Live art performance-Laura Knight

On week 25, we were given an assignment which was to do a live art performance in a small group (of 5 people). We had 3 weeks to research and create a response to an assigned ‘person’- who has connection to Nottingham (site specific). Our group did a live art performance for the life of Dame Laura Knight, an impressionist painter.
We all did some research then gathered together out side of class, and I think we were working quite well in terms of team work. We discussed and agreed on doing an art history class, with having some performance related to Laura Knight’s work of art.
On the day of the performance, I was actually surprised to see lots of audience came to see the show. We had an entry fee of 50p per person (people on the floor-25p), and we managed to raise ￡4.80 in total. The show it self went well, as we all rehearsed several time beforehand, we all knew what to do and everything was organized.
But if we were to do this again, I think I would want to include more of the artistic/creative side to it. For example, rather than performing at the side of the slide show (with pictures of Laura Knight’s paintings and photographs), it would have been more interesting if we were performing in front of the projector so that the silhouette or the shadow of our costumes are projected on to the screen. Also, the projection on to our face and the costume would have also been more interesting and creative.

We went to see the performance in the girl’s school done by another group. They had animations and music on the screen with performing a short role play. I think it was well organized and it was interesting to see how they’ve combined animation and live performance in more like a comical way (i.e. not too much formally presented histories and facts), which I think was easy to understand for the audience ( students in girl’s school).
I enjoyed doing this live performance and it was nice to see performances done by other groups as well.

Viewing Interactive Narrative at the cinema

Viewing the final 2 mins short film at the Broadway cinema was really fun. We got to see all of the narratives one by one. It was surprising to see so many groups have used comical style (one of them is of course, our group) but turned out to be really different!! One of the group did their narrative on ‘discrimination’, it was more like a documentary style, and this was really interesting. It was very different from all of the other narratives and I think this group did a good job in producing the atmosphere of the narrative, the plot, speeches, camera angle and editing.
Another narrative called ‘Post it’, this was also interesting as the selection of music was suited to the storyline and the camera angle was giving the right atmosphere.

It was really nice to look at each others narrative, it has made me learn that same effect can be used but seem very different in the final product. i.e. there were so many different ways of using ‘comical effect’ that looked so unique and interesting.

Space center trip

Choose an interactive display that you found exciting and engaging: a display that tests your eye sight and body movement.
Describe the elements in the display and say why you found it exciting and engaging? An interaction display with buttons on the wall. Random button lights up at a constant speed and the aim of this interactive system is to see how fast you can react and touch that button, which then tests your eye sight and body movement (reaction).
Because I’ve seen this interactive display before on some TV program, it has made me interested in actually using them in real. It was particularly exciting and engaging as the screen beside the display shows the score of your reaction to the display, which made me realize how well I was in reacting to the light buttons. Furthermore, because this involves lots of movement (i.e. reaching up and down the button) also was engaging and fun to use.
What interactive elements were used? Buttons and touch screen.

How successful were these interactive multimedia elements? The reaction of the touch screen was slow when going from one stage to the next Also there were limited number of levels, so it would have been better if there were more selective number of levels.

Do you think the interactive elements helped you to engage with the information in a new way? Well, not really. If the score at the end was compared with other people’s score, it would have made it more engaging. i.e. put ranking of the scores at the end showing how well you are..etc.

Now choose an interactive display that you find is not engaging at the Space Centre.
Why do you think it does not work? How would you improve it? I think ‘The Space Truck’ was working poorly in terms of engagement. Because the buttons for moving the truck around the space model with using the controller wasn’t working at all. The truck managed to move slightly forward and backward but it wasn’t picking up the signal properly.