We started off by doing some workshops, trying out different sensory experiences with people. It was important to us to get opinions and criticism from a temporary audience. We placed them in a small space, taking away their sight and heightening their sound, for example. This caused fear and anxiety in some people which gave us an idea. Our aim was to relax the audience, and make them think and reflect. We decided to give them a journey. Let them wander where they please with minimal direction. Make them think about their surroundings, their senses and themselves. We liked the idea of the polytunnel, but after workshops and discussions with tutors, we decided it best to change the idea. By this point we were down to a group of two, which put a lot more pressure on us. The other groups in the class were much larger. We had initially been looking at a journey when Kinesthesia was first formed, and the polytunnel idea really took us away from the simplicity of our first idea. We took a step back, rethought our ideas and decided on our final piece. 

The location we chose for our journey was Winchester high street. It is easy access for our target audience, it has a lot of history to it and beautiful streets and alleys, and it is somewhere that most of the audience have walked repeatedly. We like the idea of the audience going somewhere familiar so that we can make them view it in a whole new light. The track consists of music and gentle directions. It has a male voice instructing the listener to move or do an action, or sometimes letting them decide where to go. Then there is a soft female voice giving her opinions and experience.

Our target audience is friends, family and colleagues. We were originally going to approach people at random and invite them to take part, but we had a few issues with that. Our final concept was a journey using a soundscape to lead you. What with it being a sound track we would have to give them an ipod or music player and headphones to use. The journey is supposed to be a personal one and we therefore did not want to have to follow the audience in case of theft. So we came up with the idea of posting the soundtrack to our website so that people can download it themselves. It will be very simple with clear instructions and will mean people will be ready to go as soon as they arrive. In this time of smart phones and social networking, this is something that comes naturally to our generation. It will be an exciting idea that hopefully people will be more than willing to do. If we have enough interest it should culminate into a sort of flash mob. We are very much interested in the audience becoming the performers. This is something we also tried out in workshops. We gave four people the same soundtrack, starting at two different times. It was very interesting to watch as two people suddenly waved at the same time. We believe that this concept on the street will be subtle, but will hopefully intrigue the outer audience, being the public. They will see people wandering about with headphones. Will they think nothing of it or will they notice that something is going on? This is what we are playing with. Hopefully this will then draw interest into other projects. We will have flyers with website and social networking information so that people can look us up. They can also take part at any time by downloading the track and having their own experience. Therefore there are two ways of looking at it; as a personal journey for you, or as an outsider watching a group almost move to choreography without realising.

Combining a number of tracks, and layering parts of different tracks and voice recordings together created the sound scape in which we have used for our piece. We started off by looking for a sound that we could use which was subtle, however we didn’t want to create it so subtle that the audience members didn’t know the track was there and couldn’t hear it. We also wanted a sound track that tells its own story along the way through music.

Getting this was important to Kinesthesia because we wanted to create a sensory piece through a soundscape; therefore the key part was the sound. The music is emotional, sad or happy depending on the person’s personal experiences. It goes up and down in dramatic interludes, and sometimes you are just left to listen and reflect or contemplate. The instructions are calming and take you through the space. We didn’t want to create our own music, as the quality would not have been what we were after.

Once we created our main piece we wrote a script that would be placed over the top of the track that would structure and create the directions and motion within the piece. The script that we have created is a journey in which the audience members can create their own route and experience. Some parts of the text may change the way the audience perceive their surroundings, but we still want the experience to be personal. We have used simple directions in a calming male voice, followed by a personal experience in an unemotional female voice. We wanted the female voice to sound separate from the friendly and familiar male instructions. We used the female voice to hopefully broaden the audience’s mind when it comes to their experience, being able to see how someone else has perceived it leaving them to create their own journey. It may get to the point whilst listening to the soundtrack where you become unsure whether you have done something through instruction or of your own accord. For example, “I am eating because I am hungry; am I spontaneous, or am I acting under the compulsion of hunger? I see or smell an appetising tidbit, and I reach out for it; am I acting spontaneously, or am I compelled by the promise of gratification? Thus, there is no general agreement as to whether the origin of my urge is internal or external. And, more importantly, no agreement as to whether the action ensuing is spontaneous or compulsive.” (Feldenkrais, M. 1985:6).

The soundscape that we created was shaped by using music from: Robert Fripp  Brian Eno - Meissa  Lyra  Tarazed (The Equatorial Stars), Arvo Pärt - Alina! And Arvo Pärt - Tabula Rasa. These were songs which Joe found on the Internet and we decided together would be appropriate for our final soundscape. Another track that we looked into was Porcelain by Moby. We used this song in our first trial soundtrack which we used in one of our class workshops. We wanted an emotional song, yet we thought that the Moby song was too recognisable and popular. We chose unknown songs so that the audience’s mind wouldn’t drift too far off into their own memories, especially as the Moby song was used in a film. Many people said they imagined they were on a beach when they heard it, which is their subconscious remembering the scene from ‘The Beach’ that the song is used in.

To create the final soundtrack we used music editing software ‘Audacity’. This helped us to cut up the music and layer speech on top. At the beginning of the sound track one sentence that we use is “can you stay on the right path”. This sentence is said because in certain alley ways in Winchester high street we place small post’s with signs on saying things such as ‘this is not your path’ or ‘turn back’.

The reason why we have said this is so that audience members will know not to go down these streets so that we can keep them in a certain area yet still with the freedom to chose many different routes and roads. If this works we hope that the audience participating will soon start to think whether the signs are part of this experience or are they normal public signs. We hope at some points this will happen however we are not depending on this, but the transition will start to make the audience think what is real and how they really feel about the situation in which they are in. “spectator’s like to see the performer being moved or carried away in a manner that’s unexpected and to some extent unwished”(Johnston, C. 2006:94).

Below you will be able to see the route that we will position the posts with the small messages on to contain our audience. On the map the post positions are marked with red circles and the starting point of our sound scape is the yellow circle, which is The Buttercross. We don’t intend for the audience to go as far down as past the cathedral, but we wanted to place a few extra signs up just in case they drift too far.