Had a nice little chat with Jim Mora for his "best song ever written" yesterday, about the festival and Wake Less. MP3 link is here

Thanks Dad for the idea!
Ralph

Through my four years at university I became vaguely frustrated by how seldom it was acknowledged that we are, after all, bunch a apes. Artistic creativity seems to hover off the ground, encased in its theoretical fluff-speech; as a pretty staunch materialist I’m interested in ways to anchor it to the real world. I had a strong suspicion that belief in art and science are compatible in the way that belief in religion and science probably aren't (though other bingees would disagree). I suspected that art has something to do with hot-wiring our ape brains and hijacking our lazy perceptive rules of thumb to create new experiences- messing with the wiring which has been created through evolution...

So I loved this lecture by Brian Boyd. Broadcast in 2008 in Nelson by Radio NZ National, it takes a nailgun and staples art's feet firmly to the ground. He says art is an adaption (not a hijacker), and the whole speech is fascinating.

The storytelling ape

Art constitutes another Darwin machine, an evolutionary subsystem effectively designed, in this case, for creativity.

Art shows evidence of good design to generate and accumulate successful novelty. Darwin machines depend on the blind generation of variation. Randomness, nature’s way of exploring new possibilities, seems an intrinsic part of brain function. But without selective retention, randomness alone could not generate generate creativity that exists in en force. As in dreams, a cascade of new ideas could take and lose shape almost without trace.

A testing as well as a generating mechanism operates within art makers’ minds. The low cost of testing increases our opportunity to refine what we do, through online feedback. Because art involves external forms, the testing mechanism operates also in the mindset of other humans, in terms of their interest. Attention provides the selective mechanism of art. If a work of art fails to earn attention it sinks. If it succeeds it can sail on even for millennia.

Crucially, we need to imitate in order to innovate. Starting from scratch wastes too much accumulated effort. Far better to recombine existing design successes. Established artistic forms reduce invention costs by posing well defined problems and offering partial solutions.

And in a system designed to secure attention, the pressure to avoid habituation, the dampening of response to prolonged or repeated stimulus, encourages innovation. [Because of this], art faces consistent pressure for novelty.

Ralph

I’d rather be the moon than the sun

The little, mystical, vicarious one

You’ll think of the night

Of wolves and of tides

It may be a lie

But it makes a good show

A trapeze act

A fine line

In the blink of the eye

Water to wine

Just a trick of the light

My moment to shine

But never the star

Of the sky.



Copyright Claire O’Loughlin

Found this article and enjoyed these comments left below:

"Could someone explain what the deeper thoughts they have are when looking at a dead stuffed dog with a sign saying I'm dead.

What is the profound statement?"

...

""If all we wanted from an artist was that they could draw, then art would simply be a skill"
Another apology for Mediocrity."

...

"David Shrigley cannot draw
Bob Dylan cannot sing
Clint Eastwood cannot act
Kylie Minogue cannot write songs
The cast of Life of Brian cannot act
Eddie the Eagle cannot fly
JK Rowling cannot write
Eminen cannot rhyme
Teletubies cannot speak

I cannot comment"


More David Shrigley here

More from Tim Etchells.

"If there were a tangible contract between the performers and the audience, what in your opinion is the most important thing this contract would include?

For me the most important thing as an audience member is an openness to being there - to watching and experiencing what is actually happening. That sounds very simple, but I think for most of us, myself included, that’s hard, because you come with other things on your mind, with expectations and preoccupations and it’s very easy to get confused between what you’re looking at and what you wish you were seeing. I suppose that in some way every performance strives to create that quite fundamental contact, that contract, which is to say: We are here, you are there, and this is the moment we are engaged in together.
...
This focus on engagement-  on presentness - is a struggle against the idea of the audience as a passive consumer of spectacle, against performance in which those watching are not implicated, not truly present. I know, this is a cruel way to think about an audience; a hungry animal that needs something to happen, bloodthirsty, eager for quick pleasures."

-Tim Etchells (Full interview here)

Reminded me of this post and of some of the stuff we're learning and thinking about in Wake Less.

This autumn event is a celebration of pumpkin growing on an impressive scale. The man behind it is Ralph Upton, an amiable retired market gardener who can lay claim to the title King of the Pumpkin World.

Fate often provides a helping hand when it comes to career guidance. In Claire O’Loughlin’s case, communication would become a cornerstone of her life when she found herself effectively voiceless while on holiday in France when she was a teenager.

Simon Haren (1860 - 1908) Born in Malaga, Monroe, Ohio, USA on 1860 to Frederick Haren and Barbara Burkhard. Simon married Catherine Hamilton. He passed away on 9 Jan 1908.

Labor Candidate for Dickson Fiona McNamara today slammed comments made by Tony Abbott that better GP services “were unnecessary”.

Care home deaths: Rachel Baker, the drug-addicted manager: Rachel Baker professed to love the elderly residents at the care home which she ran and regarded them as part of the family.

Nobody else has ever been named Joel Baxendale.

Here is a graph of WAKE LESS, as of three weeks ago. It may or may not contain spoilers.

Back in Berlin. After 5 days I realised that none of the "theatre" I'd participated in as a spectator had any actors in it (nor was it in a theatre). I had to make it happen myself.  

-Fiona

Doing pre-show for Wearable Arts, crowd work, silly stuff. Having fun. Inevitably, behind me, between sips of sparkly pinot gris, nice and loud so I can hear; "I wonder how much he's being paid". A reminder that these are the same people who's latte cups I washed this afternoon in my hospo job.  A reminder that this is, after all, a service industry...

Not many people will know, or remember, that Binge Culture's first performance out of uni, and second performance ever was at Canaan Downs New Years Festival. Now as we contemplate the possiblity of performing at Splore 2012, I just stumbled across this article, which puts forward the argument for more theatre at this unorthodox kind of venue: http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/theatreblog/2011/jul/21/theatre-music-festival-latitude
-Joel