Since we have had to change our surroundings to Studio One I did not want to lose the sense of liberation. So manipulating different noises from the high street to create a surreal wonderland for an audience member to step into for 15 minutes, seems to keep the sense of freedom. The single, blindfolded, audience member will not be bombarded by these sounds though. That is where the ‘falling down the rabbit hole’ comes into it. We want them to feel comfortable as possible before exposing them slowly to this strange and unknowing space they have entered into. The noises will hopefully sound like a journey of their own.

The idea works because it juxtapose the mundane nature of the high street. What happens if we used the Alice in Wonderland inspiration to bridge the gap between liberation and surrealism and made a piece that effected how people saw their high street. “I must be getting somewhere near the centre of the earth.” (Carroll, 1992, 3) We want people to feel a renewed sense of wonder on the high street, even if it’s just a seconds thought.

Carroll, L. (1992) Alice in Wonderland. London: Wordsworth Edition.

During the creative process of producing our site-specific piece, we struggled to find the boundary between performance and theatre. Understanding the difference was necessary in order to devise an effective site-specific performance. We began to think of our piece as a Happening. Exploring the notion that a happening is when “the performer merely carries out a task” (Sandford et all, 1995, 7) we began to consider a performative installation or process rather than a piece of theatre.

By using the form of a Happening as inspiration, we stripped our creative ideas down to the simplest ideas in order to create the feeling of a performative act rather than a performance. We took our desire to disrupt the flow of the high street literally and started to find a way to distract the audience (the public) from their rhythm of movement through the high street. We wanted the installation to be big enough and eye catching enough to make them look up and pay attention to the space around them for a moment, questioning the retail space of the high street. We also needed to fit the brief of using technology and liberate the audience and ourselves from something during the piece. We decided we wanted to liberate all involved from the superficial view of retail spaces that we all hold; that it is merely a space of consumerism designed for our own materialistic gain. Our aim to reinvent the meaning and purpose of the space using technology enabled us to reverse the use of QR codes, to create a wall installation of QR codes that ‘Question retail’.

Having explored Happenings, it has enabled us to see our piece as similar to one, in which “the choices are up to the performer, but he does not work to create anything. The creation was done by the artist when he formulated the idea of the action.” (Sandford et all, 1995, 8) Thus, our process of creating the QR codes on the day during the performance, will be the most important part of the creative process.

Sandford, M R. (ed.) (1995) Happenings and Other Acts. London: Routledge.

In Debord’s Critique of Separation, he suggests that “we don’t know what to say. Words form themselves into sequences and gestures recognise each other” (Debord, 1992, 43). Debord emphasises that we have lost the means to communicate on an authentic, honest level and argues that the words we use to form sentences are produced by our sense of political correctness. We are afraid to push the boundaries of what is deemed as politically correct in case we are unaccepted and seen as other. As a society, we have become consciously self-conscious because we are always feeling a certain anxiety when we communicate with one another and we are constantly aware of this. Debord continues to question the fundamental aspects of communication when he asks “what communication have we desired, or experienced, or only simulated? What true project has been lost?” (Debord, 1992, 43). Debord suggests that we desire more intimate, authentic communication on a personal level that will actually satisfy our need for social interaction. We tend to use colloquial expressions such as ‘how are you?’ in everyday conversation because they are comfortable, recognisable and reciprocal. When we use social media and text messaging, we automatically use these colloquial phrases and the more commonly we use these phrases, the more they become meaningless fillers. For instance, robotically typing emotional confessions such as, ‘I love you’ strips away the intimate meaning the sentence possesses. Our need for intimacy and real social interaction does not come from having ‘600 Facebook friends’, or ‘800 followers from Twitter’, or ‘200 likes on Instagram’. My question is, have we become lost in a world in which communicating via media and technology overrules any other type of social interaction? Technology and social media may be able to connect us with one another on a global scale however, it also gives us a false sense of what ‘socialising’ really is. In our performance we are liberating ourselves from technology and social media in order to engage in real, social interaction with the public and to give them the opportunity to interact with us and feel their own sense of release from technology and consumerism alike.

