These are links to other resurch and work related to the materials gathered as Stans Cafe were devising and rehersing 'The Capital' August - October 2019
The second page is relating to the otehr experimets / tests undertaken - mainly singel screen and 360 audioe tests
The thurd page contains information aboyt Doing /Thinking, a paper presented at 'Cracking the Established Order' at Dempoford University June 2019 and then further developed int a Paper for Th International Journal of Creative Media Resurch in June 2020
This will be the About - 1 page.
it will contain initial thoughts and chats with James and overview of gathering - and how that developed.
there might have to be a specific page for info around gathering? and thinking about what gathering means to me?
‘Elements’
So, I had undertaken a number of ‘experiments’ exploring how I could use gathered material and bring parts of it together to make something that was not a document / documentation of what had happened, but was constructed with ‘stuff’ of that spaces and so it came together to make a new occurrence / moment.
I was at a point where I wanted to try gathering from a place where ‘things’ would be ‘occurring’ and something was ‘becoming’; so in February 2018 I spoke to James Yarker, the artistic director of the theatre company Stan’s Cafe, about gathering audio and imagery while they were devising a new theatre piece called ‘The Capital’. I hoped that if they were working through a devising and developing process; then this was a place where ‘things’ might be occurring, and knowing their work - that this wouldn’t be a dramatic space, but a quiet space of considering.
James agreed that I could gather as they worked through late August, September and early October 2018 - their new show would be opening at the Rep in Birmingham in mid October. I had been offered a show at in Birmingham School of Art and it was arranged that this would open a week before The Sans Show did at the Rep and it would be on for 2 weeks.
I was aware that in part the Stan’s pieces was about how people came together, met and impacted each other’s lives and situations in a big city. It was also going to be a piece with no dialogue. Both of these interested me, fitted with my concerns with things that happen before or outside cognition and therefore language and also about meeting and shifting moments and relationships.
I gathered video and audio in the space where they were devising; initially working speculatively, then as I got a ‘feel’ for the space and how they we working, I began to gather from specific points; from some video and audio, from others just audio. Collecting where the back stage areas were, at the going on / getting off points, where the tech was, where the director stood and other elements that generated movement.
The space my piece was to be shown in was very different from the rehearsal / stage space, but I decided to transpose the layout of the one on to the other. The point you came fully into ‘my space’ - was where James the director stood in front of the stage, the activity off stage left, was to your left etc.. My piece -About (facing away from the direction of travel)- was made up of 10 audio mono tracks, 3 videos and 1 still image. The acoustics in the space it was in are quite like a churches, the sound circled up and around in it, and comes at you, it felt, from many directions.
Another interesting thing was how the work materially affected and was affected by the sounds of the Art School, of people moving into and through the spaces, taking moving and shifting sounds with them and the sounds of the city coming and going as the doors to the street were opened and shut.
I was asked to make another iteration a film version for Warwick Art Centre which was shown in February 2019 – and this is a clip from that
2.c Not about Knowing – or how to know
“People know what they do; frequently they know why they do what they do; but what they don't know is what what they do does.” Madness and Civilisation: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason.
I am thinking here less of the responsibility to or our understanding of the consequence of our actions, more of this quote as a description of artistic practice. The feeling of ‘knowing’ you have when you are working on an idea, the excitement and interest in the stuff and doing things with it; but the never quite sure how things might be received / understood by another. A hope that whats constructed will have a meaning, invoke thought and response, but there being trepidation - this might not happen, others may not see / feel the same things. The worry that you thought this was a ‘good plan’, a useful set of actions to lead you through an ‘experiment’, but are you too close, do you know if it does….anything, or even what it was you hoped it might do…….
Because of my interest in occurrence I am also wondering about the describing Yve Lomax does in Sounding The Event…about becoming / event and when does this occur; do we know when this has occurred, how do we know if it has happened, what if we have missed it …
So - What has developed through my research is a multimodal methodology which includes; auto ethnographic writing, documentation, ‘experiments’, discussion / recorded conversation, images, writing, video / sound pieces all of which map and explore the terrain I am interested in. The aim is to have a continually developing methodology that works across and with all my research and is intrinsically linked to my concerns of affect, embodied encounter and the commonplace…..
In the article “what is multimodality’ Jeff Bezemer suggests that ‘Three interconnected theoretical assumptions underpin multimodality.’ To paraphrase - it (multimodality) assumes that:
communication always draws on a multiplicity of modes all that contribute to meaning.
that resources are shaped overtime to become meaning making resources that articulate the (social, individual/affective) meaning depending on the requirements of different communities
and that people orchestrate meaning through their selection and configuration of modes.
So - I am well aware that my methods are subjective and culturally specific, they relate to ‘me’ and ‘my ‘environment. But non the less I am interested in the possibility of catching different elements through different modes of gathering / collecting / unpicking / working; that these are mediated and gathered by me – that I as the’ author’ that I am very much in this. By nature this is an evolving shifting and changing thing, as Barbara Bolt says:
"Methodologies in artistic research are necessarily emergent and subject to repeated adjustment, rather than remaining fixed throughout the process of enquiry"1
Mine has been and is a developing and changing thing, shifting as approaches seem of more or less use. This is an organic, rhizomatic, responsive process of thinking, making and doing; with reflection and discussion. This research /making is in part a heuristic3 activity; this seems appropriate when ‘chasing’ affect and it could be said that the ‘nose’ I follow is one attached to affective responses (an ‘affect heuristic’ perhaps?).