Dear Esther

The most beautiful game interface I have ever seen. Or heard.

Observations from the Shawshank Redemption screening

I forgot to mention our observations about successful devising – all these were factors that enhanced immersion, and several are similar to techniques used in hypnosis:

Fractionation – moving between rooms and buildings

Being shouted at

Discipline

Taking clothes away, given uniforms

Being singled out

Exposure to cold

Disorientation

Documents representing your identity

Stairs

Queuing

Singing together

Loud noises

Lighting and set

Shawshank Redemption with Future Cinema

Top marks. We were taken to court, sentenced, transported to prison, stripped and given prison fatigues, being shouted at a lot, herded around in a venue that was beautifully (well…) transformed into an old-fashioned prison, fed prison-esque food, and harrassed as newcomers by fellow prisoners. This is all before the screening, and it was a lot more enjoyable than it may sound. We both enjoyed it tremendously – it was very well thought through and realised.

The film is great too – massive feelgood factor.

On Friday, we went to see Robin Ince’s Dirty Book Club at The Old Market. He was quite charmingly embarrassed by some of the weird references to and descriptions of sex he had dug out of his charity shop book treasure trove. And hearing a passage from 50 Shades of Grey read out in tandem with a passage from the Shipping Report was surprisingly mind-bending.

Bear attack

Fuerzabruta at the Roundhouse

We went to see Fuerzabruta in the Roundhouse recently. Now, that was immersive! A ferocious performance, very physical, surrounding us and happening among us. They move large machinery around in the middle of the audience, and we had to help roll out and lift an enormous transparent roof, that gets inflated (I think!), before aeralists climb up on top of it, and start hauling audience members up to join them. The way they involve the audience is genius – you cannot help but be totally drawn in.

The act (I don’t know what else to call it) with dancers/performers diving and swimming in water above the audience, so that you can see the amazing patterns made by the rippling water and the bodies of the dancers, is absolutely spectacular. They lower the transparent, shallow pools (built like enormous silk screen frames, but with some amazingly strong transparent plastic instead of the screen) to that you can touch them, just above your head. It was strangely moving when the performers put their hands so that you can ‘touch’, palm to palm. And of course the (probably very small) risk that you might suddenly find yourself drenched adds a frisson of fear.

The aerial acts are are also phenomenal, with performers running around in the air, around the walls, or spinning around the auditorium in a cluster of bodies.

If all of that wasn’t enough to wake you up, occasionally a performer might come up and bosh you on the head with a piece of polystyrene.

Our jaws were on the floor for most of it. Helen (of The Basement), who was also there, said she watched us half the time (she had seen the show before), and really enjoyed our looks of sheer amazement.

Some photos below.

New Year’s Day bathtub philosophizing

Having followed the news, watched Mai Zetterling’s Girls, Girls, Girls from 1968, and experienced my own, and friends’, stories, I suddenly came to a postmodern perspective on the genus issue (particularly as a parent).

It seems girls/women would benefit from prioritising the development of wisdom, and boys/men the development of active kindness. Things tend to turn out well when such is the nature of our coexistence.

I don’t mean to say that the reverse isn’t also true – of course men need wisdom and women need active kindness – but in terms of priorities, and if I have to pick one quality for each that generally would, and do, make the world a better place, I would say that wise women and kind men make for a nice place to inhabit.

Women sometimes overdo the nurture thing, at the expense of good judgement. Men sometimes handle that y-chromosome (and the extra testosterone) with less grace than desired.

Although the official agenda certainly confirms no such things, there seem to be tendencies floating around, particularly visible in playground culture, that discourage wisdom in women, and kindness in men. Girls are encouraged to act dafter than necessary, if you look at images and accessories to life in popular culture. Boys are encouraged to hide their kindness, so as to not appear ‘weak’.

This is extraordinarily silly. Are daft women more attractive? Are unkind or ‘tough’ men more manly? Personally I find both tiring, at best.

