Final project
For this piece I was partnered up with Lauran. We wanted to create something that was a game, a structured game for the audience to play with. After thinking of ideas such as using ideas from Franko B’s work (the imagery), and finding floors in all of them, eg, finding we had no control over the audience or the technical side was falling all the time. So we began to think again.
I had recently been to a party and the lights that the DJ was using seemed to be moving to the beat of the music. I spoke to him about how they worked and explained what we wanted to achieve and he very kindly offered the use of them to us.
After going back to Lauran and explaining all of this to her, we agreed to use the lights in our piece. After experimenting with them we worked out the pattern of the lights. The only problem was that the sound sensors, which the lights plugged into, to making them work with the music, had four in-puts and we only had two lights. So we ended up having the lights flashing on and off as the sequence went through the motions to the beat. However we found this to be better than having the lights on all of the time. It gave the piece some depth with the dark moments.
Our first initial idea for our sound was to create a track of feed back noise. Very high-pitched screeches and buzzing sounds. But after discovering the dark moments in the lighting we felt that this would not work as well because we wanted the audience to control the lighting. Also to add to the problem of sound, the high-pitched track had know beat to it, so there for the lights were not changing at all, so the sound had to be changed.
Our solution to this was for the audience to control the lighting by giving them a very large drum they could beat. We put them in control of the game instead of taking part in it.
Lauran and I were tied up around our knees to restrict our movement, to add a comedy element to the piece, also having a restricted space to move around in. This was a taped out square on the floor we had made before the audience arrived. The game was of cat and mouse. With Lauran and I chasing each other. The rules that were given to the audience were that:-
· The cat could only move when the lights were on (this giving the mouse an advantage).
· The mouse could move all of the time
· Once court the roles reverse
· The audience could beet the drum to help whichever character they wish to.
· The audience only have three beats of the drum each (this giving the piece an ending).
We felt the concept worked quite well, with the audience laughing and having fun. It was nice that when the light went off and then back on again the mouse would be somewhere completely different in the space.
The only main problem we had was it seemed to go on for a long time and the audience seemed to get a little bored. However this was because they did not stick to their rules and they were beating the drum a lot more than three times each. So we had to end the piece ourselves, by Lauran catching me for the last time and us having to announce that it was the end. We new that this might happen and this is why we had already agreed that if it was going on to long that whoever was the cat would catch the mouse and then announce the end.
I feel the piece was successful. There could have been improvements made but we only really saw these problems once we had performed it to a large audience. Even though we had practise the piece this had been with only a small audience so they did not show up.
These were that the audience seemed to all bang the drum at the same time, not allowing for moments of darkness. This could have been avoided by having the audience in a line and having their three bangs on the own, so then they did have complete control of the piece. Instead we had everyone in a group around the drum. However I feel that the audience understood the piece and enjoyed it to and in the end was very successful.