After finally deciding on improvisation and developing a structure for my piece after a very stressful weekend, I was keen to practice the improvisation with test audiences to see what themes came up and what could be improved upon. I had two helpers pilot the drone for me as Andrew was away. Having different pilots also developed new ideas, as I thought it would be best to practice mostly with Andrew, as he will be the pilot on the performance day, but ultimately it is not the pilot I am trying to develop a relationship with, its the drone. Each pilot will fly the drone differently, but practising with various people will help me become more accustomed to the unpredictability of the drone, rather than becoming comfortable with Andrew's piloting skills and being able to anticipate where the drone will go next.
I showed my test audience a roughly outline of my piece, describing the three sections I had in mind and asked for their opinions. With regards to improvising with the drone, they recommended to set myself tasks, such as limiting myself to the floor, or restricting the space in which I can travel, emphasising the different limitations between human and drone. Because the white floor is there for practical reasons, they suggested I play on that and use it for artistic reasons, for instance, perhaps the drone can leave the white space but I can't. However, they also said that the interaction is a lot more interesting when the drone and I are in close proximity to one another, as when we are separated, the audience have to decide who to watch, so perhaps the white floor is there to try and keep us both contained.
A key element my audience helped me realise, was that I was focusing too much on the drone and that I'm almost forgetting that I am able to make my own decisions, I also have autonomy. I thought by bringing advanced technology on to the stage would make the audience want to watch the drone more than myself, whereas in fact it doesn't always matter what the drone is doing. The following quotes detail some of the key feedback I was given on my improvisation:
"Its like you're desperate for the drone to notice you because you're so focused on it, therefore all I'm picking up is the desperation. Its nice to see you doing you're own thing, for instance; you're in the space, the drone is in the space, and you work together. Its not you completely following the drone. Its a two way relationship."
"I want to see how the drone is affecting your body, less of how much its affecting your use of space. Then we are really seeing the relationship as its causing us as audience members to react and tense up when its so close to you and it might hit you. In contact work, for instance, if your dancing with a partner, you sometimes never know whats going to happen, so you're reacting to it, like call and response but way more."
"You feel like the drone is a person, its got a presence, especially when its so close to you and it affects your movement. Like what is the drone thinking, is it trying to be intimidating? Is it trying to hit you or is it trying to move with you? As audience members, we do try to work out what the relationship is, what is the drone trying to do, which is crazy because we are also the ones controlling it"
"You're more important, you don't need to be as submissive to the drone as you currently are being. I enjoy watching you and then the drone appears"
This feedback all proved valuable and my research questions are again becoming clearer, particularly about how a current contemporary audience might react to robotic art. Its interesting how they see the drone even though they know that they themselves are piloting it, they see the drone as a person despite the fact they have control over it. When it came to showing them the section of me influencing the drone to move using its sensors, they had this to say:
"There's so much to read into it. And when its not just your hands manipulating it, it shows so much more of the relationship, it shows that its really responding to you. Its like I can hear a conversation between the two of you when watching it, like you are bickering. There's a dialogue there."
"Sometimes its like a child, it responds how it wants but then when you grab hold of it, its like its being told off."
This is again very valuable to my research, as my test audience were able to almost read the drone as a human, they are attributing human qualities or human emotion to it. The theme of anthropomorphism in the work begins to make itself apparent. I look forward to performing the piece now and finding out through post-show questionnaires how my actual audience see and interpret the work. I'm starting to feel really positive about the research now, and I'm still continuing the learn new things every day, its like I'm only scratching the surface of the potential of human art and robotic art, I know there is a whole range of possibilities I have yet to discover and I'm quite keen to do so and carry this on in the future.
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