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Thinking and Research: "Theatre of Visions (Robert Wilson)"

Thinking:

 

Self-awareness—subconscious—Psychodrama

 

There is a particular communication with audience in Wilson’s performance.

In his way, audience can make something by the things, which Wilson made. It is very much about audience their own consideration and imagination by everyday things happened before, which might have an impact on audience themselves. The reaction or effective by triggered without conscious control, without rationally, even without a particular reason. It could be only feeling instead of thinking. It means audience interior self-awareness is the key element in Wilson’s performance. Therefore, it is not a direct communication, but it is more communicative---touch their inwardness unconsciously. 

 

Before, Carlson mentioned, "All human activity could potentially be considered as performance, or at least all activity carried out with a consciousness of itself. The difference between doing and performing, according to this way of thinking, would seem to lie not in the frame of theatre versus real life but in an attitude--we may do actions unthinkingly, but when we think about them, this brings in a consciousness that gives them the quality of performance." He lays emphasis on consciousness of performer in a performance.  

 

Nevertheless, in Wilsonian communication, it seems ignore the consciousness of performers. In my point of view, to a certain extent, we could say it is a sort of doing rather than performing in his performance. In Carlson’s theories, it might not a performance. But it does a theater particular performance. Hence, sub-consciousness or unconsciousness also could create a kind of performance through a particular communication by self-awareness of audience instead of guiding them to a certain direction. (Due to an object as a substance, if we remove the original meaning or surface function, it will be huge different for individuality.)

 

As can be seen, object-based performance has a controversial problem about their consciousness. However, in this way, whether yes or no, the answer seems not important any more. Only they could communicate with others, the performance will be fine. There is another problem, which maybe we could feel, contract with physical performers performance, object-based performance is a bit more difficult to trigger out audience deeper inward emotion or feeling if only much rely on direct communication. Therefore, as I mentioned before, It pretty much relevant audience their own imagination rather than a specific guide them to a particular surface direction.  

 

In Wilson’s performance, most of us do feel there is a strong sense impact us. But we couldn’t describe what the sense is, also we couldn’t sure where it come from. It made me acknowledge psychological influence has a strong impact on being. Is it a principle? Where is the principle?

 

 

 

Research:

 

Wilson’s theatre of vision, 1969-73 (Stefan Brecht)

The dialectic of individuality, energy and time

 

P198

If Wilson’s theatre makes theatre out of living, it also makes living the making of theater. 

(His theatre is not in fact professional but is some kind of psychodrama…)

 

P201:

The materials for the shows can be categorized as what was at hand for Wilson. They were found without search, they imposed themselves, neither chanced on nor thought up, nor deliberately chosen. They are not the products of a theatrical imagination, nor of an intention of theatre. They recommend themselves to Wilson by the Absence of conscious control in his reception of them.

Tho’ some may seem crucial symbols, some mythic, he did not choose them as symbols or for their meaning; only for their immediate power and persistency, unexamined, felt, not rationally or consciously evaluated. Tho’s only some were fantasy images that occurred to him, in dreams or otherwise, or that had stuck with him for a long time……. They were what he found in his mind.

He drew not on his experience of life, but on his life of the spirit, and only on its representational, figurative, to the exclusion of its intellectual part, and there not on fantasies of events, but on images.

 

P202 

These may have detached themselves for him from experience, things that happened, but this was incidental. Life sprinkles a choice of highly individual figurations into awareness: normally they are ignored, fade or disappear; Wilson trains his inner eye on them. His shows reproduce them…..

….This is the material at hand in the mind….. he is not out to prove anything…

As with the visual material, the sense of it was not the point..

 

These materials were sensory; the visible as seen, the audible as heard; phenomena of awareness, not existents. And phenomena of self-contained, interior awareness, not of awareness in touch with exterior reality; imaginary images, remembered images or noises, things seen or heard deliberately filtered though sleeping awareness overnight, …

 

P203

 

They are visions encountering our vision, the sublimating materializations of imagination: what Wilson sees made visible to us.

 

..Wilson makes himself visible, tho’ neither as man nor as producer of theatre, but as reflective conflux of imagery. That this iconography, the markings of an individuality, may denote a personality, is, at least in Wilson’s intention, incidental.

 

P204

Materials and presentation in these shows were chosen and used to make a point. Up to them Wilson had only been exhibiting an awareness.

 

P207

It is an awareness rather than a consciousness of the body.

It is the kind of ordinary, simple awareness of what one is doing that accompanies the ordinary, simple activities of everyday living when one is not doing anything very much, or at any rate is not worried about getting something done or getting it done right……

 

P210

Theatre is communication, but Wilson’s theatre is marked by refusals to communicate:

 

No gesture of communication with the audience:

The intent to communicate is not signified: the performers do not by tone or gesture signify that they are performing for or addressing someone;…

 

No gesture of having been communicated with by the public…

No communication with the audience…

No communication between characters…

No communication of the interiority of the figures…

 

P212

…there are additional elements here absent: communication of meaning, verbal or proto-verbal communication; and the form of communication. Wilsonian communication is not a transfer, but the making of something so that others can make something of it.

…..self-awareness and giving them self-assurance would generalize into a general mental activation, as well as a more general awareness of themselves and of others and, itself a mode of communication, would make them more communicative.

 

p213 

…awareness-sessions. The general point seems to have been to start people doing things, for the sake of doing them, naturally expressive of their individuality as corporal beings rather than pointedly expressive of their psychic personalities:

what they could do.

…

 

 

his initial gives, what he wants to stage, are images, not ideas.

 

P215

There are no ‘characters’ , the performers do not imitate, impersonate or represent personalities: neither what they do, nor how they do it, certainly not anything they say, allows the identification of a personality other than their own. The performances are inexpressive of feelings, moods, thoughts, intents, emotions: non-psychological, not acting. Movements and gestures are not in character, in any character other than the performer’s.

…..

 

by and large, these are stock figures: fantastic, but not extraordinarily fantastic, not far out but out of some child’s everyday imagination: some of a fairy-tale sort, some historical, some identified by social status, some by profession according to enterainment-industry clichés, mostly slightly touched and retouched by Wilson’s whimsy; and some are purely creatures out of Wilson’s imagination, but so clear, simple and sober (unwhimsical, unironic), and compounded of such general elements that they are assimilated to the stock figures….

…

 

p219

……

the performers appear as themselves (engaged in acting out figures)

 

p221

 

 

p223

… The spectator is led to concentrate on these people’s individuality…

 

if theatre is not to bog us down in the illusion of reality, it must tell us stories: but if it doesn’t tell a story, how can it get us past the illusion of the reality of the performances? In fact, how can it be theater? To make the performers disappear into the intangibility of their individuality is Wilsonian theater’s solution of this problem. For individuals to reveal themselves was probably his original theatrical intention,

 

p224

…to create awareness of individuals. Individuality strikes me as the contemporary mode of self-identification: but as little understood. The concept of individuality is elusive. Its tricks may cause some of the mentioned paradoxes of Wilson’s theatre.

 

P226

This self-knowledge, an act of self-identification, seems an automatic and indispensible constituent of all object-perception. It seems absent, and even then really isn’t, only in one’s experiences of other individualities.

 

P229

About object 

..The experience, not a mystic one, is that of an object’s redefining itself before one’s eyes…

 

p230

If my distinctions are valid and if my examples support them, individuality turns out something quite different from what one thinks: very little, no more than a faint coloring on a window into infinity; too much, an entire existence at a moment in time. The I seems both concrete and a non-entity. The examples suggest:

as an object, something has substance, as the individual it is, it doesn’t. An individual is perceived (thought of, sensed…) as substantial, as a substance, the individual is not, but is perceived as process or event…

the reality is a process….

 

P231

It seems an image of the individual: not the observer’s image of that individual: not a reproduction or representation of the individual, distinct from it: but the individual itself as image. Or it seems in this appearance and image.

……

 

The experience is constituted and defined by this event: by the individual’s appearance: rather than by one’s apperception of it. It, not oneself, is the epistemological reference-point.

