[mf2012] moving forest - about the project and making it happen

[shu lea cheang]

dear all

these texts went into Arts council  England funding  proposal (last 
round in may)
we release here for better understanding the scope of the production.
in june, we enter the pre-production phrase.
We ask your participation by submitting proposals to this list or write to
now at movingforest.net

very best
sl


MOVING FOREST 2012 LONDON
http://movingforest.net (website to be revised these coming weeks)

1 Project Initiators
Moving Forest is a TAKE2030 production led by Ilze Black and Shu Lea 
Cheang. Moving Forest, presented as a work by the collective AKA the 
castle, brings together self-assigned acts and actions realized by 
diverse
visual/sonic/electronic/digital/performance artists, writers, 
singers, coders, hackers, mobile agents, twitters, networkers and the 
general public.

2 Project History and timescale
Moving Forest held its impromptu premiere during the Conspire edition 
of the Transmediale 2008 Festival in Berlin where it was widely 
reported and achieved the status of a festival highlight. In 
preparation for Moving Forest London edition 2012, R&D workshops were 
held in association with SPACE, Furtherfield, and the V&A museum 
during Nov 26 - Dec 13, 2011. These workshops were well attended, 
total 300 participants.

The 12 hour 6 act performace takes places from 9am to 9pm on July 4, 2012.
The performance locations include-
(1) Furtherfield gallery, Finsbury Park
(2) Triangle gallery, Chelsea College of Art and Design
(3) Parade Ground, Chelsea College of Art and Design
(4) Various sites with self-designed moving units
(5) Net/radio streams
(6) Web broadcast

The expanded performance is supported by a 12 day prelude (June 22 to 
July 3) which is essential london city - netwide staging  and 
development towards moving forest's one day 12 hour body-present 
performance. A post-performance workshop-coda (July 5) to be held at 
Chelsea College of art and design provides us an opportunity to 
review our performance within a theoretical/art practice framework.

3 Scenario
Moving Forest maps an imaginary Castle and a camouflaged forest 
revolt onto the modern day metropolis. Derived from Shakespeare by 
way of Japan's most respected film director Kurosawa, Moving Forest 
brings the classic play into the hyper-playground of London city. 
Moving Forest expands Throne of Blood's last 12 minutes into a 12 
hour 6 act performance mixing sound art, visual expression, 
electronic devising, media transmission, intervention and interaction 
between numerous performers and the general public. The event takes 
place not only at designated locations, also with dispersed units 
across the city and virtually on the internet with audio/video 
streams.

In the forest (greater London metropolis), act0 - omen begins with 
witches messaging prophecy and prediction.

Inside the castle, classic and contemporary tales of remorse(act1), 
betrayal(act2) and overthrow(act3) unfold.  Each act is realized by 
collaborating visual, sound and performance artists making use of all 
mediums, elaborating operatic manoeuvre into an escalating scheme of 
conspiracy and its contemporaneous political manifestations

Outside the castle, the mobile forest, electronically updated with 
antennas, electronic magnetic waves, geolocation, armed with bytes 
and pixels, signals and slogans, is assembled for simulated 
insurgency measures. Mobilized urbanites, empowered by free network 
emissions, carry the camouflage tree antennas, in a
spider-shaped movement, towards the Castle Central. As the sheer 
strength of signals forces an entry into the Castle, a final merging 
of forest and castle occurs during the act4 - Insurgency; a moment of 
downfall, jubilation and loss. Act 5 - eternal return brings us back 
to act0 - omen set admist a dusted, ruined castle.

4 Conceptual Argument
As a performance, Moving Forest mixes together a number of developing 
strands of activity under both aesthetic and participatory concerns. 
The open use of urban space is reshaped by art methods into the 
domain of the epic,
creating unexpected and unforgettable experiences of sharing and 
belonging, transcending the routines of daily life.

Moving Forest mobilizes a modular framework derived from the stages 
of the Macbeth/Throne of Blood narrative to create a structure 
wherein a range of 'sub-projects' can be developed by individual 
artists or teams. Through deep-level collaborations crossing art 
forms and individual practices, this project offers a very rare 
convergence between practitioners working in sound/visual art, 
performance, software art, programming, game, video and
other media. By integrating these works into a meaningful 'disjointed 
whole', Moving Forest reinterprets the tales of Macbeth as a 
contemporary, symphonic collaboration, amplified by sound and fury 
signifying the current political moments .

How the public engage with your work

We have been engaging in open calls for moving forest performance 
participation. We have done extensive research of active london 
network groups who we invite to join as moving force in the forest. 
We have the support
from cultural studies, interactive media studies, Goldsmiths college, 
Chelsea college of art and design, Wimbledon College of Art, royal 
academy of dramatic art whose students we are involve both as 
participants and the audience. We are using (starting in mid-June) 
crowd sourcing platform (i.e. indiegogo.com) to raise awareness of 
the project, inviting both engagement and investment from the general 
public. We are using digital art magazines, i.e. Metamute.org, to 
reach out to media art field. We work with Resonance FM (starting 
early June) to publicize our performance. We are connected with 
London media art organisations, i.e. SPACE, Furtherfield, and the 
V&A's digital programmes, OpenLab, Deptford TV and Mztek. Each of 
these partners will make their marketing mechanisms available to us 
including mailling lists, web and press promotion. We will also use 
social media extensively (facebook, twitter) during the 12 day 
prelude to disseminate our up-to-date-minute activities.

