Episode 023 - Annette Mees (Audience Labs) on technology in cultural experiences, and hyper-reality opera

A conversation with Annette Mees, Annette is an award-winning artistic director, creative producer and cultural strategist.

Annette used to be Artistic Director of Coney (an award-winning company of adventure and play which put the audience at the centre of every experience), she ran Audience Labs at the Royal Opera House. She is currently Artistic Director of Audience Labs & Visiting Senior Research Fellow in Culture and Creative Industries at King's College London, and is also the Chair of the FutureEverything a year-round cultural programme, that brings people together to discover, share and experience new ideas for the future.

We discuss the use of technology in cultural experiences, we also discuss Current, Rising which is a hyper-reality opera that Annette made whilst at ROH (I discussed this project in Episode 018 with Eva Liparova, who was a producer on the project, listen to that conversation).

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:11

Hello, and welcome to the digital works podcast. The podcast about digital stuff in the cultural sector. In today's episode, episode number 23, we have an interview with Annette meze. Annette is an award-winning artistic director, creative producer, and cultural strategist. She is currently the artistic director of audience labs at King's college, London. She's also the chairperson of future everything. Um, and at abstract, we are working with Annette on a creative R and D project called venues of the future, which is looking at how we might rethink the structure and working practices of cultural institutions to better realize the opportunities presented by digital in mine and Annette's chat. We discuss using technology in creation of cultural experiences. Uh, the opportunities offered by digital, um, the types of traits seen in, uh, practitioners that most successfully and readily embrace digital working, and much more enjoy. So we'll just, we'll just, uh, jump in. I think so I, I high in it.

Speaker 2: 1:27

Hi Ash.

Speaker 1: 1:28

<laugh> and I would like to start, as I was just saying with your career, which we've spoken about a bit, um, and I'm keen for you to share this story with, with everyone listening to this, cuz I am always fascinated in the slightly windy paths that it seems that everyone has taken through their career. There are no straight lines and I feel like yours has been especially

Speaker 2: 1:52

Particularly windy, particularly

Speaker 1: 1:53

Windy. So what's the net me's story?

