Category Archives: Ideas

Influence: Nerve Endings/ Brain and Emotion theory

by

 

 

I have had this design in my head after meeting up in April with my tutor and with Darren but I felt it needed improving before introducing it to you in my blog but something has convinced me to keep it.

This is my final set design:


 IMG_4072

It got me thinking how I could portray young adults and the problems we are facing which create a constant battle in our minds as well as the rest of the world. Using the alcove will hopefully make the work immersive with the limited space used and having the audience close up to the alcove will make it intimate. I designed the set to be a representation of a mind whereby the entanglement of string and rope represents the idea of being trapped and restricted in many ways such as job prospects, debt, trust etc. The use of scattered paper will represent the media, contracts (student loans), laws and government documents. The vertical rope on the outside symbolises bars which should make the audience think of  being restricted and confined and forced into having to struggle forever as an adult.

What sprung to mind when I drew this out was that the rope reminded me of the connection between the neurons and electros in the brain (the only thing I found interesting in science) for example:

neurons

This reminded me of my first initial design:

The idea

The connection of the rope reminds me of the picture above and this links perfectly into my idea of the brain. I have researched into how the brain works on developing and portraying emotion which will work in my piece well.

I just searched  Google for ‘brain nerve endings’ and this is what I came up with…

“Those are called emotions. The brain does not have sensory nerve endings, because it has to process the feelings in your body. Emotions are cognitive responses to sensory stimuli after they have been processed.”

(Qoura.com, 2016)

I knew from this that I was on the right track and took from it the sentences marked in bold. It has given me an idea on how to portray my own acting in the piece and the way to perform using body movement. I am considering using the works of Lecoq in my piece to show the connections of the emotions triggering in the brain as it stores it by physicalizing it in the use of lights and body movement.

I started to research a little further into ‘how emotions work in the brain?’ as this will help with the development of the style of movement, sound and lighting.

I found 2 websites that were useful to portray my non-narrative piece.

  1. howstuffworks.com
  2. sciencemuseum.org.uk

The first one I went to was the science museum to get a basic idea of the brain and all its glory.

This next section will be quotes and then short clear notes at end of the section, so as the creator I want to keep it simple in description to  help with the process of the piece.

 

Science museum

The Senses:

“You use your senses together information about the outside world.”

(Science Museum, 2016)

“All these sensations are changed in electrical signals and carried to your brain which them puts all the information together to produce the whole picture.”

(Science Museum, 2016)

 

 

What is consciousness?

“Consciousness has been described as ‘awareness of oneself embedded in the world.”

(Science Museum, 2016)

“Your self-reflective awareness defines you in the context of society, culture and history”

(Science Museum, 2016)

“Many neuroscientists think consciousness emerges from the activities of our tangled network of neurons”

(Science Museum, 2016)

 

Which are of your brain controls emotions?

“The neurons in your hippocampus play a role in emotions”

(Science Museum, 2016)

 

Science.howstuffworks.com

5 ways your brain influences your emotions

“A lot is going on inside your hand, and your brain and its complex processes are even manipulating your emotions”

(Uttley, 2016)

“Much is involved in interpreting emotional circumstances and crating your responses to them, and how you feel and how you respond to these feelings in ways you’re probably not even aware of.”

(Uttley, 2016)

“Part of the brains information- processing network includes neurons or cells that transmit signals throughout the brain.”

(Uttley, 2016)

 

What I learned from all this information  is that the emotions in the brain bundle up and form links with certain memories; this then becomes a continuation of when you experience a certain memory, the memory you experienced with it will be there when you use that emotion with a new experience in life.

Taking the idea that the bundle of memories causes the reaction emotions that are the “awareness of oneself embedded in the world” (Science Museum, 2016) will help with my attitude and style on how to present my performance.

Here is a video I also found useful as well:

(Sentis, 2012)

 

Work cited:

Science Museum (2016) Who am I? Your Brain. London: Science Museum. Available from:  http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/whoami/findoutmore/yourbrain  [accessed 7 May 2016].

Sentis (2012) Emotions and the Brain. Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNY0AAUtH3g  [accessed 7 May 2016].

