MiP Syllabus: Spring 2015
Below is a previous syllabus from 2015.
This is not necessarily the final document for 2024!
COMM 666 /DRAM 666
MEDIA IN PERFORMANCE
SPRING 2015
Swain 110
Instructor Technical Director
Joseph Megel Will Bosley
Office: Swain 106 109 Swain
843-7067
megel@email.unc.edu wbosley@unc.edu
Office Hrs: Tues & Thurs Office Hrs: Tues- Thurs
11am– 1:30pm 1pm – 3pm
or by appointment or by appointment
Class Objective
In Media in Performance, students will acquire advanced skills and explore critical approaches that are necessary for creating advanced, professional multi-media works in concert with live performance. Working collaboratively, they will refine their understanding of the concepts and processes of multi-media theatre and build performance works that marry live and mediated elements in a fully integrated experience.
Course Description
This is a project-based course designed to bring together the methods and practices of live performance, theater design and digital media – time based, interactive, and spontaneous. Over the course of the semester students will become familiar with the evolving standards and practices of mediated multi-media theater through observation and analysis of the processes of an interdisciplinary array of master artists. Exposure to the art form will occur through interaction with artists invited into the classroom and viewing archival and live performances.
It is expected that students in this course will come from a variety of academic disciplines and have different performing arts and media experiences. Early in the semester students will form teams/ ensembles that complement and build on individual strengths while providing opportunities for exploring new areas of interest as each team collectively conceives, creates and stages original work. Areas of creative responsibility include director, performer, designer, writer and technologist. These roles may change, overlap or be shared, depending upon the project. There will be three projects, each of which will result in a performance.
While the ensemble will self-generate in terms of creative conceptualization, research and implementation of ideas, the overall project work will be paced by the instructors, with internal deadlines for “deliverables”. Responsibility for meeting deadlines will reside with individuals and the ensemble, depending on the assignment. It is imperative that deadlines be met, for the synergy of the group effort, the momentum of the process and a positive timely outcome. The course will conclude with a public presentation of the best works, as determined by the instructors, the class and visiting master artists.
Students will work with a variety of technologies, including, but not limited to: Playback Control and distribution systems (Isadora), Telephony, VOIP, Video Conferencing, HD Video, Digital Projection, LCD Displays, Digital Audio technologies (MaxMSP, Modul8, ProTools), Photoshop, NLE suites, Theatrical Lighting, and PA amplification systems.
Specifically, students in this course will learn:
- How to work at a high level in interdisciplinary teams toward a creative vision.
- The mechanics of trans-media performance, including the details, limitations and possibilities of various technologies as tools of advanced storytelling.
- Aesthetic and dramaturgical methodologies of research-based performances including the development of narrative (story and character).
- Innovative approaches to lighting, stage and sound design for trans-media performance.
- The co-equal importance of story and design.
Integration of all elements, from conceptualization to research to creation to performance, is the goal.
Readings
Dixon, Steve, Digital Performance. Cambridge. The MIT Press. (pdf)
*Salter, Chris. ENTANGLED: Tehcnlology and the Transformation of Performance. Cambridge, MIT Press, 2010.
Thompson, Lynn. Theatre Topics, “Teaching and Rehearsing Collaboration.” Vol. 13. 2003.
Broadhurst, Susan and Machon, Josephine, eds. Performance and Technology: Practices of Virtual Embodiment and Interactivity. Bagingstoke, UK. Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
Chang, Amos Ih Tioa, The Tao of Architecture. Princeton. Princeton University Press, 1956.
*Giesekam, Greg, Staging the Screen: The Use of Film and Video in Theatre. Basingstoke, UK. Palgrave Macmillan 2007.
*Brook, Peter, The Empty Space. New York. Penguin, 2008.
Quasha, George, Axial Stones.
Various articles and readings will be added throughout the semester.
Required Performances
Students will be required to attend outside performances, and write journal entries about your experience of the work and the efficacy of the integration of the media. (How well media serves storytelling)
LIST OF PERFORMANCES TO BE PROVIDED
Workshop, Projects & Individual Creative Assignments
There will be one workshop and three major projects, which will comprise the majority of your grade. Each project will be created in a collaborative group. Each student will be assigned a different collaborative working group for each project, and will also be assigned a major responsibility based upon their expertise and interest. Over the course of the semester each student will actively participate in the creation of all elements across disciplines. Each project will be developed over three week periods. Week four will be re-working of the project based upon critique. Individual creative assignments are research based and designed to reflect the student’s perception of existing examples of media in performance.
