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a
day in the life of the lab:
HAMILTON
DOWNS YOUTH CAMP - FACILITIES
Our facilities are the old homestead which is located 75km by road
north-west of Alice Springs, off the Tanami Highway at Kunoth Well.
There is bunk style accommodation, good kitchens, showers and toilets.
Electricity supply is solar and by small diesel generator; water
is from a bore. The cost of accommodation + food is $30 per person
per day.
images
DAILY
FLOW OF THE LAB
This following notes are designed to sketch up a sense of the general
flow of a typical day in the Laboratory so as to generate an understanding
of the physical realities and the kind of situations that arose
and which generated interactive interest.
MEALS
& CREWS
We had an estmated average of 45 people present on site. The caterer
(Sandra Rotheraine) and kitchen crew (4 in all) provided regular
meals three times a day. This gave a certain consistency to the
daily life of the lab but also provided a frame for exchange and
interaction that could be recorded. Breakfast was self-service from
6.00am till 9am. Lunch was from 12 or 1pm and dinner around 6.30
- 7pm. Dependent on the nature of the gathering and the groupings
present, alcohol was sometimes available in the evenings. Riverbed
campfires and informal gatherings were interspersed with guest speaker
talks and discussions generated by the theorists. Besides the technical
crew associated with the website and the documentation, there was
an adminstrator responsible for the liason of the lab (Angelika
Fremd) and the hosting of the Territory artists and speakers (Christine
Lennard).
meet the bodyweather crew
The caterers would like to thank :
Macro Wholefoods - Sydney (+612) 93897611
Spiral Food - Melbourne and Sydney
Coles - Alice Springs
BODY
WEATHER WORKSHOP
The workshop (average 45 persons) generally maintained a consistent
time structure that was mostly repeated every day to enable participants
to enter a regular flow of process ang gauge change. The morning
Muscle Bone (MB) workout which is quite strenuous started at 8am
for the first week but then was brougt forward to 7.30am due to
the intense morning heat. MB sessions lasted 2 hours. It was followed
by manipulations which took up to two hours. Lunch at midday was
followed by a long break having the function of a siesta and would
relieve the participants from undue exposure to the midday sun.
This was generally a period of individual time. Afternoon sessions
were investigative, sensitivity work and sometimes involved treks
through the surrounding landscape. The afternoon workshop also involved
participants working in shifting combinations of groups or alternatively
individually in relation to the landscape although the main emphasis
was on experiencing a common group body. Within the Body Weather
process is a constant verbalisation of sensory perception - we intended
to record this on audio tape for edited upload as part of the lab.
Participants were encouraged to maintain a log of their daily experiences,
excerpts of which were uploaded daily to the lab page parallel to
their own direct unedited contributions which would be a part of
the web forum pages.The Body Weather workshop was open for general
participation for any Laboratory people from other components -
NT artists, writers, theorists etc -who wished to participate on
the same basis as the workshopees.
see what happened in the bodyweather
workshop
NT
CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS
We anticipated a constant shift in dynamics according to how individual
and groups of artists (estimated total of 20-30 persons) participated
and contributed to the Laboratory. Each artist could define the
length of time they wished to be on site at Hamilton Downs as well
as the type of work and interaction they wished. Some stayed the
entire duration of the three weeks, others were only on site for
one day. Some involved extensive use of physical materials, others
not. The process of each person and grouping differed and the extent
to which anyone wished to have their work documented or included
in the website was negotiated individually.
meet the artists
THEORISTS,
WRITERS & GUEST SPEAKERS
The theorists and writers were 4,( Ian Maxwell & Gay MaCauley
- CPS, USyd, Martin Harrison - UTS, Realtime writer, Playworks and
Peter Snow - Monash University) were the main contributors on site
for varying lengths during the lab. Their individual process of
observation varied as did the nature and level of their direct interaction
with artists, workshop participants and documenters.The Territory
guest speakers were in the main invited to speak in the evenings
over or after dinner.
meet the guest speakers
DOCUMENTERS
The initial days were used to gather material that portrayed the
site, the operation of the Territory artists, the theorists and
the basic structure and framing of the Body Weather workshop. Once
this was established and to avoid repetition of material, the focus
was more in depth and continually charted both the details and the
generalities of the various processes at work alongside modulations
in individual and group investigations so as to bring about a sense
of overall overview . Verbal interchange both between different
contributing groupings and within the workshop were recorded both
in audio, video and written form.
THE
SITE, ENVIRONMENT & CLIMATIC CHANGES.