Uttley, C (2016) 5 Ways Your Brain Influences Your Emotions. USA: How Stuff works. Available from:  http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/human-brain/5-ways-your-brain-influences-your-emotions.htm [accessed 7 May 2016].

Quora (2016|) Does the human brain have nerve endings and senses in it?  USA: Quora. Available from: https://www.quora.com/Does-the-human-brain-have-nerve-endings-and-senses-in-it [accessed 7 May 2016].

Non-Narrative piece

by

I decided the best way to do my performance is not to do it in a narrative way because the topic is not a box standard one; it’s potentially affecting many young adults who want to help make the world a better place but can’t because they are burdened with so much debt. I returned to the book Creating Solo Performance and found a section where it helps with the foundation of the piece. This is what it said, “If you are not doing a narrative piece, and it can be a useful task to set goals for yourself as a performer.”  (Bruno and Dixon, 2015, 97) So that’s what I’m going to do; by answering the questions given on the page, to set goals and set a promise of what I will approach within my piece:

What are you trying to do?

To explore the situation of what young adults are going through when saddled with debt as they embark on their financial future by making people aware of it and acting upon it.

Why?

Because this issue affects many young people who are trying to improve their lives but are thwarted because of a lack of trust, the possibility of a corrupt future and debt up to our ears. Although this is the problem, students and some people have been affected in one way or another however, it can be different for anyone.

So I am trying to let my performance be open to interpretation as I want it to be a piece which is relatable to every experience that the audience have had, find areas/ parts of the performance where they connect and feel a sense of release by watching it being performed and be made aware that every young adult feels the same.

How are you going to do this?

As a piece that is very visual with a simple acting and a non-linear narrative so it acts like a thought of the mind rather than a performance.

What do you hope to achieve by doing this?

By using a soundscape of news reports that impact on me and other students/ young adults and a set that is sufficiently artistic, I hope to fire the audience’s imagination so they can work with the piece and tap into their feelings, memories and thoughts on the matter to support it and highlight it.

 

Now I have set my goals and achievements I must be sure it is clear to the reader and easy to interpret for each individual in the audience.

 

 

Work cited:

Bruno, S. and Dixon, L. (2015) Creating Solo Performance. London: Routledge.

Playing in the Space

by

I had Bob Dylan, the the self-righteous voice of his generation playing in the background during the session to inspire some ‘beat the system’ vibes.

 

What did I have with me?

Rope: To show entrapment, restraints, ‘no strings attached’ and obstacles.

String: Tedious, hard to work with, represents the little niggles in life, the things you don’t look for and more obstacles.

Chair: used daily for rest, support, working, schooling, leisure

Table: to eat at, place items on, dinner time,

Scissors: represents a way to release oneself from the situations of today, rewriting the saying  ‘one step at a time’ to ‘one snip at a time’.

Paper: represents constant debt, bills and loans in the mail, media becoming overwhelming and getting everywhere.

 

What did I do with the space?

IMG_3870

 

IMG_3871

I just played around with the rope and let it go where it fell on the chair and it turned out to look like a spider’s web.

So I thought what a spider’s web means to me:

  1. Strong
  2. Attachment
  3. Resourceful
  4. Entrapment
  5. Silky
  6. Invisible
  7. Beautiful
  8. Entangling
  9. Stuck
  10. Versatile
  11. Delicate
  12. Sustainability

These words relate to the good and the bad of what a young adult can be and do if given the chance.

The piece shows there is a problem to be solved and when you accidentally walk into a spider’s web your instinctive response is to get the heck out of it! So that’s what I felt when performing in the space with the entangled rope and string around me. I felt very pressured to get out especially as initially I went a little crazy with the string whilst wrapping it around me and the chair; this caused me to panic and feel a little claustrophobic with the mess I had got myself into. This was in fact, a blessing in disguise as it became the development of the beginning of my piece. I remember the feeling of anxiety and being trapped when the news of the increased rate of student loans came out in 2010. By remembering this reaction, I had an intuitive response to help the audience and myself understand that feeling of anxiety by transforming it into a physical representation and, to make the message clear, I will produce a new report soundscape.