The post-performance one day conference organized by David Garcia , 
dean of Graduate School and Enterprise Development, CCW, Matthew 
Fuller, Reader in Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College, Josephine 
Berry Slater, Mute magazine, investigates tactical media and 
performative practices that include the aesthetics of the 
unitised/securitised/database city; durational performance 
frameworks; distributed urban aesthetics; full improvisation; 
software aesthetics; a form of tragedy adequate to the present, and 
more general critical and
interventionist currents, Taking Moving Forest as a case study, the 
conference gathers together thinkers, artists, programmers, schemers, 
strategists to provide the public a context in viewing complex 
innovative and challenging performance works. We aim at developing a 
well-formed relationship with a wide range of beneficiaries. 
Alongside a wider roster of participating artists, beneficiaries 
include audiences interested in performance, new media, sound art, 
art and urban space, mobile architecture, live arts and new forms of 
public art. Communities local to the venues and public spaces of the 
performance are involved as participatory force. The local and global 
networked aspects,
embracing radio, wireless and Internet-based communities, widen the 
extent of beneficiaries of greater London public.

Making it happen
Moving Forest attempts, in highly accessible manner, to address a 
closely bound network of relevant issues within shared media 
production and performance, for example, open radio, wifi network, 
live coding, live audiovisual, live arts, hack labs, and actionist 
collectives. Methods such as improvisation and notation,
collaborative performative coding, interface between text and 
performance are adapted. By bringing together local and globally 
active artists, theorists and collectives within new and critical 
media practices, we hope to
invigorate London and UK-based new media and grass roots practice.
During the 12 day prelude period, we will use a smartmap/mobilephone 
technology to track various groups engaged themselves as moving 
force. On the day of the performance (July 4), the 6 acts (act 0 to 
act 5) are realized by
various collaborations with artists self-directing themselves.

[Act 0 - omen] - Spiderweb mainframe. Empty code in raven wings.
Time frame: 09:00 - 11:00
Location: Furtherfield McKenzie Pavilion and Finsbury Park,
Artists: The Hexists
Conceptual approach: 3 keys - The River Oracle. a game of chance and 
divination. Following the lost river of London, Hackney Brook, from 
Finsbury Park to the Olympic park, it attempts to invoke the 
relationship between
the divinatory functions of our contemporary 'influencing machines' 
(cybernetic systems of data-mining, data
profiling and data protection) and traditional magical ones, creating 
new machines in the process.

[Act 1 - remorse] - The Lady Supreme washes the bloody unborn.
Time frame: 11:00 - 13:00
Location: Triangle gallery, Chelsea College of Art and Design,
Artists: Marco Donnarumma, Linda Dement, Laura Oldfield Ford
Conceptual approach: Xth sense body sensor meets blood streams. 
poetically engage London as a site of social antagonism..

[Act 2 - betrayal] - The Lord stands tall, briskly the arrows strike 
in silent air.
Time frame: 13:00 - 15:00
Location: Triangle gallery, Chelsea College of Art and Design,
Artists: Valentina Vuksic, Oliver Wolf
Conceptual approach: A 'mysterium cosmographicum' system is set up 
with multiple computing devices, audible by transducers for 
electromagnetic fluxus. The tension between magic powers and the 
deterministic run of events
marks a Macbeth oscillating between being remote controlled and self 
empowerment.

[Act 3 - overthrow] - The Lord soaked in rain of thousand arrows, 
fall the body.
Time frame: 15:00 - 17:00
Location: Triangle gallery, Chelsea College of Art and Design,
Artists: Kaffe Matthews, Ewa Justka, xname
Conceptual approach: 3 riot girls lead the act of overthrow. 
Thousands of arrows
thunder down on a fallen lord. Using various sensor units, sound 
patches and electronic boards to generate a mass discontent.

[Act 4 - insurgency] - An insurgency swarm of camouflaged antenna 
branches, marching into the castle from all
corners of the city.
Time frame: 17:00 - 20:00
Location: Parade Ground, Chelsea College of Art and Design
Artists (to be expanded): Graham Harwood, Bioni Samp, Vasco Alves
Conceptual approach: The forest move into the castle. The public 
merge with the performers including Bioni's bee hive sound system, 
Vasco's amfm keyboards and harwood's intervention devices. Matthew 
Fuller's 500
slogans read by various groups - including RADA texts and performance 
students, Paper Tiger theatre troupe and the participating public.

[Act 5- eternal return] - Remaining castle monolith.
Time frame: 20:00 - 21:00
Location: Parade Ground, Chelsea College of Art and Design
Artists: Dead Record Office
Conceptual approach:  testing Invisible/inaudible audio frequency, 
DRO take us to eternal return with  post-trauma negotiation and 
reconciliation.

Organized by TAKE2030
TAKE2030 is a London based new media agency which gathers 
(project-based) programmers, provocators, free networkers, designers, 
fabricators and artists . TAKE2030 has received Arts Council England 
funding for its network performance projects - RichAir2030 (2003) and 
Porta2030 (2006). These works have toured international electronic 
arts festivals widely.
http://take2030.net
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