On Friday 9th March, Luke and I met up with Conan and told him about our project; “Making the Unseen of the Seen, Seen” The Lost Histories and Thoughts of Lincoln.
As part of the meeting, Conan gave us feedback and personal opinions on what he feels would work better for our piece.
Feedback ETC
The slight bumps in the road…
For starters he didn’t like the idea of the tree, he seems to think that there is no real need for it, and considering that we don’t have a busking licence for the location yet, (even though we have thought of a backup location since finding out this problem) he thinks that it would be better if we mounted all the “Leaves” on the walls of Studio X in the LPAC like an exhibition gallery.
We feel that, the tree is the symbol of the norm that is taken for granted, the life of Lincoln, made and placed infront of the audience in such a way that it can’t be missed, causing them to interested and to go up to the piece in genuine intrigue, not forced to walk into a building and stare at a load of pictures on a wall, that isn’t interesting at all, we want them to be hands on and involved with the piece, make them question and realize what they are missing to influence them to physically go out and search for the images in person – to see the real Lincoln.
At first Conan didn’t understand the importance of the paper mache element, but by this point we had already sourced ALL the materials for the project and paid through our own pockets. Sadly, we have no real budget because we have no outside funding, only a little money that we have set aside ourselves.
So instead, Conan advised that we think about making something smaller, something to do with Lincoln, what that is we won’t know until as he said, we interview people for the audio part of the project – the main element he liked, even though he would prefer three times more stories than we were thinking about for the project.
Also he wants us to focus our idea more on a smaller space than the entire of Lincoln, even though our main research so far has been mostly between the area around the Cathedral, down Steep Hill, through the High Street to around St Mary de Wigford by the Train Station, with also a few hidden places around Lincoln to such as the Arboretum and the Botanical gardens at The Lawn, a few minutes walk away from the Cathedral. Places you wouldn’t know about until someone took you there who knew about them. I guess we will have to think about thinning our margins.
Overcoming the Paper Mache Problem
Even though it seems that the tree idea is out of the window, Conan’s thought about it did influence me slightly after the meeting. I really do like the tree idea, personally, it feels like an important element to the foundations of the project, but if we can keep the tree, what is stopping us from incorporating Conan’s idea of the smaller models?
The unseen elements of Lincoln, maybe don’t just have to be the “Leaves” of images and audio clips, but maybe also elements of the tree.
I remembered going to Disney’s Animal Kingdom and being overwhelmed by the size and beauty of the “Tree of Life”, originally designed by Clive Kay.
http://www.brentjes.com/mats.htm
The tree is not your average tree, it is built up of carvings of animals from all over the animal kingdom, carvings very much like the ones in the Arboretum in the play area of the snake and the fish.
Maybe, we can merge Conan’s idea of the smaller models of Lincoln with the Animal Kingdom’s “Tree of Life”, maybe even a little Lincoln Imp sitting at the top of the tree? Who knows? This will require further thought.
The Upside to the Meeting
It wasn’t all negative in the meeting. Of course criticism helps, we have taken on board what Conan said, and we have taken it forward, tried to resolve/tweak our problems – tighten the screws as it were.
Also as part of the audio front Conan did offer us his new toy, an extremely good recording devise, which I will say now, we are eternally grateful for and we will guard with our lives!!! This will give the added professional finish to our performance.
Bibliography
Website
Jes, Brent (unknown) “Frames and Mats” Online: http://www.brentjes.com/mats.htm (accessed: 11th March 2012).
Kay, Clive (2001) “The Fine Art of Clive Kay” Online: http://www.clivekay-artist.com/Default.htm (accessed: 11th March 2012).