Speaker 2: 1:58

Um, well it's a particularly windy one. Uh, I'm originally from the Netherlands. Um, and I, uh, I grew up I'm I was born in 77, so I grew up in the I'm the MTV generation. So I loved music videos. Um, so for me that was what culture was MTV was it? So I studied video art and the Dutch, uh, Royal academy for the arts, which, um, I had no idea what video art was and I ended up never creating a music video in my life, but it just introduced me to this whole universe, which was completely new to me, of art, artistic thinking. We had, you know, classes to talk about the color blue, which just made me incredibly happy. Um, and so I was in living in Amsterdam at the time I was working in a jazz club. Um, there was an incredibly, uh, vocal and active hacking scene around, but also a very active club scene. Those things all came together. And I think for me, that sort of mixture of a Royal academy education with sort of the hacking scene, the music scene, jazz and clubbing coming together, I feel like that's where my aesthetic comes from and I just did lots of things. So I moved to the UK to London in the early two thousands because I don't know, everything just seemed impossible here AMAM was small, London was big. Um, I think what I was finding is that I was flourishing most in the, in between spaces, the spaces that maybe didn't quite exist yet or had an overlap between a and B and possibly C, um, because I think that's where new and innovation and all of those things that I get excited by that experimentation, um, tended to live. So, um, worked in film for a bit, uh, but really ended up in theater here really quickly. I'd done a little bit of theater in the Netherlands, uh, my new domains. Um, but here just did it fell in love with it, but also immediately wanted to destroy it. So after three or four, like new writing, uh, projects, I got really interested in, I, what does it mean to pull things off of stages? How do I, my very first show that I directed had, uh, a three dimensional, very, uh, cinematic, um, soundscape in it. So there was, you know, sound and action coming from behind very, you know, like cinema. Um, so I got to play around a lot. I then I got really interested in interactivity and a massiveness because as someone who came out of film, the audience being there was fantastic. And, you know, can this be more like a gig, like an experience, something exciting, something, you know, something you want to be in. And part of, um, I then got the opportunity to do like massive, uh, a massive installation for Shakespeare's globe with God knows how many actors in it. Thank you, Simon Elliott for taking a gamble at that point. Um, so at that point I had done a lot of just by the sheer size of those productions, like a lot of interactive actor directing. Um, so then I met my fellow, uh, my fellow Coney. Uh, so we set up a theater company called Coney. Uh, there were three, uh, people, Gary Campbell, tassel Stevens, and Tom bot tell who were already making things together. I came in for, uh, a small town anywhere. Um, and at that point, the, the company was set up. So the four of us did that together. Um, and yeah, I spent a decade making a massive interactive theater making experiences that were theatrical. Some were almost gay mask. We worked in, I, we had shows on, in the foyers of the national theater, uh, around TA Tate Britain, uh, in Glasgow night clubs in fields, in games, festivals in, in so many different places, you know, and once in a while in an old fashioned theater, but never with seats. Um, and if you make work like that, you need tech because literally you want to create, you want to create a universe that is incredibly fluid, that is responsive, but also is theatrical. So it, so you need to control the environment. You need to control the story. You need to have the, the ability to let the A's voice have an impact, but simultaneously also for that impact to be great. So very quickly you are starting to, you know, initially do little hacks with, um, uh, with sound and the sound system, uh, but quite quickly is sort of start hacking Q lab, which is how we operate sound light, uh, and video in, in, uh, theater. And, and that became really exciting. So I remember really early in my career, I did, um, a, an in a one-on-one installation where I used AI. And this is literally like, God knows, like 18 years ago about to sea art center, where you could make tiny things in Nicks and crannies where, um, an audience went in, we built this sort of installation in a completely black type room. You couldn't get away with this health and safety wise anymore. Um, uh, and there was an installation in there full of memories and pictures and objects really beautifully done. Um, but we completely blacked out. And as you went in, you got a box of seven matches and you could listen to a story for as long as you can keep the match burning. And basically these were just stories about what it means to be alive, uh, and to love, um, taking the seventh stages of man of Shakespeare's, uh, Shakespeare's famous UHS as a, uh, as a structure. And it was amazing. It was really beautiful. It was really moving. Do you know what it's the AI that really learned it down because we sort of really realized we, we created a really complicated solution to a very simple problem, which is basically turned things on and off when the light goes off. So for me, me, that was an early sort of learning experience about like when technology sometimes gets in the way, like sometimes we were being so clever unnecessarily. Um, so I think I've always been attracted to like tech that facilitates behavior that, that makes theater, that makes theater possible that, um, that makes things more magical, more theatrical, more meaningful, and that allows for the audience and the show and the actors to have a different relationship than, you know, old fashioned broadcast that is about interaction, about experience and about all of those things. Um, we were still in my career, so, yes, so, so I, uh, I was part of, yeah, I was basically artistic director of Coney for about a decade. Um, I then had a really beautiful opportunity to do a fellowship with wired magazine and the space, which allowed me to really look at the opposite. I'd been looking at for the last sort of 10, 15 years, which was how do you bring technology into theater to make better theater? I was really that year, I became really interested in how does one bring theatrical thinking to technology to make more exciting experience that may or may not be theater discuss. Um, so, and that was really such a beautiful opportunity. I did, uh, I worked with teenagers in over 65 to look at the future as a sort of project to, to really allow for that thinking in a sort of active way, which I always do. Let's make something to understand what is important. Um, and then very relatively soon after this couple of other side paths, but I was invited into do opera house to set up, to help set up audience labs, which was, uh, sort of a new department that looked at technology as a way of opening up art forms. So, um, the Royal opera house had just done a big capital in, uh, investment project, um, where they literally opened up the building, everything from windows to cafe, like you could really enter the building. And I wanted to change the nature of the building. The whole project was called open up, and they took that as a philosophical moment to think about other ways of opening up the art forms as well. This is, uh, about five years ago. So, um, at this point, immersive technologies were really getting to a level where they were good. They were beautiful, and you could start to see how they might be stages for art, for artistic experimentation, for new artistic experiences. So my job was to set up a department and set up partnerships and collaborations that explored how one makes good art, how one makes, what does a 21st century opera look like? I often liked, I liked the word Gaza KWA, which is, uh, this very German, uh, concept that comes out of opera often ascribed to Wagner, where GZA Kuk is sort of total artwork, which he described opera. As you know, it brings together poetry with music, with set design, with storytelling. So, you know, the question of what is a 21st century GZA<inaudible> definitely involves technology. So that's one of the questions. How, what does choreography look like if a body is no longer limited to biology, um, when does it become meaningless, uh, to watch a digital body moving through space, and when does it become meaningful? What did you lose? What do you lose? What do you gain and how do you play with that? Um, so that's what I did for three and a half years. And the last year I've sort of stepped out of making work for a bit, and really I'm working with, uh, different people on what the future might look like and, and really using this time to talk and generate sort of almost like a little conceptual push again about like, what are the investigations, what are the experiments we wanna do next? Um, so yes, that, that's where I'm at.

