Living Gallery Evaluation - Robyn Mae-Harriott

Site Specific Evaluation

Robyn-Mae Harriott

I think our final piece was a successful performance. After having many ideas of what to do for our living gallery, our final piece was a still image of Megan and I sitting on two windowsills and above us we had written all our similarities and differences on some paper we had sellotaped to the wall.

We wanted this image to convey the different perceptions that different brain- or perhaps the same brain- can have.

Strengths:

We controlled our audience members well. We had a sign next to our overview that said “3-5 people at a time please”. And people did stick to the rule. This was an important thing for Megan and I to do, because it controlled the amount of people that could come down the small isle. In our health and safety

Myself and Megan were successful with how we interacted with our audience. We didn’t want our piece to be a scene or to intimidate the audience. We wanted to be able to talk to our audience and ask them how they felt about our piece and how they felt about our society and the different points of views people have. By talking to the audience, it gave us the opportunity to inform the audience, what we had been working on this term and what message we wanted to convey in our living gallery. We got to ask people what they thought about our piece and answer any questions they wanted to ask us. It gave me a stronger connection to my audience members, it was also successful because most people weren’t shy or afraid to interact with us. This was good for our piece as it helped it to develop.

Our message was to show our audience that we are all the same on the inside but just different on the outside. We wanted our audience to think about they way they view people and the initial thoughts they have on someone when they first see someone. It was important for us to convey the message of equality and we wanted the audience to think about the fact that everyone is human, everyone is created by genes and chromosomes and everyone is have bones and a heart. Throughout the process leading up to our living gallery, we explored how the mind views people when they first see them, and that is that a lot of people judge from looks and don’t actually think about the fact that we are all equal in reality. When we spoke to our audience members, some of them guessed what our piece represented- and guessed right which shows that our piece was successful in conveying the right message. If people didn’t quite understand, Megan and I would explain what we wanted them to take away from it and they would understand and liked our idea.

Weaknesses:

The main weakness for Megan and I was the time in which we left to set up and prepare our piece. We didn’t completely think about how long it was going to take to stick up 50 pieces of paper on two walls and write facts about us on it. We had been given twenty minutes to set up our living gallery before we had to go and warm up, Megan and I thought this was more than enough time, however, we were proven wrong as we did over run overtime. To improve this we should have maybe thought about how

long it would take us to create our set. Perhaps, we should have stuck our pieces of paper together first and then stuck it on the wall as a whole, to save some time.

We were tucked away in a small corridor siting on two window ledges and so therefore this might have been a bit difficult for the audience to see us and to come and view our piece. Because of this positioning, it was quite easy for some audience members, to walk past the small corridor and not notice what was happening, especially because we were sitting there silent most of the time. The window ledges were also very thin in width and high, which had a risk of us falling off them. We put two high chairs next to the window ledge to help us get up and down at ease. However we realised that there was still a risk of us losing grip on the chair or we could put too much pressure on one of the chair legs, so we decided to make it easier and safer by using two small step ladders to get on and off the window ledges.

As our piece was quite still and quiet, it wasn’t as attractive as some of the other exciting pieces, if I had the chance to do this again, I might add some dialogue or some movement to make our piece more attractive and inviting for audience member, However, I do feel like our piece was popular as it was different from everybody else’s surrounding us and people did like our piece, however I feel like more people would have came over if we added more movement or dialogue to our living gallery.

What will I take from this:  

I have learnt by taking part in the Living Gallery, that it is important to be specific with how we present our message. Because the word perception is such a broad subject, we wanted to particularly focus on views of people from the outside and inside, so I have learnt that it is important to make art clear for the audience but also have it open to interpretation at the same time. Also I have learnt that a living gallery takes a lot of preparation and it may take longer to set up the space then I thought. I liked working with a simple piece of stimulus and creating something of my own from the artwork we chose from the Tate Modern.

Comments:

“extremely interesting”    

“learnt a lot about the brain through our conversation”

“interesting way of putting the message across”

“the image we created was attractive to look at”

Living Gallery Evaluation - Megan Richards

Megan Richards

Site Specific Evaluation

Our final piece was a still image of Robyn and me sitting on a window ledge each with paper stuck to the wall behind us. The paper had similarities in black pen and differences in colour pen – this highlighted that we were focusing more on what society sees in us; our differences.

Strengths:

A strength of our piece was our decision for interaction with the audience. We decided to speak as ourselves because it enabled us to explain about the brain and what we have been working on throughout the term so the audience could gain a full understanding of the context of our piece. This also gave us the opportunity to ask them questions about their views on how they are represented in society and how they felt about the topic or representation and stereotypes.

I feel that we also portrayed the message of our piece. Part of our message was that we are all the same in the sense that we are all human, yet people see us differently. We spoke about how when we see people in society, we only recognise the image and because we don’t get the opportunity to understand the true personality of the person, we forget that underneath the layers, we all have the same root – we are human, we are girls/boys and we were all created from genes, chromosomes and are made of bones and ligaments. As I explained this to the audience members who passed, it was clear that they understood the concept and our message as they nodded in agreement. Some even admitted that they do have tendencies to judge on image. I then explained that its part of normal human instincts to judge image instead of understand character which again, connects us all and makes us one.

