Workshop 1 Report

My first workshop took place yesterday, Monday the 8th of October at Crawford College of Art and Design main campus in the Photography Studio. There was six participants present including four females and two males.

Prior to the beginning of the workshop I had prepared a process method schedule, a short choreographed warm up, meditation dialogue and calm music. The reasoning for this was to ensure the smooth running of the workshop. All lights were set up in a very comfortable way. The room was very quiet and all that could be heard is the piano music playing softly in the background. This was playing before people entered the room. Six chairs were laid out in an equal positioning allowing space for the movement exercise and also allowing each participant to be present in the frame of the camera.

Participants arrived at different intervals between 6.50pm and 7.05pm. In the future, I will wait for everyone to arrive before they can enter the performance space.

I began the workshop with a little introduction whilst keeping the grounds as vague as possible. Each participant signed a release form. I described the schedule of events up to the end of the dialogue meditation.

I then continued with the exercise. The goal of this was to relax the body and its muscles and zone the minds of the models into a comfortable and blank canvas focusing them for the following exercise.

I found that as I was speaking in the same tone from the very beginning, the music was uniform and the lighting didn't change, concentration was kept and the progression was smooth and effective.

During the course of the dialogue there was very little movement and even less sound. Through the distressing parts of the dialogue reaction was minimal however I will inspect this further with the recording.

On awakening the models all gave me the impression that they were totally zoned out. The time went comfortably and reached about 7.35 at this point.

I then gave out a blank sheet with a crayon of their choice to every participant and gave them a few minutes to draw anything that came into their mind. After doing the exercise I asked participants to turn them face down and passed them along to the end.

Thereafter I cleared the room and began the improvisation part of the workshop. Everyone left the room and individually I gave characters to the participants concluding in a family structure. I began with small scenarios to get the building of the characters and it developed greatly with the evolution of time.

Tutorial development 1

IAfter a very positive and constructive tutorial with Jessie Jones last week, I went off to get something cohesive on paper. After disaster with the booking of rooms in college, my scheduling went up in a heap but all I can say is that everything happens for a reason. I now have scripted a concise dialogue for my first meditation workshop. The aim is to develop the dialogue throughout the workshop in acknowledgement to the ongoing motion and body language of the participants. The workshop will be recorded - the camera will remain static at all times with the lens open to allow a full focus of the entire body.

After this workshop I want to experiment with the dialogue and see if it worked well. I want to eventually experiment with the combination of the scenarios in actuality and the silent response brought forward by the participants at the workshop.

Thematically I will be dealing with the concept of family relationships. The language of the script will be very ambiguous. It will be driven by emotional triggers.

Having has a follow through tutorial with Tony McClure, I am now in a good position to go forward with my first experiment and look forward to having something visual by next week!