Another element we consider important in the build-up of the Laboratory
and website was a constant mapping of the space and the changes
that are occurred at the site - day and night. This related into
the monitoring and detection of weather in its broadest sense, into
navigation and the registering of space that concerned both the
workshop, the theorists and some artists.
climate
images
of the site and the surrounding area
Triple Alice -
SPACE Û PERFORMANCE Û MEDIA
Triple Alice engages
with the nature of artistic practice for the new millennium. It
takes the Central Desert as fundamental to its mapping of the future
of artistic, cultural and media practice. Held over three consecutive
years, Triple Alice convenes a forum and three live, site- and temporally-specific
laboratories staged over three weeks each year. The forum and laboratories
are accessible through an interactive website which is formative
of and integral to the event.
triple alice 1999
- 1st ripple:
NT
Artists; NT guest speakers; BodyWeatherWorkshop + Performance Unit;
Theorists/Writers
This first laboratory
20 September until 10 October focussed on contemporary arts practices
of the Central Desert and brought together indigenous and non-indigenous
artists from the Northern Territory and local guest speakers to
contextualise the site. The interstate and international Body Weather
workshop participants were joined by a Dance-Performance Unit under
the direction of Tess de Quincey. Theorists and writers maintained
an onsite flow of changing input and theoretical debate. The interactive
website transmitted the laboratory and invited remote participation
- a cross-cultural interdisciplinary meeting of theory and practice.
triple alice - 2nd
ripple (currently projected for 2001):
Interstate Collaborative Artists; Performance for Web & Screen -
Live Interstate Linkup; Theoretical Forum.
This second lab will build on the experience and language developed
in the first lab. It opens out to interstate artistic collaborations
and invites a wider range of response, particularly from New Media
artists, both through physical attendance at the lab as well as
remote interactive networking with it. Participation from remote
sites will include live interstate linkups with art venues in the
major cities. The major emphasis will be on performance and art
works specifically designed for electronic media.
triple alice - 3rd
ripple (projected for 2003):
On-Line International Laboratory, Seminar
& Festival.
This lab will correlate the codifications of space and time in the
different traditions of performance and artworks with that of other
disciplines, including astrophysics, philosophy, astronomy, military
research, navigation, etc. In parallel with this exchange, live
and on-line performance and artworks will synthesise the results
of the first two labs.
The Triple Alice
Website - www.triplealice.net
-
aims to capture, relay and interact with the components of the live
3-week stages over each year and host the continuing Forum.
The website is a digestive and interlocking function during and
between the live laboratories - maintains a flow of changing input
and theoretical debate on the website. Building accumulatively over
the three years, 1999-2001, it relays to an audience and to an artistic
involvement in an interactive circuitry through electronic media.
Developing a network of nationwide and global exchange, it questions
the relevance and shape of performance and the shape of artistic
practice in the next century.
The Triple Alice Laboratories
are cross-cultural multi-disciplinary laboratories of research and
development in and around Alice Springs. In their site-specific
relation to the environment, they provoke an involvement and relation
to sensory experience and perception alongside a correspondence
within virtual space. The short and intensive Laboratory periods
staged each year, allow physical work to be developed in real time
and space; the first stage in 1999 anchored a relationship into
the Territory and its artists, the following plan to open out to
an exchange with interstate artists and then to international collaboration.
As a meeting of theory and practice, this series of laboratory-workshops
brings together multi-disciplinary practice alongside informative
seminars/meetings/conferences emphasising dialogue both in hard
space as well as in a new-media environment. The exchange between
different artforms and focus on the contemporary practice of the
Central Desert opens an arena to examine the performative elements
of different disciplines - both in terms of their physical and mental
boundaries as well as the performative parameters of virtual and
non-virtual space.
A commitment to the
Alice -
-to the centre of the continent and to the Central Desert, springs
from the belief that the place represents a burning point - geographically,
culturally and politically - highlighting issues of contemporary
importance which have an immense bearing on the parameters of artistic
and cultural practice. Inherent within the concept of investigating
the space of perception within the outback is an inevitable and
extensive historical relation to the establishment and function
of electronic media in the Central Desert - bush telegraph, radio,
television, satellite relay and the Internet. These media are integral
components within the contemporary environment.
While Triple Alice invites
audiences to focus into the centre of the continent through a website,
the Laboratory work is anchored in the physical space and reality
of the Central Desert - the information embedded in prehistory,
Indigenous history, post-colonial history and the perspective of
global futures which forms the contemporary reality - the parameters
of perception - the virtual space of The Alice.
Triple
Alice is initiated by Tess de Quincey and is a partnership between
BodyWeather,
Desart, Centre for Performance
Studies (University of Sydney) and The
Performance Space.
contact:
triplealice@usyd.edu.au
for further info
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