The Builders Association and dbox, SUPER VISION: DOUBLE CONSCIOUSNESS
SUPER VISION tells three stories
1. As he crosses successive borders, a solitary traveller gradually is forced to reveal all of his personal information, until his identity becomes transparent, with no part of his life left outside the boundaries of datasurveillance.
2. A young woman (Jen), addicted to the white noise of constant connection, maintains a long-distance relationship with her Grandmother. As she makes efforts to digitally archive her Grandmother's past, the Grandmother slips into senility.
3. A father covertly exploits his young son's personal data to meet the demands of the family's lifestyle. This ploy escalates beyond the father's control, until he is compelled to disappear. His wife and son are left with a starkly diminished data portrait, and his escape is shadowed by the long reach of the datasphere.
Nick Kaye: Do you feel a division between these things, or do they seem when you are doing it, very integrated together?
Moe Angelos: Last night, another thing happened. I don’t you were aware of it or not, but in my first speech I have this little microphone that hooks around my ear and comes down next to my mouth. I wear a wig and an earring, and they get all snagged up, so I wasn’t getting a direct hit on the microphone with my voice. Hal, one of the video guys - Dan Dobson must have told them on the headset, ‘tell Moe to put her microphone up’ - so Hal comes creeping over to me in my scene and I see him out of the corner of my eye going – like this – so I had to adjust my mic up. It was something that was very physical. The overall performance is so dependent on the technology. I have to be aware, first and foremost: Am I in the shot? Am I seen? Am I able to be seen? It is an odd double consciousness.
Nick Kaye: How does watching yourself in mediation affect your performance?
Tanya Selvaratnam: I am doubly aware because I am looking at myself to see how I look on camera - and I am also trying to be unconscious of myself. That for me is different from what I was doing with the Wooster Group – I was aware of other people doing – Kate Valk had to do that in House/Lights. She is looking at her screen to see how she is framed but also trying to act in the scene. I learnt a lot from watching her.
Nick Kaye: What specifically?
Tanya Selvaratnam: Just an ease – present - very grounded in the moment, very bare. Not worrying too much.
Nick Kaye: Do you think that focusing on yourself in that way in the performance heightens your sense of presence?
Tanya Selvaratnam: No, I think it actually diffuses my sense of presence, because I am not relating to the audience. I mean this show is surprisingly a more exhausting one for me to do. I switch gears so drastically between the prologue - where I am standing in front of hundreds of people talking directly to them without anything behind me - to not talking to any of them at all. Switching the energy like that is very exhausting for me.
see also: playing to camera | performer presence |
Left to right: Moe Angelos (the Grandmother) on forestage and live mediated onstage;
Tanya Selvaratnam (Jen) live mediated to window and onstage; Moe Angelos live
mediated to screen, centre.
Photo by dbox.