In normal object-experience, the object is experienced as in a time and space subsisting independently of it, and as definitely located in both,…. ,but by the moment and place of one’s awareness; and by the definitions of directions, units of extension (measurement) and points of reference…

 

P232

But aware of the individuality of a thing (or person), one experiences its here and now as defined by it, by the moment and place of its self-actualisation and appearance, and experiences time and space—and to begin with its extension and duration,--not as independent subsistence, but as its extensions or modes of being…

The experience of an individuality seems verbally inexpressible and incommunicable. One finds oneself unable to tell others what a given individuality, one’s own or that of a third party, is: one cannot put it into words for oneself…. 

 

P233

Signs other than icons can not convey individuality: individuality cannot be reduced to a meaning…

Introspection to ascertain one’s feelings or motives, body awareness in the performance of physical functions, emotional concern for another person, a look at something because one may need it or to see what it’s like. But on the other hand the individual must not be taken for granted or ignored because it’s familiar or uninteresting. The perception of individuality requires exemption from these two alternatively dominant dispositions of ordinary life.

 

P234

The object may or may not invite classification or explanation by an inwardness… the object or the situation may or may not stimulate one’s interest, this interest may or may not be or persist in being extrinstic.—this means that tho’ one cannot induce the experience of the individuality of others in people, one can so manipulate their environment as to promote it. Wilson’s theatre is such a manipulation.

 

But they result from a focus on a single individual, and pertain to it only: one is momentarily not playing attention to the normal order around it, but is not oblivious of it: its presence to one’s mind is signaled by an aspect of restraint in one’s concentration on the individual. It has been shattered for one, but one is aware that it would instantly reform if one changed one’s object of awareness or mode of attention…

The perception of individuality is impractival.

 

 

p237

the spectator is guided from one object of awareness to another, or trather from objects of awareness to a surface of awareness to a texture of awareness:

a.

b.

 

….

This dominant audience-awareness-dynamics may be accompanied by others, notably an increase of self-awareness by way of identification with or recognition of characters, of reflection on their action, and/or insights into institutions or types of people. Someone or something may be revealed to be different from what they seemed…

This is a change from realism to illusion. But the object of the illusion is a suppositious reality of the same sort as the object of the realism: the activity of real substantial people in a real substantial environment. In this sense, there is no change….

 

P238

It mobilises the spectators’ energies only for affect: does not stimulate their sensitivity.

Wilsonian theatre dispenses with these dynamics of normal theatre…has no propagandistic, moral, emotional, educational intentions or effects. It address itself to the power of awareness only: to its reform.

 

Wilson’s theatre is set up not only to induce the spectators’ experience of the individuality of the performers, to sustain it in each case, and to give the spectators a generalized disposition toward it, but to prevent backsliding, the renormalization of the experience: not by prolonging that experience indefinitely, but by leading the spectator smoothly from one experience of an individuality to another, by a systematic repression of references to normal reality,--whether that of the theatre-situation, or one represented by a play or its characters—and by promoting a shift in the spectators’ attention from the individuals as individuals to the images of their appearances and actions (as individuals), viz, to images structured by the motions of figures acted out by the performers.

 

P241

….The spectator becomes unaware of them. Losing substantial reality, the performer for the spectator turns into what he is doing at the moment: an event.

 

 

 

An analysis about 2nd Lab

Description:

• I used three helium balloons, which could float in air in the dark room.
• In the center of the room, put a battle (there was a Mp3 player in it) within water in a tank. (In dark, the reflection of water could create a special effect: illusion)
• Two simple monologues of Cookson and Yates would be continuous during the whole time.
• In addition, there were four candles and three simple geometric shape, which hanged by the balloons.

Through this lab, I supposed to know what audience would feel about this object-based performance? And how audiences communicate with them? What relationship they would feel between the balloons and the monologues. For instance, whether they could consider the “Perfection in reality is impossible” because balloon couldn’t be real stable in the air.

Response on feedback form 

 

1. Water  2. Candle (fire)  3. Bottle  4. Balloon  5. Geometric shape  6. Monologue 

 

There were six elements in my 2^nd laboratory. Through feedback form, among those elements, most audience concentrate on balloons, monologue, candle and water. 

 

The whole materials together triggered out peoples childhood memories.

Also they didn’t quite feel they communicate the objects; instead they felt they so much communicated with other people because of those objects.

 

Before I gave them the feedback form, they seemed didn’t think about these words (Pure, pain, perfect, children, simple, life, impossible, reality) 

 

 

Analysis

 

My original thought: 

 

About “Pure, pain, perfect, children, simple, life, impossible, reality”

 

The six elements are simple materials to semiotic something (which could be different in each person). Audience could feel free to interpret it by themselves. From those objects, which they do have connections but seems non-relevant with each other as well.

 

It is a test for “what they image when they watch and play with them? Whether connect my words or not?” however, how much degree the audience’s thoughts relevant to those words are not actually quite important. 

 

 

After the lab finish, there are some important suggestions need to be consider:

 

• Could build my own purely creatures instead of using everyday objects.

(that could be easier to remove the orignial meaning of the object itself.)

• The people’s relationship is a key point.

(Audience’s community very much influences the interpretation of the objects.)

Maybe need find a way to deal with audience’s relationship, which could make people have a particular relationship before they watch the performance.

• Surrealism 

Surrealism beyond reality, organization and logicality, then express the irrational inward vision. The theoretical background is Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis and Henri Bergson’s Intuitionalism (Intuitionistic logic is about a method of non-existence proof and an abstract truth in philosophical analysis of mathematical constructivism), which very much relevant dream analysis, unconscious mind, Metaphysical art and Automatism. 

In Surrealism, reality, future, memory, illusion and dream come together, it seems try to emerge a sort of sub-consciousness. 

 

Due to those Illogical constitution in my lab, which made some people felt surreal. I thought which much related audience’s imagination and sub-consciousness. Whether develop the irrational sense in my future practice, which is a question need to think more. Because irrational sense will be more difficult for audience understand it. It needs research more about which form of communication is suitable in object-based performance.

 

• Audience Self-reflection, Self-identification, individuality 

Compare with physical performer, object-based performance is much closer to audience self-imagination. To different people, the reaction will be huge different, because of the substance of their personal life. This is a phenomenon of self-contained, interior awareness. In this way, to a certain extent, it will related to some features about Wilson’s theatre of vision, in which these materials were sensory; the visible as seen, the audible as heard; phenomena of awareness, not existents, not awareness in touch with exterior reality. (Brecht 1978:202). 

 

About "Surrealism"

Surrealism beyond reality, organization and logicality, then express the irrational inward vision. The theoretical background is Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis and Henri Bergson’s Intuitionalism (Intuitionistic logic is about a method of non-existence proof and an abstract truth in philosophical analysis of mathematical constructivism), which very much relevant dream analysis, unconscious mind, Metaphysical art and Automatism. 

 

In Surrealism, reality, future, memory, illusion and dream come together, it seems try to emerge a sort of sub-consciousness. 

 

About Surrealist theatre: According to Artaud’s theories, “rational discourse comprised ‘falsehood and illusion’, a new theatrical form that would be immediate and direct, that would link the unconscious minds of performers and spectators in ritual event.” “Theatre of Cruelty, in which emotions, feelings and the metaphysical were expressed not through language but physically, creating a mythological, archetypal, allegorical vision, closely related to the world of dreams.” 

 

 

There is a “Surrealist Manifesto” and “Freudian” from Wiki: 

Surrealist Manifesto

Breton wrote the manifesto of 1924 that defines the purposes of the group. He included citations of the influences on Surrealism, examples of Surrealist works and discussion of Surrealist automatism. He defined Surrealism as:

Dictionary: Surrealism, n. Pure psychic automatism, by which one proposes to express, either verbally, in writing, or by any other manner, the real functioning of thought. Dictation of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason, outside of all aesthetic and moral preoccupation.

Encyclopedia: Surrealism. Philosophy. Surrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of previously neglected associations, in the omnipotence of dream, in the disinterested play of thought. It tends to ruin once and for all other psychic mechanisms and to substitute itself for them in solving all the principal problems of life.

Freudian

Freud initiated the psychoanalytic critique of Surrealism with his remark that what interested him most about the Surrealists was not their unconscious but their conscious. His meaning was that the manifestations of and experiments with psychic automatism highlighted by Surrealists as the liberation of the unconscious were highly structured by ego activity, similar to the activities of the dream censorship in dreams, and that therefore it was in principle a mistake to regard Surrealist poems and other art works as direct manifestations of the unconscious, when they were indeed highly shaped and processed by the ego. In this view, the Surrealists may have been producing great works, but they were products of the conscious, not the unconscious mind, and they deceived themselves with regard to what they were doing with the unconscious. In psychoanalysis proper, the unconscious does not just express itself automatically but can only be uncovered through the analysis of resistance and transference in the psychoanalytic process.

