Preparing for presentations

Everyone is working really hard right now on final preparations for the Performance East critique on Thursday. This will be recorded and used for the purpose of the site-seeing project. We hope you guys in Cape Town are developing your projects in interesting directions - have been checking out the blogs you have set up. Encouraging to see the blogs and various channels starting to grow. This should continue somehow... Hopefully everyone is getting something out of this, a learning experience; realisation of how possible it is to communicate in this way. Yes, it requires commitment and time (can be very time consuming - but also rather addictive..).

Our project has taken us from a short improvised performance/idea, through experiments with video, photography and more performance. Spatial connections have been woven into the fabric of the choreography (placed back, finally at the Whitechapel Gallery) - working out ways of experiencing a space 'through new eyes'. As designers, this skill of conceptual and improvised techniques, using ourselves as a tool to test spatial qualities - and how we, as occupiers of space, connect when we use or pass through space, is a valuable one to nurture.

Students have used a range of techniques; from graceful cartwheels, jumps and mimicry, poetry, dance, measuring, drawing to observations and recordings... and found, through this journey, the joy of the accidental discovery - as we now have evidence that the creative process, specifically through random and improvised initial experiences, has given the final outcome a raw, beautifully unique quality, yet carefully developed and individually performed.

It has been, and will continue to be, an experience to observe, from where I stand, the growth of process, the ideas and discussions, the laughs and 'happy accidents' that made it all a memorable project.

After Thursday's presentations we will report back here on e-site-seeing and then continue to keep our collaborative sites open for a while longer. I would encourage students to carry on using blogs and other communication e-channels.

More later......

14th May 2009 - link to other and your own Blog...

                                                                                                                       Amanda, analysis

See also the Performance East blog - these blogs do have overlap - so you need to be checking both. Now we have some new followers and this is a good way of keeping in touch with interesting blogs - you can now create your own BLOG - why not give it a go? Then become a follower of the e-site-seeing/Performance East blog and it will create a further layer of contacts and sharing. 

Students - any video files - send them to me and I can upload via youtube - I have some files already from the presentations today and will select random Work In Progress.

------

11th May 2009 - progress and investigation

                                                                  Page from Martha Graham's notebook (Elena's research)

11th May

Progress is happening in the form of sketch ideas - now developed into further performances, some recorded on video or camera stills. Movement / spatial connections are analysed, searched and established through a range of media and experimental tests.

Students - please send images and WIP details so everyone can share, enjoy and discuss your progress! Our google group is growing slowly but surely, students, get signed up and start getting involved.

Yi/Research

Wednesday 6th May 2009

UH students: You will be receiving an email inviting you to join a blog group. Please follow instructions and let me know of any difficulties. We have to keep an eye on the space that we have allocated on this and other sites - so do consider other ways; perhaps start your own site-seeing blog with link to this main one.

Let's discuss in studio. There will be other blogs too, so be prepared.

H

5th May 2009 - spatial choreography

Dear all,

This is now actually happening - it has taken some time to test, develop and deliver a start to this part of the experiment of using communicative learning links between two distant parts of the globe. We are in Hertfordshire, England, communicating with the BHC Design School in South Africa. 

Entrance, Whitechapel Gallery

THE BEGINNING

Interior and Spatial Design level 2 students have started initial tasks and have visited the site; the Whitechapel Gallery in East London. A meeting/lecture was held at the Round Table in the Guernica room - and we are now, through that intervention, part of a 'archive of events and moments that have taken place in that room, around that table'. This is part of Artist in Residence Goshka Macuga's art installation/project. We are putting together files and video from that day, to be stored in the archive. That's rather exciting, I think, to be part of an event like that; to be making a mark on history for our selves as a design group/student group.

TASKS - CHOREOGRAPHY - PERFORMANCE

Tasks for the day were: to produce a short performance 1-2 minutes - part of mapping process - to explore conceptual thinking, occupying space whilst performing 'a trivial' task (walking, moving slowly, mimicking others, and so connecting to the site and its users, history, building, future.. FROM THIS, learning will take place for design ideas of a site specific performance/installation/CHOREOGRAPHY to be developed through experimentation and later, drawing and visualising and placing on site.

Next stage is to finalise experiments and start getting sketches, CAD etc., into the complete picture. Video and photography should be used as explorative tools throughout. 

H