Creative – Page 26 – Hannah Nicklin

Posted on February 20, 2011February 20, 2011 by Hannah Nicklin — 4 Comments

Real Life Residues

An image from the working one of the Twitterbug workshop days.

Recently I’ve been wondering about the sticking power of Twitter. The people I have my eye on who tend to turn before the tide does have been getting itchy feet about it, and whispers about the second dotcom bubble are now even reaching the mainstream media. It’s fair to wonder ‘what happens next’ to companies like Twitter valued as high as they are whilst still making a loss – do they turn to ads, with premium ad-free accounts? Do they make their money out of apps (too much competition)? Or will they just become bloated, too big for conversation (Myspace, and now facebook’s problem)? But… migrating from Twitter? It feels like an surprisingly emotional thing to be thinking about. Twitter has played such a large role in my finally feeling part of an arts and politically active community as well as providing the opportunity to meet and work with some wonderful people, and to make some wonderful friends.

It means a lot to me that limping my bike home to an empty house, shaking slightly, after being hit by a car, I can tweet my shock, and be.. well, cared about (however fleetingly) by above a 50 people. But then I remember that it’s the people, not the medium, that matters. If we all move to what Diaspora or Beluga might turn into – or something else that doesn’t exist yet – the medium may change, but I don’t think the web will stop being social, stop weaving our lives together. I’ll still see the snapshots of @joethedough‘s baby boy growing up confusedly in silly hats, hear about the regular ‘offstage’ characters like @SlunglowAlan‘s cheese-pilfering lodgers, and care about @Andyvglnt’s earnest battle with anxiety and depression mixed with the best new punk and hardcore recommendations this side of the Atlantic.

These thoughts about Twitter, or the form of communication and interception that it has brought to my (our) lives have been bubbling at the surface of my mind particularly because over the past two weeks I’ve been working on a theatre/twitter investigation in Manchester. Catherine Edwards and North West Playwrights brought together three writer/performers, Alex Kelly from Third Angel as a (loosely termed) director, and myself as a tech-ish art specialist to look at the possibilities and challenges of creating ‘theatre’ (performance/drama) on twitter. Or through twitter, perhaps, as it ends IRL, with a performance at DAT Fest in Stoke next weekend under the name of ‘Twitterbug‘. Continue reading Real Life Residues

Posted on November 11, 2010November 11, 2010 by Hannah Nicklin — 5 Comments

Hibernate!

Image shared by Smithsonian’s National Zoo on Flickr via a Creative Commons License.

Just to let you all know that I shall hopefully have my first ever proper game played at Larkin’ About‘s Winter games event. I’ve been coming at the world of pervasive games and contemporary performance from a largely writerly point of view so far, hence my affinity for the soundwalk form, I think, and although I love crafting soundwalks, I thought it would be good for me to have a go at something looser, and more game-y (ludic, I should say) and force myself out of control.

I thought something simple would be a good place to start, so it’s roughly a treasure hunt/capture the flag kind of cross, the rule set as it stands thus:

Hibernate!

For 8-20 players

Set up
Your normal habitat’s food supply is under threat because of a Summer of floods and damp weather, it’s getting cold and you need to prepare for winter, so you’ve had to venture into the city to find food…

Rules
– To be played within a small area of dark city-space.
– Up to four teams (3 will work best, I think) – the Door Mice, the Voles, the Shrews and the Weasels.
– Each team wears a coloured glo-stick in their team colour and gets a certain number of the same colour, unsnapped.
– The aim of the game is to collect pieces of ‘food’ back at the nest.
– Players can only carry one piece of food at one time.
– There are 2 sizes of food, blue and red, blue food is worth 2 food-points and requires two animals to carry it, they must link arms to pick it up.
– Players cannot communicate using anything other than the word ‘squeak’, but they can mark routes with their ‘scent’ – snapped glo-sticks.
– If a nest is unguarded, the food stored in it can be stolen.
– The winning team is the one with the most food within 10 minutes. OR The winner is the first team to a certain number of foodstuffs and all at the nest within the time limit.

Needed per iteration:
– Glow sticks of up to 4 colours
– ‘Food’ hidden around the space, not too grouped together. Painted ping pong balls are best.
– Something to signify a nest

So there you go. Simple, I know, and I think for the next one I’ll try and play with the form a bit, but just as Walk With Me was my first 10 minute test of the soundwalk form, so Hibernate! will hopefully be a simple test of game-like stuff.

I’m currently working with the Larkin’ folk to iron out a final rule set, and all being well it should get its first test on the 27th of November in Manchester. Exciting! Continue reading Hibernate!