 

 

^{http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/culture/breton.htm}

"Of contemporary psychology, surrealism retains that which tends to give a scientific basis to research into the origin and mutation of ideological images. In this sense it has attached a particular importance to Freud's investigations into the processes of dreaming and, more generally, to all of Freud's work which is the clinically based exploration of unconscious life."

Its concentrates on “subject and desire”, “unbound” consciousness….

(Mundy) "The surrealists' exploration of desire was influenced by psychoanalysis but not subservient to it. Freud was regarded, with but a few reservations, as a pioneering figure of incalculable importance, but the surrealists rejected the notion of 'cure' and the standards of 'normalcy' implicit in psychoanalysis. ……

Nonetheless, the two principal images used within Freudian psychoanalysis to conjure desire and its effects - 'unbound' energy within the unconscious, on the one hand, and a compulsive, fetishistic process, on the other - find strong echoes in the surrealists' explorations of desire. Through the techniques of automatic writing and automatic drawing, for example, the surrealists tapped into, or came close to, the energies and half-formed thoughts and impulses of the lower levels of the consciousness. Breton once described automatism as leading to the psychophysical region characterised by the 'absence of contradiction' and 'the relaxation of emotional tension', that, he said, alluding openly to Freud, was ruled by the pleasure principle alone. The fetishistic model of desire corresponded to the surrealists' trompe d'oeil visual images remembered from dreams and fantasies, and to their specifically constructed 'objects with a symbolic function'. In these works the image or object stood in the place of veiled or sublimated impulses and desires, as a recompense for, or an intervention in, what the surrealists saw as the inadequacies of reality."

Freud had analyzed, the figure represents unconscious desire and all the other psychoanalytic boilerplate. The catalog solemnly declares that Masson's grotesque figure represented "male longing and displaced desire."

In some ways, surrealism represented a kind of Late Romanticism that rejected modernity in the same way that earlier versions did. So, for many surrealists, courtly love is a natural outcome for a psyche that refuses to conform to a bourgeois society that has enshrined science and logic. If bourgeois society promoted Enlightenment values, the surrealists would have none of it. If so much of modern culture stressed progressive values, surrealism for its part would champion dreams, fetishes, hysteria, mystery and nostalgia for the past.

(Trotsky) “Looked to those elements in Freud that were of least interest to the surrealists, namely the almost mechanistic relationship between the material environment and the mind.” It should come as no surprise that Trotsky looked favorably on both Freud and Pavlov in his "Culture and Socialism," since both figures resonated with his own biological reductionist tendencies. Trotsky writes:

"The school of the Viennese psychoanalyst Freud proceeds in a different way. It assumes in advance that the driving force of the most complex and delicate of psychic processes is a physiological need. In this general sense it is materialistic……from the religious myth, the lyrical poem, or the dream straight to the physiological basis of the psyche."

You can find an altogether touching description of how the two engaged with each other in Breton's account of his visit with Trotsky in Rosemont's book. They are discussing "objective chance," a key element of surrealist ideology. It is not easy to capture in words, but it deals with serendipitous and unpredictable moments when incongruous elements encountered in everyday life combine together to produce a kind of mystical insight, like in a waking dream. 

Not surprisingly, the transition between surrealism and abstract expressionism was relatively seamless. Although the latter school eschewed figurative elements, even in the off-kilter manner of a Magritte or a Dali, it retained the obsession with psychoanalysis. Where a surrealist painting might tend toward an open representation of Oedipal themes, for example, the abstract expressionist would dispense with the symbols and concentrate more on the raw energy generated by an inescapable neurosis. Robert Hughes describes their relationship as follows:

Some of their tracks were obviously parallel. Many of the American painters had read Freud and Jung; Jackson Pollock spent two years (1939-41) in Jungian analysis, and they all lived in a city whose cultural circles accepted going to the shrink as a normal feature of the social landscape, as Paris did not. The deep interest that early Abstract Expressionism showed in preconscious and unconscious images as the very root of art was not, therefore, simply a mimicking of Surrealist procedures. Nevertheless the example, and presence, of André Masson mattered a good deal to the younger American painters, for he - more than any other member of the Surrealist group -had tried to close the cultural gap between the fantasies of urban, modern man and the old dark imagery of prehistoric cultures, the recurrent content of myth from the caves of France to the labyrinth of Minos. When Mark Rothko in 1943 declared his belief that "the subject is crucial and only that subject matter is valid which is tragic and timeless," he was appealing to the kind of archetypal imagery that Masson's paintings of massacres, labyrinths, and totems had invoked for the past fifteen years. This was D. H. Lawrence's "knowledge of the blood" given pictorial form.

Robert Wilson’s visual language-- A review of “Einstein on the Beach”

The opera isn’t a narrative about Einstein’s life. In a certain extent, it seems about time and space in theatre. They used architectural images, which created mega-structures of time or rhythm.

As Philip said: “Yet the piece is actually full of Einstein. Practically every image comes from Einstein's life or ideas: trains, spaceships, clocks. And I suggested we have a musician taking his part, because Einstein played the violin – although he was such an amateur musician he couldn't possibly have played the music I composed for him.”   

A mathematical equation, which was the way both of them worked. As Robert stated, The images you see on stage are not decoration, they are architectural. At the very start there is a vertical bar of light that appears three times. Then, in the second scene, you have a horizontal bar of light. Together, they represent the cross of time and space: time shown as a vertical beam, space as a horizontal line.

In this way, the whole piece became an abstract and non-narrative/ non-literal type of theatre, which is concerned with in which way spectators understand the visual presented images.

About abstract conceptual non-narrative theatre performance, I think he prefers to audience’s themselves interpretation about the moving image, in Wilson’s performance, some parts are slow enough to seem like still images….As he emphasized “making visual communication more important than words”

From “Einstein on the Beach”, in my interpretation, we could find there are lots of signs to stress the whole piece seem happen in spectators’ dream or we could say it is a sort of hallucination:

•   Performers’ quite slow action but continuous repetitive movement. (Because of quite slow and repeat a lot, it made me felt bored in some moment. fall a sleep make me really feel the blurred performance was happening in dream.)
•  Repetitive monologue and Performer’s weird expression
•  Blurred or non-emotion
• Actors seem like puppets or objects, which are manipulated by the whole environment: Therefore the body became a semiotic symbol in this performance, which is a kind of material to carry the similar function with the other stage elements—lighting, costume, prop or whatever. According to Erika, “The actor was meant to transform his sensual body into a semiotic one which would serve as a material carrier for textual meaning. All physical aspects that exaggerated, falsified, abused, undermined, or altered its meaning in any way were to be eliminated.” In addition, “Any reference to the actor’s bodily being-in-the-world must be exorcised from his material body in order to produce an entirely semiotic body. Only a “purely” semiotic body could communicate the text’s meanings ‘truthfully” and perceptibly to the audience.” (P78) In this piece, the actors’ bodies are quite pure, I thought.
• Sculptural and minimal geometrical elements in costume, make-up and lighting.
• Cold grey & simple colour and minimal music
• Chaos and confused situation could create a fragmental memory.
• The prop: such as anticlockwise clock, chaotic compass and moving moon.

Moreover, another thing I concerned about it was the object performance part. The huge rectangle geometric light from horizontal to vertical direction and then hanging up, finally leaving until disappear from the stage, the whole process approximately spent 45min, why in this 45mins audience were still stay in auditorium. Waiting or looking forward what will happen next? Or expecting some surprise things or what?

Let me image, if nothing happen next, after the rectangle geometric light disappeared from the stage, the performance would be finished directly. What going to be emerged? ? angry or something else? Would audience feel unhappy?
How audience face to an only objects performance, an object’s simple movement?

