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.