Due to our instruction of having only 3-5 people in our area at a time, this controlled the flow of movement between our piece and the pieces around us. It also enabled us to be able to talk to a few members at a time and fully engage with them and get them to understand our points of view and ask them more personal questions. It gave me a stronger connection between the audience and me and I felt that I took in more of their views and they took in my piece. The audience were also very interactive with us and weren’t afraid to ask questions. This was good because it helped our piece to develop and it opened up more questions which I wanted to ask other audience members.

Weaknesses:

The main weakness was the time we took to prepare our piece. The original idea was to also have lain paper stuck up on the opposite wall with pens for the audience to write down their responses to the piece and any questions they ask about the topic we were exploring. We did not think through the amount of time we would need to achieve this, therefore we ran out of time and only had enough time to do our own paper and writing. In order to improve this, we should have been more efficient and pre stuck the paper prior to the performance so we would only need to stick up the big piece of paper (in total, three pieces).

Also, due to the positioning of our piece being tucked high on a window ledge, embedded into the wall, some of the audience, members walked past us without seeing our piece because they did not notice that we were there. There was also a high risk of falling as the window ledge was thin and high. We positioned high chairs next to the ledge so we could get up and get down with ease but there was still the unknown chance of losing grip of the chair when standing on it to get up or down from the window ledge. To ensure higher safety, we could have purchased small step ladders with a wider base than a chair so the risk was lowered.

I order to make our piece more attractive and inviting, we could have added in more movement. Our piece was very still and taking based whereas, when people walk around an art gallery they usually are in the mind set to just watch art, not have an intense conversation with the artwork. If I was to do this again I would have added in a simple movement sequence that Robyn and I could have repeated while speaking to the audience so it was less naturalistic and more the theatre world reaching out to the normal world and getting them to engage in the theatre world.

What will I take from this?

By participating in the Living Art Gallery experience, it has taught me how specific you need to be when trying to portray a message in a way that the audience will easily understand. It has also taught me about the importance of time keeping and how before a performance, there is no time to set up your space from scratch, you need to have prepared everything before so you can just go to your space and place it where it needs to go. It has also taught me how fun it is to create work from a simple stimulus into a piece of art with a context that means something to you. It has inspired me to want to create more work like this based off different stimuli and g deeper into the topic I am trying to cover and present to the audience.

Comments:

Some people said they found the topic extremely interesting and they liked how we related it to the brain. They said they learnt a lot about the brain through our conversation with them and it raised a lot of questions in their mind about society.

Someone said they did not recognise what we were trying to say. I then told them that this piece was all about perspectives and what each part of our piece represented. After they understood fully, they told us that it was an interesting way of putting the message across and the image we created was attractive to look at.

Pictures of the Site

Materials and Creative Techniques

Exploring and documenting the use of different creative techniques in the space:

Stillness: We both did not move throughout our whole piece. This was a different way to set our living gallery as many of the other pairs and solos. Many other of the galleries spoke to the audience and acted out a piece of experimental theatre or physical theatre. Whereas ours simply had us sitting down on a window ledge with writing above us.

Speaking to audience: We won’t act to the audience but we will speak to them and inform them of what we want to convey with our piece of theatre. We want them to tell us first what they thought of our piece and what message they got from our image we had created. From studying experimental theatre we have been learning new techniques and learned that breaking the fourth wall is okay when we do experimental theatre. We want to connect with our audience in our living gallery and help them to understand where we are coming from with our ideas.

Silence: Other than when we will talk to the audience, we are not going to talk to each other or perform a monologue or duologue, we will simply be sitting there and looking at our similarities and differences. The simplicity of our piece hopefully will be quite a nice change for the audience as the other groups surrounding us are shouting, talking, and playing music, whereas when we perform, hopefully the audience will be attracted to our piece as it will be different from the others.

Levels: We will use the architecture- to our advantage- that is already in our area. Instead of standing, sitting on the floor or on a chair or perhaps lying down, we will sit on the window ledges that had been built. This will give a different feel to our piece as it was mainstream and the obvious thing to be doing.

Costume: We decided to stay in black clothes so we would blend in with the similarities which we would write in black so our differences were highlighted even more, meaning our message we were trying to convey was shown  boldly.

Image: The image we want to create will be close to a still image of us on the window ledge writing down our similarities and differences. The stillness of us means the audience will be more focused on the words we are writing than us.

Recording use of different materials:

Paper

Pens

Sellotape

Two chairs.

We will stick up sheets of paper on the wall above the window cells with sellotape and write our differences and similarities. Black pen will show our similarities and the coloured pens will sow our differences. The reason why we will use coloured pens to write our differences is because we believe that naturally humans notice people differences first, before they discover their similarities. In our performance we want to talk about the way people don’t notice the similarities they have with others, we want to put up paper on the opposite side of the wall from us and give the audience the opportunity to write their similarities and differences they have with the people they are with.

