Our company was created with three original members; myself,
Joe Hollis and Zoe Beauvoisin, all with different skill sets and backgrounds.
When we came together we all had different ideas yet some themes were
consistent in all of them. We all had a strong interest in taking the audience
on a journey, be it physical or emotional. We also wanted to include different
senses within the performance. Together we came up with a name for our company;
Kinesthesia.
“Proprioception meaning "one's own" and
perception, is the sense of the relative position of neighbouring
parts of the body and strength of effort being employed in movement.[1] It is
distinguished from exteroception, by which we perceive the outside world,
and interoception, by which we perceive pain, hunger, etc.,
and the movement of internal organs. Kinesthesia is another term that is often
used interchangeably with proprioception, though use of the term
"kinesthesia" can place a greater emphasis on motion.” (www.wikipedia.org).
At the start of our devising process as a group of three, we
decided to do some research into a few things that interested us. We were all
interested in happenings, and for our performance to hopefully be placed outside.
It intrigued us that passers by would catch a glimpse of something out of the
ordinary. One book we looked into at the start was Wrights and Sites ‘A misGUIDE
anywhere’. The concept of guidance, being led and being lost got us all talking
and spouting ideas. In the book they talk of seeing your surroundings in a
different light, like road works for example. “A hole
in the city provides a chance to peer into the historical and geological layers
of the place. You could consider the roadworks as a free open-air exhibition of
earthworks and archaeological revelations” (Hodge, S. et al. 2006:12). We
continued on with this theme for a few weeks. Another book that we looked into
was ‘The Dice Man’. This was a book that I read a few years ago and I
remembered when we were talking about chance. In the story the man lives his
life by the dice. He makes 6 options, rolls the dice, and does whatever the
dice decides. This was another interesting concept. I have always been
interested in spontaneity, and how many people live their lives very reserved,
restricted and routine based. This idea would be a risk to see whether people
could actually do something out of the ordinary.
So far we have looked into themes of journeys, happenings
and chance. We remembered back to when we did a trip to Spain and did a
workshop where we were blindfolded. We had a partner who held something with a
strong scent and led us around the room only by following our nose. We were
thinking of different ways we could take the audience on a journey, and this
was when we decided to do some workshops with our classmates to test the waters
and see what interested people the most. “Journeys have
an ancient resonance; the thrill of the hunting expedition, the trial of the
religious pilgrimage and the adventure of voyages of discovery” (Mason, B. 1992:144). We wanted to combine this traditional concept of a journey with
something new and modern. A journey was something that at the start we
considered looking into, but we went on a tangent for some time. This tangent
was based on senses.
Joe told us that he had a pollytunnel. He explained it to us
as a sort of greenhouse style tent that we could use for our performance. We
thought this was a great idea and our thought process started going down the
route of installation and a reflective space for the audience to enter.
Following on with our theme of senses we thought we could take certain senses
away whilst heightening others. We thought about sight, and the workshop in
Spain. I remembered a scene in the film Amelie,
where she leads a blind man through the town describing random and interesting
things that surrounded them.
It was a different way to see the world. Not only can you be
blindfolded to remove your sight, but we thought that smoke could block your
vision. We had the idea that we could fill the pollytunnel with smoke at points
to obscure your view. Another idea was light. Darkness or even very bright
lights can hinder your sight, and by doing this you awaken other senses which
may have not have been as acute beforehand. That is when we had the idea of
placing scent within the smoke. Smell and taste are very similar senses, yet both difficult
to include in a performance. We spent some time researching different scents
but in the end we decided that it would be difficult to include them due to
everyone having different tastes and sensitivities. Our main outcome was to
leave the audience relaxed, and we didn’t want to put anyone off. Scent is also
a very strong memory starter, taking people back to a place where they smelt
something similar. In some ways this would be a good thing, but it could also
be a distraction. The next sense we looked into was hearing. We spent some
time researching different soundtracks, and the ones which interested us the
most had heavy bass-lines. This was because at a loud volume, not only could
you hear the music but you could also feel it too through vibrations. This
meant that we were combining two senses in one, which is exactly the kind of
thing we wanted to do. We had to be careful when selecting the music, because
we didn’t want anything too up-tempo. The music needed to be able to give the
audience the chance to reflect and relax, but it would also be very loud. This
was a difficult balance to come by. I have mentioned sight, smell, taste and sound, and the only
thing we had left to look into was touch. “Kinesthesia,
the proprioceptive sense of movement, has been omitted from the ‘five senses’.
It is the most proximate sense, related to touch but the other senses depend on
it as well” (Sklar, D. cited in Banes, S. and Lepecki, A. 2007:41). As I mentioned, the sense of touch can be included
in some way in sound, yet we wanted the audience to have something more. We
came up with the concept of having different fabrics hanging inside the
polytunnel. We thought that this could split it up into sections and also add
texture and depth to the space. We also thought about the floor, and possibly
bringing the audience inside barefoot. In this way we could have grass or sand underfoot,
or something contrasting to the ground outside. If the audience were
blindfolded, then it would heighten their sense of touch. It would also mean
that they would have to be careful not to walk into each other by moving
slowly, and softly touching each other as well.
In some ways there are not only five senses but also many
others. “It turns out, there are at least nine senses and most researchers think
there are more like twenty-one or so” (www.todayifoundout.com, 2010). Other types of sense
include temperature and emotion for example. These were other things we
considered working with at the time of coming up with these ideas. Emotion and
relaxation were important to us throughout our devising process. The emotions
we wanted to convey were reflective, tranquil and personal. Each participator
was to have their own experience and emotions throughout their involvement in
the piece.
We moved on from looking into sensory performance to think
about the overall design of the piece. We considered placing a large parachute
over the polytunnel to restrict the light intake so that we could use lights
inside, or make it pitch black if need be. We also tried placing a smaller
parachute inside, hanging it up to split the tunnel in two and add more
sections and texture like the fabric. We thought about creating a rustic look,
placing tyres and crates on the outside. When the audience enters it would be a
more modern and clean space inside to add contrast to the piece.