Speaker 1: 13:11

<laugh> thank you.

Speaker 3: 13:46

Wanna do next? Um, so yes, but that's where I'm

Speaker 1: 13:50

At.<laugh> thank you. And I think that really showcases where I wanted to chat with you really, because it, it feels like you have been playing in, in this space for perhaps<laugh> not to, not to age you, but maybe meaningfully actively proactively engaging with those questions of how can technology both in person technology and online technology sort of reshape and extend and enhance and augment experience. And it feels like those questions have been being asked by more people, especially over the last two years when suddenly this was really the only way that you could make cultural experiences. And I was interested by what you said about your, your piece you did at, with the matches at BAC. And actually in that example, the technology was overwrought perhaps, and maybe got in the way. And it feels like that's something that you still see quite often that maybe, you know, if the technology is the answer, what was the question sort of thing, rather than it being woven in to make the thing better? It's sort of like something that was either the starting point at the culture was sort of bolted onto or vice versa. How do you, as a, as a maker of cultural experiences, that's a very, very clumsy term, but how do you make choices about technology? How do you approach that question? You know, what will come to talk about current rising in a bit, but that had elements of VR in it. Was that the starting point, or was it, you know, you were making this piece in VR, was the right tool to reach for, um, equally with your, your BAC example, you know, was it that someone said we should use AI and then you built an experience around that or was, was there an idea? And then AI seemed like the right tool to reach, or I'm, I'm interested at what point technology enters the conversation?

Speaker 2: 15:59

I think I work from all directions. So interestingly, so I thought AI was like a junior solution for the BSAC and I was just very wrong. Um, where with current rising, uh, we'll talk about that a little bit later. Um, but that uses something that, uh, is sometimes called hyper reality. So that means, you know, physical sets and, um, uh, uh, social VR, social and free roaming VR. So you can, multiple people can see each other while roaming through a space where they see a virtual world, but also physically experience that world simultaneously, which gives a real sense of transp transportation totally started with the technology. That one, I was, uh, I was looking at that idea of GZA<inaudible> at that time. And, um, I went to a shopping mall where I went into a hyper reality experience in which I, So I went into a shopping mall in which I went into a hyper reality experience in which I was a star wars storm trooper in which I shot lots of other star wars, storm troopers. And at one point Aveda showed up, I'm still not sure we definitely saved the world. I'm still not sure how don't care was amazing. Um, and I think as soon as I did that, I was, I felt the technology felt very operatic. So in a weird way, I started trying to find more work that I used those technologies to understand how one might make a 21st century, cuz I'm Kunz back in that. And then I started gathering the right, uh, creative team is what we call it in, um, in theater, right? Creative team around it that got it, that got excited by it. We heard this extraordinary, um, set designer, uh, Joe Cher, who I worked with as an massive theater director, she's done a lot of a massive work. She also has done, uh, operating and stage work. She's won Olivia awards, uh, but she's also done, uh, things for television. And she did an opening ceremony for the pan rabbit games like stadium size with actual camels in it. And I sort of felt like Joe would understand that this thing is about scale, that you can have epic scale, that you can have movement in a way that that doesn't exist in, on, on stage. You can make things small and big in a relationship that the human body has to. The spaces that we create in this is super important. So, so, you know, NHA Jones, an amazing opera director who also had a background was a video designer already was pushing the boundaries. So we created an all female creative team. Initially we got our token male sand designer in there who was amazing. Um, but it was a team that gathered around the exploration of the meeting of an art form that they understand very well, theater opera, um, and find the collaboration, the overlap, the, the possibilities of this technology that felt inherently operatic gave. So that's a very sort of inspired by technology, but mostly it's sort of a back and forth mostly. Um, I, I'm a strong believer and much of my practice lies in creative R and D. I do a lot of I tests. Um, I try to always have different projects that look at similar things with different technologies going on so that you start to understand if you understand how a body like choreography and a body feels in mixed reality. You also have a sense of that for VR, it's slightly different, but, uh, there are overlaps. So it's, I think it's an experimentation failure has to be part of it. There's no way that you always pick the right thing back to the BAC example. Very complicated for no ex no reason whatsoever. Um, but also non-complicated, isn't better. Sometimes complicated is better. So I think, yeah, so for me, my practice is about having space for exploration, experimentation, where failure is part of it and then creating spaces in which we can push when, when we have found the right idea, meeting the right technology, that we can then really push the boundaries. There can really push it forward because we understand why those two things need to come together, what they have to offer each other. I think that for me is the question. I think, I think when you start with the technology, sometimes it goes wrong because it becomes such a demo. We we'll use all the functionalities. I think there's a really important question by which functionality do we not use because actually it's not true to the art form or true to the experience or true to the emotion that we're building. Um, but I also see it go wrong the other way, where arts have amazing ideas, and then they want to do that with a technology they don't don't fully understand. Um, and it just becomes a bit awful because the technology isn't right or not ready, or, and, and you get sort of you like with all theater production, there's an art and there's a craft. And the art is a great idea and the emotional resonance and, you know, the beauty and the aesthetic and the importance of the story and the craft is hybrid and on stage, a good idea does not a good play make, but just craft also does nothing. So it, it is about finding spaces where this stick can marry. I think because I've done it for so long. I have an eye for it now, but I, I too still need to, I'm continuously hunting for creative R and D spaces where I can explore push, um, find new resonances between performance music, art, theater, and technology, because that's how one learns how to be good and ward works.

