In-Class Studio Time

This week, we performed an updated version of our performance from Week 3, with roughly the same script, but with increase visual elements on top of it. While I think that the performance went quite well, the main issue came with not having rehearsed the entire scene beforehand, and the lack of communication from my part in terms of providing stage directions. This led to a mix-up where a prerecorded scene was supposed to be playing but unfortunately this was not communicated properly, and the actors started their scene while this went on. I think this highlights the importance of running through a performance before it is presented, just to get everyone on the same page and mindset.

Weekly Reading

For this week’s reading, we watched a presentation about the use of AI in decoding animal communication. What stood out to me from this lecture was the speaker’s discussion of the potential of constructing a synthetic whale with AI to communicate with whales as a method of research. I believe this concept of reconstruction using AI to be closely related to my performance work of reconstructing the personalities of the deceased, and the caution that should be put for both to be linked as well, as the speaker mentions the danger of disrupting wildlife through this method. Similarly, I believe that a thorough exploration of all the potential consequences of our concept would be fruitful for speculating the future, and figuring out how to implement them into our work would contribute even more to this.

Performance Work

For the performance work researched, I decided to choose Wildness (2012), a documentary focusing on the Silver Platter, a historic queer bar in Los Angeles which had a community of primarily transgender immigrant women. In theme with the rest of this week’s reflection, much of the documentary focused on how Wu Tsang, the director of this film, inserted himself into this community with the intention of helping it, but in many ways caused it to undergo more scrutiny than it ever had and indirectly led to it’s eventual closure. This theme of actions vs consequences may be a good source of inspiration for my performance work, as a way of analysing a character who may be harmful to others despite their good intentions.

References