26/5/14

Last lesson up until this one was exam time. That's the reason for the significant date-gap between these last entries.

Today's question: Describe the surrealist techniques you used to explore a surrealist artwork [in my case Harlequin's Carnival]. What effect did other groups create that were successful?

So, today, we created a surrealist performance based on a surrealist artwork of our choice (given three or so to choose from). My group chose to do the artwork Harlequin's Carnival. We made use of a few techniques, but not many as we didn't completely understand what we were doing. Out main technique was that of lighting, changing the lighting from blue to red when the performance changed from benign to sinister. There was also some repetition of actions, but once again we really had no idea what we were doing.

Some of the other groups made some really good use of space, as well as far better lighting than what we had. The idea of the lighting was quite similar, although it was much better timed and executed. The use of space, however, was incredibly clever. Instead of sitting and observing in a group, the audience was instead divided into pairs and formed arches with their arms. The performance then took place around and through these audience-made arches, creating a very immersive feel.

Some other groups also made good use of pause, repetition and disjointed language, which were again things that none of my group did. Oh well, this is how you learn I guess.

And that's a rather short entry, but they're probably mostly going to be like this from here on in, now that I'm more focusing on answering the question rather than simply recounting everything we did (which isn't actually what we were meant to do - I guess that makes sense, better to reflect on something than to simply ramble on about just the events themselves).