I have been working with a small group of performers and artists on some basics of the Viewpoints at CIA Studios.The focus has been on games, mainly on childhood games. The cross over between the Viewpoints and basic games have become clearer to me. Inside an improvisation rules begin to develop and if the performers are aware of the situation then they will acknowledge the rule and work with it. Indeed it is the rules that create the specificity within the improvisation, as performers play within them or choose to break them.
On Tuesday night two groups created two games;
Game One – Knee touching
Rules
- Have to hop on one leg
- Have to try and touch the knee that is raised
- Once you touch it three times the toucher can change legs
Game Two – Slow Death
Rules
- a large group stands on a chessboard like imaginary grid
- consecutive turns
- each player controls another player on a grid (left, forward, right, back)
- a player ‘takes’ another player when they move into the square the other is occupying
- There are two winners at the end
I have also been looking at freeware applications that use onboard mobile phone GPS to track players in space. These are readily available for phones like the N-Series and E-Series Nokia phones and of course the now almost ubiquitous iPhone.
There was a lot of talk at Electrofringe this year about privacy and how important it was to people in this day and age. There was a lot of conversation about Facebook and how it was impossible to get your personal details off that site etc etc. There was a response to this – that perhaps people cared less about their privacy these days (??).
The ability to track people through mobile phone use has apparently taken away some of our freedoms and ability to disappear into anonymity. I feel the opposite when I see the above graphic. I feel exhiliarated, that a satellite has tracked me through a small chip on my mobile phone as I move along the ground and then drawn a line on a map. AWESOME! Big Brother is me, and I am tracking myself.
