For our multimedia project, we began to experiment with different methods of improvisation. For starters, we sat down as a group and tried to think of different ways of coming up with an initial idea. This was the second stage of thinking of a project to proceed with.
As a group we looked at -(I can’t remember this method)- and started to experiment. One method we tried was to look at the movements of a crumpled up plastic bag and how it fell to the floor. We then began to mimic the movements of this plastic bag one by one. There were movements such as twirling around and falling to the floor gracefully, falling straight to the floor as if the plastic bag had not unfolded and jumping in the air and falling down slowly. This gave us the confidence to continue to work as a group and get past the awkward stages of feeling self-conscious, even though it didn’t give us an idea as to what our project was to be.
The second improvisation we tried was to work as a whole group and to get one person across the room without that person touching the ground and without any other member of the group using their hands to get that person across the room. How we did this was to have 5 members of the group on the floor on their stomachs and 1 member to lie across all of them. The 5 members then rolled towards the opposite end of the room so that the one person would roll with them and end up at the other end of the room without being carried. After this improvisation, our ideas began to flow more into thinking more critically about what our project should be.
Another method we looked at -(again I can’t remember what this was)- was to find a still picture and to look closely at the aspects of it which weren’t the obvious. We chose a picture of a person fishing in a boat next to a lighthouse. From this we picked out subtle things about the picture, such as the movement of the water, the boat on top of the currents of the water and a fish inside this water. We began to play around with this to make the still picture come to life. One person from the group acted as the fish, moving towards an invisible finishing line and quickly swimming away when it got to close. 2 other people acted as the currents of the water and moved their hands back and forward, mirroring each other while doing this, with a third person acting as the boat moving backwards and forwards in this current.
After all this we noticed our thoughts and improvisations became a lot easier as we continued. More ideas began to surface about our final project idea.
By Kim Price