I find kindness a very attractive quality in a man – courtesy, consideration, empathy, insight. Bring it on. I really do not see how that can be anything but attractive. Likewise, the choice between spending time with a daft woman, or an insightful, thoughtful woman with good perspective on life, is very easy indeed.

Sleep No More – observations

My mum and I enjoyed Sleep No More immensely. I will be unpacking the complexity of it for some time. The dancers/actors were excellent – especially Tori Sparks as Lady Macbeth. Goosebumps! But they were all superb. The slow-motion banquet stops time itself.

Key features:

urgency – the risk of missing the action
embodiment and ambiguity
restructuring the hierarchy of sensory channels
hidden affordances – the need to seek out locations and hidden places
the possibility of unexpected interaction with unknown consequences (but presumed safe)
seeming randomness – strong, but not superficially obvious, narrative structure, rich in layered metaphors
dynamic changes of scale, reflecting the narrative structure – narrow, twisting corridors opening into big rooms, boxes and small spaces within rooms
the tacit “mirror” choreography of the movement of the audience – designed to be intuited, not directly perceived

Ambiguity/the partially revealed:

darkness makes it more challenging for vision to remain the controlling sense; opening avenues for other sensory channels (auditory, haptic)
disorientating, placing emphasis on imbalance, risk of falling
creating an atmosphere of impending danger and/or mystery
masks limiting the visual field, making hearing more important as a way to perceive fast approaching actors and audience memberslight and occluding edges, using extreme chiaroscuro to create ambiguityshifting boundaries between performance spaces (as they become so) and audience spaces – the need to be constantly aware

Embodiment:

proprioception being pushed to the fore by a disorientating and unbalancing environment
proximity of other bodies – both actors and other audience members – often fast moving
the intense physicality of the actors/dancers
rich surround (recorded) sound, reverberating through your body
the sound of gravity and effort – the actors/dancers, the audience members, moving (often with great urgency) close up
the real risk of impact if you get the shifting boundaries between performance space and audience space wrong

And, of course, meticulous attention to micro- and macroperspective detail and sensual depth, created by layer upon layer of material-as-metaphor. Finished off by draping all that rich detail in sensory ambiguity.

New York photos

I like being a pair of eyes on legs. Some of the things I saw below.

Sleep No More – Punchdrunk in New York

Sleep No More is based on Macbeth, and takes place in the fictional McKittrick’s Hotel, located in a fictional Scotland. An extremely ambitious production; the hotel spreads over six floors (I think – you do lose your sense of time and place), and contains innumerable (well, just over 100, so it says) rooms, each with its own character – some tiny, some huge, connected by labyrithine, narrow corridors, stairways, or ghostly halls with installations resembling ruins, miniature graveyards, ballrooms, and many others I cannot mention – or may have missed.

The actors/dancers work in cycles and loops that interweave with each other, like some passionate, winding (and quite murderous) clockwork. You end up running up and down stairs, following them as they move at speed between rooms and settings. The performances are intensely physical; they are clearly all dancers, but the acting is fully in place, too. They literally bounce off the walls, lifting, throwing, climbing, slithering. Embodying the atmosphere of the play palpably at all times.

There is a highly charged banquet, where the court of Macbeth dines in painfully intense slow motion; perfectly choreographed, and you just know, every moment, that things are twisted, wrong, primal, inflamed by madness, and heading somewhere very dark. There are bedroom scenes between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth that are simultaneously erotic, tender, passionate, and stark raving mad. There are so many things I could write about, and it will take me a while to unpick it all.

Amazingly, my mum and I spent three hours in there, and crossed paths several times – yet ended up telling each other later, in the bar, about entire floors and scenes that only one of us saw. And I thought I had managed to catch it all – but that clearly wasn’t the case.

Well, I will likely return to this one for some time. It even got into my dreams!

I do find this cartoon very funny :-)