 |
| Artist Ju Row Farr's most welcoming smile |
This November and December I’ve
been working as a volunteer with Blast Theory, a 4-times BAFTA nominated art
collective based in Brighton. Their work uses interactive media and live
performance to explore social relationships, contemporary culture and politics,
and the boundaries between fiction and reality.
Despite being around since 1991,
winning a long list of awards and being internationally renowned, I’ve noticed
that there are still many people with interests in art and digital technology who
are yet to be acquainted with Blast Theory. Here, I want to introduce you to
the community by sharing my experiences of their work over the past year – as
an academic, an audience member, a participant, and now as a volunteer.
Guiding you through the moments
in which the group’s work has shaped my life in these different roles, I’ll be
demonstrating how Blast Theory has something genuinely constructive to offer
everyone.
___
My first steps into the world of
Blast Theory were slow and inquisitive. Starting my new Art, Performance and
the City module during my Masters, my attention was instantly drawn to the
title of one of our upcoming seminars – ‘Playing the City: Performance,
Technology and the Public’ – with none other than Blast Theory’s Matt Adams as
a guest speaker. The seminar promised an exploration of how play, games and
their associated technologies can expand our understanding and experience of
cities – a topic that magically welded together my budding academic interest in
video games with my earlier work on public space.
I was filled with that buzz of
anticipation that is the addiction of countless researchers and knowledge
seekers. Eager to find out more, I couldn’t resist taking an early dip into the
seminar’s reading list, where I discovered a couple of papers written directly
about Blast Theory’s work by digital media scholar Marcos Dias.
The subject of these papers was A Machine to See With, a Blast Theory production from 2010. This locative
performance sees participants become protagonists in a live heist movie as they
walk through the city. Using mobiles to make and receive calls from an
automated phone system, they are guided through a series of ethically
questionable tasks towards the eventual fictitious objective of robbing a bank,
believing that every action they take is being filmed.
Mindful of the fiction behind the
event, participants scrutinise everything they encounter in the real-world urban
environment: hyper-aware of the smallest details in their surroundings, the subtle
acts of strangers, and their own performances as they are being filmed. Yet at
the same time, the participant is made aware of the limits that this technology
imposes on interacting with the city. The automated voice on the end of the
phone is oblivious to the predicaments participants face as they negotiate the
urban environment in real-time, including potential dangers, mishaps, and even
past participants attempting to interrupt the story for others. By the time the
event reaches its climax, the real and the fictional are blended almost beyond
recognition. It becomes a performance for
the participants themselves.
The themes from this piece are
reflected in much of Blast Theory’s repertoire. The artists are keen for
participants in their works to interrogate the interactive potential of
technology, encouraging them to explore the intricate relationships between the
virtual and the material, anonymity and surveillance, agency and control in our
mediated social experiences.
The critical ethos behind their
work is strengthened by how the content of their projects often engages with
current social and political issues, encouraging people to re-think what worlds
are possible, probable, or indeed morally desirable. Taking place shortly after
the financial crisis, the bank heist story in A Machine to See With was in part
an exploration of the agency that individual citizens can have in the face of
the seemingly impervious forces of global capitalism.
So although their methods are
playful, it is mostly play in the sense of
re-imagining; momentarily allowing people to loosen the rigid boundaries that
govern their social interactions to illuminate – and potentially change – how they are conventionally
understood.
___
Our seminar with Matt Adams in
March introduced me to more examples of this, including the live storytelling
productions of My One Demand, a film broadcasted in one continuous shot; and
The Thing I’ll Be Doing for the Rest of My Life, during which a team of
volunteers push a 30-tonne boat through the streets of Nagoya, Japan. I was
intrigued by the way that Blast Theory used interactive methods to allow people
to share experiences in ways I’d never seen or considered before, with such striking
and enduring impacts on those who participate despite the short-lived nature of
the practice itself.
I became increasingly keen to
experience a Blast Theory project for myself.
So later on in June I downloaded
Karen, Blast Theory’s ‘life-coaching’ app in which users take part in short
‘sessions’ each day, answering questions posed by Karen, your life coach. It
soon becomes clear, however, that your relationship with Karen goes beyond the considerate
professionalism you’d anticipate. As she shares some quite personal details about
her own life, her interest in you also becomes unnervingly intimate. She seems
to know a little too much.
This is because Karen uses your answers
to build a profile, based on a series of psychological profiling tests, which
then determines how she interacts with you. When you complete the experience,
you are given the option of buying a data report generated from the answers you
submitted, which exposes how the intricate systems used by the app created your
personality profile.
Like so much of Blast Theory’s
work it was an unsettling yet revealing experience, uncovering how digital and
data-based communication profoundly affects our interpersonal relationships and
our identities – the ways we understand ourselves and others. Although I’ve
used a wide range of helpful apps for information, entertainment and
communication, I learnt more about the boundaries of my relationships with
these technologies and other people through Karen than any other app has taught
me.
I didn’t wait long before making
my next foray into the familiar unfamiliarity of Blast Theory territory, having
learnt that Operation Black Antler – a project that previously took place in
Brighton – was coming close to home in Chatham for three days in late June. This
would be my first live Blast Theory event, and one that immediately sent me
outside of my comfort zone. My task: to play the role of an undercover police
officer at a party, attempting to win trust and information from members of an
extreme right-wing group.
