Upon entering the city, the parking was
full. The closest spot available to Le Nuit Blanche was a half hour away. The
drive there took nearly an hour. After all this waiting, I was greeted by the
one thing I hate most about Toronto, the crowded streets and a confusing
landscape to try to navigate my way around. However, after this entire
struggle, I was pleasantly surprised when I got there. The art was amazing, and
although I had promised myself I would not dare attempt going to Le Nuit
Blanche until after graduation when I would be able to stay awake at the less
crowded times of the night I was rather happy I went. However, after walking
half an hour through crowds to get there, the first thing on my mind was to sit
down, take a break, and figure out where to go look first.
It
was this impulse to have a break that caused me to wonder into the Metro Hall,
Rotunda on 55 John Street that night in Toronto. What I saw upon entering was
simply four performers standing in front of an audience, saying what to me
sounded like nonsense sentences. On the walls were two circles with dots, which
changed constantly. It was some kind of performance art. The sign informed me
that this was +city, an interactive
installation.
After
listening to these seemingly nonsense sentences for what felt like forever, I
was about to give up and go back out into the crowded streets. However, one of
the performers began to introduce the group as +city, he began to explain what was happening. These sentences were
related to social media.
The
circles, which had caught my attention from the moment I walked in, were ever
changing biased on the Tweets the group received from Twitter. All the audience had to do was send ideas to #snbTO and
#pluscityTO Twitter hashtags. These
ideas were then acted out on the stage as improve performances. Upon hearing
this description I knew that this is what I had travelled to Toronto to see.
This was the event I was looking for.
The
audience was not asked to put down their phones, but rather encouraged to do as
they do in their everyday lives. There was no requirement that the person
responsible for the tweet even had to be within the room. After leaving the
area, the viewer still carried with them, through social messaging, the power
to change what was happening on stage. The viewer was being transformed, in a
way, into an artist, painting the dots onto the circle as they send out Twitter
messages to the actors on stage.
The
idea of this is very unique, especially within the setting of Le Nuit Blanche.
The large crowds, which annoyed me, brought power to the performance, even if
the people in the crowds knew nothing about art. Everybody from the artist and
art student, to the drunks that simply go to get drunk and wander aimlessly
through the crowds until they are taken away in an ambulance, were able to
change this art piece.
This
piece also had the ability to interact with other works around it. All it would
take to make this happen would be to have a viewer leave the show, view another
piece, and tweet about it. A person could be braving the crowds, viewing a
piece, such as Green Invaders, and
simply tweet about these adorable little alien figures. At this point in time,
the conversation on stage would switch, and the improve actors attention would
suddenly be focused on a conversation about these aliens. All of this can
happen without the individual responsible for it even being present in the same
room.
However,
there was a flaw with this design. It was cold out, and there was seating
within the building. This lead to the vast majority of the crowd being elderly,
people who would not likely grasp the idea of a tweet having the ability to
change the performance, and perhaps people who were not even aware of what Twitter is. The building was also out of
the loud crowds, and not a single loud, drunken individual appeared to be
present. This was likely largely in part to the security guard standing by the
entrance, controlling the flow of the crowd within the event. This security
presence could have also possibly been the cause for the lack of younger
individuals present within the event, as many seemed to be there for a good
time rather than for the art.
These
flaws are also, in many ways, the cause for the success of the event. As it
unfolded, all of the members of the audience were able to see what was going
on, thanks to the seating. There was no issue with somebody to tall standing in
front of somebody to short. Also, if the event were taking place in an area not
controlled, the odds are that it would have been too loud to hear the
performers. These elements needed to be controlled in order for this event to
be a success. These limitations, however, could have easily been avoided. If
there had been signs throughout Le Nuit Blanche with an explanation of the
event, and what one would have to tweet in order to change the flow of the
discussion, the event would have been much more lively. Another solution to
this problem could have been to have a second stage outside, or at least a
screen projecting the event out into the crowds in order to draw more attention
to what was occurring within the walls of the building.
Overall, the ability of +city to mix the cultural innovation
with a comedic performance is something that should be respected. The group
responsible managed to come up with an innovative way to bring this popular
culture innovation, Twitter, to the
stage of a performance. This mix of popular culture and art is something that
does not happen very often, and defiantly something that should be seen more
often. This mix could, potentially, have the ability to interest a newer,
younger generation in the world of art.
If
given the opportunity to see an event by +city,
I highly recommend taking the opportunity to do so if interested in the
connections between the everyday mundane acts and art. Twitter is one of the most popular forms of social networking
available, with many weird tweets available. By simply attaching a hashtag, the
audience becomes artist, being given a hand in creating the performance that is
unfolding before them. Art such as this is sure to attract new, younger
audiences, introducing them to the art world. This is important, as for art to
survive there needs to be people who are interested in viewing it. If nothing
else, the colourful projection on the wall attracted an audience, and the
interactive, random aspect of the performance itself is what kept the viewers
watching.
Here are some photo's from the event, and I hope everybody has an opportunity to see a performance by them.
This is the interesting pattern, the colours change as tweets are received.