As I said before, actors provide a body to present a semiotic symbol, which will create a different feeling compare with an abstract body, as the rectangle geometry. In <Transformative Power Of Performance>, Erika mentioned, “The actor instead is subject to very specific conditions established by the doubling of ‘being a body’ and ‘having a body’ and therefore unreliable in the aesthetic process. In order to guarantee the status of the artwork in performance, Craig argued, the actor would have to be removed from the stage(P77):

‘The whole nature of man tends towards freedom; he therefore carries the proof in his own person, that as material for the theatre he is useless. In the modern theatre, owing to the use of the bodies of men and women as their material, all which is presented there is of an accidental nature…. Art as we have said, can admit of no accidents. That then which the actor gives us, is not a work of art…’”
Here, if as Craig argued, the actor would have to be removed from performance, it means the performance will relay on those objects communicate with their audience and transform the physical space. If like this, whether audience will still have patient to watch it continually or we might not concern too much about whether audience fall a sleep or not.

Moving back to Robert Wilson’s Theatre of Images, which takes place on a stage of non-conformity: contradiction is the basis for theatre Wilson believes. “Stefan Brecht calls it a successful attempt to create a right brain dominated theatre, which only serves to illustrate the dichotomy of Wilson’s theatre. His theatre is often divided.”

In Robert’s performance, “It uses negative/subtractive propositions (subjectivity, alogical, acultural, ahistorical, interiority), presenting these in opposition to positive principles (objectivity, logic, culture, exteriors).” His theatre has to do with states of the self in “perpetual motion, acting in separate entities against the current tide of homogeneity. This is signified in reference to the interior/exterior screens.” “There is an act of logical truth that can eventually make no sense to minds indoctrinated by social order and legitimate thinking. On the threshold of some meaning, we counsel our concerns before discovering them. We lose sight of images before words.”

Object as words, Words as objects as well, which is a form of communication.

“Wilson’s aesthetic principle is to leave a strange unfinishedness. The nature of language is that it is first dead. When someone uses it, it becomes dirty. What might be finished to one person is strange and unfinished to another. People coming into contact with a strange employment of language think it is nonsense or illogical. At first they are unable to grasp anything fundamental from it, but then it begins to take on a metaphoric or symbolic significance for them. As the notion of the ‘other’ exists, so we understand a loss in language. This is an aim of the Theatre of Images, to make the invisible visible.”

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2012/apr/23/how-we-made-einstein-on-the-beach

http://web.mac.com/olivertipper/iWeb/Site/robert%20wilson.html

"If science proves, then science communicates something very specific. Language becomes a puzzle that we try to work our way through in order to grasp that scientific fact.

We inherit language, we do not create it; we operate within it. We have that known logical sense of language.

We displace the icon of language by our very existence, because our knowledge of that language is not encyclopedic, but is only a knowledge of language as is composed by our own subjective experiences in the world.

Wilson’s theatre is in opposition to all forms of super-imposed logic. He has a ‘negative’ interest in what is happening to the individual within society.

This is a ruthless empathy and incinerating compassion not for his subjects but for the secret truth and inner mystery that they behold. These alogical functions of his theatre, work positively to inspire the artist’s own inner vision to merge with the spectator’s. The optic of Wilson is that he sees a way in all of us, to ourselves, which is reachable through communication processes, outside of logical communication processes (i.e. metaphorical value of abstraction). Feeling the audible, hearing the visual (hence, language as a material). These begin by working and creating.

Totality does not exist for Wilson, which is perhaps the most opposite refinement of his work, compared with other theatre groups. Logic is totality, the thought process defining a world-view.

Wilson’s theatre of images has an alogical function, accepting the individual’s creative process and inner vision as the natural accretion.


“I’m not giving you puzzles to solve, only pictures to hear. Look at the music, listen to the pictures.” (Louis Aragon)

The comparisons made by Louis Aragon, to a surrealist expose in Robert Wilson’s theatre of images, are founded in the alogical functioning of dreams. The dream world of the Theatre of Images is inoculated by two processes of association Freud termed Condensation and Displacement. The condensation process is equivalent to the stripping away of logic or the re-evaluation of images and words, until all that is left forms a material residue. The residue contains only essential meaning, and although an abstract, can be repositioned (Displacement) all over again within a brand new context.

As rational language becomes abstract and confused, Wilson’s images imply meaning. Freud placed order on illogical dreams that they might become symbolic and valuable. Through art, symbolism and metaphor occupy the space in which the individual operates.

‘Priem Ostranneniji” (Strange making), is a theory of Viktor Shklovsky and was perhaps a precursor to Brecht’s own ‘Alienation’ theory. It can be used to express the alogical sign-system of Wilson’s theatre, that is determined by communication of image based signs. As such, an object or event already known to us can be manipulated and reconstructed (Condensation and Displacement). the residue of icons can form a new, integral logic (as shown in the South Bank Show film about Richard Wilson).

The essence of Einstein or the symbolic container of his essential truth, noted Wilson, was a small gesture made with his thumb and forefinger; Wilson displaced the gesture in Einstein on the Beach, replacing it amongst a group of writing children.

Music is composed of sounds, harmonies and melodies, all within basic or complex structures. These are the presumed logical structures of music. Re-arranging the syntax of these logics, we understand the separate words but not the alogical combinations. Wilson’s work disorientates from conventional language syntax structures in order to excommunicate logical understanding. A world of interiority and self-awareness is fixated on, measured and caused.

"

I think he challenges audience’s patient and gives a huge freedom to interpret by their own.

"A tele organic theatre such as Wilson’s does not need an audience, because it is more and less than a theatre. This form of drama therapy is based on Wilson’s own discoveries that working with the body can physically exercise the mind and increase development, to help social interaction (or make it possible at all) for communication. The Theatre of Images is a workshop for the bodies of its performers and the mind’s of its audience.

Wilson’s theatre has much in common with the 300 year-old ritualsitic theatre-dance Kathakali. Devotion to one’s body is to attain personal knowledge and a mastery of the senses. Asceticism is crutial to the kathakali performers. When stripped of their exterior desires and belongings, they are free of the world and freer in body. It could be said, Wilson and his performers practice asceticism through self-sacrifice; by allowing their ipseity public exposure, they become exhibited as objects. Both kathakali and the Theatre of Images are intensely spiritual events for audiences, often lasting for periods of twelve hours or more. The similarities between the two kinds of theatre stretch further to include the compositional qualities. Certainly there is a deeply codified language rooted in specific objects and these evoke particular responsive emotions in audiences of both theatres. Colours correspond uniquely with our bodies to produce emotions and sensations. A stage structure serves to parallel the emotional experience of crossing over (Becoming). In Kathakali the make-up design, makes the individual a miniature stage for the inner spirit. This is comparative to the ‘dream make-up’ of individuals in Wilson’s theatre, where clothing is generally animate of an individual time space (figures function as solo entities). Not surprisingly, the costume used in Kathakali is said to have appeared in a dream, to its creator, over 300 years ago.

The proscenium arch functions symbolically to frame the life painting. It portends the interior/exterior screens belonging to the performers/audience and is by way of encountering or balancing the idea of dual status, dual roles, between audience and performer.

Postmodern art and theory tends to be concerned not with depths but with surfaces; representing representation, framing the frame; concerned less with truth and meaning than with the means by which the effect of truth and meaning are created.

Wilson transforms the objective image/word into a subjective response from audience members, in much the same way as the minimalist movement had done (in response to expressionism). Robert Rauschenberg was a conformer of the minimalist art form who had shown that by repeating an action identically many times, meaning would evaporate from the original. This deconstructing notion is a theory of the postmodern that is concerned with the loss of values and individuality in contemporary society, ultimately driven by what Guy Debord called the ‘society of the spectacle’.

His simplistic adjoining of images negates other complex forms of montage performance, such as the Happening.

The performance injects in to me the mystery associated with a non-performance matrix. Performers are not so much actors, as they are amateurs installed on the set of an industrious group therapy session. The non-matrix performance bears relation to Happenings, in that they set out to deconstruct conventional theatre practice and deny fixed frames of reading performance. However, the absolute aim of a Happening, is to dissolve symbols and metaphor, integrating the physical space of an audience into the ‘art’. This clearly is the opposite intention of Wilson, who sets out not to control the physical environment of an audience, but to illustate it.

A self-scape is carved in the calm of meditation on epic and small images.


Wilson’s stage offers the spectator no Law of the Text, no shared, culturally derived order of meaning by which the stage’s elements may be decoded en masse


Wilson’s theatre discards any law of the text and so the spectator can no longer rely upon the community notion of language. There is no longer a dependence on the logic of society or sense of language as icon. We therefore have to gather meaning subjectively according to our own, personal relationship to language.