Workshop – A Discipline Based Approach to Mediated Performance
Each student will be assigned a discipline (writers, directors, performers, designers, technologists). Each student will work in their designated discipline groups (writers with writers, directors with directors, etc.) describing and illustrating an approach to creating mediated performance work based upon a provided text. The groups will work together and present their approach to the provided text, detailing staging and media design choices – from the point of view of their specific discipline. (i.e. Writers will work on an approach to adapting the text to the stage using media. Designers will work on approach on design integrating media elements. Etc.) By formulating this approach each discipline group will demonstrate and reflect on ways of creating meaningful media choices in live performance. The groups will present this approach to the entire class using web-based research to illustrate their choices.
Projects
Each of the three projects will be created in four-week cycles.
WEEK 1 – Exploration of/ for Text: Conceptualization, Research, Space and Body Work
WEEK 2 – Implementation of Ideas: Script, Designs, Performance Work
WEEK 3 – Class Presentation and Critique: Research, Design Communication, Performance
WEEK 4 – REDUX Presentation integrating critique
For each project, the collaborative group will be required to submit “deliverables” (for each discipline) such an initial script (writer) design sketches (designer), directing and performance concepts (directors & actors), storyboards for media (technologist), etc. These assignments will have firm deadlines. Assignments may vary according to the project.
Each project will receive open critique after the initial presentation. Process will be discussed in terms of collaboration, exploration and implementation of ideas, as well as final presentation. The content of the work will be critiqued on visual, aural, spatial, poetic and emotional elements, as well as intellectual concept.
Project 1 – Performing/adapting specific dramatic text:
Student groups will work with an assigned dramatic text and create a multi-media performance based solely upon that text. Students must use all the language of the text (or section of the text) that they adapt to the stage. The key to this project will be the full integration of media into the performance. Ideally the media component should be an integral part of a designed experience, rather than the sense that the media was “added” on. (5-10 minutes in duration)
Deliverables include: Writers: adapted script. Directors & Performers: statement of style and approach to creating this work focusing on the integration of live performance and media. Designers: preliminary design sketches, integration of mediated elements and statement of approach. Technologists: Storyboards and short statement of media design concepts.)
Project 2 – Devising a performance
Based upon an agreed idea, theme or concept (using research – news article, web pieces, interviews, primary research etc.) the group will devise a work, creating a fully scripted experience based upon multiple sources (at least three), and present it to class. (5-10 minutes in duration).
Deliverables include: Writers: draft script. Directors & Performers: overview of sources used for devising and an analysis of the style and approach to creating this work focusing on the integration of live performance and media. Designers: description of resources preliminary design sketches and statement of approach. Technologists: Storyboards and short statement of media design concepts.
Project 3 – Open Choice
Groups may create their own final mediated performance. (10-15 minutes in duration) Proposals for final project must be approved by Professors.
Deliverables will be determined by the instructors based upon the scope of the final project
Individual Creative Assignments
There won’t be many of these, but among the few will be:
Introductions: an opening exercise exploring the use of media in performance
Each student will be asked to bring in a piece of media they like or are drawn to and create a performance introducing themselves and integrating media into their performance. (no letter grade)
Web Research Project: Students will be asked to search the web for examples of mediated live performance, and choose at least one positive and one flawed example. Students will post links to these videos on Sakai (Forum folder entitled Web Research Project) and then write a response on each (a paragraph or two), describing how media is being used to enhance or detract from the story and performances. How is the media characterized in the performance? Students will show/use examples of these in your Workshop presentation.
Journals and Papers
Journals (kept in a spiral-bound sketchbook – notes may be typed, printed and inserted, if you wish)
Each student will be required to document his or her individual and collective creative process for each project in a journal that will be submitted at the end of each project. These journals are to help us understand your process outside of the classroom, while also asking you to become a conscious multimedia artist inside a collaborative production.
You can use the journal to argue for the approaches taken or not taken by your groups in the creation of the performance work. Journals are a good place to voice disagreements in the group. A place to talk about a choice made or not made, how you might have gone a different direction and how differing approaches were resolved with the group. Journaling can be a place of brainstorming and wrestling with ideas of conceptualization, design and performance. Journaling can cover anything surrounding the success and pitfalls of your class projects. How is the media affecting the space? Are your collaborators affecting your process? What are you struggling with? What surprises are you encountering? This is your chance to let the instructors understand your individual process, so let us know what you’re experiencing/ thinking. This journal should contain a minimum of twice weekly entries throughout each process and a response to each critique.