It was the day after the EU
referendum result. Wandering through unfamiliar territory in Chatham town
centre, on my walk I encountered a stumbling, drunken middle-aged man who slurred
a futile request: could I educate
him? The sodden streets still tender from the fiery rhetoric of the referendum coverage,
I felt disconcertingly out of place: a university-educated arts student in
working-class Chatham.
I received a text telling me to
meet the rest of my team outside the Argos on the high street, where we were silently
shepherded into a nearby abandoned building. Splitting into small groups with
people we’d never met before, we were briefed on our targets, the event, and
our objectives. We only had a short time to devise our undercover alter-egos
before being swiftly thrusted into a poky bar a short walk away, barely remembering
the details we’d heard only minutes previously.
It was an uncompromising
introduction to life undercover, and one that taught me as much about my moral
compass as the fictional far-right group I’d attempted to infiltrate. Unlike
watching a documentary or reading a news article, I had to come to terms with
the ideology by living it; spending
time with its advocates, sharing their spaces, and taking on a new persona. It radically
expands your perspective when you’re forced to
argue from – and empathise with – a
point of view that you’re not acquainted with, or maybe even opposed to.
At the end, the groups came
together to decide if a full-time undercover operative should be sent in to
monitor the group. We now had to judge whether the kind of people we’d
pretended to be, and had socialised with for an hour, were dangerous enough to
warrant such invasive surveillance.
This is interactive art’s
superpower. By putting you in situations you wouldn’t normally encounter and
inviting you to participate in them – whether by playing roles, making
decisions, or taking actions – Blast Theory are giving you the chance to learn about and develop your unique sets of instincts and moral boundaries as an individual.
It is a process of rediscovering
yourself.
___
Around this time I’d been carrying
out research for my Masters dissertation on video games, and I couldn’t help
but be struck by the crossovers between Blast Theory’s work and the interactive
artworks I was studying. Both typically involve assuming a different identity
or role, entering new environments, and interacting with what you find there to
guide your experience. Though in the likes of Operation Black Antler and A
Machine to See With, this identity play manifests more as a process of provoking
the transformative potential in existing, real-world people and places than
attempting to create whole new fictional worlds with their own distinct characteristics.
This is why such experiences are often referred to as ‘augmented reality’ – an
area in which Blast Theory has been widely recognised as a leading light, long before the fanfare that accompanied the recent arrival of Pokémon Go.
I’d been fascinated by augmented
reality for a while, writing a whole coursework paper on the subject earlier in
my Masters study. Though it was through Blast Theory’s work that I became acutely
aware of how this area of interactive art seemed to encapsulate my academic
interests in studying the relationships that make places meaningful; yet also inspired
me creatively as a powerful method through which these stories could be told in
an immersive, engaging way.
So when I saw Blast Theory’s
callout for volunteers to work with them between July and December, I realised
how the programme was an exceptional opportunity to learn how such creative
projects are developed on a day-to-day basis, and draw on this experience as I
pursue a path towards making my own interactive art.
Being accepted onto the volunteer
programme felt like the most encouraging welcome I could possibly receive as a
newcomer to working professionally in the arts sector. After all, Blast Theory
is a registered charity, and their commitment to supporting aspiring artists
and innovation in the creative industries is clear to see from the range of
talks, mentoring, and other opportunities they continue to provide both inside
and outside the studio.
Since I began volunteering in
early November, I’ve come to witness this benevolent impetus in their creative work
first-hand. Blast Theory’s most recent project, A Place Free of Judgement,
empowered a group of 30 young people to live broadcast a 9-hour takeover of
three libraries. Exploring and celebrating storytelling as an art of sharing experiences
– and libraries as sanctuaries for this practice – the young participants led
viewers through their imaginations of
these spaces; directing the camera, having fun, and sharing something of
themselves. Online audiences were able to contribute their own stories, which
took creative physical form in the libraries as our performers read aloud, drew
pictures, sang, and wrote the words to hide between books.
At a time when funding for both
libraries and the arts is dwindling, Blast Theory have sought to use their
artistic endeavour to enable, support and inspire others to cultivate their own creativity. That is an art to be
admired in itself.
It’s also a motivation that
extends beyond the short-term impact of single events. In upcoming project
2097: We Made Ourselves Over, the group is aiming to encourage conversation
about our collective future over the coming century by teaming up with Hull UK
City of Culture 2017 and Aarhus European Capital of Culture 2017. Workshops are
being hosted with residents young and old in each city to hear their ideas
about what the future of our cities could/should look like, alongside insights
from experts attempting to answer these questions for issues as broad as
climate change, infrastructure, and spirituality. What is our capacity for
self-determination in an uncertain future? What can our minds and technologies
offer us as we plan for the forthcoming decades?
In this role Blast Theory are
like toolmakers; intricately crafting the instruments with which people can discuss,
design and build their ideas of the future.
___
Making art can often seem quite a
selfish pursuit. Not only do we devote significant quantities of our own time
and resources to expressing ourselves, but we sometimes ask for other people’s
too. In this respect, maybe the most valuable lessons I’ve learnt from Blast
Theory are the ways that art can be selfless.
While their projects are perhaps the most visible sign, this spirit reaches out
continually through the Blast Theory community, a vast but close-knit network
that draws from and works with artists, researchers, organisations,
freelancers, and keen participants from all walks of life.
I’m touched by how warmly I’ve
been welcomed into this community over the past year, and I hope that this
piece can encourage others to join in the experience.
Believe me – you’ll get as much
out as you put in.
No comments:
Post a Comment