Having that whole spectrum of feeling awakened in us is the freedom-bestowing aim of art on the highest level. "

Review of "A Story Of Profit In Loss"

28^th, we finished the special show in De La Warr Pavilion Bexhill, which it is a site-specific performance. We did it in two weeks. The action of audience is quite good. I’m happy.

All seems in dream, the theme, the dress, the sound, the music and the whole performance. For me, even the art-deco building, the sea, and the several days are all in dream.

I enjoyed to do this costume design and making, but in the second week, I struggled for several days, from at the beginning using the large dress, I really worried about the dress would be broken before Saturday, because the felt we used, quality was a bit weak. I felt don’t know how to deal with if the thing happen… however, on Friday morning, I did it, I felt less stressful after that.

I suppose to make the whole element looks geometrical, seems all of them are some moving sculpture, but not many details in it. At the very beginning, I thought about the hood could put iron wire in fabric in every character, that will be easier to build those stable structure. At last, I only used this in that large dress.  

I like the silk we used in the train, which could symbolize the flow. It looks like water, especially when it was on the roof.

About colour, before I would like to make it really simple: black and grey. 

Because this could symbol those people are all in the past, it is a kind of memory, all in dream. However, we didn’t have much time to do it, so all in black, but the effect wasn’t bad. I’m happy.

The show moved from the original theater to a gallery, which happened in public. Because of this, many viewers became accidental audience in it. Many people watched it two or three time, each show was a bit different, because of audience or because weather. More and more people were willing to attend it, in the last show, I felt the big gallery seems don’t have enough space to make sure everyone could watch it.

In gallery performance, the distance in between actors and audiences is much closer than original theatre performance. I think it is a good way to communicate between production and reception. I enjoyed to watch audience’s face expression, I could feel they were thinking…maybe just think about where they should go in next part, where they should position themselves, could watch more. Due to the show happened everywhere, travelling the whole building. Even though for me, I couldn’t quite sure whether I watched the whole show or not

I think audience is quite happy to be engaged, which is an important part in every successful performance. They think about it carefully and want to seek more about it, that it why they want to watch it more than one time. A good performance, we should consider in analyzing of both production and reception processes. I think we did it.

In addition, one audience asked us that day, about passive audience. It made me think about in this show weather we should involve audience to become a kind of performers or not…and how to involve audience naturally. I was quite exciting when I saw more than half of audience want to be involved in it. In the tango part, maybe both audience and performers could dance together… or audience could help her move the large dress if they want… in a certain extents, in some ways, passive audience will be positive. Weather it is good for the whole show or not, it is still need think.

Randomly Thinking: Communication of performance

After watching the film “Farewell My Concubine”, I feel cannot get off from it for a long time. Keep repeating listening the theme music, the plot still hover in my mind, and a blurred emotion hover in my mind, which I cannot describe it clearly. Watching the things happen in this film, I knew everything is not real, but I still feel it exist, which is a real world, at least, in that period, I was in that world. A complicated sense after watching it, don’t want the result like that, however I don’t know what kind result is I want, whatever better or not….

In terms of ‘meaning’, I couldn’t describe the meaning of this film clearly either. I was engaged in it very much, even the form is quite old, but the detail of emotion in it is quite delicate, gave me a deep sense, quite real. I admit I’m easy moving by these kind of things.

Communication of performance, one of elements may be depend on the character of audience, but mostly it depends on how we show it entirely, from every detail, let audience feel it is truth, it came from an undoubted reality, just near us. Whatever emotion or meaning you suppose to show…

About form and meaning of performance, the Chapter 5 (The emergence of meaning) states it quite a lot. In terms of Materiality and signifier, “The relationship between actors and spectators was considered only in so far as the actors were capable of “appropriately’’ expressing the “correct” meanings and communicating those to the audience.
……Theatre was repeatedly called upon to stop conveying meaning and instead to concentrate on producing effects…….

Meyerhold nonetheless diverged in his artistic conclusions. In his view, theatre had to account for the very circumstance that spectators now defined themselves as “co-participants and creators of a new meaning.” Once the actors refrained from transmitting predetermined meaning to the spectators and restricted themselves to emitting sensuality and materiality, it would be up to the individual spectator to generate meaning on the basis of this materiality. They spectator thus becomes the creator of new meaning.

A gesture therefore means exactly what it performs; it is perceived as a movement…….To perceive theatrical elements in their specific materiality is to perceive them as self-referential and in their phenomenal being. Does that simultaneously imply perceiving them as insignificant? …….

I do not respond to an unspecific stimulus, I am perceive something as something. The things signify what they are or as what they appear. To perceive something as something means to perceive it as meaningful. Materiality, signifier and signified coincide in the case of self-referentiality.  Materiality does not act as a signifier to which this or that signified can be attributed. Rather, materiality itself has to be seen as the signified already given in the materiality perceived by the subject.. what the object is perceived as it what it signifies….

This applies only to conscious perception. To perceive something consciously means to perceive it as something. While we constantly perceive things that do not cross the threshold of consciousness but still influence our behavior (Roth), these subconscious perceptions remain meaningless for the perceiving subject and cannot be taken into consideration here because nobody can claim any knowledge of them….
Perception unfolds as a kind of contemplative immersion into that gesture, thing, or melody, in which the perceived elements show themselves to the perceiving subject as what they are: they reveal their ‘intrinsic meaning.’…
Interpretation depends on searching for meanings which might ‘match’ according to certain criteria…”

Related to my work, I will use shadow, which I suppose to express a change of us in everyday life. Colour and form of shadow, both of them will be changed by audience’s gesture and behavior during that show. However, I couldn’t quite sure whether audience couldn’t understand or not, even it will be quite simple. Normally we couldn’t aware of a change step by step; due to we are position in this situation. We easily concentrate on the detail of life changing; therefore sometimes ignore the whole changing by our own.

this is a simple description about my work in interim show:

Basical principle:I will mark the point in particular position in advance, if people change the thread position in to these particular position, the angle of fabric will be changed. And at this moment, their shadow’s shape will be showed clearly, and colour will be change gradually.
Shadow from blurred to clear, from black to colourful.
The whole piece:
        A cube frame (2.25m*2.25m*2.25m)
        One of the surfaces in this frame is a wall. I will make an abstract minimal image on this wall. Before the light turn on, all things are black and white, everything (black rectangle, line) on this wall is 2 demotions, which is really simple at this step.
        However, in this cube, I will extend the points and lines are into the frame’s inside space, hanging threads in the space and mark points on the threads as well. Making the whole space looks like: 
From outside space, it still looks like an image (especially stand a bit far), which is 2D &3D image.
         Hanging the white paper and transparent fabric through some of these threads by random angle.

During this step, I need mark the particular point on the frame and on the threads. (with light, and test in which angle, the shadow’s shape will be clear, and in which area will create colour changing) Here is the key element in the whole piece.
People come into the frame, and then play around the fabric and paper, seeking what will happen in this area. (By changing the position of the thread into those particular points, leading to the angle of the fabric and paper change.) This is an interactive part. Performance will be happen at this moment.

Moreover, I will also pay attention to the inside structure, sparse and dense. Because different structures will create different emotion, when people are playing in it. And also outside people will watch them who playing with the threads and the shadows inside the frame as a whole performance.

In that 2.25m*2.25m*2.25m cube frame, which symbolizes a big shell for everyone. People walk in it, and change their own shadow by themselves. Of course, it might be disturbed by surroundings, even they may don’t know which one is their own shadows. Be in a shell, maybe make them less free to move around. I’m not sure that each audience will focus on where in it. Also this is no point audience misunderstand what I supposed, there is not right or wrong interpretation.

Life is like that as well. Things happen sometimes is difficult to deceive how is going will be better than the reality, which is already happened. What is surreality, an illusion in mind? What is distinguishing with reality? Reality is truth, isn’t it? 

Thinking after watching 'Peeping Tom' and 'Psycho'

Why we watch movie?

We are enjoying watching other’s life from a film in a dark room for entertaining ourselves or for spending our spare time… at that time do we actually think about what we should see or what we shouldn’t. Who decide this and what could influence on us how to decide it… Why sometimes we see something we don’t want to see, but actually we do see it? We more want to look at things, which someone told us that the things we shouldn’t look at…. This is a kind of curiosity; we want to know the reason, the truth, the development or the result. We want to go into the gaps between director and audience, we want to be smart audience, who can understand and figure out the truth… more closer, the more we can get into it… we see the world, sometime what we saw was not real, we need use our other sense to feel the real truth. Some people are quite sensible even they cannot see, even they are blind, such as Helen’s mother( In ‘Peeping Tom’).

