Gallery – Page 2 – circumstance.

Give Me Back My Broken Night

w/ Uninvited Guests

2011 – ongoing

Created in collaboration with Uninvited Guests, Give Me Back My Broken Night is a mobile performance work using pervasive technology, which asks audiences to collaboratively imagine the future of their city. Site-specific science fictions are told using a combination of location sensitive mobile devices, portable projectors and actors, to create a magical, relevant and cinematic experience for participants.

Unlike conventional tours or historic walks, this is a tour of the future. Audiences are given a mobile device and a blank folded paper map, a micro projector is hung around their neck. In the streets, an actor guides them through a landscape of utopian or dystopian possibilities. They ask the participants about what they would like to see there. As the audience describe their own visions of the future, these imagined buildings begin to appear on the paper map in their hand as a series of glowing lines.
They return to the theatre to meet other audience members, at which point the individual maps become projected as one and all the participants describe, debate and share their visions for the future.

Credits

This project was originally created in collaboration with Uninvited Guests as part of the Theatre Sandbox project.

For this project Circumstance is represented by Duncan Speakman

Commissioned by Pervasive Media Studio and developed with The Soho Theatre.

We Are Forests

2011

We Are Forests is a work for public spaces, experienced and co-authored with audiences using mobile phones. This work explored ideas of intimacy in public space, starting with the question ‘what would you whisper in stranger’s ear?’. Experienced by audience members on their mobile phones in a public market space, it sought to try and create a work co-authored with an audience.

Participants begin the experience on their own in a crowded market, they receive a phone call which connects them to custom software so that when they speak their voice is recorded and then played to everyone else on the network. A mixture of pre-recorded texts and ‘imaginary’ audience contributions shapes a narrative over the course of the piece. Participants slowly begin to notice each other as they drift through the market, until at the finale live singers appear amongst the crowd in the market and begin to sing the words the audience have been speaking.

For extra info and panel discussion at Watershed after residency please visit http://www.watershed.co.uk/dshed/we-are-forests

Credits

For this project circumstance is represented by Emilie Grenier and Duncan Speakman

Software design by Arjan Scherpenisse

Created on a cross-european residency between Pervasive Media Studio Bristol, NiMK Amsterdam and Kitchen Budapest.

Thanks to Annette Wolfsberger, Victoria Tillotson, Melinda Sipos, Clare Reddington and Dan Williams

our broken voice

2010

Our Broken Voice is a subtlemob about trust and suspicion in public spaces, a Ballardian fiction of terrible events in a city centre, with the audience playing out the moments leading up to the event.

What is a subtlemob? A subtlemob is an invisible flashmob, it integrates with the beauty of the everyday world, so only its participants are aware of it. It’s like walking through a film. It is experienced on headphones, and it is performed by you and hundreds of strangers. Armed with only an mp3 player this subtlemob takes you on a cinematic experience of twists and turns. A mixture of narrative and richly textured music fills your ears. Different MP3 files are distributed to different audience groups, so while some perform simple actions, the others hear stories about these actions, so that everywhere they look the stories come alive in the world around them. The roles swap back and forth, sometimes you’ll just be watching, sometimes you’ll be following instructions. There’s nothing embarrassing or dangerous, you’re almost just playing yourself. There is no venue, there are no ushers, this is a performance organised and owned by its audience . . .

try to remain invisible.

Credits

For this project circumstance was represented by Lottie Child, Emilie Grenier, Duncan Speakman, Sarah Anderson and Tassos Stevens

Additional music performances by Ysella Kaute, Chloe Herrington, Emma Sullivan

Originally commissioned as part of InBetweenTime Festival.

Supported by Arts Council of England

As If It Were The Last Time

2009

‘A deliberate slap in the face to the flashmob phenomena . . . it reshapes the cultural landscape.’ – Paul Currion

As If It Were The Last Time is a subtlemob about celebrating the present, about home, belonging and loss. A snapshot of the world around you, a chance to savour the moment, and make new connections with the people and the place surrounding you. This is no requiem, this a celebratory slow dance, a chance to present in the world, and to see it with fresh eyes.

What is a subtlemob? A subtlemob is an invisible flashmob, it integrates with the beauty of the everyday world, so only its participants are aware of it. It’s like walking through a film. It is experienced on headphones, and it is performed by you and hundreds of strangers. Armed with only an mp3 player it takes you on a cinematic experience of twists and turns. A mixture of narrative and richly textured music fills your ears. Different MP3 files are distributed to different audience groups, so while some perform simple actions, the others hear stories about these actions, so that everywhere they look the stories come alive in the world around them. The roles swap back and forth, sometimes you’ll just be watching, sometimes you’ll be following instructions. There’s nothing embarrassing or dangerous, you’re almost just playing yourself. There is no venue, there are no ushers, this is a performance organised and owned by its audience . . . try to remain invisible

Presented at :

Sonic Acts (Amsterdam), Microwave (Hong Kong), Media City (Seoul), Gameplay (New York), Indiecade (Los Angeles), Performance Space (Sydney), Tristram Bates (London), TPAM (Tokyo), Yokohama Triennial (Yokohama ), ArteMov (Sao Paulo), Forest Fringe (Edinburgh), 1912 (Nanjing), Tiandi (Chongching), Wellington Internatinal Festival (Wellington), SemiPermanent (Auckland), plus independent events in Liverpool, London and Birmingham

Credits

for Paul Walker ( 1979 – 2009 )

For this project circumstance is represented by Sarah Anderson & Duncan Speakman

Voices : Jess Marlowe, Jess Hoffman

Additional musicians : Leo Smee , Laura Groves

Developed with : Gemma Paintin, James Stenhouse, Uninvited Guests, Ed Rapley, Lucy Cassidy, Alex Bradley, Sita Calvert Ennals, Becky Hall, Tom Wainwright

Developed at Pervasive Media Studio, Bristol