Abby and I performed a piece called ‘Before the Sun Sets’ for this project. I genuinely enjoyed working through this project with her because I got to combine skills I already had, skills I learned solely through this class, and concepts I learned from other classes I had been taking this semester.
The collaboration for this group project was easier than past group projects I was a part of to be honest. This was surprising to me since we had to do all of this through a screen. The thing that worked best for us was that we had opposite strengths. I was good at coming up with ideas, developing a story line, and gathering content, while Abby was good at executing the concept and doing the technical stuff behind the scenes to make it happen. We listened to each other ideas and concerns and instead of rejecting any piece of it, we simply said “yes, and…” which really helped us a develop a final idea.
We went with the first thing that came to mind, stuck with it, developed it, and did not think too much about it. I brought up the idea of a Flaneur, which I had learned in my Metropolitan Studies class. A Flaneur is a white privileged male who has no other purpose, but to take in and wander through the modern city. The thing is, ONLY white privilege men are able to do this since they can blend into the background, afford to have no responsibility, and not be questioned about their existence. Women and people of color are not able to be Flaneur’s because they are not allowed to simply exist as it. Their wandering could be questioned or categorized as criminal (loitering).
This brought me to a feeling I had when I walk outside alone as a women. I thought Abby could relate since we had that in common. We talked more about the experience and then I told her I had an old poem about this very thing. From there, I found content that supported the theme/ feel of the poem and then we went from there by implementing OBS and a Max Patch.
I have never done live visual performance before so it was a new experience for me. It was a challenging thought because as an artist I try to seek perfection, but with this live element, it taught me that anything could happen and you just have to accept it and adjust accordingly. The final performance was not perfect and did not fully display what we planned prior. I definitely would have liked to put in more time with practicing the piece before hand so that the cues could be more crisp and the pacing of the narrative be perfected, but we did the best we could with that our schedules allowed. Also, it would be cool to see the scale of the piece in a different light too. I think seeing this piece performed on a large projection in an intimate place would really make an impact. Overall, the process worked really well and I am happy about how it came out.
Tori's Blog 