“We stopped seeing the street as a series of snapshots but as an endless movie”(Crab man and Signpost, 2011, 16)
Having experienced a number of stumbling blocks along the way, our process has been developing constantly and reflects the performance process found in the text “A sardine box of tricks”. In this text the performers/authors guide the reader through their performance process of researching and performing in a city landscape. Most importantly there process of exploring the site inspired us to follow in their footsteps and “become part of the street’s regular life”, (Crabman and signpost, 2011, 16)

A tactic they used was to “wear something that sets you apart and allows others to have permission to approach you”, encouraging people to share their stories of the street with you. This was something we thought would be important in disrupting the rhythm of the street but would also personalise the space and remove it from it’s superficial retail use. By using pervasive media we then discussed using the words of the audience who engaged with our performance as process and create a QR code for their story of the street. This would allow us to concrete their personal interaction with the space within the code and share it on a global level through the use of pervasive media.

Crab man and Signpost (2011) A Sardine Street Box of Tricks. Exeter:Blurb.

Situationist theory is “the unified study of spectacular society” (Plant, 1992, 4). The situationists explore concepts of futurism, Dadaism and Surrealism in order to invoke “a wider world of meanings which challenged conventional arrangements of reality” (Plant, 1992, 3). The ‘reality’ Plant refers to here, represents capitalist society, thus she suggests that the Situationists challenge the structure of capitalist society in relation to the individuals who are forced to abide by these codes. Marxism is also an important part of the situationists work because they investigate the role of the bourgeoisie and the proletariats whilst challenging the structure of capitalist society. Debord is especially interested in Marx’s theory of alienation which “refers to the subjective or objective state of the individual in capitalist society, a state categorised by desires which are either distorted or frustrated, and by a lack of understanding and control of the social environment” (Elster, 1986, 29). Debord focuses on the way individuals are alienated from themselves, their own emotions, experiences and desires due to the constraints of capitalist society. Debord theorises that the movement of the commodity “is identical to the growing estrangement of men among themselves and in relation to their global product” (Debord, 1992, 76). The more the commodity is forced into our lives, the more we feel alienated from one another and from the product itself. The product will always be out of our reach and there will always be something new that will lure us further into the world of commodity. There will never be a product that will ever satisfy us because there is no final product.

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

Elster, J. (eds.) (1986) Karl Marx: A Reader. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

