Mars Exploration: May 22,1984
- Submitting institution
-
Royal Conservatoire of Scotland
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 2847656
- Type
- I - Performance
- Venue(s)
- Glasgow
- Open access status
- -
- Month of first performance
- September
- Year of first performance
- 2020
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
2
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This piece of practice research is an attempt to explore how to create an artistic experience that is neither the same as watching a film nor the same as watching live theatre, but which reflects qualities of both in a new way. I build on explorations of narrative that have underpinned several other pieces of my work; 'Mars Exploration' is set against a context of literature on audience experience/reception, on narrative and on ASMR response.
Covid-19 restrictions radically shaped the development of 'Mars Exploration'. I worked with two actors over Zoom; they simultaneously ran their own recording software so that they could act with each other, listening and responding, while recording their own contributions to the material. The actors and I all recorded various pieces of video footage and sound effects; I edited all the recordings into a rough cut, and the final cut was made after further discussion.
The completed work premiered on 25 September 2020 and is publicly available on the RCS YouTube account. The piece confirmed a hypothesis implicit in making it: that it is possible to achieve an audience experience which is at least the equal of live theatre by recognizing that audience experience involves effort. Here the effort becomes assembly, decoding and inference. While my aim was to examine theory and practice for makers, informal conversations suggest that for audiences the completed work is a unique experience with some common narrative elements.
Although experience of the work is a valid form of dissemination in its own right, I have included a textual commentary and recording of an artist discussion in this submission for context. A chapter offering a further exposition of the research methods and findings has been accepted for the Routledge volume 'Performance in the Pandemic'.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -