tech – Page 11 – Hannah Nicklin

Image shared by SkyD on Flickr via a CC license

Thought I’d throw some brief reactions to BAC’s One on One Festival, which I was very glad to finally get to on its last day – this Saturday.

Firstly, I love BAC. It’s the only arts centre I’ve ever felt like I belong in. This may have something to do with the kind of work I’ve experienced there – all buried away in different corners of the building, asking you to explore it – but either way I need to get back and see more things there. In fact on that note I just popped them in google reader (RSS link here) – take note theatre companies, have a blog, and mention stuff you’re doing there, a feed is a brilliant way for people to find stuff out without you bending their ear about it (Twitter, usually).

OK, so, for those not familiar with the #1on1fest format – basically it’s an awful lot of pieces of theatre/performance/intervention/experience for one. Or occasionally two. But mostly one. For this version of the festival I picked a set ‘menu’ of 3 piece (one main, two sides), but could also ‘do’ one of 10 extra pieces around the building, ranging from posters appearing throughout the building which suggested progressively scenes for two people to play out, to a couple of tin cans on a piece of string for you to ‘phone in’ famous movie lines from, and a mysterious message about the ‘loveliness principle’ which gave you a series of clue to follow if you called a certain number.

I chose the ‘out of body’ set menu. I write an awful lot about immersive things, I kind of felt myself interested in intimate or single-person experiences to transport rather than immerse. Here’s what I got:

You Only Live Twice (But Die Once) – Kazuko Hohki

This played pleasantly with sound. Introduced (after removing your shoes) to a light, minimalist space, you lie down on a futon and voices speak to you from a radio, and inside your pillow. They can hear you reply. Unfortunately there was a lot of noise bleeding in from outside so I never quite drifted into the world of the piece. This meant the payoff (SPOILER, SKIP TO THE NEXT PARAGRAPH IF YOU DON’T WANT IT) of your being woken by a lady ninja above your head, didn’t quite hit it. For me, female eyes looking through a space in black fabric says ‘burqa’ before it says ‘ninja’. This may be a British thing, or it may have been I never quite left my British body behind well enough for it to work.

And the Birds Fell From the Sky – Il Pixel Rosso

This was my ‘main’. A piece using video played into a visor, 3d sound in headphones, and the effect of sprayed whisky, brushes of hands, and the sitting down on a vibrating car seat to create an out-of-body (or in-another’s-body) experience. Continue reading And the Sky – #1on1fest

I thought I’d throw down some quick thoughts from the two pieces which have stuck with me most from my day at Fierce Festival on Wednesday. Fierce, if you don’t know, is a Birmingham-based festival of live art, plus lots of lovely words like ‘supernow’ and ‘hyperlocal’. Which actually, it kind of is. Fancy that.

Symphony of a Missing Room (Lundahl & Seitl):

Symphony was, in the simplest terms, the augmentation of the Birmingham Museum and Gallery with sound and light*. An experience begun and ended as a group, but that very quickly evaporates into a binaural audio wandering-for-one (extremely effective in the acoustic environment of a museum); then vanishes into bright blindness as goggles – through which you can only really distinguish shifts in the light – obscure your vision. You are guided on journey by a voice, and by the touch and brush of warm hands.

Symphony reminded me of the best of my childhood dreams, always about behind, under, through. I had this particular dream (I tried to write the book of it aged 9, it had an illustration, and everything) that on a certain night, running in the dark through the big creaky barn-house that was where I grew up, I would take the stairs, but it would be a set I had never walked down before; a set of stairs that took me to another time, or another place. Symphony was like that feeling, like striking across a playing field with dusty knees and stripy dress in summer, but also knowing, knowing, it was a spindly bridge across the fiery lava pits guarding some treasure.

The piece played with your trust, but pleasurably so, the guide was both reliable and flighty; easily scared off, but as you moved – guided by the touches of numerous hands – you never felt lost.

It began curiously, with slowings-down, reveals, and the constant question ‘is this a part of it?’ – it was in this very beginning question that I felt the piece was its strongest, it’s most taught. The blind wanderings through the secret door (to find the missing room) were almost magical (though left to go on a little too long), and at the last you are left lying on a piece of carpet, as regular museum-goers walk quizzically around you – feeling how I always imagined the humans in a Midsummer’s Night’s Dream feel as they wake up; back in the real world, with a sensation of having tripped across worlds, but never having left that spot.

Unfortunately the main voice grated a little for me (kind of like a fairy that you want to swat). I’d have also like to have seen it play a little more with physical sensations, of rushing air, water, or the smell of tree bark, and to weave in the male voices a little more sense-fully. But these are minor, and probably quite personal gripes. Mostly it was transporting, mostly I felt like I was in a secret room hung with cobwebs and adventure, mostly it was a journey that didn’t fill you in as a character, or part of a narrative, but that asked quiet questions about perception, buildings, and the spaces we travel between life and art. A fracture of a fairy tale, that you slip through for a moment. Continue reading Fierce