The sets are going to be a time-consuming process for a while. Requires
start and stop rehearsal, not straight through the dress rehearsals.
Intuition will be good but thats a slomo and wont work in time for the
12th. If we can come away from the rehearsal Thursday with a good
setting (timer), that will be good. But Twyla should be able to reset
the
timing for conditions that apply during the actual performance.
Monika, I thought like you and Lee that the randomness is interesting
as a creative technique but not in the performance. I have changed my
mind
about that because of the way that I am experiencing the medium of
Internet. ISDNs, T1, Frame-relay and some other things--wireless,
cable, etc. can give us something different. Oudeis has that locally
in Austria, but we can't deliver that world-wide yet because we don't
have a wide range of sponsors to handle the crossing of boundaries,
jurisdictions, turfs, etc. Greater cooperation would probably be best--
cheapest, most creative, most flexible.
But our audience is on the Internet because they can't afford a T1 to
their house--and I'm not sure that getting there should be a high
social priority. I'm saying the lack of bandwidth is not a serious
social problem. So our medium is one that gets its biggest boost from
large academic and corporate and government networks that carry some
of our packets on an as-available basis. It works amazingly well.
Wanting the Internet to be without lag, however, is like thinking the
ocean would be a whole lot nicer if it didn't have all those waves.
I'll bet Odyseus had thoughts like that. But the ocean does have waves
and the Internet has lag. Someone at the university probly has a
wonderful theory describing the fractal geometry of lag. But for us,
it creates openings and the openings *have* to be filled with something
to reassure the online audience that they they are still connected.
Getting them to play a part, such as cyberchoros is a good idea. What
should be the content of the choros may be a matter for more democracy
than we are willing to contemplate.
These fragile spider webs that connect us break too often for us to be
able to count on really high-speed or micro-synchronization. We have
to handle the microtiming locally. Lag demons are dwarves on one side
of their body and giants on the other. They come in many sizes and
shapes. Our SubWeb is really an IntraNet which we could benefit from
taking quite seriously as a design issue and an issue with our
sponsors who could probably stimulate a lot of creativity by throwing
an idea or two into the pot.
But even if we had very snappy service among ourselves, people at home
are going to depend on the main Internet cloud and will be subject to
lag. So let me explain what we have in the active part of the Mount
Olympus set.
1. I tried to go for images or expressions that characterized the
ambience of the scenes we are presenting--Ogygia, Phaiakia, and
Thiaki. The gods are essential to this sense of context which is what
the sets provide. Doing the Odyssey without Athena is absurd. If you
are doing it without Athena, why are you including Odysseus? What did
he ever do but get his ass in trouble and have to be bailed out by one
goddess after another. No, the winged warrior woman spirit is what kept
Poseidon from filling Odysseus' nose with water and smashing him to
pieces against the rocks.
2. I also explored formats. We can have little flecks of language,
phrases that will suggest to the audience some things that they may
remember but haven't thought about for awhile--like rosy fingered
dawn. The thighbones are in this style and are there to remind us that
these people were deeply involved in a debate about human sacrifice.
An other-culturely element.
3. Sets can be multilingual; I would like to include some German
and Spanish. I would like to get the Greek in there too and maybe
something like Hawaiian. I think this would seem a lot less intrusive.
4. I too experience a feeling of absurdity when one of these lines
pops out at me. I have a Hermes that I built a box for. All he does is
cycle between "I have a message from the gods." and "Just sign here."
Sometimes he repeats one or the other. (Three lines is an interesting
pattern.) I made a box for him and keep him there. That is about off
enough (How off do you need him to be?).
Load him with one line and he could be like a doorbell. Hermes says,
"Hello!" Not sure how useful that is. Maybe here is the place to say
that I see the work we are doing as comprising in part something I
would call Experimental Community Online Theater. The experimental
part of that means that we have to have some negative results.
Otherwise we aren't really finding anything out.
So although I agree with what Lee has been saying about many things, I
don't agree that MMK was "stillborn" and I don't agree that we are in a
make-or-break situation now. For me, I went through that impasse about a
week ago. I think the momentum for Oudeis is just beginning to build. We
are just testing the flexibiity parameters and our own improvisational
skills and are finding that we have what it takes.
I worry too, Monika, about a project that devours its people. I continue
to believe that we are struggling mainly with our expectations. Many of
us come from sombre professional environments and we have very exacting
demands. But the reality is that most if not all of us are volunteers.
As well, we are in territory that is largely uncharted. If it isn't fun,
then what's the point? I have really enjoyed meeting all these people
and working with them, some very closely. In some cases, I am certain I
will work on them again even if nothing further comes of Oudeis.
But I don't think nothing further will come of it. Individual people may
finish with it and move on. Others will see now a way that they can
contribute and will be inspired to join. Mythography is like that.
5. Odysseus, rag of a man, is also from the Olympus set. This is the
one you experience as a bot. This image re-occurs, and can be seen as
an image that defines an important part of O's char.
