The Presence Project

Blast Theory are presenting a 3 day public test of Day of the Figurines at the Sonar International Festival of Advance Music and Multimedia – Barcelona, Spain, on the 15th,16th,17th June 2006.

Day Of The Figurines, 2005. Copyright Blast Theory. Photo: Nicola Dove.

Gabriella (Giannachi) has just returned from visiting a 3 day preparatory workshop with Matt Adams, Ju Row Farr and Nick Tandavanitj of Blast Theory, Steve Benford and team members from the Mixed Reality Lab, Nottingham University, Irma Lindt of the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology, and Alain Becam of the Interactive Institute, Stockholm.

Day Of The Figurines, 2005. Copyright Blast Theory. Photo: Nicola Dove.

Day Of The Figurines has been developed as part of the European research project IPerG (Integrated Project on Pervasive Gaming) in collaboration with the Mixed Reality Lab at University of Nottingham, Sony Net Services, University of Gotland, Interactive Institute and the Fraunhofer Institute.
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We will be following and documenting the evolution of Day of the Figurines as part of the Presence Project over the next 18 months.

Our documentation of these processes will soon be emerging at: http://presence.stanford.edu:3455/Collaboratory/627

Blast Theory write that:

Day of the Figurines is set in a fictional town that is littered, dark and underpinned with steady decay. The game unfolds over a total of 24 days, each day representing an hour in the life of the town that shifts from the mundane to the cataclysmic; the local vicar opens a summer fete, Scandinavian metallists play a gig at the Locarno that goes horribly wrong and a gunship of Middle Eastern troops appears on the High Street. How players respond to these events and to each other creates and sustains a community during the course of a single day in the town. From the Gasometer to Product Barn, the Canal to the Rat Research Institute, up to 1,000 players roam the streets, defining themselves through their interactions. The centrepiece of the game is a 3.5 x 5 meter model town – at the Centre de Cultura Comtemporània de Barcelona - created using pop up metal buildings, overlaid with computer graphics. Each of the 1,000 players is represented by a small plastic figurine which is moved by hand every hour for the duration of the game.

The full day 24 day version of Day Of The Figurines will be launched in Berlin in September, which we will be following closely.

At Sonar by Day - at the Centre de Cultura Comtemporània de Barcelona C/
Montalegre, 5 08001 Barcelona, on 15,16,17th June 12.00 – 22.00

For more details -

www.dayofthefigurines.co.uk

www.blasttheory.co.uk

www.sonar.es

www.pervasive-gaming.org

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The first part of Andrea Zapp's current current work, Eye 2 Eye will open on 16 June.

Eye 2 Eye – Networked Installation is developed for the Okno Gallery in Cheljabinsk, Russia. her partners onsite are Dmitry Lathukin and Svetlana Shlyapnikova from the Okno Gallery. The gallery's website is at http://www.oknogallery.ru/en/index.html

Andrea will be showing the work locally via a LAN connection at the summer festival at the GI in Moscow on the 16th of June and then travel on to the Urals, to set up the work as a networked link between theUral State University (Ekaterinburg) [http://www.usu.ru/] and South Ural State University (Chelyabinsk)

Andrea describes the piece:

Two remote identical black wooden boxes are connected via the Internet using I Sight cameras and an I Chat video interface.

Visitors glimpse through a small peephole into the box. An invisible camera inside on the opposite wall captures their eyes and transfers it to the other box, where it is displayed underneath the camera on a small round-shaped projection screen and vice versa. Both participants exchange their views in real-time, looking into each other’s eyes.

This surveillance interface inside the box is embedded into a stage like miniature set of an earth globe below and amidst a starry sky with little colourful planets dotted around that seem to float in the space. It recalls a satellite perspective, which is underlined by the surveillance interface above; but the view onto this small universe glowing in the dark, reminiscent of toys even, implicates ironic commentaries in itself – resulting in thoughts about who controls and who observes whom in a more globally networked sense

Image courtesy Andrea Zapp.

Andrea Zapp's website is at: http://www.azapp.de/

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On 21 June, 12.30-4.30, Bella Merlin will conduct our sixth and final Presence workshop of the series here at Exeter.

Coming from a training in the Russian School which combined Stanislavsky, Michael Chekhov and Jerzy Grotowski, Bella’s particular emphasis in the exploration of performing presence will be in many ways remarkably simple: what happens between two physical bodies in the performing space?

Her investigation will try and unravel some of the complexities arising out of that simple encounter when actors undertake - in Stanislavsky’s words - to 'get each other in each other's grasp'. This process also connects Grotowski’s via negativa and how the actor strives to eliminated inner and physical blocks between action and impulse.

Putting the notions of 'radiation' or 'communion' under the metaphorical microscope, Bella will work with actor Miles Anderson, whose extensive experience in theatre, film and television has challenged his own understanding of 'presence; in the moment of performance, whether in front of the camera or in front of a live audience.

Through a series of silent etudes, in which the actors' attendance to the minutiae of each other's facial, physical and (most importantly) energetic changes prompt impulses in the moment of performance, Merlin and Anderson will work towards an analysis of text (taking a scene from Three Sisters between Vershinin and Masha and/or a scene from Anna Karenina between Anna and Vronsky). This in turn will lead to an investigation of how the spoken word alters the actor's psycho-physical state in the moment of performance: to what extent is 'the present' nudged out of the picture by memory-testing the pre-learnt lines?

Bella Merlin trained as an actor in the UK and at the State Institute of Cinematography in Moscow. She has worked extensively with director, Max Stafford-Clark in co-productions between Joint Stock and The Royal National Theatre, including David Hare’s The Permanent Way, She Stoops to Conquer and A Laughing Matter. Bella’s many other roles have included Masha in The Seagull, The Governess in The Turn of the Screw, and Celia in As You Like It, with numerous performances on radio and television.

Bella’s wide ranging publications include: With the Rogue’s Company: Henry IV at the National Theatre, Oberon Books, 2005; Konstantin Stanislavsky, Routledge Performance Practitioners, Routledge, 2003; and Beyond Stanislavsky: The Psycho-Physical Approach to Actor-Training, Nick Hern Books, 2001.

Bella Merlin is Lecturer at the University of Exeter.

Audience places for the workshop are free. The workshop will take place in Theatre Studio 2, in Drama's new complex, The Alexander Building, Thornlea, University of Exeter. Details of how to find us are here http://www.projects.ex.ac.uk/performing-presence/How%20to%20find%20us.php

To book an audience place at the workshop please contact l.m.dowsett@exeter.ac.uk

An introduction to Bella's is available through the Presence Project Collaboratory at http://presence.stanford.edu:3455/Collaboratory/350

Images reproduced courtesy Bella Merlin..

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