Our Broken Voice re-pre-viewed

Following on from the experience of Our Broken Voice, a subtlemob by Duncan Speakman and Sarah Anderson, last night in Cabot circus, a group of about 9 people, including some who had taken part in an earlier trial version, took part in a research workshop at the PMStudio.

This was part of the Digital Cultures Research Centre series on  Language and Value of Pervasive Media

with Jon Dovey and Constance Fleuriot as one strand of the Knowledge Transfer programme between DCRC (UWE) and the Studio.

The first part of the workshop was for each of us to write a short 'listings' preview for the piece. This in itself is interesting to see the range of ways people approach it - specific info, what you need to do/bring, genre, experience, who it might appeal to etc... here's my draft:

"Experience Cabot Circus in a new way. Feel yourself as part of the environment in this subtle mix of radio/event/exploration.At moments you'll question your relationship with everything and everyone around you. What will the story unfold? A gift, a new acquaintance or an experience you'll remember for time to come."


Then we discussed our experience of the piece, with some interesting takes on the characters we played, feelings of invisibility versus performability, ethics and impact on other users of the space, practicalities and technical aspects, as well as the artistic content and narrative.

This is one of a series of workshops, running since April, informing Jon and Constance's research looking at the aesthetics of pervasive media, what it brings, the form of what pervasive media may become,  implication for designers and producers (language, value, design dimensions etc). 

A few notes from my musings during the session:


*Context:

• not 'commercial' but is 'economic' (funded work, making a living out of artistic production & teaching...)
• piece works with the 'true' context - human context rather than machine context, different every time, something unpredictable and dynamic but that can be designed for (usually very successfully in Duncan's work) - constantly shifting context, ambiguity of designing for serendipity.
• physical object exchange (received) seemed to be an uplifting 'magic moment' for several of us. Creating it (writing a note, leaving it in a bin or handing it to someone) seemed more provocative of anxiety/conceptual response.
• spectacle.... multiple viewpoints and levels of performance/interaction
• pervasive media for solitary experience? how would that be? (what I was asking in Something More)

*Great expressions from other contributors: (names in sketchbook for ref.)

• 'pleasantly furtive' 
• 'soup of engaged disengagement'
• 'strange familiars and familiar strange'
• 'audio tour meets urban explorer'
• 'ambient aesthetic' and 'design for serendipity'

*Notes of my wo/andering threads of thoughts:

• O >>>>>>> . Use of space seemed an intriguingly inverse relationship to what I experienced at Back to Back Theatre's small metal objects staged in the centre of Broadmead last May. In that piece, the audience are central on a raised seating stand, and the performers come and go into sight amongst the crowd. The shoppers watch the audience, sitting with big headphones on, watching the characters who may or may not be actors or innocent bystanders. In Our Broken Voice the two roles merge, at times the participants are dispersed, invisible in the crowd, at other times they come into focused relationship, creating a spectacle that draws other shoppers in to look at what is being looked at. Inside out and outside in.
• Cabot circus certainly took on the feeling of a stage, a theatrical piece with start and end, arrival and departure. More so than of a film, despite the references to cameras, framing and overhead shots, and the cinematic way of looking the piece invokes. The time element seems important to unpick a bit more - does it need to start with synchronised watches? Could it work as a radio broadcast? Could we arrive at our own time and pace during a less-tightly-framed performance and still have a meaningful experience and contribute to the collective piece effectively? I certainly like that it is a scheduled event rather than an ongoing drop-in, but could it loosen just a bi tot accommodate what was obviously a fairly common experience of arriving just a bit late, starting slightly out of sync, batteries failing, device playback at varying speeds, & just plain tech malfunction. There could be other interruptions too - especially if it were a longer piece, which I think I would have enjoyed.
• Observation from Jon... Development of the medium: it is through existing mediums (in the case of pervasive media quite a lot through live art & performance, hence start, end, stage, spectacle etc). e.g. cinema began as an event 'coming to town' to manage the technology before widely available.