I cam across two things this week that made me think thoughts. Not that I’ve come to any conclusions, but I’m posting this in case the process makes me come to any.
a real garden that feeds on social interaction. The more you talk to me, the more I grow!
Essentially it’s a plant that is hooked up to a system that will detect physical interactions and social media activity. Stroke it and it’ll get watered. Become a fan of the Facebook page and send it messages and it’ll receive nutrients.
What interests me about this is the way that the means of communication is filtered (the plant can ask for quiet time and protest about too much watering) and the idea that simply by communication becoming a two-way stream an object can be imbued with a personality to which one might form an attachment.
There’s something about dependency to figure in here too.
The idea is that you control a pixel and have to arrange yourself, along with all the other people controlling their own single pixels, into various formations. If you manage to be part of a formation when the clock runs down you receive points. There’s no effective means of communication (and therefore coordination) between you and the other players.
Groups formed in order to make formations, became successful and then unwieldy before splitting. Formations came together well before the deadline, leaving stray pixels zooming around the screen looking for somewhere to settle (or a crowd to be ‘in’ with).
Decisions had to be made about when to flee a sinking ship and seek fortune (and points) elsewhere. Unlike with Meet Eater, a clump of pixels had no physical form to be attached to so connections were ephemeral, loose and only maintained as long as everyone’s self-interest was served.
More Hide and Seek-related stuff. They’re being terribly interesting at the moment.
I went down to their Weekender thing at the National Theatre on Sunday. It was part of LIFT, itself interesting because Mark Ball (who founded Fierce and was there when I worked for them a couple of years back), seems to have given the festival a kick up the arse in the best way.
One of the things we saw was a huge game of pass the parcel. Huge to the extent that in the early stages the players had to circle the parcel, rather than it being passed around.
The two people who facilitated the game were fascinating to watch – keeping the game ticking along at a decent but unrushed pace, getting people involved and leaving them to their own devices. Carefully cultivated chaos broke out as the layers came off and the area became strewn with balloons, feathers, wrapping paper, bubble wrap and all sorts of other bits and bobs.
It was fascinating to see side-games springing up all over the place too. Some provoked directly by the facilitators, some not (although in most cases they’d still provided the platform/materials for them to take place).
Try to be a theatre director of any scene of people in play and you discover many games tumbling out at once – games of status, of desire, of curiosity, of connection, and of greed, of all the sins and of all the virtues – plus hope – and as an actor here you can’t stop still, moment by moment a different game crackles into life. And in reality, these games are all being played all at once: by different people at different times in different places, interrupting and overlapping
The other week, I was invited along to a pervasive games lab at the MAC. Fierce organised it and Hide & Seek hosted it. The other invitees were artists (of various stripes), filmmakers, webby types and developers of serious games.
Pervasive games might involve roleplaying, running about, technological doodads, funny hats, location-based tomfoolery and all sorts of other things. Often the games take place in the ‘real world’ (the very fact that it’s necessary to point this out is instructive). Games might last ten minutes or run for days at a time. It’s a broad church. Street games and alternate reality games are similar/related.
I’m consciously avoiding any proper sort of definition because no-one seems able to agree on one, leading to all manner of tedious hairsplitting.
Labs, just to clear this up, are workshops but… um… edgier. Maybe?
After some general orienting in the morning, we spent the afternoon devising games for Nikki Pugh’s whale hat which she explains here along with videos like this one:
All in all, it was nice to mess about with something a bit different for a day and to make some new friends. What’s more, Nikki’s gone on to develop the whale hat into a game called The Bloop which became something of a media magnet in the run-up to this weekend’s Hide and Seek weekender at the National Theatre.
Going all big picture for a bit, there seem to have been two motivators for the day; to give some WMers a kick up the backside and to get some cross-sector collaboration going in a growing market.
Reticent West Midlanders
Fierce had an event happening at Warwick Arts Centre on 26 June. They’d put out a call for proposals – offering cash for artists to come and do stuff . There was apparently loads of interest from around the rest of the country, but not much here.
This ‘lab’ was partly an attempt to coax out a few more applications and develop some games that could be tried out at that Sandpit event on 26 June. We didn’t quite get that far – half the group had to leave after lunch and many had brought projects they were already working on and couldn’t really give up to this process. That stunted things a little so hooray for the whale hat.
I hear this sort of thing from time to time. To pick two off the top of my head, the West Mids has/had the lowest number of bidders for upcoming Olympics contracts and a (Birmingham-based) BBC chap I met was saying that he gets pitched digital stuff all the time, but from agencies outside the region. It’s rather frustrating.
