Our Audience, and a Persona.

Perf-Art's audience would consist of anyone open minded, and appreciative of art. Probably from a young adult age, and above.

An example of someone interested in Perf-Art is Georgia, twenty-four years old and studying drama at university. She works part time on weekends at a restaurant near her house, in the northern suburbs, and creates art installations and sculptures as a hobby.

1) What is she thinking?
Her thoughts are very 'now' orientated. She obviously has an idea of where she wants to be in ten years, perhaps set-designing and creating things to be part of sets, but she likes the idea of living in the present and not let life slip you by whilst working towards something in the future.

2) What is she saying?
She talks about what she did on the weekend; how work went, which friends she saw, how little sleep she got. She always talks about great movies, but how she hates it when famous actors and actresses are cast in it when it is clear that they are not suited to the role at all.

3) What is she doing?
She's often learning lines, or writing lines for something she's going to be performing in the future. Or she's socialising and catching up with people she doesn't see that often anymore. Or working. She works a fair amount, considering she's a full time university student.

4) What is she hearing?
Georgia hears about many up and coming performances, exhibitions, art projects. And she hears a lot of comments about the food at her place of work. Many of them complaints because the food order has been incorrect, or the food has taken too long. Often things without her control, but she hears it all.

5) What is the reward for this person?
Being someone who appreciates both art and performance, Georgia gets to experience the best of both. Not only that, she gets to see the outcome from several different artists, and compare the difference. Curious as to the mindframe of many artists while they create all the art she sees in exhibions, she actually gets to see video footage of these artworks being created.

From the real world, to web.

Writing down three or four sentences, and then reading those sentences to everyone else in our tute, we had to share our idea. The same idea from last week, so for Dom and I we had to write down and share our "Perf-Art idea". We got the response that we were hoping for when everyone heard what we had called it.

This also meant that we got to hear other people's ideas which was great because we have a better idea of what page everyone's on.

In addition to simply writing down what we had come up with last week, we had to 'classify' what our idea is. Mobile, web, film, or real world. Because ours is a live, physical thing it falls into the "real world" class.

What then had to be done though was we had to swap our idea with someone else, and David would give us a new class that we had to change this new idea into. Or incorporate it in to that class somehow.

Dom and I swapped ideas with Karl, and I think I understood what his idea was. I probably will not do it any justice at all describing it because I won't know the write words to describe it, or its correct functions. BUT, from what I understood it's one device where you can plug in multiple musical instruments in order to tune them, and essentially play... (I think...) instead of using multiple amp's, etc...
So this idea is a real world idea, from what I understand a pretty cool real world idea, and David asked Dom and I to turn it into something that is web based.

What does the internet do best? It connects people. So we thought we'd take that very aspect of the internet to incorporate into this nifty little device. In fact we decided not to change the idea of the device at all, simply allow it to connect to the internet, and so other people on completey different parts of the globe who have the same device can connect it up to the internet. This essentially will allow people to play as a complete in-tune band, at the same time, while being thousands of k's away.

I LOOOOOVE how Karl turned our Perf-Art idea into something that is web based. Here are his exact words.

"The art is consumed via the web (application). The audience reaction is monitored (eg. filmed by webcam, sound recording, a musical input decide, or measure brainwave activity) which is then uploaded to the site and collaborated with other audience reactions to create a new piece of art (eg. iTunes visualiser from sound). THAT is then consumed and it continues to evolve!"

So it's like a great big cycle of art, that keeps on going.
I LOVE IT!

"Perf-Art - Evidence of an Event."

Dominic and I are working on our creative idea that we need to pitch to the class. Well, it's Dom's idea. He's been thinking of it for a while now and for this task him and I are working in a pair, and so I am now thankfully in on it. I say thankfully because I think it's a fantastic idea.

To put it very basically, it's combining performance and art, and just being silly we combined the two words and came up with "Perf-Art". We really got a good little laugh out of that because of how it sounds when it's said out aloud. Perfart. A few puns have been made since!

The idea (I hope I can capture this well enough in words!) is...
A few cubicles, perhaps 3m by 3m each, and one artist/performer goes into each one completely alone, with absolutely no-one watching. Music, or a stimulus of choice, (or perhaps an assigned piece, so each performer or artist in their respective cubicle is listening to the same thing) is played and the artist with paintbrush in hand and paint accessable, moves/dances/performs allowing the paint to be splashed and painted and thrown and placed on the walls, roof, body and anywhere. The artist performs to evoke the emotion being experienced, and paints it to evoke a permanent emotion for all to see. The comparison between the different outcomes from each artist would be incredibly interesting.

We discussed the idea of filming the performance, so that whilst no-one is watching the performer (allowing them to express their emotion privately and in whatever way they see fit) there is a visual presentation of what took place in that room, so that when the viewers see the final outcome of that experience, there is evidence of that event.

Three negative aspects of the idea that we came up with during the Reverse Brainstorming is that;
- There could be too much going on, with the music, the performing, the painting, the filming. It could be too much for viewers/the audience to take in.
- Viewing accessibility could get complicated. Ideal viewing would mean one person in the room at a time, in order to completely take in what the performer was feeling and trying to express. If multiple people go in there could be noise and it's possible the music could be overcome.
- There would almost definitely be transportation issues. Several big, possibly glass, rooms.

But the positive things we thought of during good old traditional positive Brainstorming!
- It would be an experience for both the performer and the viewer, not one or the other.
- It is "Evidence of an event." As said by David.
- It gives an explanation for the final outcome. Unlike many artworks that cause us as viewers to ask many questions, it will explain what was done where, what the artist was listening to at the time something was done, how the artist looked while doing a part of the artwork. This will all be shown in the footage of the performance.

I'm very excited to continue working on this idea. I love it, and I know that this doesn't have to become a reality, but I really hope that one day it does.