PAF

Avatar vs Human – a short avatar scenario to play at home or elsewhere

avatar-vs-humanI’m happy to share this short scenario with you. It was written by me and Ebba Petrén at PAF last summer. You can play it with two people or in front of a smaller audience. The participants should not listen to the track on beforehand.

You need

• 2 voluntary participants.
• A pair of headphones with the Mp3-file.
• A table
• 2 chairs
• 2 windows that can be opened, it’s nice but not necessary if there is a view.

Take it off

To begin, one of the two players starts the mp3-track and put the headphones on. The other player start by observing the avatar. Both players starts standing up. When you put on the headphones you are the avatar, follow the instructions and take no other initiatives. When you don’t wear headphones you try to communicate with the avatar by responding to it as if you are having a chat with that person for the first time.

Description

The avatar asks something demanding, something the human finds hard and personal to answer. The avatar says “You will have the opporutnity to be an avatar. And I will become human. When I raise my hand you can take my headphones and become the avatar”. It raises the hand. The new avatar comes out, “the avatar of a human spirit”, and opens a window saluting the fresh air. Next avatar is “the avatar of the real” trying to jump out of the window. Human has to stop it. More avatars follow, with other agendas.

Some feedback

“It’s like having a child or a pet in your room when you’re trying to work. You have to take notice and care for it. And it will for sure use its voice to communicate!”

Background

We’ve presented this scenario at PAF Performing arts forum in St Erme, 2012, at the 14th Symposium of the International Brecht Society in Porto Alegre, 2013 and at Scenkonstbiennalen in Jönköping, 2013. We are looking forward to hear where it will be played next and how you experience it!

Documentation

Video from a session at a room in Master Express Grande Hotel, Porto Alegre, May 2013. On screen: Ester Claesson and John Hanse. Spoiler warning!

Working with avatars at PAF

Summer is slowly fading away and I haven’t written here since May, which is a shame because plenty of interesting things has been going on.

This week me and Ebba Petrén has had the fantastic opportunity to go to Performing Arts Forum. We have a generous grant from The Swedish Arts Grant Committee to be able to do research on the avatar formats. The last week we’ve been thinking about what we have done so far and explored new ideas on what is possible to do within the avatar frame – humans being directed by a voice, turning them into something else, hybrids between man and machine.

First of all I want to say that this place is amazing. I was here last year to attend the Agora Seminars and I have had the intention to come back ever since. Just have a look of the village S:t Erme as it emerge from my bedroom window tonight:

Here are a couple of the ideas that we’ve been working with, I’ll probably get back with more later …

Switching positions

The idea is to explore what happens when you change into an avatar and the intention to do so. In the most simple iteration one person (human) has a conversation with anouther one who wear headphones and reciev instructions (avatar). When the avatar stretch its hand up (following an instruction, of course) the human can chose to take its position. The avatar can never chose to be a human, but the human can chose to turn herself into an avatar.

We did a recording where the avatar is asking questions and then making interruptions. Encouraging the human to talk, but not really responding in a proper way.

We also tried out a “Round Robin” structure with 4 avatar tracks and a group of audience members, who could chose to take the headphones during certain circumstances. The curiosity on behalf of the audience was high and everyone wanted to become avatars at some point.

We have a lot more ideas on how avatar-human interaction could work out that we didn’t have the possibility to try out in practise yet. It could be an avatar hosting seance, initiating a game or introducing conversational topics in a social situation.

Here is the studio we’ve been working in with the simple set up for the 4-avatar switching test.

Phone call piece

Here is a new idea of a piece where the audience give their phone numbers to us when they enter the performance. We have a dramaturgy, a railroaded set of actions that the audience members execute/perform by getting phone call instructions, wishes, begs from the operators, a kind of call center. This would not really be avatarisation, there would freedom to say no to negotiate or say no to an instruction. The operators/game masters are seated in a call center, a room near by, above them or in the same room but behind a window.

“Excuse me, could you help us by…”
“There is a camera, can you make the documentation of this piece?”
“Can you take responsibility for …”

This way we could produce an aesthetizised social dynamic in the room.

PAF – an invisible academy

I wrote my last post from my room (above) in PAF – Performing Arts Forum, located in the village S:t Erme north east of Paris. It’s a self-organised space in an ex-monastry for people into performance and art.

I just finnished reading The Name of the Rose that is set in a monastry, which creates a kind of strange fictional backdrop for my mind – allthough I don’t think my stay here will turn into semiotic-philosophic murder-mystery. Anyways PAF is based on very simple principles:

  • Don’t leave traces
  • Make it possible for others
  • The do-er decides
  • (Think them interrelated)

I’ve only spent a night and a day here so far but it’s extremely inspiring. It is open the whole year and there are amazing spaces to do things. As far as I understand it’s financed a little bit like a hostel. You pay 14 euro per night for a bedroom and access to all the spaces. In the entrance there is a schedule where you can propose activities for the coming days.

Tomorrow the philosopher Nina Power, who wrote One Dimensional Woman, will start a seminar. (Introduction in Swedish at Popvänster)

The place also reminds me of the idea of an Invisble Academy, present in Grant Morrisons epic anarcho-occultist comic adventure The Invisibles, which I unforteantley couldn’t find any image of.