In this post, I would like to reflect on both the Midterm Proposal and Q&D show…

Midterm Proposal

Overall, I thought the presentation went pretty well and it was very gratifying to get validation for my plans and concept. In preparing for the pitch, I tried to narrow in on the themes I wanted to explore with each of my performances and their connection to larger concept. I believe this presentation was also the first time I committed to working exclusively with Amazon products. This brings with it a certain amount of world-building in my performances in order to imagine what a fully-integrated Amazon Smart Home will look like. In sum, this opportunity really made me hone in on some key aspects of my envisioned performances.

For the actual presentation, I noticed that several times I was ungrounded in my presentation. Often my energy moves upwards, which leads to me gesticulating a bunch and starting to use lots of “likes” and “kindas”. I felt I had good notes to reference and that the flow of my presentation was crafted. I believe it just came down to presenting in front of everyone that my energy became ungrounded.

Quick and Dirty Show

Overall, I had a really great time showing yesterday and was happy to find the live performance becoming easier and easier with each go. My goal was to show the working draft of my first performance live, although I had a backup recording just in case. I had to adjust my zoom sound preferences in order to cancel noise filtering and enable original sound, and with the exception of my performance for Matt, everything went without pretty well with sound. In asking for feedback from the guests, I showed the 5 minutes of performance one without any conceptual introduction and asked for initial thoughts before giving that context. In all, there were a lot of common threads with the feedback, including the need to update the ending and do more world building to show it was a uniquely Amazon Smart Home. Here is the feedback I received from each of the guests:

SARAH

Liked the reveal of the Alexa from the initial framing. Liked the shitty anthropomorphization of the Alexa with the googlie eyes and hanger hands. Glimpses of world-building, but largely unspecific: was this a future memory, one from the past? The ending was unclear with the “scrolls through instagram on the toilet”, too alienating. Potential through line of advertising. Did well with keeping emotionally invested.

Sources: let’s paint exercise & blend drinks tv (for performance 3 inspiration)

KAT

Initially thought it was about the connection each device has to the master server and how we offload emotional responsibility to our devices. Didn’t understand the alienating ending, gave me the idea to change it to “would you like to have another memory?” Perhaps the beginning is a better spot for alienation and that builds the world, perhaps also for adding in advertising. For moving this to a bigger performance space, should I use projections?

Sources: Arlington by Enda Walsh (for a play about a person in a room with a controlling big brother voice)

MATT

Had trouble understanding the vocals. In it’s current form, it feels very small, so how will I translate this to a larger space? Will the character of the smart speaker continue or will it become the whole room? Can I shittily anthropomorphize a whole room?Wanted more specificity with the world building and how this is uniquely an Amazon product. We discussed how much to preserve the truth of the tech versus moving to full theatrical gestures? For example, can I just do this all with conventional theatre materials. What is the case for my materials?

Sources: Ted Chiang (for speculation about how memory will change in the future), Samuel Beckett (for how to find comedy while holding in these unusual spaces), 2001 Space Odyssey (for how to find humor with AI characters)

TIRI

Worried that having it in a longer form would become too predictable with just the user interaction. How can I subvert this predictability? Gave me the idea to lean more into the user interaction, just like a iPhone generated montage allows you to customize the feeling, how could I ask Alexa to customize the feeling of this memory? Tiri asked me fantastic questions for how to do this in person. Encouraged me to plan ahead for what I will need. She said that, with the proper light diffusers, I could probably make it work with philips hues. What will be the user interaction before the show? If I am doing three separate pop-up performances for each of the shows, does it justify having a fully installed lighting system? How can I move this stuff around? Liked the simplicity of the tech in its current form, did not want it to become over saturated.

It was such a great experience yesterday, and I got some fantastic ideas for how to move forward with this performance. Mainly, I want to lean into actively customizing the memory beyond the initial experience. However, I do feel I need to get started on really crafting the second performance. I have the technical capabilities almost complete, but still no proof of concept yet. I think I should give performance one a bit of time to breathe while I work on performance two.