Reflection on experimentation and development to final performance

In my final performance I will be developing my past experimental work further to draw links and parallels between different sorts of public address into an absurdist interview between myself and unknown participants. Unlike past experiments, I will allow myself the choice of the three predicted words beyond my initial prompt. I feel that this will help to develop the piece over the duration of the performance and I hope my phone will begin to respond to my suggested choices, creating a more reciprocal dialogue, particularly as recently the predictive texts have been reaching short, consistent loops.

I intend for there to be four different 'watchers' or perspectives:
The live (physical) audience - who may ask questions are are unseen by anyone within the performance

The live (online) audience - via a laptop webcam, who may again engage and ask questions and are afforded a different sort of anonymity through their physical absence and removal from the performance.

The camera- set up as if from the live audience perspective, but with noone necessarily physically behind it, I want to play with the idea of a camera having its own view and volition.

The phone- I hope to record the livestream via my phone as if it has initiated and is watching the situation unfold alongside me.

A brief summary of main artistic influences

Lorna Mills

The irreverent tone of the artist's work and focus on a digital medium and its qualities.

Thomson and Craighead

Recruitment gone wrong- the participatory nature of the artwork, meaning experience of it includes involvement, despite not being able to influence the speech used in the piece. Human viewers are used in a similar way to a canvas in that speech is imposed upon them by the artists.

More songs of Innocence and experience - the way in which a serious and dull subject (spam emails) are turned into a pleasurable leisure activity (karaoke), which a participant can better engage with.

Aram Bartholl

Phone Zone - the mockery of social conventions by constructing a parody of the smoking area space for people to engage with, highlighting the ridiculousness of an implied boundary through a drawn line.

In bed with my brother

We are Ian - the clowning style of the performance and complete fixation and absorption in their task (conveying the words of Ian to the audience).

Kathryn Elkin

The appropriation of scripts from online spoken material, re-purposed into artwork which conveys a different meaning from what the words originally intended.

Jill Gibbon

The attempt to inhibit a closed or secret space through assuming an identity/ persona and infiltrating it.