Ways of Reading - Experimental Performance/Projection


So yesterday saw our first MA group show; put together by a very organised and patient member of the book art student group; a big thanks to Estelle for all her hard work. 
It was a mixture of Book Art and Printmaking students work in our freshly painted shared studio. I wanted to test out an idea and so tried something I have never ventured into before....performance! 



'Ways of Reading' was really more of a live projection rather than a performance but I have no idea how to name these things. And it was an experiment so some parts of it were not how I ideally wanted them, but the whole experience was positive and made me think a bit more about the initial concept, which was the whole idea of the experiment I guess. 



So the book that I used was The Readies by Bob Brown, and I only used a certain section of the book where he is describing a new method of reading and the example of a READIE story that might be read on his proposed Reading Machine. [I will do a proper post later with more on Bob Brown and his Reading Machine]. 
The idea behind this silent read-along was to do with how we read and how reading is changing now. The viewers who are reading on the screen have no control over how fast I am reading and when I turn the pages or move the book around. It is a reading machine of sorts, forcing you to miss bits, read faster and get frustrated by the way you are reading is being controlled by another person and also by the mechanism it is being transmitted with. 


I have some ideas on how to push this further alongside other Reading Machine ideas like the barrel from the last post, but I think I need the feedback to sink in from yesterday a bit before I comment on this any more. 

Ps. I have to thank Di for taking photos for me too; they are great! 



2 comments:

ronnie said...

I'll be very interested to see how this project moves along... (I must say I have a selfish reason for being so interested and that's because I'm thinking and planning a 'performative' book work, of sorts, myself..... NOT reading though!)

Abigail Thomas said...

Hey Ronnie, its an interesting area; performative books....