Speaker 1: 22:09

Absolutely. And we, we spoke, um, about current rising there, which was the, um, opera and hyper reality that you made at the Royal opera house. I've actually, you know, we, a previous episode of this podcast, we spoke to ever lip over who was one of the producers on that, who, who really we'd really got into the, the detail of how that worked with remote creative teams and sort of more traditional cultural, creative team working with, you know, VFX people. So if you're interested in the, the nuts and bolts of that, then I'd encourage you to go and listen to that episode.

Speaker 2: 22:43

Yeah. It was a really special period to this is, it was a part of the piece was created during a pandemic. And it was a very, uh, special period to both be making, but also be able to make, um, which we could, because there was a technology factor to it. If it was all have been live, I think we, well, well, we saw in theater industry in the UK, it would've stopped. Um, but also it really allowed us experimental ways of working that otherwise we wouldn't have. And yeah, do listen to the episode

Speaker 1: 23:17

<laugh> and I'm in intrigued by what you were saying there by sort of describing this, you know, constant process of exploration and experimentation, and also the need for the, the creative teams to be maybe not expert in the technologies that are being used, but at least familiar with the potential and also the limitations. And I wonder if you have, and maybe there, isn't an easy answer to this, a perspective on, you know, if, and maybe so if I think you and I both agree that, um, hybrid forms of culture, I, there there's a sort of a very traditional in person as, towards ever thus, um, that will continue. Absolutely. But then there is this more technology enabled, enhanced strand that increasingly will be part of how cultural organizations program. And if you've got a, you know, this cohort of traditional culture makers, do you have a perspective on how they can evolve their practice to become more,<laugh> familiar with the potential of technology. And, you know, if, if things are moving in this direction, how do we develop the talent or, or is it a case of actually need to go out and engage with a whole new generation of, of theater makers? Because it does feel like there is this watershed moment paradigm shift to a degree that is happening and people need to understand this new tool set that exists. Um, yeah, I I'm intrigued by your perspective on that. I realize it's not an easy question.

