mirro Stage, the gaze...Ideas are also come from others related reading.

In theatre, audience viewing a performance is the gaze, and the gaze might not audience themselves, it can be performers' or directors'.The employment of live camera projections and films could present various angles to audiences, which are both what they can and cannot see. Here, I am trying to explain my piece with this theory. In Connection, a party scene, for example, Lauren is chatting with Naiming. Later on, a screen behind them shows a video of a girl’s death which represents Lauren’s inner world, an abstract concept. Through utilizing video is possible to present a character’ thoughts, dreams, memories and fantasies, which is a gaze from the character’s point of view.

In another scene, Lauren saw Yunzhe on a street. The main screen shows a video, Yunzhe waiting for a cab, from Lauren’s viewpoint, the gaze of Lauren. Also, a side screen presents two angles of Lauren gazing at Yunzhe, which are different from audiences’ view from their seats. What is more, the view of the whole stage, onstage acting, variety of viewpoints of video projection from actress’ and my director’s gaze, are the subject of audiences’ gaze. I am interested in the outcome of these many ways of looking in this kind of performance. When look at gaze and viewpoint in theatre, the audience view a performance which is finally the gaze of the director.

The employment of projection and film present various angles to audiences, which are both what they can and cannot see. The screens give new viewpoints new types of gaze for the theatre.

Also, Paul Valery discusses gaze in live performance and says, “two people look at each other, you take my appearance, my image, and I take yours. You are not I, since you see me and I don’t not see myself. What is missing for me is this ‘I’ whom you can see. And what you miss is the ‘you’ I see.” I am considering if, in theatre, the “I” I miss and the “you” you miss can be seen through utilisation of video and live camera projections.

L ab 3 report-- video & live acting

In Connection which is a story about a girl who has an ability of telepathy can feel another girl’s sense the relationships between onstage actions and live and recorded video are explored. Particularly, I am working with the digital projections which use different viewpoints in variety ways. Through involving videos connecting two events which happened in different place at the same time. Presenting more than one angles to audience through the usage of video, like top view, side, double, close-up shots and POV shots. I also try to present inner state, thought, which is a abstract conception through projection. A party scene, for example, Lauren was chatting with naiming . Later on she stood still mean while the main screen was video about a girl’s death, which was representing Lauren’s feeling, sad.

1 There are too many elements at the same time

I think the main reasons for this is Connection itself is a complex story and I am trying to make every part clear but also to create a special feeling. However, I focused on too much details which should have been well arranged. For example, one time I showed four or five video images on the screen at the same time, appearing and disappearing. I think this was good to communicate a feeling or atmosphere, but it did not show the story clearly and confused audience.

2 Some audiences questioned if repeated videos and scenes necessary

In the performance, some video and performance scenes were repeated, but this was for essential reasons.

I used a repeated video, but reversed, to show a transition movement back in time. This is for the story to explain why Lauren had the strange feelings. So, the story ends when Lauren sees Yunzhe over a road. The live acting and the video then reversed to go back to the beginning of the story, in order to go forward again to explain Lauren’s range of strange actions. The reversed repeated video showed this time transition.

Secondly, some scenes that were live perfomance in the first part were repeated on video in the second part of Connection. For example, in the first part, Lauren dropped her shoes in live performance, and the she and the audience do not know why. In the second part, on video is the scene when Lauren dropped her shoes and in the live performance Yunzhe is on the subway and drops her map when a man passes her. The idea was show two related events at the same time but different space, and to swap the space from stage to screen because we go back in time.

This idea did not communicate well to audience. When planning the performance, I decided not to use dialogue or voiceover to explain the story. I did this because the connection effect is not clear to Lauren, she not understand her strange feelings, so I did not want to communicate the story over-direct. I wanted the style to be open and ambiguous a little for audience to feel what Lauren feeling, and try to understand.

This is also a question I am asking, about how clear the communication to the audience is. From the feedback, I understand I did not communicate clear enough, also with the problem of too many elements.

3 The live acting is weaker than video.

According to this problem, I should have been concerned more about onstage actions. Like, how can live acting work well with the projection. However, there are some practical reasons for this problem such as limited time offered by actors, limited time using the Portakabin and other technical problems.

I should have taken more time at rehearsal, testing how to well combine live acting with video, and cut some video.