Tony Schultz, SLC, Bronxville NY, April 30th

This is the train to North White Plains

Please watch the gap between the train and the platform.

AND ONCE AGAIN … the next station is … Bronxville.

THE STRUCTURE #1

One character and a journey from NO TECHNOLOGY … and getting to it.

From nothing … to a computer.

And all the craziness will be placed in the MIDDLE PART (as much information as possible). The suitcase image: we keep adding and adding information to it, eventually it’ll collapse and we’ll bring another bigger suitcase or we’ll change the material the suitcase is made of.

The journey: is this a birthing process? The mother giving birth to this baby? Or is this about appendages, armors being added to? YES TO THE THIRD QUESTION

I think it’s a transformation, things being added to in order to evolve into something else because of LONELINESS.

“It’s interesting that you have this path down and you say this is lonely (MOM) and this is full (THE COMPUTER at the other end). When I think about sitting at a computer … I think of that as lonely. Maybe these are just two things that resonate … I know that for a performance, you need, it needs to happen in time. So, you need to go from one place to another but these things, they coexist. Maybe, something your project is … that you’re going this way (in reverse, from down to up)”

Absolutely! I needed to start out of something, that something became STRUCTURE #1 … the journey exists in order to be changed and the direction now exists so it can change (or not) along the way.

“You’re on to something and this is, I think, I fundamental tension.”

MIDDLE PART – THE STAGE AS A COMPUTER SCREEN

I’ll try to resemble (re interpreted) a computer screen as much as possible, TABS, things popping up, windows opening and closing, flashing messages, MULTITASKING etc.

“I think it’s already embedded in ……. That our idea of how we represent things, just because of how language has been constructed, we do it on a flat plane. So, the book and the television, and the movie screen and the computer screen … these are all flat things. So, it makes sense that the space of theater is also this kind of flat space.”

Proscenium stage

Thrust stage

Theater in the round

Black box / Flexible theater

Found space

Arena stage

Alley/Corridor

Touring stage

Site specific

In reality, I’ll be dealing with a traditional PROSCENIUM stage. Can we find ways/possibilities to “transform” the space with our interpretation of a computer screen?

So, suddenly that flat squared surface becomes something else, something that goes way beyond just breaking the fourth wall.

“I don’t think this is hard-wired aspect of performance … that there are other geometries possible. And I’m sure, computers, maybe in the future, that we’ll just have like a sphere, a crystal ball”

THE PANOPTICON

The Panopticon is a type of prison building designed by English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in 1785. The concept of the design is to allow an observer to observe (-opticon) all (pan-) prisoners without the incarcerated being able to tell whether they are being watched, thereby conveying what one architect has called the “sentiment of an invisible omniscience. (Wikipedia, of course)

……. In other words, a circle prison consisting of many little cells which you can watch all at once by standing in the middle.

“……. You have basically a penitentiary structure in the same way you have these little theaters in the circle around a central gaze, so it has this kind of polar symmetry, so there’s one gaze in the middle that can see everybody.”

“When you look at something like Facebook, you explode into like another kind of topology and you can imagine that when you sit at Facebook … you’re in the middle of that panopticon and you get to see everybody. You get to basically do surveillance on everybody around you and you imagine that nobody sees you … in reality, everybody is doing the same activity. (EVERYBODY IS AT THE CENTER AND EVERYBODY IS BEING WATCHED AT THE SAME TIME) So we can’t represent it in three dimensions anymore ……. That’s the way we experience it, the way technology allows us to create the space ……. It’s like a poli panoptic structure and in reality there’s a grand master who’s actually looking above the whole system and sees everybody’s gaze, and whatever everybody is looking at, or clicking on.”

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

WE CAN’T REPRESENT IT IN THREE DIMENSIONS ANYMORE.

EVERYBODY IS IN THE MIDDLE AT THE SAME TIME BUT IMAGINING THEY’RE WATCHING EVERYBODY ELSE.

AND … THE GRAND MASTER.

We’re on our little computers on our little desks in our little houses/apartments and we think we’re in control, controlling our computers and our Internet experiences. We think we are doing things because it’s our fingers and again, on our computers.

“There’s another structure on top of it where we’re inside. When you’re on the Internet you’re inside that cage and basically people know exactly what you’re doing … where you’re mouse is on the screen, even when you’re not clicking on something, do you put your mouse over a certain link and just let it sit, you know, there. There’s a lot of information they know, and they know where you’re geographically.”

THE DECODER RING

ChatRoulette as a decoder ring and all its possible interactions.

You go from one person to the next, clicking NEXT, the same way people run into you … we all get paired up with other people and the ring keeps turning with endless possible combinations. There’s no stopping and there’s no final result but to keep pairing people up.

“It’s not just roulette because it’s random. It’s roulette because we’re all together in this system and we just get paired up with each other.”

SOUNDS OF THE INTERNET OR SOUNDS TECHNOLOGY MAKES

“The relationship I have with this device (cell phone) is very personal. When it vibrates in my pocket, I have an immediate anticipation of who it is. Is this a loved one? Is it my sweetheart? Is this work? It’s an anticipation, might have anxiety associated with it. When we’re in the public space, when you hear that message sound, it’s something that you apprehend as a very personal sound and you can have the same anxieties ……. Even when it’s not for you.”

CHATROULETTE

The ChatRoulette structure … just imagine stories instead of people.

“There’s a lot of men there like looking for women. So they’re looking at other men, they’re clicking, clicking, clicking … when they see a woman, they stop clicking. But then, that person clicks away from them ……. Your heart is very present, but then it’s just …”

disposable.

MULTITASKING

Not meaning showing one person on stage doing more than one thing at the same time, but pushing the envelope as much as possible.

“Multitasking being performed is when the focus is broken ……. And you can hear it in my voice. When you’re on the phone with someone and you’re talking to them, talking to them, and then you know the minute they’re looking at the Internet because you can hear that they’re drifting … they’re drifting”

and one last thought …….