Speaker 2: 25:19

No, but it's, it is. And it isn't because there is, it's not rocket science it's it's time and interest. Um, so, you know, in a weird way, when I started making a massive theater, there are amazing theater writers that cannot write for a massive, and there are amazing theater writers that cannot, there are amazing actors that are just great on stage, but cannot make the transition into immersive because it just, it's just, it shares muscles, but it also has different muscles that need to be flexed. So I think when I think people who really understand theater, uh, have an enormous amount to offer to technology, but they also need to want to offer. So, and I, I think vice versa, I think people who are incredibly creative in technology, or just incredible craft people in technology have a lot to offer to theater makers and that idea it, so, so it's about people are open and curious and people who, who want to collaborate, who are good to collaborate, who are open and flexible. I think when one is very good at once craft, there is for some people, and this is a great thing. They really keep honing that craft more and more and more and more and more, and they have a very distinct view about how once craft is done. I think there's another cohort that goes, I'm quite good at what I do. So what else can I do with that? And then those are the people that I look for. And then it's about, you know, I approach it like I would do in theater, where you build an ensemble where the scenic painters need to understand the piece, to understand which technique they might add with, but a lighting design and the sound design can't work in a vacuum they need, and they need to see a run where the actors are in and the actors need to understand what the lighting is doing so that they can place themselves in, in dramatically useful ways. So that idea of building an ensemble that collaborate and where everyone brings their strength through the table to, to create something that is holistic is really the same. When one brings sort of what is still now called an interdisciplinary team. I mean, in many ways, theaters made by interdisciplinary teams, lighting designers, and composers and, and actors and directors. Um, these are just new forms of creative teams. And for some people that's exciting. And for some people that is not so exciting. So I tend to work with the excited. Um, and then there is a period. So what I try to build in. So for example, with, um, current rising, the hyper reality opera, we, uh, at once we had the money. So we brought the technical team together with the opera team, all the expertise in one room. And we discussed what opera truly is, uh, and figment who are, uh, technology partners, curated a series of VR and hyper reality experience for the team. Some of whom had never worn a VR Google in their lives to look at and that period. So there's no right and wrong analysis. There is no one definition of opera that rules them all, or one thing that, uh, is definitely part. So our team decided that the human voice was really core to it. I'm sure you can put another team on it and I will decide something slightly different, but we listened to music. We talked about how opera is made. We talked about how VR and hyper reality is made. We found differences and resonance. Um, but I think most importantly, we started to develop a collective vocabulary, which is useful, uh, but also a collective taste. So I remember, uh, I won't name any names, but a very big American circus troop who made VR was brought to the table as an example of how, as of high quality work, where the theatrical team, the opera team totally recoiled from it, because it's very in your face. It's very, um, humans that aren't quite human coming quite near you. And they found that incredibly repulsive, where we went on a hyper reality dinosaur tour that Figma developed in house. And at one point you drive on a little train between two dinosaur perks. One would think that that is not the highlight of art, but actually everyone got super excited by it because the visceral feeling of travel while standing still felt so extraordinary to people, just an audience in movement while not in movement. And that dichotomy, that became part of the vocabulary that we really wanted. So we started building almost like a bucket of things we were interested in. So movement was one of them scale was one of them, the human voice. So, so we started creating taste as a group that was aiming to make something together. And I think that's really interesting and I'm not talking about good taste or bad taste. I am a very, I'm very in favor of high culture and low culture metering each other. I love bad taste and I love good taste. Um, it's about a creative team starting to bond over a series of elements around an aesthetic around ideas that there is their shared taste. And I think that as the start of creative process is always important and even more important if you're doing something new because you have to take on board new things and learn new things for me, that's where the joy and excitement lies. I think for again, I think for the people I choose to collaborate with, that's one of the things I cast them on other than being also extraordinary in what they do. It's also that like genuinely being excited, excited to learn something about opera or learn something about technology or learn, you know, our designer got really obsessed with what textures work and didn't work, um, you know, grass, but we had really beautiful concrete. Um, at one point I remember conversation between the Desi. So there's, um, in one of the rooms in Somnia room, there is almost an esque sense of scale and stairs that go yeah. Sort of a distorted space, very, very Asher actually, um, with a bit of Anthony Gormley thrown in. Um, but the, um, the stage designer was discussing with the technical team, how many stairs she could have, and they were, well, we don't really understand in essence, infinite as many pixels if you get, but obviously you can't see them at that point. And I think she's, so she was so used to sort of going, okay, so we can afford there's this amount of stage profile. We can afford this amount of words. So it's somewhere between 14 and 16. So I'm staking that as a starting point for design, it's really a useful way of thinking about designing, but obviously in digital, the space is infinite. The, That question becomes irrelevant and, and one needs to approach from the other way. And she did, and she made, I mean, it's one of my favorite spaces. Beautiful. Um, but that thought jump just had to be made and it can only be made by working as an ensemble. She couldn't solve that on her own and she couldn't have solved that. She didn't listen. They didn't understand question and had to sort of make the saw jumpers. Oh, okay. Yes. So when you think about it physically, it works like this. So when you think about it digitally, here are some tools for you as a designer to think about what works.

