This week was a particularly challenging one in the process as we had to alter and adjust our piece after feedback from the module leader. The first 3 hours of our 6 hour period were spent in the space experimenting with the aesthetics of our piece.
After spending weeks theorising our piece we thought it was time to put the theory into practice. We began with the footsteps. Every step that I took I marked the front and back of my foot with chalk. We took a video and watched it back. The audience reaction to this element of the piece was exactly what we expected and hoped for. The audience had no choice but to pay attention to the piece because it was taking place in their space and they had to actively go out of their way to avoid it.
We met with Steve, showed him the video and discussed with him the rest of our piece. He felt it was difficult to pass judgment until he saw the piece in full in the space. Steve and module leader Conan watched roughly 13 minutes of the piece and then gave feedback.
Conan enjoyed the concept of recorded sound in the space, the footsteps, the feeding of breadcrumbs to the pigeons and the moments where we were sat silently in the space whilst the sound played. He was concerned about our own voices being part of the soundtrack and was also concerned about the ‘performed’ nature of the lines. He felt as though the lines sounded acted rather than natural probably due to the fact that we had drama students record much of the lines who inadvertently ‘performed’ the lines. We were told our piece could be reduced to as little as 10 minutes.
Our response to this feedback was initially negative and frustrating because of the workload we had taken on over the past 5/6 weeks. After a further discussion with Steve and meeting as a group we came to a solution. We are going to go through our soundtrack and pick out the least contrived voices and then re-record some other ones.
We are going to get another three speakers and have the track playing out of the four speakers at different times. This means the sound will constantly move around the space as we do rather than us being stuck to a laptop which was a concern of Conan’s. We are going to keep the movements in the piece that worked (footsteps, breadcrumbs and the moments of silence that were really poignant) and experiment over the next fortnight with the speakers and what other movement we could potentially add to the space.
Joe Turner