Getting all collaborative
There are a whole bunch of initiatives going on that are/have been trying to draw links between different sectors and disciplines. Hats off to Screen WM for being active in a lot of that, Producers Forum are working with others a bit, 4iP has been a beacon for that kind of thing, the TSB are trying (in their own mildly incomprehensible way) and there’s a new thing called Switchboard which is a next step in bringing together various creative industries strands.
As well as the general benefits that collaboration brings, pervasive games, transmedia projects and multiplatform approaches are all the rave at the moment. I imagine there’s a sense that the region could do quite well in this emerging area if people got their heads together. Where the best transmedia producers come from is a tricky one, but these sorts of sessions will help.
I’m pretty much used to the rain and mud of Glasto. This year I learnt that good weather brings with it midday naps, shade-hopping, suntan lotion, waking up when the sun starts warming the tent and hayfever. It might also have been the reason people got down to the site much earlier than usual.
I know Glasto is about more than the bands but personally I enjoy gorging myself on live acts for a couple of days, having the excuse to see bands I wouldn’t ordinarily bother buying tickets for. One year I’d love to spend more time in the theatre fields (although there was a bit more of that this year), green fields and the more out-there Shangri La/Arcadia/Block9 places but every time I get sucked into the list of bands on the schedule.
Here’s who I saw:
Thursday
Beardyman – “The sun has got his hat on and he wants some drum n bass”. FUN! A great way to kick things off
Egyptian Hip Hop – to quote someone else’s assessment, “they don’t let their charisma get in the way of their music”
Friday
Rolf Harris – a jam-packed field and Rolf delivered exactly what you’d expect him to
Femi Kuti – good summertime sounds. Not that it was a problem at that time of day, but his set seemed to lack a little drive and power
Megan Henwood – a nice lady with a lovely voice. Looking forward to catching her again at Moseley Folk later in the year
Frank Turner – we couldn’t get into the tent for this one. He’s got a flair for audience involvement that I’d not expected with plenty of singalong goodnes
Bonobo – love the Black Sands album but couldn’t stick around for too long to listen to the set. Sounded good though
Snoop Dogg – a very polished performer with a slick, hit-stuffed set. Pilton went all gangsta for an hour or so. Was a bit worried Tinie Tempah was going to explode with excitement when he came on
Rusko – just buzzed by but this was sounding heavy
Florence & The Machine – the best bit was her girlish glee at making a whole field of people jump up and down on the spot
Saturday
Two Door Cinema Club – I really like the album and they reproduced it really well but live, many of the songs sounded the same and vocals came across as a bit weak
Brother Ali – heard while looking for the pharmacy to get some different hayfever drugs. Sounded ok. Determined to get as many ‘hell yeah’s as possible
Shouting At Planes – we were hiding in the shade of the Queens Head tent when these came on. Can’t remember anything about how they sounded
Wild Beasts – came highly recommended. Perhaps they sound better on record/in less sunny circumstances
Neville Staple – really glad to have dropped in on this on the way to the next lot. He gave in to the crowd and played a bunch of Specials tracks
The National – impressed with these. Decent songs and an unshowy but strong stage presence
Shakira – she’s tiny! Quite good fun and I was on TV and everything (pic below)
MistaJam – actually I was hoping to catch a bit of Kelis but she was late so we got Mistajam playing the Fresh Prince of Bel Air theme (and other hits) instead
The xx – a highlight. Surprised by how the crowd responded to a muted set of songs with clapping and singing along. The segue into the refrain from ATB’s 9PM (Till I Come) . Florence turning up to sing glitched vocals on their You Got the Love remix was a welcome surprise
Pet Shop Boys – they played everything I wanted them to, accompanied by an inventive stage show. Things dipped when the music played second fiddle to the theatrics but It’s A Sin and Always On My Mind were epic
Sunday
Tunng – definitively not a band making inaccessible music for beard strokers – I’ve no idea why I ever got that impression. The new album’s really good and they put on a charming live show
Slash – he’s hired a better behaved Axl Rose impersonator for vocals. Solo material wasn’t much to write home about but Sweet Child of Mine and Paradise City were great
Ray Davies – a good show but his stuff has never featured much in my life. Definitely preferable to watching the football
Toddla T/Professor Green – saw these two (on separate stages) while wandering about the dance village. Truth be told I was distracted by the middle-aged man who was having the time of his life throwing a plastic bottle high up in the air and catching it, over and over again
Chew Lips – only caught the last few songs but I like these. They were on the BBC Introducing stage but had a good crowd. They should be bigger this time next year
Julian Casablancas – we sat listening outside the tent for a couple of songs but it was all a bit whiny. Saw plenty of eager-looking girls go rushing into the tent, some wearing wedding dresses
Back on the dance festival write-ups. Week 3 was one of contrasts – from mass-audience outdoor stuff to more intimate audiences and with performers from many different countries all sharing the same stages.