Speaker 1: 33:28

And it's, it's interesting that cuz I think in almost every conversation I've had in the 20 odd conversations I've had as about this podcast is that idea of curiosity feels integral to working in digital, regardless of whether you're looking at, you know, user experience or eCommerce or, you know, making new forms of culture, you have to have that curiosity cuz there's always gonna be an element of it that's never been done before or is completely new or, and, and so it's, it's interesting to hear you reflect on that in these sort of artistic, um, sense. And I wonder now, you know, there's a bit of distance between your, your time at the Royal rock house and, and sort of audience labs. And I know you, you made a lot of things while you were at audience labs and you were part of the fabric of this big institution. What are your, what, what lessons came out of that, that period?

Speaker 2: 34:27

Oh God, I mean so many, um, it, it was incredibly interesting. So I think, you know, there's a whole realm of artistic lessons that come out of, um, working in a building where everyone is at the top of their game. Artistically. I think for me, there's something very potent with, by bringing very old art forms together with cutting edge technology. There's something very, the meeting of those two quite rigorous aesthetics I think is really, was really exciting. But I think there's also a lot of lessons about trying to figure out like as an institution, what you're trying to do and what you're not trying to do. Cause I do think curiosity is really important, but also not everything has to be new. And I think, um, it's about trying to figure out what you are trying to do in a particular thing. I think many culture institutions make the mistake of Want wanting everything to do everything. And it comes out of a, out of not quite understanding what we're doing, but you get pieces that should use cutting edge technology that may or may not be stable yet, but is also stable. So an audience can find it, which is, uh, artistically pushing the boundaries, but also recognizably the art from we are getting, which will speak to the existing audience, but also bring in a new audience preferably at the elusive youth as I like to call them. Um, that educates, that brings people through the doors and, and stimulates them to, to buy tickets to a completely old fashioned performance that also, uh, has lots of PR value and, and so forth. I always like to add and cures cancer at the end because it's sort of like an impossible brief. So I think what is really useful to think about when one works with a culture institution or when one is inside and wants to work with these new possibilities is, is where do you place yourself? Where are you taking risks? Where do you want other outcomes? Where is it to speak to new audiences? Where is it to speak to existing audiences and how different the approach from the very beginning to, from the technology you use to the artists you might work with to the ideas that you might want, want to develop to where they are placed to what budget you want to attach to it. Like all of these are choices that are made every day within traditional art forms. But I think sometimes are overlooked within as soon as what digital gets attached to it, which everything my toothbrush is digital, you know, letting go of that idea that digital always needs to be cutting edge or that digital always has to be alien or that digital is for the young is I think would be really useful and making choices, bringing the same rigor to the choices. One makes when starting projects as one would to a, what I would call a main stage show or a new front of house audience development project. Those are different people, different skills, different things, both can use digital. Again, my toothbrush is digital. That doesn't mean it can make art nor does it mean it would be great at front of house, uh, audience development, that those are two bring the right expertise to the right questions. And digital is a tool that can be part of it can be so much more than a tool it's like, it can perform magic, but it's also just something that is, is the material the material one works with.

Speaker 1: 38:25

And that what you've said there, I think touches on something that we've, we've discussed previously, um, that you were very aware of as a director of immersive theater, that idea of priming your audience for the experience they're about to have for sort of setting the stage before they, they step into the performance space in inverted commerce. And in, in our discussion, um, outside of this podcast, we were commenting that that feels like it's lacking in so many of these digital cultural experiences that have sprung up over the last couple of years that, you know, people are just sent straight to a, you know, a YouTube link or, or something else. So it's, you know, it's a bit of a, a cold start standing start to some, to, to an experience. And actually you need to, I think you use the, the imagery of, you know, you need to take the audience down the steps into this experience because there is a, a state change that needs to happen in their expectations. And actually if you manage to do that, they're going to have a better experience ultimately. And I, I wonder what your, how, how could, should people start to think about that in a, in a digital context?