By the way,with the chairs and tables, my first thoughts were that it resembled a ‘mind palace’ ; this term is used in the popular BBC drama Sherlock starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman. The origins of the ‘mind palace’ came from Cicero who called it the “Method of Loci” (Sachs, 2016) this is “the journey method” (Sachs, 2016) through the memory by training it.

 

This method “was invented more than 2000 years ago” (Sachs, 2016) and was used by the Greeks as well as the Romans “to memorize and give speeches that could last for hours” (Sachs, 2016). It worked because the speaker “mentally placed the key points of their speech in locations along a familiar route through their city or palace” (Sachs, 2016) so they can visualise the particular place and remember the relationship to the point that they travelled to. They went through their mind palace as though it is a treasure hunt of sorts, “and in each location retrieved the item representing the next key point they wanted to talk about” (Sachs, 2016).

 

IMG_3884

 

My piece will represent a very messed up, disorganised and confused mind that needs a good tidy up so it can have a fresh start on everything that is happening. By applying the ‘Method of Loci’ my piece will have this sort of ‘treasure hunt’ idea by exploring the news and events that have changed the lives of young adults in the UK.

Work cited: Sachs, H. (2016) Memory Palaces and the Method of Loci. [online]  Germany: remebereverything.org. Available from: http://remembereverything.org/memory-palace-the-method-of-loci/ [Accessed on 15 April 2016].

 

An In-depth ‘so far’…

by

sign-lost-confused-large_trans++qVzuuqpFlyLIwiB6NTmJwfSVWeZ_vEN7c6bHu2jJnT8

 

I need to summarise the process I am leading myself and the show into, clearly and in an efficient way.

From the beginning of this project, I was very keen to make the word ‘Balance’ a key part to my show. A ‘Balance’ of life such as taking a look at self-help books taking abstracts from them and bring that to a performance but I felt this was not enough. So, I started searching in personal information and general information on what is wrong, right or in between in this bizarre and curious world. I looked for things that can be shown in a clear topic but made in an abstract and artisan way with a predicable acting monologue or performance; I wanted to create an art piece,

I looked at a broad range of artists such as Denis Calvert, Hannu Huhtano and Caitlind r.e. Brown and Wayne Garret (Page: Picture Stimulus). They all experimented with Light on life balance and the use of space with captured light. Some were artists who used the human body to show balance and how precise you must be such as Tabias Hutzler and hand balancing by Diamond Productions; some had a human connection using material objects such as stones, pebbles etc. like Michael Grab who has a lot of patience, confidence, precision and does it for the love of it. All these artists have stimulated me into using the concept of balance for my solo performance; this is not the literal form of  balance but applying the word to other concepts and taking little things from it and combining them such as the balance of art, physical theatre and lighting and not just sticking just to one in the show.

I have found a way to bring balance to myself as a performer and to a topic that can be a form of feelings and opinions about my life and my fellow students and I took inspiration from what our next stage is after our degree. This is obviously life and the pressures that we will face and leaving the warm, safe security blanket called education.  Having this security blanket taken away from us is all well and good although we have learnt some very good life lessons during our student years however, there are problems ahead of us as young tax paying independent UK citizens. The struggles for millennial adults in the real world is harder than ever now with a multitude of newspapers, news channels and even the government calling us the new ‘lost generation’.

Fitting quotes:

“Arising generation that finds college expensive, work hard to come by and buying a home an impossible dream.”

“Generation born into economic good times, only to be hurled into global economic meltdown in the first years of their careers.”

(Ball and Clark, 2015)

 

“While barriers were being lowered in some sections of society, young people in particular were having to cope with far more difficult circumstances.”

“Hiking up university and college fees and excluding young people from the higher minimum wage rate is not the way to build a fair and prosperous Britain.”

(Johnston, 2015)

“More and more people, most of them young are being locked out of opportunities and privileges many of us have taken for granted.”

(Dugan, 2015)

 

Looking at these quotes as a young adult makes me worried and stressed on how my future will pan out and how even more tough it will be to sustain myself the way that other generations have. Will it be impossible or will there be another gateway that can solve all these problems?

