Watching the Script, Notes 9 June 2008

Preliminary list of everything we’d like to do & group & prioritize

Questions raised:

Applications:

• mnemonic?
• Pedagogical (reading playtexts, analyzing & comparing others’ blocking choices, learning to make & self-evaluate blocking choices)?
• Research (abstracting and comparing patterns in use of time & space in a text or a performance)?
• [NEW] tool for creating illustrations to accompany textual analysis of text and/or performance (ie. could I embed a link in an online journal essay to a demonstration)?

Representation of text:

• relationship between printed text & simulation – eg. direction of moving text?
• level of action being represented (literal refs to movement vs. filling in literal moves such as stage directions vs. movement that illustrates dramatic conflict)?
• time implied in text? (are we dealing with time at all? Again, at what level: fictional time passing in the play, pace of performance, phonological time in words)?
• To what extent are we concerned with sound (this tool creates a second visual analogue for what is essentially an aural medium)?/

Things we might like to do:

Space:

• integrate blocking tool
• tip the stage so we can see an elevation rather than a ground plan
• adapt the shape of the stage
• adapt the relationship between audience and performer (distance from the stage, height)
• Dimensionality – could we simulate 3-d?
• Noses for orientation of performer’s body
• Program in more than one blocking scheme for the same text (eg. for two famous interpretations of a scene) and view them simultaneously?
• Add directional arrows/ mouse tails to trace movements (could these be turned on an off, maybe also a function to see where characters are going next)?

Time:

• mark ‘pace of average ordinary speech’ on pace control
• control cues (sometimes actor responds immediately, but permit pauses)

Characters:

• could this be set up to show doubling – one actor for several parts? (without losing character colours) – possibly this would need a doubling chart tool

Abstractions for analysis:

• storyboard of tableaux from climaxes
• graph of number of characters on & off
• high-speed ‘flow’ of bodies on & off
• [NEW] calculate time of a performance based on cuts & business
• transfer to a performance in Second Life?

Further investigation:

• Dance choreography as a language for annotation
• Edward Tufte for graphic representations of space & time
• Marcel O’Gorman (Waterloo)
• Sandra Gabrielle – designs of the stage – a professor at York – design – in visual communication design – eg. noses

Funding avenues:

• SSHRC ITST
• Other smaller grants? – CCA? RDI? Internal?
• Research/Creation – Visualization tools are artistic creations in themselves; Tool as a tool for research-creation & tool as a creation itself; Moving the other direction from image to text (show playwrights the visual pattern & ask for new text?)