Projects 2013 > Page to Stage > Journal
So, yesterday we all trekked to Bristol again for another day being 'struggled' as they used to say in the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Unlike the Maoist version, the pain involved in this process is designed to make you feel better in the end. It's for our own good. It's good for us to realise that "people like us" (or even "people like our children") is not aviable market, to have some vague idea of how to let people know these products exist, and even to imagine ourselves into the heads of a stick figure we are calling the User.
"So, you want your app to be all about sound, and helping people to listen with new ears?"
Easy ."Yes!"
"Do you know any blind people?"
Not so easy. "Errr - sorry, not personally, no."
"Then you have to go to the RNIB and watch a blind person navigating an iPad just by sound."
"NOOOOOOOO...."
We don't even know if we have an orchestra. We don't know if the basic interactivity will work. How can we start going off and watching blind people? But then.... You have to admit, that's a really interesting idea.
So, the great thing about REACT is that they know how to talk to us makers in a way that gets through. More than can be said for the organisers of Creative Europe, a funding body offering to help projects that might have international appeal, for which a hundred or so hopefuls trekked to Docklands last week. The programme was presented by a very cleverly designed Eurobot, carefully dressed in Shoreditch hipster style and programmed occasionally to make eye contact with an audience just behind the back wall.
Unfortunately the programmers had forgotten that spoken communication is only really effective if your audience is awake. On and on he went, in long, uninflected sentences full of those Snapchat phrases programmed to self-destruct ten seconds after they enter your brain.
Finally, his presentation was done. Furtive smiles of shared relief darted round the room.
But then it all went horribly wrong. The organisers had been briefed to produce refreshments at 4.30, and at 4.25 they appeared: not Eurofreshments but delicious little English cakes on stands, and a herbaceous border of china cups and saucers for our tea.
The dog had seen the rabbit. Maybe tea and buns would make it all make sense and restore the will to live (and create, which was claimed to be the point of the event).
Then a hand went up. Somebody had a question. Somebody had understood enough to frame a question in response? The rest of us listened, fretfully. We wanted our tea. And we couldn’t understand the question, either.
Unfortunately, the Eurobot could. It seemed to warrant a long and nuanced reply. But nobody was listening any longer. Anxiously we sat, gathering up our papers and our bags, staring across at the gingerbread and brownies, and wondering why the questinos couldn't be answered just as well between mouthfuls. Maybe the Eurobot wasn't programmed to talk and eat at the same time.
Finally, it ran out of battery, and we dashed for the coconut macaroon bars, trying to remember why we’d gone into this work in the first place.
It's certainly great that the European Commission wants to give us money to collaborate. But it takes more skill than that to bring the money and the makers into happy harmony. Personally, I got far more inspiration from Tony Ray-Jones' photographs at the Science Museum last week, photos that make Martin Parr look like an alienated schoolboy. Incredible frozen moments of human passion, images you can stare at for ten minutes and still keep finding more.
This is documentary: the extra eyes – or ears – that bring the rest of us the stuff we otherwise wouldn’t know was there. Can we do the same with music? Can we help people hear patterns, stories, emotions, techniques they would otherwise miss, and open a way in for them? Those are the questions REACT is all about. Now - how to get in touch with the RNIB...
Posted by Sheila Hayman