Speaker 2: 39:43

I think that's what I think that's one of the things that really got me into this crossover between digital and theater, which, you know, is where I'm originally. It just allows us to break out of four walls. I think, um, as I was saying, I, I came from a, a Dutch art enemy. So when I entered the theater, I was surprised how many rehearsal processes in my early career. I, um, I assisted on who just wanted to almost erase the audience were gonna rehearse so that it's going to be the same every night and there will be an audience, but we have a fourth wall. I was always immediately attracted to fourth wall breaking and, and sort of the idea of the audience being there. That that was one of the fores of theater. Um, and most theater does that, um, to a assassin Anem I was always really interested in pushing that. So I remember, um, when, when me and my colleagues at Coney stumbled upon this, uh, sort of idea, which I think came from America, just this sentence, the audience for the audience, the experience starts when they first hear about it and stops when they stop talking about it. And for us, we were really interested in occupying that arc and what it would mean, um, where traditionally, when you first hear about it, you are in the marketing space and then you're in the box office space, and then you are in the front of house space and then the lights go down and then the lights come up. Now you're in the art, the curtain up, and then the curtain comes down and maybe goes up again, a bit of applause down, the art space is now done. And then you leave the space and you have all this conversation bar, not no longer the art space. Um, this is now bar space, and then you go home and then next week you talk about at a dinner party, definitely not art space, no marketing space. Uh, so those spaces are quite delineated where we sort of felt really attracted to this idea that for an audience, that's all part of the thing, right. Uh, I know that when I go to something, if I go with people, I was super interesting conversation afterwards. It enhances my experience of the whole thing, which is partly to do with who I went with and how interesting the thing was and whether the bar was a nice place to hang out in or not. Um, and whether it was six hours and it's now 11:30 PM and I really need to get home. Um, but we were interested in that idea that for an audience, the experience starts when they first hear about it and stop when they stop talking about it. Now our drivers never to occupy that whole arc because that's insanity. Um, but it was to expand the space of the art to make it more porous, to, uh, to erase those hard lines of cutting up cutting and down marketing art. Um, so very early on, uh, which is a cliche night, but it was totally radical. Then we started playing with characters, emailing audience members and, and having audience exchanges. And because we were making a massive theater, it also helped us get a sense of casting, like who is really, who is quite pushy. Who's had certain thoughts who, who was confident, who was less confident and it helped prime audiences. So, so really you talked to the show and just show talked to you before you were there. And some people got a very sort of specific strand based on their responses because they were very playful and that was useful or great, uh, very confident. And that was useful for other parts of the show. So we toured, uh, not that show actually early times, uh, early days with better nation, which was a show which the audience was a, um, uh, an interim government of a, uh, a nation in ruined, which we taught throughout the UK. Uh, and again, it had that kind of structure of, of what we call the advance, uh, and then, uh, sort of the anti chamber, uh, bit of casting the show, then an anti chamber and then the bar. And I think one of the things that Tom bot hotel, my co-ed director who wrote that show, and I looked at when we were on tour with it was, um, do we need to kick people out of the bar, cuz that was a good show and that sort of, for us, that was all part of it. That's part of the show as much as, you know, when it snows, which also happened in the co, which is super theatrical, say, we know it's gonna snow and it's gonna be beautiful and people going to go, ah, for us, the conversation at a bar and that, that idea of people slowly entering the world and understanding what their role is in that suspension of disbelief, where they, where there's space for them to play. Um, I think it just makes for a more powerful experience and a more personal experience. It gives the audience more agency. And that's what, the thing that we as Coney were always after it was agency, how much of yourself can you put in? Does it work if you put very little in and it should because that's part of agency also the agency to do very little. Um, and how does that influence the show and the meaning of the show?

Speaker 1: 45:03

And, and to me, when, you know, when we've talked about this previously, I can immediately see how that translates into a, into a digital experience because you know, digital facilitates discussion and connection and engagement and, and all of, all of that stuff that you've just talked about there in those various stages sort of before and, and after. And I think I, I would be really intrigued to see more organizations playing with, with those sorts of ideas and the, the final sort of idea that I'd like to ask you about is something that you've spoken about a, a digital works event that we held during the, the pandemic, but this idea of sort of constellations of experience and how digital can really add these layers, um, to, to, to a cultural experience. Um, and so I wonder if maybe to, to close, we could sort of hear the Ann Annese constellations, uh, hypothesis theory.<laugh>