Monday 3 May
It was the Bank Holiday and we went back to watch Utopia again. What we were going to do was get a bunch of people filming from different places around Victoria Sq and then edit it together. What we didn’t realise is that the time had been brought forward, so we arrived while it was halfway through. That was disappointing. Still, it was good to see the cossack dancers again.
Strictly’s the kind of thing I avoid like the plague, so I had to be fed snippets of info about the various dancers and their back-stories by my better-informed companion for the evening (cheers, Ellie).
The dancers were, of course, excellent. Despite the fake tan, sequins and fixed grins, you can’t escape the fact that these are no fools. It was the ladies who impressed most, doing the same as the men but backwards and in heels (and usually spinning too).
Leaving aside the more snobbish criticisms (and I’ve got em), what I disliked about Strictly was the speed of it. In order to achieve maximum dazzle everything was performed as if it was sped up, providing a kind of visual chipmunk effect. Quite often the ladies were flung around the stage with such force that they seemed to be doing all they could to stay upright in those heels (which, of course, they did).
Oh, and while we were supposedly shown a range of dance styles over the course of the evening, everything (ballroom, flamenco, salsa, swing) looked like a Strictly dance.
It was entertaining, it just wasn’t my thing.
Tuesday 5 May
A slightly more rarified experience was Complot, performed by Chanta La Mui at the Town Hall. This promised to be flamenco as they’re performing it in Madrid these days. I’d attended a press call earlier in the day and chatted with the show’s promoter, Ana Garcia, who’d explained that the dance form was constantly evolving with new elements brought in regularly, but that this didn’t tend to be reflected in the styles of flamenco shown outside of London.
It was a good show – I’ve not really got into flamenco, but there was enough to hold my interest and make me wish that there had been a slightly larger audience in attendance. The bits that I remember most clearly are:
the sweat that flicked off the head of the male dancers – it’s the level of effort that goes into creating that power and grace on stage that impresses me most, and that applies equally to flamenco as it does to streetdance and ballet
the music, and the singing in particular, which really wasn’t my cup of tea
a part that involved some incredibly fast, rhythmic stamping by all three dancers that left me wondering ‘….how?!’
Friday 7 May
The predicted highlight of my week was Akram Khan Company performing Gnosis at the Town Hall. It turned out to be a show of two halves. The first left me cold – starting well enough but giving way to an improv session that didn’t do much for me (it had been a long day). Akram was chattier than expected though, and a genial host. He also recommended that those of us in the stalls find our way to the balcony for the second half which we duly did.
The second half was the main event – a duet between Akram and Yoshie Sunahata, a beautiful and incredibly talented kodo drummer who also danced and sang. The piece was inspired by the Mahabharata story of Queen Ghandari, who blindfolded herself for life to follow her blind husband.
My dance review vocabulary lets me down at this point – all I can say is that, against a stark black stage, the pair managed to create an entirely engrossing world of their own in which they told an affecting story.
As with the flamenco, I’m left with two particularly strong details:
Queen Ghandari raising her son by means of pushing, pulling and guiding with her stick which managed to convey all manner of motherly emotion; and
the dramatic ending – Akram Khan stood front and centre, spasming and convulsing with increasing violence, his body threatening to tear itself apart. A jaw-dropping end to a great show.
This was the busiest week and the one in which my jaw hit the ground more often than medical advice recommends (metaphorically speaking, obv).
Tuesday 27 April
Ballet Nacional de Cuba’s Magia de la Danza is selection of the company’s greatest hits, starting with a scene from Giselle that simultaneously made me look forward to Friday and reminded me of just how scary a flock of ballerinas can be.
The show was good – nicely paced, although a few dancers didn’t seem quite on their A game; there was nearly quite a bad drop and one of the ballerinas was quite noticeably straining during her solo. For all that, it’d be unfair not to mention that another dancer received gasps and applause for the length of time she held a particularly difficult position.
Carlos Acosta paid a visit during this performance too. I gather that some people weren’t best pleased that he only put in a short cameo but he didn’t need long to prove his chops. I’ve not got the vocab or level of appreciation to spot what was better about his dancing, he just seemed better.
For all that, perhaps the most impressive performance of the night was put in by Alicia Alonso, the company’s octogenarian founder, receiving the crowd’s applause at the end before going on to conduct a series of interviews and (if reports are true) stay up and put away her fair share of rum.