Most time we have freedom to see what we want.
Why we scare or moving by things happened in screen, even we know that just a film, I think maybe due to we always connect the real things, we related it into things around us in life, put them in the real situation and image ourselves are actually in that…

"Peeping Tom (Michael Powell)", Mark was a victim by his father, he was watched by camera constantly, his father used to document his everything. Because of that, Mark wants people to watch themselves in the extreme horrible condition--- a process from extremely scare until dead. Does he enjoy it? Maybe not…he looked at when he was a child, his father use lizard scared him, he still feel horrible. (Because his father wanted to research children’s reaction when they scare….he did a lot from Mark)

He documents the process of women’ death for watching in that dark room? Undoubtedly, He is a voyeur even thought from he was a child.

Dead, existence in a safe way..
The beauty of fear
Long time taking risk

Things make me think about why we watch movie, why film become a popular entertainment? About voyeuristic, is it a common existence in every single person of us?

Some questions about ‘Peeping Tom’: Mark has a lot extreme secrets, but why he didn’t lock the door when he was outside, Helen and her mum were easy to come in, but police had to break down the door at the end.

About "Psycho", which is a film by Alfred Hitchcock. I was quite engaged in this film; after I knew Norman was playing both himself and his mother, I was shocked. It is an attractive narrative film for me.

Wikipedia about Alfred Hitchcock: “He pioneered the use of a camera made to move in a way that mimics a person's gaze, forcing viewers to engage in a form of voyeurism. He framed shots to maximize anxiety, fear, or empathy, and used innovative film editing.His stories frequently feature fugitives on the run from the law alongside "icy blonde" female characters. Many of Hitchcock's films have twist endings and thrilling plots featuring depictions of violence, murder, and crime, although many of the mysteries function as decoys or "MacGuffins" meant only to serve thematic elements in the film and the extremely complex psychological examinations of the characters. Hitchcock's films also borrow many themes from psychoanalysis and feature strong sexual undertones. Through his cameo appearances in his own films, interviews, film trailers, and the television program Alfred Hitchcock Presents, he became a cultural icon.”

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19981206/REVIEWS08/401010353/1023

Unlike modern horror films, "Psycho" never shows the knife striking flesh. There are no wounds. There is blood, but not gallons of it. Hitchcock shot in black and white because he felt the audience could not stand so much blood in color (the 1998 Gus Van Sant remake specifically repudiates that theory). The slashing chords of Bernard Herrmann's soundtrack substitute for more grisly sound effects. The closing shots are not graphic but symbolic, as blood and water spin down the drain, and the camera cuts to a close up, the same size, of Marion's unmoving eyeball. This remains the most effective slashing in movie history, suggesting that situation and artistry are more important than graphic details.

Perkins does an uncanny job of establishing the complex character of Norman, in a performance that has become a landmark. Perkins shows us there is something fundamentally wrong with Norman, and yet he has a young man's likability, jamming his hands into his jeans pockets, skipping onto the porch, grinning. Only when the conversation grows personal does he stammer and evade. At first he evokes our sympathy as well as Marion's.

The death of the heroine is followed by Norman's meticulous mopping-up of the death scene. Hitchcock is insidiously substituting protagonists. Marion is dead, but now (not consciously but in a deeper place) we identify with Norman--not because we could stab someone, but because, if we did, we would be consumed by fear and guilt, as he is. The sequence ends with the masterful shot of Bates pushing Marion's car (containing her body and the cash) into a swamp. The car sinks, then pauses. Norman watches intently. The car finally disappears under the surface.

Analyzing our feelings, we realize we wanted that car to sink, as much as Norman did. Before Sam Loomis reappears, teamed up with Marion's sister Lila (Vera Miles) to search for her, "Psycho" already has a new protagonist: Norman Bates. This is one of the most audacious substitutions in Hitchcock's long practice of leading and manipulating us. The rest of the film is effective melodrama, and there are two effective shocks. The private eye Arbogast (Martin Balsam) is murdered, in a shot that uses back-projection to seem to follow him down the stairs. And the secret of Norman's mother is revealed.

For thoughtful viewers, however, an equal surprise is still waiting. That is the mystery of why Hitchcock marred the ending of a masterpiece with a sequence that is grotesquely out of place. After the murders have been solved, there is an inexplicable scene during which a long-winded psychiatrist (Simon Oakland) lectures the assembled survivors on the causes of Norman's psychopathic behavior. This is an anticlimax taken almost to the point of parody.

If I were bold enough to reedit Hitchcock's film, I would include only the doctor's first explanation of Norman's dual personality: "Norman Bates no longer exists. He only half existed to begin with. And now, the other half has taken over, probably for all time." Then I would cut out everything else the psychiatrist says, and cut to the shots of Norman wrapped in the blanket while his mother's voice speaks ("It's sad when a mother has to speak the words that condemn her own son..."). Those edits, I submit, would have made "Psycho" very nearly perfect. I have never encountered a single convincing defense of the psychiatric blather; Truffaut tactfully avoids it in his famous interview.

What makes "Psycho" immortal, when so many films are already half-forgotten as we leave the theater, is that it connects directly with our fears: Our fears that we might impulsively commit a crime, our fears of the police, our fears of becoming the victim of a madman, and of course our fears of disappointing our mothers.

The interview with Tim Spooner (12th March 2012)

The interviwe with Tim Spooner on 12th March. (Thelma, James and me)

• Where does the inspiration come from for your work?

“At first, it comes form the normal place where the artist to get inspiration one thing to depict, the same with one thing to painting, to depict the world. The world for performance they do it is something eternal world. Doing a lot of work with my eye shot, trying to feel what the world inside is without vision, and trying to somehow express that visually, and with sound, with whatever else happens in performance.

So that, it is a kind of basic where my inspiration come from, and other thing is fade into it, a small thing with my body, physically, so what is the nature, the relationship between the body and the mind, the physical and not physical, combining them in some ways become the same thing, they are not be separate substantially. I cannot quite believe they just there, I believe everything has to come back to one thing in the end, a lot of people say that the mind must be material at the end of it, which I’m sure it is true, but actually I think we need expend the idea what the material is, because we got the evidence. Body is much more complicated than other materials. Lots of people, kinds of everyday things, are my decisions and communication.

And then other things they come into a kind of more straight forward I want to demonstrate the strange material, so I find these material such that upstairs’ things.. I want to share this puppetry in my hand, because I’m interested in the idea of the materials slightly more expended. I’m interested in spending the idea what the material but just everyday things. And I hope in a way that may people look at things in slightly more glowing way, look at the world more…like everything we looking at… have a little bit more opening, which is everyone hopes. I hope I’m doing in that particular way, which is do seeing the interior life of things.”

It seems about we are telling audience, the interesting things we found, but they haven’t know that… about Tim, the interesting thing is the interior life of things. Seeing the world in a particular way and express it to others.

•   How do you connect the grotesque and the natural elements within your work?

(About the piece ‘Grotesque Manipulations’)
‘Grotesque’ is the one I used in the type of the show, about one of the starting point for that show. For some reasons, I need calculate the idea, match the object action, demonstration with each of these, which is very special rally strange piano pieces, and each one has their own particular character, and from beginning to the end very quickly, feel like catalogue in a strange way.

“Music is the first thing I understood in artistic way, piano, realization what it could be… music and have this incredible. So in a way, everything comes back to that, I suppose there is a very perfect. In that way, it is being abstract, but actually it is describing an interior reality, which is what I was talking about inspiration, and it doesn’t feel a kind of being a puppet or person is in a reality, so in that sense, reading that text, they said the ‘Grotesque’ keeps coming up in lots of very different, it means a lot of different things. I thought what is that, they thought really right for that music. Grotesque, classification like I was looking at what that word means, and what things have been use to be described. One thing is describe a kind of church decoration… but it is a kind of strange sculpture of a great person for describe the church, and then you trust at the beginning, it is the first to describe a kind of high deco-art, descriptive art, which was a painted decoration, where a descriptive colourful. So over the top, a kind of decoration, where planet form, animal form, human form and architectural form will be kind of match them together, so plenty board, animal and the colour with the person.”

