Monday 30 March 2009

Rivington Place

Thanks to everyone who visited Rivington Place today and contributed lots of valuable ideas. I thought the Liminal exhibition provoked plenty of fascinating debate and helped to fuel a brief but exciting brainstorming session. Don't forget that we have arranged to meet every Tuesday at 3:45pm in Room 80C (the sixth form computer room) so that we can continue planing our summer events and gain our Arts Award accreditations.

Here is a summary of what we discussed in the afternoon session:

Tom really liked the theme of change and the use of role play in a radical alteration of the physical space of the current school building. What might it be like to transform the school into a country ruled by a despotic leader? Could we change the function of internal spaces, create our own currency and economic conditions, form a government, arrange political protests etc.?

Amber and Matthew definitely wanted to change the building, especially the corridors and other in-between spaces using sound. How could we explore the idea of absence and leaving a building behind? What does the building sound like? The school appears very geometric, doesn’t look very engaging from the outside but is interesting inside. How important is sound in learning? Could we create a Maze/Labyrinth type game using the whole site? A promenade performance or quest? What for? Moving between locations where performances/activities take place. Changing perceptions of the school building and what happens in it. Demonstrating the importance of new media technologies in learning. The element of surprise; the unexpected. Part of a consultative process with parents that could become an annual event. Need a place to gather at the end of the event – a meal and conversation.

Billy and Tom wanted to create a massive game of Quasar Laser to engage parents and students in learning together. Young people become experts. Could use Twitter to keep a record of a conversation about learning. Guide visitors around the school. Turn the school into an alien landscape using special effects, a series of strange occurrences and making the school unrecognisable through strange lighting. Perhaps we could change the story about school; create a different narrative about learning by challenging conventions and expectations about how learning is structured.

I am really looking forward to reading your reviews of the exhibition. This is your first task for the Arts Award. Perhaps you could add your thoughts as (very long and detailed) comments to this post?

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

It was a very enjoyable day, I felt that we made a lot of progress and generated some very good ideas. I loved visiting the touch sencitive floor as well as the fact that they used Twitter as a way of keeping a record of what has happened.

Amber Rowe said...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bonifaceplymouth/3411530028/

The link above is a picture and brief explaination of what Boniface school did to their photography studio.

Definately an idea I think to consider for 'food for thought'??

Jon said...

I agree. It would be cool to turn two or three of the classrooms on the languages and humanities corridors into camera obscura so that we could record both sides of the concourse. We would need decent light to do this effectively though. Maybe we could do it in the half term holiday and video the results. Then we could project the videos back onto the concourse or in the rooms where the cameras were?

Amber Rowe said...

Definately.
Or play it outside the classrooms on a screen or against a wall so you have expectations before you go in the room. But the wrong classroom videos so they've swapped positions like an extra two doors of the school that don't actually exist.
Back to the idea of the ghost of Tallis?

Jon said...

Yep. I liked what you said about psychological sound associations in another recent comment. I've always liked the idea of Psychogeography and Tallis is a good candidate for this kind of exploration.

matthew said...

liminal:A Question of position.

This a a art gallery with a twist insted of thingd on the wall that you can not touch there you had the freedom to go and explore.
When we first enterd the room where the gallery was it was very plain. Then you walk on to the piece of work called Frictions of Distance this is a floor that when you tred on it little bubbles come up showing where you have been. They have one in britian and one in Cambodia.This piece is linked up to the computer that you are able to type in things such as how you are, what you want ect. Than give it a few secs then that appers on the floor. In the next room as you might put it there was a screen and a proector and a table, sitting on this table was like a window flower pot with stones in it the pot was split into 4 smaller pots.then when you moved the stones around movies started in a caribeim way. Then you move them again and the movie would change and there were about 6-8 combonations. Now moving on to my favirote piece the wall ball and that was is the middle of the room and it was a massine rectangle split into 16 pieces and ach piece had a diffrent piece of a face on it and next to this piece there were some red and greeb balls, and like a kid would do we piked them up and started tothrough them at this wall and the small pics changed the aim f the game you may say was to complete the face and if you did the face would talk to you once we had done this we started to try and just make a very silly face.

Over all the day was very enjoyable an fun and gave you a new way at thinking about art.

ttgunner said...

i thought it was a very enjoyable,creative and eye opening expierience.I really gave me and others a lot of inspiration.Its main exibitions included a sensored floor which showed certain emotions or needs of inderviduals.IT was very interesting looking at the differences beetween each person and the likeness beetween cambodia and britain. There was also a exibit with a gigantic face made out of 16 squares each with a different persons section of face.Below this there was 5 balls which if thrown would change a section of face.When the face was complete it spoke to you but unfortunatly it was not shown that this would happen which is a downside. all in all a great day!!!

Me said...

The visit to Rivington place to see the Liminal exhibition was very enjoyable and gave us allot of inspiration and good ideas that we have been discussing/brainstorming in the last couple of meetings.

The thing I liked about Liminal exhibition is the discovery, what i mean by this is that there was no instructions which tell you what to do,
when i first see the wall ball no one new what do do until we see the 5 balls resting on the table than the first thing that came into my head was to throw the ball at the wall,
and thats what we all did (not going in to no more detail as people have already explained what it does)
The ball wall was my favorite exhibit and seems to be quite popular, it was very fun interactive

I like Ambers idea of turning one of the classes into a camera obscurer, we could do this in our summer half term.

I can't wait for the next meeting,