Wednesday 28 April
This was the one that I’d been looking forward to most – the teenage boy in me drawn to the Shaolin monks of Sutra before anything else.
It was a great show too with ingenious use of props. If there’s a gripe then it was that I’d like to have seen more martial art tomfoolery and less furniture shifting. There was a sense that the monks were performing within themselves a certain amount – the way they lined up to cartwheel and showboat across the stage at the end showed they had some spare energy to expend. It was great to see some personality in amongst that showboating too.
This was also the night that I had the strongest sense that the festival was a major event. At a reception just before the show, David Massingham pointed out that the Hippodrome and REP were both sold out, with a good crowd at the Patrick Centre too. More than 3000 people watching dance in Birmingham on a Wednesday night. Epic.
Thursday 29 April
I didn’t get to see much of the Outspoken programme of dance from the Arab world but I made a point of catching the first event – a screening of a work in progress documentary, Dancing Under Crossfire, which tells the story of an Iraqi dance group made up of dancers now living in Europe. It was good to get another perspective – while we were enjoying a deluge of dance in Birmingham, Baghdad’s contemporary dance scene is apparently just about non-existent.
After Tuesday’s sneak peek it was back to the Hippodrome for Ballet Nacional de Cuba’s Giselle. None of the shakiness of the other evening, everything ran smoothly. The first half was pretty but felt a little over-long (I’ve discovered very traditional ballet isn’t really my thing) but things picked up after the interval, with a darker mood and astoundingly regimented ballerinas dancing in tight formation.
I can’t leave this one without saying Giselle shouldn’t have bothered to save Albrecht and Hilarion, who was drowned in a lake by the Wilis, didn’t deserve to be treated the way he was. Where’s the justice?
Saturday 1 May
In 2008 I went to watch the big public IDFB spectacle in Victoria Square – it was probably the dance performance that made me think that dance was something I could see myself getting into. This year we had Utopia taking over the same space with an international mix of folk dances and The Destroyers.
It was a great show – the band sounded ace, with Paul Murphy in his element. The rain held off (for the first performance – the evening one was cancelled) and a sizeable crowd were there to appreciate it, with the cossack dancers getting the biggest cheers.
The performers looked like they had a fantastic time too. Such was the response, it sounds like it might now be adapted for the stage. Quite right too.
Circa was on that evening at the REP. It looked interesting and had been talked up by a few people but I didn’t buy tickets until the morning of the show. By that time there were only a handful left. I was so glad I didn’t miss out on it.
I’m not sure what to say about this one. In purely descriptive terms it was a mix of circus skills, sports acrobatics, gymnastics, contemporary dance and breakdancing.
That doesn’t quite cover it though. The things those people did on stage defied belief. The audience was the noisiest I encountered but that was no-one’s fault – we’re talking gasps, squeals, laughs of disbelief, outbreaks of applause… that kind of thing.
Not wanting to gloat, more to record for posterity. Andy Hartwell and I are having quite a long-running pool competition in the office. We’re running fairly even at the moment but at lunchtime today, and thanks to two incredibly jammy shots, I managed to do this:
Andy, ever the gent, did as tradition demands in such an eventuality.
Over the past month I went to 18 performances as part of International Dance Festival Birmingham. I figured I should probably write about them.
Monday 19 April
Things kicked off with Dancing the Waterways at midday – there were speeches, David Massingham flung a bottle of champers against the side of a canal barge and we (the small crowd assembled around Brindley Place) were treated to an extract from the boat-specific dance piece called Canal Work Dances.
After that I hot-footed it over to see Temperamento Español performing in Stratford-upon-Avon for United Colours of Dance Out & About. I’d see the same flamenco dancers in Utopia in Birmingham in a few weeks time.
Tuesday 20 April
Not a dance performance but still part of the festival, Dancing on Thin Ice was a debate on the future of public investment in the creative industries.
Politicians representing the various parties joined Marc Reeves and Rosie Millard. I was liveblogging this from the back so, although I was concentrating on what everyone was saying and trying to convey it to the online audience, I didn’t get much of a chance to think about the various arguments very much. The general feeling was that, with an election close, no-one was willing to give too much away.
It was all quite (too?) good-natured, although Sion Simon and Marc Reeves both tried to inject a bit of feistiness.
Thursday 22 April
The ‘proper’ festival launch was just prior to Mark Morris Dance Group’s L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato. It started well, with the dancers running between each other at such speed that someone behind me gasped.
