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| Proximal Distance. Photography by Simao Vaz. |
This will be the final blog post of my dissertation project. Reflecting on the performance of Proximal Distance and the findings within the post-performance questionnaires. I'm pleased to say that the performance went splendidly and it was received very well by my audience!
Arguably, I feel as though the dress rehearsal went better, but this was mostly because during the evening performance, two of the drones used for sections 1 and 2 had a slight fault with their propellors, meaning they were more difficult for Andrew to control. The performance became very tense as the drone swerved close to the cyclorama at the back of the stage and also close to the audience. It was a good thing that I restricted the seating so that no one was sat in the first three rows! The intensity of the performance I felt disrupted my movement, as I became increasingly worried about the drone's flight pattern, concerned it was suddenly going to crash or cut out. Thankfully it didn't but it was too close for comfort! The audience were also therefore extremely tense, as the drone and I were often extremely close, almost hitting each other, but somehow at the last minute narrowly avoiding one another.
It felt as though the drone and I were both nervous for our debut, as our movements together were drastically different then any previous rehearsals. But we held it together and somehow maintained calm amongst the intense atmosphere.
I've already received some of the questionnaires back from my audience and I've had some interesting answers. For instance, all of them so far have stated how they see the drone as a performer in this piece, rather than an artistic tool to aid performance. And with regards to the question on how would the audience feel is this work was to progress in the future, perhaps to the extent of eliminating the human reference entirely, many shared the view that having a human being present on stage makes it more relatable for the audience as they can understand and imagine in their own bodies how it feels, which they cannot with the drone. Others stated they would miss the human emotion which currently a drone can't replicate and one audience member found that particular thought as "unnerving" as without the human element there implies there is no human control. These answers provided great insight in to the audiences reaction and how I could progress with this research in the future. I think its obvious that current contemporary audiences are not ready for purely robotic art, without human input, we still require an element of control and human emotion.
Many audience members picked up on the organic relationship between myself and the drone and how we influence each other, which is exactly what I had hoped for. So overall, I feel as though the performance was a success, even if it didn't go as smoothly as the dress rehearsal. I now have to collect all my findings from the creative process and the questionnaires to conclude this particular research project in a presentation. Its a shame to say goodbye to this project, and bye to Andrew, who has helped so much in the making of the work and the discoveries of the research. But I am confident I will continue this work in the future, so perhaps it isn't goodbye after all.