Title		Reference/ Version
Department		Date of Assessment	01/1216
Location	music practice room	Next Assessment Due
Assessor Name		Job Title

Open plug socket, electrocution	Someone could get electrocuted	The audience and the performers	In the room there is one open plug socket, to make sure that nobody decides to fiddle with the plug socket we have cover it with a plug socket cover, and put the seats in front of it. This will lower the risk of someone fiddling with it because it will low accessibility because it will be hidden.	4	1	6	Make sure there is no access to the open plug socket. Audience members aren’t allowed to sit in this area		01/12/16
sticking up carpet	Someone could trip on the carpet and injure themselves	The audience and the performers	To prevent someone from tripping on the sticking up section of carpet, we allocated our seats over that area, to make sure nobody could walk that section. This is greatly lower the chances of someone tripping on the carpet and injuring themselves.	1	1	2	stick down carpet with carpet tape		01/12/16
Fire could be started	a fire could break out and people would need to escape from the fire exit	the audience and the performers	Flammable items such as hairspray and specific clothing materials could ignite a flame. If this was to happen, as there is a large number of audience capacity in such a small area the flame could spread even further. In case of this happening there is an allocated fire exit in which people can safely exit from. If anyone is injured the ambulance will be called who will arrive promptly to the school building.	5	1‘	5	do not bring flammable items into the room		01/12/16
Large Piano in the room	people could accidently bump into it and get injured	the audience and the performers	The edges on the piano are quite sharp and someone could end up walking /bumping into an edge of the piano and hurt themselves. By moving the piano further back away from the audiences could avoid this incident from happening. Another precaution that we looked as was covering any edges of the piano with a soft material or cloth. By doing this it will mean that if an audience member does actually end up bumping into and edge, it is likely that it won’t be painful or uncomfortable.	2	3	6	It is important to look where you are walking but also make it clear to the audience where to walk, sit and stand to avoid any accidents.		01/12/16
The door  opening	the door is very heavy so when it closes it could trap somebody's fingers or hit their head	the audience and the performers	During the performance the performers enter and exit and different moments of the show. Because there is quite a lot of chaotic movement at times from the performers it is important that they don’t hit their heads or end up getting something caught on the door. The door is also very near to the audience members in terms of where they are seated as it is such a small performance area. It will make it safer if the audience members are warned to be seated/stood as far away from the door as possible.	3	3	6	It is important to be careful of the door so that you don’t put yourself or anyone else in danger. Perhaps putting up a sign to inform the audience about the heavy weight of the door.		01/12/16
The event of a fire alarm going off	someone could get left behind in the fire and panic will arise	the audience and the performers	In case of a fire alarm going off during the performance, and some audience members might not know in which direction they are to go. The fire exit is allocated on the side of the room with a bright ‘Fire Exit’ sign located above. The audience members might not be aware of where they should be going (in terms of location of school grounds), once they do escape out of the fire exit.	5	2	10	A register should be taken so that everyone is aware if anyone is missing or might still be inside of the building.		01/12/16
The Piano Stand	the piano stand could fall over and hit someone	the audience and the performers	The piano stand might accidentally end up falling onto someone causing them injuries. It can be easily be moved from the centre of the room to the back which will lower the likeliness of this happening. The piano stand falling will also inconveniently interrupted the show.	1	3	3	The piano stand should be put to the side away from the audience members and the performers must use their spacial awareness to remember where the stand is kept in the room during the performance		01/12/16
During the middle of the performance a performer stands up on a chair and reaches up to the window ceiling	the performer could fall off the chair and injure themselves	the performers	The performer could end up falling off the chair and injuring themselves by breaking a leg or an arm. The chair used might also not be stable which could cause the performer to become unstable and lose balance. By allocating a specific chair, the performer will be aware of how the chair feels like when standing on it so that they know how to get up onto it.	3	3	6	The performer should keep two feet on the chair to keep the chair balanced. The actor needs to practise this so that they get used to standing on the chair before the performance so that they feel comfortable and safe when performing.		01/12/16

 

 

 

 

 

Severity			Likelihood			Risk
Severity = Level of potential harm			Likelihood = Chance of harm			Severity x Likelihood = Risk
1	No action, delay only		1	Very Unlikely		1 - 6	Acceptable
2	Minor injury - 1st aid only, minor damage		2	Unlikely		8 – 10	Tolerable if strictly monitored, but try to improve
3	Injury, illness – time off work, damage		3	Fairly Likely
4	Major injury, disabling illness, major damage		4	Likely		12 - 25	Unacceptable, further controls are mandatory
5	Fatality		5	Very Likely - Imminent
		Severity
		1 Delay Only	2 Minor Injury	3 Injury or Illness	4 Major Injury	5 Fatality
Likelihood	1 Very Unlikely	1	2	3	4	5
	2 Unlikely	2	4	6	8	10
	3 Fairly Likely	3	6	9	12	15
	4 Likely	4	8	12	16	20
	5 Very Likely	5	10	15	20	25

none

01/12/16