6. Poseidon is a brooding influence throughout. Athena and Poseidon have
a long-standing conflict that predates Odysseus by hundreds of years.
7. The shambling, red cows of Lord Helios are the central image of
the Odyssey. Odyseus is told by Tiresias and again by Circe not to
mess with those cows. And Odysseus tells his men. And they get the
picture, more or less. Remember that O left Troy with a squadron of
ships and still has them when they encounter Polyphemus. He goes into
the drink several times and ends up clinging to a piece of the ship
for days--several times. The first time happens when they can see
Ithaka on the horizon but the crew opens a secret bag of winds. The
second time happens after the last of the crew has killed and eaten
some of the god's cows. Humans just never seem to get the picture. You
know what I mean?
It's separate from O's issue with Poseidon. Helios goes to Zeus and
Zeus sinks O's last ship (GaVoom!) and drowns the whole crew except
for O himself and himself is getting a massive case of wrinkles. Don't
mess with the god's cows. He gets a long time to meditate on that one.
Learning to 'respect the gods' cows' is a major connecting link for
people in our audience. They get it right away and can point to people
who have been arrested for protecting water and land from logging.
Powerful fuel here.
I think here is the place I want to suggest some thinking about the
gods. Each of the gods is a word, a name, a verbal object that conveys
multifaceted information. To tell the story of the Odyssey without
reference to the gods is like trying to understand the modern world
without any reference to Republicans, or Christian Democrats or
Wobblies or . I guess we could personalize it entirely.
Ms. Pallas Athene has been making things awfully easy for aging
soldier Odysseus Laertiades lately. Full invisibility through town in
Phaiakia, girlfriends galore. And now we hear she marked his discus at
Alkinoos' competition on the second day. Really, Pallas.
Have a look at Artemis, everybody! Lookin good, Artemis. ;-) But I
think Artemis looms bigger translation.
Wording can also be changed. I would suggest you go and stand onstage
in that environment for a while. It was never intended to be the final
set. It's sort of a demo of possibilities, an exploration.
Personally, I would like to see some of these ideas in action on the
MOO. I suspect we are looking at events that will take anywhere from
several days to months or even in some cases, years to complete
themselves. Oudeis is such a project. It is, in fact, a mythographic
opportunity that could fruitfully be explored at least for some
decades. And this virtual beerfoam reality takes some work to float.
Zeus's house is an experiment in tube sock (one-size-fits-all) design.
There is also an Ogygia, an Ithaka, and a Phaiakia. But that will
absolutely require the control room with an operator. So let's talk
about this. We had a guest who was doing the control panel at the 2nd
rhx.
I wonder if translation is something maybe the audience can do, would
like to do. I have been revisiting my sense of the Internet medium and
most people are on systems that will time them out for inactivity. Me2.
Plus you can lose your connection to a windstorm or a tree falling on
your telephone line. So you don't really call up to watch someone else
do something for very long. You wanna play. It's more like theater
games in that sense.
If athemoo had a capability to play back the native character set of
the incoming client, like someone could post a message in greek or
russian or hebrew or arabic or hindi or cree or pingying--any alphabetic
language, then maybe people from different language groups would
connect and help with the Artemes Translator-Mythographer Project .
That is an approach that would work here (MOO), I think. Plenty of
meeting space. Lots of port resources. And there is an audience, small
as it is, that we could build on. Bring a friend.
I am wondering if some kind of sponsorship relationship could be
formalized with the University of Hawaii. They are certainly de facto
sponsors. We use a service provided by them and by ATHE. Their logo
would make nice addition to the oudeis page, I think.
Frankly, in the end, I went for poetry. Odysseus narrowly escapes a
second encounter with Scylla and describes himself (to the Phaiakians)
as clinging to the branch of a tree like a bat. The Homeric poems are
actually quite rich in this kind of vivid comparison.
Odysseus seems a reluctant hero. He is not out there like Achilles,
doing the savior thing (White Knight); o just wants to get home. So he
endures. But even at Aulis he is described as threatening to leave.
My own theory is that O did this war as a commute, that he was back
and forth to Ithaka many times. The infamous Suitors are younger men
than Penelope. None is her peer. They come on the scene later, much
later. Only really after Odysseus doesn't come home in a reasonable
time. Even more specifically, after her lover of many years dies in
mysterious circumstances and she is visited by Orestes. These things
shake her and make her look over her shoulder. Without the considerable
flow of matronly warrior energy, odysseus was a dead duck plain and
simple.
I haven't said anything about aleatory elements in performance (John
Cage) or the massive tradition of avant garde, experimental, and fringe
work (Harry Partch, Jerzy Grotowski, etc) in the performing arts.
-- Jim Terral South Slocan, BCHave a look at the aka Boris project proposal-- http://www.netidea.com/~cyberhut/akaboris/proposal.htm