Speaker 2: 46:09

The Ann ma constellations theory of joy. Um, I think one of the things that came with that idea of, of having a show that that is starts when you hear about it and stops, when you stop talking about it, it has different beats. It has beats that are away from a unity of space and time, but they all come from the same, they're all part of the same universe. They all circle circle around the same sun, right? They come from the same space, they inhabited the same universe, like, like the Marvel universe in many ways. So I think what became really exciting is that all of those bits can become, and I think we weren't ready as kinde back then, but I think we becoming more and more ready, uh, as makers and the technology is better and, and we understand, and it become cheaper to do things. Um, but what we can now do is have, um, create a show and idea a world from which there are small experiences or big experiences for people that will work as a string of pearls, where they slowly do that stairs thing slowly become more and more into the world and they'll become part of it and maybe be in it and come out of it. But it doesn't mean that it one needs to have a collect them all linear, uh, attitude to it. So one can create those little bits as experiences in their own, right. Which just allows for a different way of experience, but also a different range of audiences being able to, um, engage with the work in different ways. And, and so digital obviously is super useful in that, because if you make, I don't know, like the space we made for, um, current rising, this extraordinary distorted esque space, for example, one of many, um, you could use it as a performance space for something completely different. You could, uh, but you also could put, uh, Joe scotch, the designer in it to tell you about the materiality, maybe in collaboration with her, our, uh, uh, SFX designer. Um, you can maybe allow audiences to go in there and listen to a story that is told from the point of view of the main voice of the piece. There's many things you can do with it. And those can all coexist. So, so digital obviously has the advantage of, of re reusable assets, especially if you start designing that from the beginning. Um, I think part of it is also, you know, in theater we're really used to, let's go into a rattle room and let's make it perfect. And then when the curtain goes up, it looks natural and effortless and like, we can just do this and then we close the curtain. Then we fall on the floor and throw away the set. And I think digital culture isn't like that. It is much more about, um, yeah, showing what you're doing. Um, being part of the builder, being part of the thinking, being part of a community of, of ideas, of, of beauty, of, of things that are fun. Um, things that are smaller that together can allow people to be part in different ways to look behind corners, to go deeper, to go longer. Um, you know, people talk about serving a fandom, like that's only done really in, in these sort of pop culture way, but I think culture can learn a lot from that simultaneously. I think there's different audience for different things. So when we made Coney shows, we, we iterated a lot. So we did early, early iterations that where AUD, where audience would come and test things with us, um, sometimes totally different audience, not interested in the main show just much more. So there are different audience for different elements of the work, which I think is interesting. One can think about what I like to call design. So all of the stuff we make and never show anyone that set design drawings, costume jokes, which are beautiful, which you can play with, which you can bring to life. You can allow audiences and, or other artists to remix stuff as well. So we did an R and D with, uh, Google creative lab in Sydney, where we worked with a ballerina and choreographer from the national ballet. Um, it was a great R and D uh, but what came out of it, wasn't a product. It was an understanding about choreography, uh, and AR the choreography though was beautiful, just gorgeous. Like, uh, Chris McNally was a choreographer. It was, we motion captured it. So we had the data. Um, so during the pandemic, we were like, okay, but we have, we have this extraordinary choreography, really beautifully motion captured. So what we did is we set up a little collaboration with the national gallery here in London, um, and asked artists to come up with an R and D for themselves that would, uh, expand their creative practice in response to the pandemic and where we were all at, like some other themes and then a connected, the choreography, which was called Eve, which is all about, um, Eve was basically an origination story about a woman finding a power. At one point, she replicates herself, she grows, she shrinks, she, uh, she can control the climate and create other humans. Uh, she creates man at some point. So the national gallery then put in a polar Rigo piece, which had similar ideas about female power and different power structures. Um, and then we handed it over. We handed it over to, uh, we ended up selecting, uh, a visual arts from Nigeria, a, uh, immensely gorgeous gender bending collective from Berlin and a female creative technologist from Brighton in the UK, uh, who all created different pieces using those raw elements because they're there. Um, and I really like that. The idea that you can have constellations around a universe, you can have that sort of handover, which has always happened in art. People have always looked at what went before, took some of it, remixed it and did something new. We call it a mashup. Now it used to be called inspiration, you know, because he used to go to museum, sit and draw what he saw and then took it home and then start a painting based on that, that was something radically different. Um, so that idea of mash up of remix of universe, about, about finding ways of creating and presenting work that can bring different a in at different times, but also pull audiences through from one piece to another, I think, think is it's an exciting way of thinking about it

Speaker 1: 53:28

And on that exciting way of thinking, Annette, thank you so much for today. I'd love hearing from your brain.