After researching the problems young people face, I noticed the importance of money in this economic climate is shown to be crucial than ever before. To get somewhere in this prestigious world, it is who you know more than what you know that makes the difference more than ever before.  For my generation, the economic depression is worrying and I want to make sure that I and other students are not disheartened by  it by bringing some help and certainty of living to the next generation. We have learnt from the previous generation and the next one will learn from our mistakes with the help of education, especially for me as this is the key to unlock another door into a sustainable world.  Mine is the lost generation as deemed by The Guardian which refers to Britain’s youth at risk of being ‘lost generation’,  by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) results in October 2015. The article says that “under 34 – suffered the biggest slide in income and employment and now faced higher barriers to achieving economic independence” (Johnston, 2015) This view is continued by the Independent which said that Young people are suffering their ‘worst economic prospects for several generations  and there is a “worrying age inequality gap” (Dungan, 2015) with the worst “worst economic prospects for several generations” (Dungan, 2015). In order to see some light at the end of a very gloomy tunnel and beat the system that the government has given us, it has never been more important for us to be educated, resilient and care about what our future will be so hopefully we can make it a brighter one.

There was an article in the Guardian entitled ‘Generation self: what do young people really care about?’ by James Ball and Tom Clark which used the words from Ipsos Mori on generation Y, “this generation is born into economic good times, only to be hurled into global economic meltdown in the first years of their careers.” (Ball and Clark, 2013)  This meltdown is the crisis that I and many students have feared so we struggle to carry on studying so we can make a stand and not let this economic downfall harm us by bettering ourselves; education and showing a strong will and stubbornness will help us carry on through tough times so our future’s bright.  The Guardian article by Ball and Clark also says “The generational shift in attitude towards benefits is perhaps the most frightening shift for advocates of the welfare state” (Ball and Clark, 2013) it continues by saying my generation is suffering because, “Ipsos-Mori’s social research units …, says it is easy for politicians to miss the point of the differences – or the battle – between Britain’s generations” (Ball and Clark, 2013).

Let’s look at the phrases/words that spoke to me:

  • Arising generation
  • College expensive
  • Work hard to come by
  • Impossible dream
  • Economic good times
  • Only to be hurled
  • Meltdown
  • Being lowered in some sections of society
  • Far more difficult circumstances
  • Excluding young people
  • Not the way
  • Young
  • Being locked
  • Opportunities and privileges

 

These words/phrases stand out for me and reflect the experiences that other students/young adults have felt through our independent lives so far. The word that comes to my mind when looking at the list is ‘constraint’.

 

 

I took this word constraint and played a bit of a word association game with myself to see how far I can go:

  • pressures
  • restraints
  • coercions
  • compulsions
  • oppressions
  • deterrent
  • discouragement
  • freedom
  • hindrance
  • liberty
  • aggression
  • allowance
  • permission
  • warning
  • containment
  • subjection

The list can go on…

The next thing I thought of was to associate these words with physical things and scenarios such as:

  • Chains
  • Locked room
  • Rope
  • A cage
  • Entanglement
  • Detention
  • Prison
  • Spiders web
  • Cave
  • Maze
  • A cell

Getting the idea of entrapment led me to find an artist who inspired me and led me to Despina Zacharopoulou and her piece, Corner Time.

As said in the blog all about this artist’s piece, “This performance explores the mental spaces that open up during control exchange in human relationships” (Mai-Hudson.org, 2016). Her precision and patience is quite symbolic for the feel and representation of my chosen topic of the unbalance a situation of economic justice of young adults.

References

Ball, J. and Clark, T. (2013) Generation self: what do young people really care about? [online] London: The Guardian. Available from:  http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/mar/11/generation-self-what-young-care-about [Accessed on 12 April 2016].

Dugan, E. (2015) Young people suffering their ‘worst economic prospects for several generations’. London: Independent. Available from:  http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/uk-inequality-young-people-suffering-their-worst-economic-prospects-for-several-generations-a6714226.html [Accessed on 12 April 2016].

Johnston, C. (2015) Britain’s youth at risk of being ‘lost generation,’ warns equality report. [online] London: The Guardian. Available from http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/oct/30/britains-youth-at-risk-of-being-lost-generation-warns-equality-report [Accessed on 12 April 2016].