On the completion of our ‘Against the flow’ script it was time to create the first draft recording of the audio experience. I took to the microphone completely unfazed about the task ahead of me, we had a script, the equipment and therefore the voice should be a breeze. I was in for a very big awakening. The first challenge I encountered was when physically speaking the written text some of the sentences were very difficult, the structure was clearly wrong so as a group we sat down and changed the text as I spoke it through in order to correct our mistakes. Secondly my Yorkshire accent made the pronunciation of certain words alongside the letters b and p very harsh. When listening to the recording back, we found sections that had loud rushes of wind and sharp vocals that only appeared with my way of pronouncing B and P. This was problematic when the water I am constantly referring to throughout the piece is called the Brayford Pool.  But the biggest challenge I feel I am now facing is how I present my vocals on the recording.  The piece has the job of amercing the audience member in a new and historical world on the waterfront, changing there opinion on these familiar surroundings. However this can be completely ruined by the wrong representation of the voice. I felt my first attempt at the recording was more like a storybook style voice or a relaxation tape not an immersive and informative piece. So taking this on board I began to listen and research a variety of audio tours from various sources in order to try and understand the importance of the voices role and how to successfully represent my voice in our performance. “Walking accompanied by the taped stories that capture and recall events that happened at specific places in the city, creates an opportunity to see and interrogate the city as a chronotope, charged with traces of the past, personal experiences, affective qualities, and social regimes”(Hahn, 2014, 29) ‘50 Kilometres of Files’ ( Haug, Kaegi and Wetzel,)  is an audio walk that was created by Rimini Protokoll and takes place in central Berlin. The performance takes participants 111 kilometres of archival records over several hours using sites across the city. What I found most fascinating about this performance was that after listening to a few short video clips that were in German, even though I did not understand what was being said the way people were speaking made me realise that it is not neccerey to stage a descriptive voice in order for the piece to be interesting. it is more affective when you speak naturaly, that way the listener is getting a strong sense of the raw emotion of the piece. It was clear in 50 Kilometres of files, if a piece of audio was serious, sad or happy, when they wanted the listener to feel part of the history of a place. Emotionally there wasn’t a language barrier and I feel that is something I can think about when trying to create this personal vocal and audio connection. If people who don’t understand the language can understand the emotions it opens up the experience to be accessible and understandable to people around the globe in some form. On the other hand I listened to some clips from two very different audio tours ‘Our broken voice’ by artist collective circumstance (Dovey and Fluemont, 2012) and ‘The Carrland’s Project’ by Mike Pearson (Pearson, 2007). These audio tours made me understand the importance of the voice even more, I felt both audio tours were targeting a different emotional response. Our broken voice makes the listen feel quiet unsafe, excited, adrenaline based feelings to make the storey come to life for the listener and so there reactions match the character they are playing. Whereas the carrlands project makes me feel quiet uncomfortable, feelings of fear and uncertainty take the listening into the depths of the history, building this unique uncertain world around them, every step feels cautious and real. So emotionally how do we want our piece to effect the listener? Do we want them relaxed, excited, fearful or happy? I feel in order to create right voice as a group we need to decide what atmosphere we want to represent, only then will the vocals bring the audience In to the experience.

Bibliography

Pearson, M.(2007) Carrlands.[online] Cardiff bay: Design Stage. Available from http://www.carrlands.org.uk/default.asp [Accessed 30 March 2015]

Dovey, J. and Fluemont, C. (2012) The Pervasive media cookbook.[Online] Bristol: Available from http://pervasivemediacookbook.com/kitchen/ [Accessed 30 March 2015]

Hahn,D.(2014) Performing Public Spaces, Staging Collective Memory. 50 Kilometres of Files by Rimini Protokoll, 27-38.

Haug, H., Kaegi, S. and Wetzel, D. Rimini Protokoll. [Online] Berlin: Available from http://www.rimini-protokoll.de/website/en/projects_date.php [Accessed 30 March 2015]

“Revolution is not ‘showing’ life to people, but bringing them to life. A revolutionary organization must always remember to that its objective is not getting its adherents to listen to convincing talks by expert leaders, but getting them to speak for themselves, in order to achieve, or at least strive toward, an equal degree of participation.” (Guy Debord, 1961)
When coming across this quote we realised that maybe not all of our signs allow an equal degree of participation with our audience members. We feel that this quote sums up our piece as a whole as this is what we intend to do so in order to appease this we are considering changing our last sign to encourage that equal degree of participation by maybe making the audience member swap places with us for a while and hold the sign therefore encouraging them to be more involved.
We also have recently found out that our performance will be on the 7th of May which also happens to be election day meaning the streets of Lincoln will be filled with people trying to entice people into voting. We feel this is even better for our piece as people will think our signs are a form of voting advertisement but instead what we will be offering is social interaction to brighten people’s day. By doing so we are not only liberation people from their everyday routine and social norms, we will be liberating them from the hassle of voting and the normal signs that they see on election day. It also then makes our piece a slightly more political piece even if it is in a subtle way as we are saying that people should be stopping more and interacting more with the people around them. When we take part in the ‘changing of the guard’ routine to swap our signs this will also appear highly political as the march will appear to be somewhat of a protest march whilst we hold our large signs and march. To the public eye without reading the signs this act will look like a political protest against the elections, however when reading the signs it is in fact nothing of the sort.

Debord, G. (1961) Pour un jugement révolutionnaire de l’art. Translated from French by Ken Knabb. The Bureau of Public Secrets.