Overview of the workshop at NSCAD, March 3, 2007

This workshop took a different approach from the one carried out at UCLAN in February. Instead of looking at a document of live work from each participant, this workshop hosted at NSCAD, focused on the creation of a live event that was documented in nine different ways. Even though this second workshop has a different approach and premise, participants from UCLAN are encouraged to post comments and respond to this workshop as well.

The goal of the NSCAD workshop was to experience and generate DURATION through a parasitic relation between our bodies (abstract, biological, molecular and otherwise) and environmental elements of a selected site. The intent was to discover, embody and generate artistic strategies to prolong the sensation of duration experienced in live events through its documentation. Working within the parameters of a one hour time frame, each participant selected one element and one medium (noted below) to experience, research and document movements of duration.

Elemental focus:
vision, sound, taste/digestion, temperature/touch, smell, scale/volume/dimension/distance, movement, word/text/language, force/acceleration/amplification

Mediums:
video, audio, paper/pen, manmade readymades, environmental elements, spoken word/breath, body/skin, time/duration, space

After the one hour event, we discussed how each document created in the event worked to both capture and extend duration. A rhizomatic panorama of the event emerged. The nine encounters with the live event produced detailed empirical and phenomenological data on movement of duration within the one hour time frame. (The postings on the blog will reflect aspects of this activity, as will the manual and an exhibition. See below for more details).

Next, we focused the problem of how to archive the documents so that the sensorial and durational movements of the live event continued migrate. Focus groups of two broke off to strategize ways to tackle the problem. In the late afternoon, we all regrouped and discussed preliminary designs for encountering the documents in the future. These designs will be posted on the blog no later than March 22, 2007.

- Chris discussed using the form of the text score to re-activate his performance actions.
- Tom presented ideas on working with sound clips to amplify the dimension and volume of the event.
- Rajee spoke about methods of marking and chaffing her arm with ice as an extension of the movements she generated in the event.
- Ruby discussed ways to utilize memories of the phone calls she made during the event every 15 minutes, by asking the person she called to draw his recollections of the conversation.
- Melanie presented an animated sequence of still images of folding waves taken while she meditated for the hour.
- Suzanne, like Chris, chose not to render traces and documents of her actions during the event. She revisited the site after the event to photograph elements that referenced the durational qualities she experienced.
- I presented a small segmented of video and audio that I thought best reflected the durational aspect of the event as I experienced it. I spoke about isolating the audio from the video so that the encounter with the document considers durational aspects through the amplification of proximity and distance.
- Josh presented his collection of NOW magazines (NSCAD school bulletin) that had each been “stamped” with different environmental elements found on site and linked with a series of questions generated from each encounter.
- Cam presented a variety of objects and stories she collected from people passing by the site.

Josh and Cam also proposed a plan on how to archive all the documents so that viewers could encounter the durational and sensorial aspects of the live event. These are some of the ideas that were collaborative generated from the discussion:
- Create a “walking” archive where viewers wear a coat that has pockets full of documents that can be touched and/or listened to. Viewers can take and add collected objects placed on tables or other means of display.
- Placing miniature speakers in a coat of ice/snow so that viewers can listen and feel the sound from the event.
- Tagging each sub-archive of documents with an audio component picked up by wireless headsets. (GPS tracking or simple a shuffle ipod with ears phones for random audio associations).
- Marking bodies with ice
- Miniature video projections with amplified sound sculpture
- Take away manual on how to archive live art documents

These ideas now form the premises for an installation of an archive collection of the documents. The schematic for how to install and archive this archive will be drafted by Tagny, Josh and Cam by late March and circulated to the group.

Finally, after a super productive day of research and creation, the group decided to collectively call itself “parasite”. (see Cam’s posting of the etymological premise of this word).