(It is a kind of opening your mind, let the other elements come in.)
“I was interested in about which is gluing that things together, so it is a column, in art, person. I can think the one, which is a kind of being in those methods together, this person reflection this together, in a really lovely, funny way doing that, bring those things together, the reason is called ‘grotesque’ is that they discover this kind of art, which decorative art in an old palace over thousand years, and they thought…. Well, because they take down into a cave, the ‘grotesque’ means ‘grotto’, ‘task’. Or likes come a cave, ‘cavity’ in some way, so then I thought about ‘cave’, what is interesting about cave, I mean different types of caves, and something about the cave which is a place where the things can happen, things possibility or impossibility. It might be going on because it is dark, it is mysterious, and the effect. They would be a kind of theatrical experience, where people will go into these caves by touch and would be a kind of overwhelming create magic experience. To see these painting, deep reflect, have to go on the huge journey to catch this thing, through this little tiny piece, so that was exciting. Something, such as a painting, some material things become reality become living things, some kind of power, outside it, and also caves into be where people go to think, in a very power, romantic sense. People get transform in caves and see.

One of those things is about cave which is a Plato’s cave, where he describes how we see the world as in kind of everyday way as being like, being change to who in cave…… it is quite complicated, so metaphor, but people going to past…. between something and something else. Anyway, us, people, the people change to who, who we see the shadows be things, because we don’t know anything else, that’s what we take to be reality, that’s a kind of thing what we take to be, that what we have in front of us, and then he just percept, seeing and then goes outside of the cave to receive the sun…… the things we talk about it is philosophy, beyond how things look to us and a kind of surreality… find a perfect form of what things really are, between the truth and things, so that was another idea, into these ideas, shadows where the things happening and where the real things happening.

(Maybe this is a kind of exploring the reality under surface, we are looking for the real us and seeking things beyond the things look. Also pursue a perfect form than the things really are. A kind of truth… in our mind or in surreality)

About natural elements, it is a way of he suppose, he said “When I suppose make something grotesque, I’m talking about getting a thing exist whether is a natural element or something has been made, like musical book and than editing things to it, and a kind of cross. Editing things to it, like super glue or a kind of cross the idea, and a kind of building up the idea of these things. It is a kind of combination of these objects. Building one thing with another thing, so it is talking something have a little reality, so stick something in trip, or in a really rough way or delicate, actually it is a quite rough way.

•     Do you aspire for the magical element to resonant through the work you produce?

Yes, a bit. I really like the shows being you can see how everything works, I really like that and a lot of philosophers doing that show to having… with thing being manipulated, demonstrated to audience, but actually which is another vision of the shadow is, which is demonstration looking at… what the meaning of this, what was actually happening was the movement of my hands, my hands had a little glove and there were strings, figure which put the switch and these connected the little motived, and also my costume, so a kind of self content. So the movement of my figures is the combination of this different things never quite different ways to move your figures to do that. The combination of that figures being that, basically with my costume, make this music, because it is not trying to make sounds, which is a particular way to change the music….

Why am I saying this, because the idea that everything on that show, so you can see the switch on the figures, and you can see the voice going on, and connect this, this kind of organ thing, so even you don’t have to know electronic thing, you can see there is a kind of links, you can see it is going on, and nothing hidden. And doesn’t disappear the box and then come back again, as the sound is there. And I like people seeing map this things, because for me, that it is a part of exam. It is not hidden magic, although so in general, I love the end I use the lighting to show everything is there. You see everything is nothing. (Transformative, where the magical does come) In theory, I against magic, but then it is really nice to just hide them a bit, so control that magic, so you present something that very… you can see how everything works, but actually it is something quite seriously, it present like magic show, and there things within it, actually I do hide a bit in that show, so whether the mouth on the stick, the wire…I hide something, otherwise they will be not surprise. So it is a kind of controlled none magic, and you can treat something become magic or become explained. In general, I don’t think it is a magic thing.

•  How much consideration is there of the audience within your work?

The idea presents something that is a magic show presenting something someone recognize.. I thought of the relationship with the audience to be thought of straight forward or one they can understand. So that is why it is a kind of, a bit like a demonstration. Kind of something, kind of residence, even you are sitting here, that is a kind of you recognize that before. That is show is most like magic show. That is kind of form, people recognize. So the thing is important to have that, recognizable formal relationship with audience. In less, very specific go against on you wanted to describe it. I think with the shows, I want audience to be who they are, to kind of say things where they are.

That coming into a cave, in that show, I made a whole room like a cave, explain this about grotesque and that is to do a cave and then made the room dark and a little particular, especial this, near the shadow, so again that is another, it is not recognizable form in a way, magic way but it is a kind of emotional residence from people there, you are going into this dark, and you expect something strange happen. Same with going into a theater, but maybe a little bit more strange, particular. Then the other things about the audience is the something that I’m talking to upstairs it is about the particular thing, it is to do how do the audience actually see this, because this is necessarily the size in. So that is the thing, I’m going to film it to use camera, because actually a lot stuff, people can’t see it.

I do care about audience’s feeling of my work. I like hearing things there isn’t. I’m not doing message in main, so it is not that direct get what I’m trying to say. Otherwise maybe fail, but they have experience, in this a kind of wide meaning, who understanding a bit, they recognize what I was thinking.

•  Where do you think the liminal space lays within the structure of your work?

I think this is in between the body and the mind, so in a way, what I’m trying to do with this thing is bring the physical world into this strange middle space and they will have the ideas into that, and a kind of mixing up to, and a kind of bring both into consideration as one thing rather than as two things, and so I talked about already a little bit, but I think the shows as a composition in time, they are not a story, but they have a shape in time, and for me, that to do it is the drawing or representation or depiction of thought pattern, some a kind of thought pattern, which is a story, it is a kind of representation.. time, art, thought maybe one thing leading to another, that was story, but another vision about there is a kind of solid vision of thought, it is a kind of solid language, and the ‘grotesque’ come back into that, because in the sense, I’ve talking about which is the idea all meting something which is existence so I have thinking a lot about this subjects being a kind of so limited idea, so a kind of sticking solid stuff around the idea so become a real form world, which it doesn’t quite make sense, but it is a way think about….

I work a lot with thinking a creation mix this kind of vision how things come to be the one, which is a kind of different metaphorical reality so I can be on and except that how.. so therefore the show make sense, the show, logical into it or painting. So one of those creation means it is that what come to us with consciousness rather than physical reality, and gradually we just stuck this consciousness…such as we realize we need the food over there to carry on thinking. They don’t lead everywhere, they are not real like a physical pictures, just trying to turn things ups and down, there are something from there a kind of understanding of the world from which to go up from.

•  From identifying a performative element within your work, what are your thoughts on the place of the puppet with performance?

I suppose that is puppet is the extension of what I think. So I say a lot what I’m doing, I wouldn’t particularly call puppet and I would say that puppet has some thing you recognize just being to do with a body, a personal animal body or it got face or something. If it puppet, I think it is something you recognize just being you relate your body or animal’s body. (object representation)

It’s just not particular word I used very much, because I think it is how what people think what is puppet. I do think there is a slightly important thing, this is difference where just quite hard to explain. I think when you moving a puppet, and that would be an object, but it is… you are asking an audience to see it is a body in some way, and I think it doesn’t have to be a puppet, it is have to be express, to be represent something outside your body.

“What is puppet?” has different perception.. I feel a puppet is a slightly different when I work with puppets and I think quite a lot of people question what is it. I doing this they are trying to disappear. They are trying to give life to a dead object, and I think what I’m trying to do which is the transforming your own thought movement to other things. And I think what I’m trying to do it is thought of back of vision of that, which is review a reality of that object as that interested to it. I think that is my focus, it is trying to do those things who already do, this things already have. It is not trying to make something, it is a kind of work with that shape, with that form and material and something just lead to what should be doing in a way, for people. And that is why that show is not being lots of very tiny little things, second, but each thing can only really do one thing, has one thought of action you can make it do and then it started move to next, and then that kind of keep coming back in my show, that is very short section, but we see something and then we might come back something later, it does another thing but they are not something a story the you can make puppets. You do with puppet, it is designed to do a lot of different thing, for what I mean, a puppet in that normal sense. So where I’m going to it is trying to find the in consciousness. Whatever it is, vision of consciousness inside to be think, aim is that.