Debord continues to analyse our need for authentic social interaction by suggesting that dreams are a product of our unfulfilled desires. In Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams, he states that dreams are the “royal road to the unconscious” (Freud, 1997, 64) and that at the centre of each dream is a repressed wish. Debord, being influenced by Freud’s dream-work theorises that dreams “strikingly publicise those of our needs that have not been answered” (Debord, 1992, 47). Debord emphasises that our repressed desire for authentic social communication is presented to us through our unconscious in the form of a dream. Freud also theorises that every dream once analysed thoroughly can be seen as a wish-fulfilment, however, these wishes may conflict with our responsibilities and conscious aims. In this case, our wish to connect with one another through different, bolder means of communication and interaction conflicts with society’s ‘normal’ way of communication. In our performance, we want to break boundaries and offer gestures that are not normally presented to strangers in order to create authentic social interaction.

Debord, G. (1992) Society of the Spectacle and Other Films. London: Rebel Press.

Freud, S. (1997) The Interpretation of Dreams. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Edition Limited.

John Drever’s sound walks seem to me to have organic nature. It was ordered yet creative. This means that myself and Chloe can explore our new idea through his innovative methods. Drever, for me, has been inspirational as he has explained how to communicated with an audience, “It is important to establish a trustworthy contract between the group and the leader.”, Drever creates a connection between himself and the group which means the group can explore the journey he has set for them on a whole different level. Although ours will be in a different setting I hope that the audience will still be able to, if we follow Drever’s steps, trust us and enjoy the journey too.

What struck me the most about Drever is how specific he is on the ‘procedures’ of sound walking, “Next, the group is invite to adopt a number of rules: no talking for the duration of the walk…” (Drever, 2011, 2) He goes on to say about how to guide and work with your group, especially about the speed of the group. How to become acutely aware of the pace of your group. As our piece is now being reformed into the studio space pace is something we have to be conscious of. Timing is everything as we do not want to run out of space before we run finish the performance. Drever “At carefully chosen points the group may stop momentarily to regroup” (Drever, 2011, 3) This not only gives us more time but give us a better connection to the audience. We can use the sounds we have recorded and manipulated to explore how they relate to the noise around them.

Drever, J. (2011) Soundwalking in the City: a socio-spatio-temporal sound practice. 5th International Symposium on Temporal Design.

Can we hug?

Leading up to our final performance, we decided to test out our ‘signs’. We have decided on three definate signs; Can we hug?, Can we High-five? and Can I compliment you?. These three worked really well on our site. We gained a lot of positive feedback from our experiement and the reaction we wanted. Unfortuneatly our other options of signs did not work as well, Can I lend an ear? and Can I help you? This may be as they are very open and the public feel uncomfortable and that these signs are less approachable. The idea of conversing with a complete stranger is one that is quite alien to the public especially on the high street as people are set in a routine. This is what we as a group are trying to liberate the public from, therefore having the fourth sign still as a conversational gift I believe is still a good idea. It may just be the way we present the sign is more welcoming.

When on our site, I used the ‘can we hug?’ sign. I recieved a good reaction from this, some as expected just gave a quick hug with no talking and carried on with their daily routine. This is still a good outcome for us as we have broken their everyday cycle. On the other hand, other members of the public stopped and asked us what we were doing then recieved the hug and thanked me for “brightening their day”. I encountered two older ladies (shown in video) who asked what I was doing, after I explained one gave me a hug yet the other was originally quite reluctant. After seeing her friend recieve a hug and the positive reaction she changed her mind and decided to join in too. Both thanked me for brightening their day and went on to appologise that they “were not 20 year old, young men”. We both shared laughter and they went on with their day. It was really nice to see how much a simple action like a hug can make a difference to someones mood and routine.

Although several memebers of the public did not join in, most stared and smiled or discussed what we were doing amongst themselves. Which again is still creating the overall outcome we wanted.

The four signs should lead on from each other up the high street, potentially decreasing seperation the further up you go. “The Phenomenon of seperation is part of parcel of the unity of the world” (Debord, 13)

Debord, G. (2008) The Society of the Spectacle. First Edition. New York: Zone Books.