We – myself, composer Alwynne Pritchard and the 6 teenage girl participants from Brazil, Norway, France and the UK – had finally started to work in the realisation of Alwynne’s piece EVEVEVE.
As part of the first activity, the participants had written texts describing the places where they live.
Now, we are set to do the second task: they will exchange their texts with another girl who speaks a different language. Each girl will translate the received text into their own language, using Google Translate or another online software. Then, each one of them will add four or more invented things to the text that they received from another girl.
We will do the swapping again, then on the third round of swapping each girl will receive their own texts, now modified after so many translations and added some fictional things by the other girls. The idea is that the texts now present these fictional places, all a little bit real and all a little bit imagined.
We did this second activity all together, during a workshop through Zoom on the 14th December.
We were using a variety of devices and were all in different contexts: some girls had their texts on their phones and it was tricky to send them to the computers so that they could upload to the Zoom chat, other girls were using borrowed computers and did not have access to some programmes to write or translate the texts, some girls had their texts handwritten and it was tricky to share digitally for the other girls to translate, and so on.
We used different strategies, for example: some girls sent me their texts through WhatsApp or via email during the workshop, and I forwarded them to to other girls, or sometimes we found ways to scan the hand written texts and turn them into digital docs.
All in all, we were all very patient, we waited for one another, and we got to do the activity!
It was great fun to see the imagination of the participants flow, and some of them found it interesting to hear the things added to their texts: sometimes they made sense, sometimes they didn’t make sense at all, but it was all fun!
Now, as we get ready for the third activity, I reflect about what we think we need, and what we may really need in this increasingly digitalised world.
In my project proposal, I had said that I would work with a software developer to create a new digital tool for audience participation in online concerts.
In the first year of the project, as the creative process was open to the participants, there was no need of new digital tools whatsoever. And, so far, in this second year, this need has not come up yet either.
Indeed, things that have been required are: patience, empathy, and flexibility.
Sometimes, a technological tool that seemed pretty straightforward, that was actually considerably challenging for some participants, for a variety of reasons. Also, each person is found in a different context, with access to different devices and tools inside those devices, not to mention different qualities of internet connection and infrastructure in the places where they are at the moment of the workshops.
Again, I thought about “offering” something. But, actually, what makes it happens this time is to “take” whatever each person has and wants to offer, and from there we build, together.
In the meantime, we carry on to the next activity: explorations of sounds and images.
To be continued…