Another thing I have been doing is that maybe a kind of movement as we see the sound so I have been working with this feedback loops. So another thing happen in my hand it is the little microphone there in my costume… but it is a tiny microphone there and a speaker in somewhere, and go though a kind of voice change. Somehow there is responsible to happen this, because what I’m doing anyway and working another thing you can maybe just set up the name, they have their own feedback within what they doing. So in a way, a kind of showing, a kind of vision of something they could be like a consciousness and trying to involve.

•   How do your relate yourself to the performing objects? In relation to ‘The Grid of Life’ we see yourself and the puppet at the same time. Do you see the puppet as an extension of your consciousness or another organism?

I don’t think it is an extension of my consciousness, I think it is an extension of my body or I’m an extension of its body. … Put everything in that middle place, I’ve talking about it’s made of all shell and string things, like other objects without the human shapes, but it is also looks exciting, so just trying to drag both into together. I think purposing this thing base on everything, increate form in a kind of structured form. I think for me just funny title. I’m struggling to remember why let any particular more interesting meaning to that. It is a great of life in there, it is described there a lot talking in it as well. Another thing is about that the little it is a demonstration of the objects, a vision of this but it is a way with done.

So that was between a kind of share the performance, the delivery of this show…….The puppet here trying to disappear, here actually you can’t escape from being this. What you are doing, it is much more complicated visually than what anything else can do. Even a really puppet can do, still a kind of you are still involved, and you are implicated in this thing going on. How you move the thing just an interest thing and the thing moving. So in a way, you can’t disappearing, so it is a kind of showing on rather than to me to go away to there. In that sense, a puppet is an extension of the body and there is another puppet in that show just same, and that much more like what I talking about object, just having one movement. So that this a kind of really rough body shape and just have this particular movement you can do, where on the end of the stick have called from behind. So just like something beginning to learn to walk.

•  Considering a still performing object within a space as an installation and then a similar performing object when manipulated as a performance, would you consider a still object manipulated by another source (eg, wind, water etc) a performance or an installation?

I think for me I don’t think an object when still performing object, I don’t think that performing. I don’t think it is trying to do anything. I wouldn’t want to give it that intension. So I say what I’m doing is ‘demonstrating’, so in a way, if anyone performing in front of me not move, not the thing, because the thing you have to trying to, it doesn’t particular wants to be a show.
I think when a person involved that is performance, for me, it is performing. Someone is going intension of the show or something that is performance. I would say the thing without person is not performance.

Mini-lab & Shadow

Suppose to control shadow is a difficult part, which was the key point in this mini lab…. I put transparent fabric between thread and wall to make some shadow become blurred. But the shadow and the real thread became similar, because of lighting; I couldn’t quite sure which one was real line, which one was shadow. Reality and virtuality are similar at that time.

Whatever, I feel shadow is a quite interesting element between audience and performance.

 

Augmented Shadow (Joon Y. Moon)

(2010) format : interactive installation
dimension : 1050 * 1050 * 950
Augmented Shadow is a design experiment producing an artificial shadow effect through the use of tangible objects, blocks, on a displayable tabletop interface. Its goal is to offer a new type of user-experience. The project plays on the fact that shadows present distorted silhouettes depending on the light. Augmented Shadows take the distortion effect into the realm of fantasy.

Shadows display below the objects according to the physics of the real world. However, the shadows themselves transform the objects into houses, occupied by shadow creatures. By moving the blocks around the table the user sets off series of reactions within this new fantasy ecosystem.

In this installation, the shadows exist both in a real and a virtual environment simultaneously. It thus brings augmented reality to the tabletop by way of a tangible interface. The shadow is an interface metaphor connecting the virtual world and users. Second, the unexpected user experience results from manipulating the users’ visual perceptions, expectations, and imagination to inspire re-perception and new understanding. Therefore, users can play with the shadows lying on the boundary between the real, virtual, and fantasy.

Augmented Shadow utilizes this unique interface metaphor for interactive storytelling. Maximizing the magical amusement of AR, it is embedding an ecosystem where imaginary objects and organic beings co-exist while each of them influences on each other’s life-cycle, even though it is not in use by users. Light and shadow play critical roles in this world’s functions causing chain reactions between virtual people, trees, birds, and houses as shown below.

A set of tangible blocks allows users to participate in the ecosystem. Users can influence on the system by playing with the blocks or observe the changes of the shadows as if kids were playing with an ant farm.

Relational light (Ernesto Klar)

http://klaresque.org/?p=63

Relational Lights is an interactive installation that explores the ways in which the individual and expressive human subject occupies a shifting and variable space in relation to others.

The installation uses light, sound, haze, and a custom-software system to create a morphing, three-dimensional light-space in which spectators actively participate, manipulating it with their presence and movements.

The work functions as a living organism with or without the presence and interactions of spectators. When viewers step outside the projected light-space, the system begins its own dialogue with space by means of extruding and morphing sequences of geometric light forms. And when viewers penetrate and interact with the projected light-space, a collective and participatory expression of space unfolds.

Relational Lights amplifies the three-dimensional fabric of space by making it visible, audible, and tangible to participants. The resulting aesthetic experience encourages an unending relational process of shaping space among participants.

Ernesto Klar created Relational Lights as a tribute to the work and aesthetic inquiry of Brazilian artist Lygia Clark (1920-1988.)Relational Lights emphasizes the spectator’s relationship with what Lygia Clark called the “expressional-organic” character of space, and expands on her conception of the “organic line.”

The latter is the root of Lygia Clark’s progressive interest in and inclusion of the viewing subject within the work of art. Relational Lights takes examples of the “organic line” in Lygia’s oeuvre, such as her Modulated Space maquettes from 1958, and literally extrudes them as interactive planes into three-dimensional space. Spectators are able to modulate and penetrate the “organic line” itself while maneuvering within the space. Relational Lights brings about an awareness of the spectator’s bodily occupations of space in relation to others.
 

Individual Practice Thinking

Basically, I will continue do my previous lab work in interim show. However, depend on the first lab, there are lots of things didn’t work well. Audience didn’t feel what I supposed, such as the speed of time, the exact time trigger out memory, about my role. Therefore, I think I need develop it a lot. Due to the limited time, I just make a rough plan about what I’m going to do in interim show.

I will begin with a simple structure.

(The square is the space.)

During the whole performance, I will change the space form several times.
The following is about the methods of changing:
λ    Maybe I will use the nails on the wall, ceiling and ground.
A big transparent fabric will be dragged in this space, which could be divided the whole space. And then using thread goes through it, which will be hanged on the wall or somewhere else. Audience could go through into these several parts of space. Probably, I can change the thread and the fabric position to transform the whole space (Maybe need two more people help me at the time change it. Basically, we become a kind of performers.)

Using light to help change the space as the same time.

As the thread and fabric are changing, also the lighting changes, the shadow will be different as well. I suppose to design the shadow’s pattern on the wall. (This will be quite difficult to do) so the shadow’s pattern is only simple geometric shape, such as triangle, rectangle and square.

These are the several examples about the form of this space.

During this, I will use an abstract body’s form will be hanged by these thread in one part of this space. (As the middle one on above image) It symbolizes the changing of body (physical and chemical).
The abstract body form, which will be made by iron wire and transparent plastic, or clay… I’m not sure yet. Maybe it is only a half body or a part of body, or just symbolized body. From solid to liquid…

The meaning of this work is about the nature transition within the physical human body. Which is happened in everyday life, but very slow by time. I expect audience could figure out something in play around this performance. Thinking their own changing, thinking their own life, according to different time, different environment, how changing ourselves….

Everyone is changing by time.

Basically, it will become a kind of play. Audience will be participated in it.
Changing the thread in to a particular point, that is signed already by me.
Changing the fabric in to a particular point as well.
And then see how the space’s shadow change and how themselves’ shadows will be change. Maybe, the audience will stand on a particular area, which it will become a part of shadow that will be seen by others and by themselves as well.

About music, the rhythm will be similar with the last one, which I used in my first lab. The atmosphere is about time, space and mysterious.

Before I thought use a small space, which could be similar with portacabin. However, that large empty space is not like that, I think I should make a frame to hang the things, a big cube, and make my things in it…