Journaling should also include reflections on and perceptions of any required outside performance attendance. It should also contain class notes, responses to readings, guest artists and the project work of other groups.
Three Project Based Papers (3 pages)
Using journal notes, each student will be required to write a short paper on the creation of each work, citing readings and research that informed their process. These are process/research papers that will be building blocks to a final paper.
Final Paper (10 pages)
Using the short papers as building blocks, along with the experience and insight gained over the course of the semester, each student will write a final paper that argues a coherent approach to the creation of live performance of media. The paper should cite individual collaborative experience (failures, successes, and ambitions), readings throughout class, research on projects and critique of other class performances and outside performances.
Grades
This is a project-based course. Most projects will last roughly four weeks, created in groups picked by the instructors and changing with each assignment. Students will be given a group and an individual grade. Prompt class attendance is mandatory. Lateness and absences will ABSOLUTLEY effect your grade. Each student may have two excused absences a semester. Each unexcused absence will drop your individual grade and may affect your team’s success. For this reason it is a good idea to encourage your teammates to attend class. Lateness will count as ½ an absence in this calculation. For the semester, grades will be based:
- 15% Attendance, Participation, Assignments, Workshops & Journals
- 15% Project 1 (including short paper)
- 15% Project 2 (including short paper)
- 25% Final Project 3 (including short paper)
- 15% Final Process Paper
- 15% on instructor/peer evaluations
The project final grade is based upon your progress as well as the final performance.
Communication
Most communication for and about this class will take place either via the course Sakai website or by email. Students are required to check their university e-mail and the course website(s) daily.
This course has a public website on which content from this course may be posted. Students will be cited on the public website only with their permission.
www.mediainperformance.web.unc.edu
Space Reservations
Please review these procedures for space reservations. Since we are using Swain Studio Six for our class, you will have special permission to have access to studio six. When making reservations you will need to contact Rob Hamilton as well as the UNC performance coordinator.
http://comm.unc.edu/resources/performance-space-reservations-2/
We will also be sharing space with productions throughout the semester, so working around the sets that will be in the space will be a necessary obstacle or opportunity.
Social Responsibility: Peer Evaluations and the Use of Your Work
One aspect of this course is that when an individual focuses on the group/society they live/work in, rather than on himself or herself, everybody can benefit. There are two explicit examples of this in MiP: First, you will be asked to evaluate your peers, both to assist in the course grading and to provide feedback to them as human beings. We will cover the details of this in class. Second, you will soon be asked to sign a document granting UNC, and your peers the right to show your work from MiP (with attribution) for academic and other purposes, including putting together demo reels, for example.
Where and How You Should Work in This Class
This course is likely to have students from art, english, drama, music, social sciences, computer science and other majors. These disciplines all have different standards for how they communicate, how they train their students, and how they evaluate the quality of work. It is EXTREMELY important that students in this course be tolerant of the different cultures that are represented. Based on experiences in the real world with these kinds of trans-disciplinary teams, one of our goals is “getting through the semester without a fistfight”. To help meet that goal, there are a few basic standards that all reasonable cultures have in common:
- Be Honest.
- Treat everyone with respect.
- Listen when it’s someone else’s turn to talk, and actively solicit input from each team member.
- Show up, on time, for any meetings you schedule.
Finally, we expect you to do all work for this course in Swain or the BeasleyMRC. There may be other campus resources that may be leveraged for your project. Details to follow. If you work by yourself, you will be missing the whole point of this course.
Roles within Media in Performance
The goal of Media in Performance is to take students with varying talents, backgrounds, and perspectives and put them together to do create integrated trandisciplinary performance work. The class is divided into assignments or “rounds”. At the beginning of each round you will be placed in a different team of five students, each with one of the following assigned roles:
- Writer
- Actor/Performer
- Video/Audio/Projection technologist
- Designer/Scenographer
- Director
Each student will be assigned a primary role. We assign roles to guarantee that every team has every skill needed to stage a successful experience. You are responsible for filling the role you are assigned in a team, but you are NOT constrained, in fact your are expected to participate in the creation of all the elements of the performance work. There will likely be a few cases where, due to “talent shortages,” some students will need to make perform secondary roles (like more than one performer). We will make every effort to make sure no one gets stuck in roles they are not well suited for, but students should expect to have to make occasional sacrifices, and step up to unexpected challenges. Although we hope to allow students the opportunity to perform each role they are qualified for, there is no guarantee that this will be the case. The instructors have final decision-making powers over teams and roles.