I remember that it was a beautiful production – delicate and deft movements in pastel shades – and occasionally amusing too. I enjoyed it a lot, although I was happy by the interval and the second-half, while just as good as the first, didn’t really add much more.
It occurs that, a month on, it hasn’t had much of a lasting effect on me and I’m struggling to think of much to say about it. Perhaps that’s because of the show I saw the next night.
Friday 23 April
I’d followed the development of Rosie Kay’s 5 Soldiers: The Body is the Frontline for a little while. I’d popped into the studio a few times, edited some early rehearsal footage into a 3min package and generally chatted with Rosie in the months leading up to the show’s premiere. Plenty of people were talking about how it was the show they were most looking forward to, so hopes were raised.
It was a good show but it took a little while to realise how good. It didn’t have the obvious and immediate prettiness of the Mark Morris piece but it was thematically rich and gave me plenty to chew on afterwards.
It didn’t seem to pass judgment on war or the soldiers that take part in it, other than to highlight the isolation of the injured soldier. In the main it was descriptive – we saw the boredom, the frustration and the excitement. Seen through Rosie’s lens, the physicality of the soldier’s life was highlighted, with practice drills, combat, grooming and nights out all having their choreography.
Actually, writing this reminds me how dense it was. We even got a sense of the soldiers’ distinct personalities and their varying relationships to the rest of the squad.
I was also impressed with the levels of extra detail that came out in the post-show talk. Even though I was privy to small parts of the show’s development, there were plenty more references – such as allusions to Michaelangelo’s The Last Judgment – that I hadn’t expected (or spotted, if I’m honest).
And that was week 1 over. Some outdoors stuff, a couple of cities visited, some prettiness and some thoughts provoked.
The CiB shop is probably to blame for this, although I’ve not spent much in there (yet – although you’d think the place has cost me enough money as it is).
However, I bought one of TTVPete‘s prints the other week. Pete’s a friend, but his stuff is lovely and he’s got a knack for catching casual moments and scenes. The one that he caught in the print I now own is from when Jo and I were working a mulled wine stall at the Kings Heath Big Party at the end of last year.
Last weekend I was down in London and, on a walk through Spitalfields Market, I passed a section of prints that caught my eye. The style was quite instantly recognisable as that of Tom Lewis. I’d nicked a picture of one of his little hip-hop characters to use as an avatar a few years back and also given him a mention on CiB.
Long story short, we had a nice chat (he’s a top chap) and I bought a couple of prints – Megan and the shimmer tree and The Legend of Hoo-oo Lagoon.
There’s a few other things I’ve got my eye on – a couple of bits and pieces in the CiB shop and also a canvas from the Mitchy Bwoy exhibition at the Sauce Gallery.
Last night I got to enjoy Stan’s Cafe‘s new production, Tuning Out with Radio Z, from a fairly unique perspective. I say fairly unique because there were four others who were tucked up in beds arranged around the stage at the mac.
It was a strange experience.
We took our positions 10 minutes before the doors to the theatre opened and only got up after the audience left, so I’ve no idea how many people were there watching.
I didn’t get to see any of the action on stage from where I was lying and, when I was told I could get up, I was surprised there was that much paraphernalia lying around.
Without the visual part of the show it was like listening to 4 hours of Blue Jam.
Although the focus is on two radio show presenters, reality and perspective slides sideways and backwards quite regularly. It was smoothly conveyed through speech and, the more I think about how they achieved the effect, the more impressive it seems.
The music was really good – I particularly enjoyed a bit of Spiritualized and will be digging out Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space soonish. They played my fave Girls Aloud tune too.
We weren’t given much direction or told what to expect, or at least no-one told me anything other than to lie down and look asleep. When Craig dashed over to me and started shouting questions in my ear – “Can you hear me? Can you open your eyes? Blink if you can hear me” – I was a tad surprised and not sure how to react. I figured the safest thing would be to not react. Good choice, I reckon.
There was a part where. I gather, we sleeping forms were non-responsive patients in a hospital. There was an extended period of no action on stage and I shifted slightly, making Craig run over, all hopeful that I could be roused. I wonder if they were waiting for one of us to move or if he just improvised around that.
As for what the show was about, I’m not sure. It was an improvised performance that took the theme (that night) of ‘shooting’. Things or people being missing provided a major thread – opportunities not taken, the shock of people being taken and events happening in other places. The story of Orpheus and Eurydice was told with small alterations.
Gemma Thomas, who was in the audience, said that the last hour was she was moved more than expected by the last hour.
UPDATE
Ah, I’ve just found the tracklisting online via the joy of the Stan’s Cafe Last.fm account. I was there from Donna Summer onwards.
