Rhythm 0.0.2
Final Project Proposal
For my final project, I’ve decided to build from one of the previous challenges and do another iteration of my performance art piece Rhythm 0.0. I outlined my idea for complete fruition of this piece in my previous blog post for Rhythm 0.0.1, so I’ll just go over my goals and plans for this specific prototype.
Summary
Rhythm 0.0.2 is a performance where I will occupy a room on the ITP floor for at least two hours while onlookers can anonymously send me commands over their phone for me to perform. The audience will be within eyesight of me, but hopefully there will be enough people on their phones that I won’t be able to tell who is sending me what. There will be a screen in the room with me, probably big and on the wall so the people can see it also and so that I can receive the prompts without having to check my phone. I might have a device on me to just highlight the commands I’ve already performed, but other than that I will probably be in constant motion, acting out the prompts. The commands will range from repetitive and physically tiring motion, to consumption of food, to removing/adding articles of clothing, to self-inflicted pain or electrical shocks, and more — running the gamut between good/bad.
User Command Options
Muscles
do an ab workout
jump on one foot
hold a handstand
dab
stretch
Mouth
eat a cookie
drink water
suck on a lemon
deep breath
Skin
flog yourself
shock yourself
slap self in face
(belly flop?)
Hands
paint your body
juggle dildos
take an article of clothing off
put an article of clothing on
stop performance (only unlocked after 2 hours, or if I unlock during performance)
Goals
I haven’t discovered the ultimate purpose/message of this piece yet, because I haven’t performed it enough. But I’m interested in the main question of: “What would Marina Abramovic’s Rhythm 0 have been like if the audience could have interacted with her body anonymously? I’m not trying to say anything profound about cruelty in chat rooms or senseless violence so much as I’m just trying to make a thought-provoking game that uses my body as the medium. It’s not very game-y right now, but in future iterations I hope to make each user a distinct player with stats, unlocks, and rewards. Further than that though, I hope to explore something I think about every time I make interactive art — audience agency. I want to know what people feel when they realize my body is at their fingertips — whether it makes them feel powerful or powerless or neither.
I also want to explore what effect this power or lackthereof has on the user, especially in circumstances where they choose something painful or hard for me to do. My second performance art piece ever included me and one of my best friends branding my chest with red-hot metal on stage, and I always say that it hurt him more than it hurt me. Was it cruel of me to ask my friend to torture me? Will my audience for this piece resent me for making them feel complicit in my pain?
Stats page? Will hopefully have some sort of data display in the room or on the app where people can see a graph of some sort counting how times I’ve done each action (sent from my device?) Originally this was to display a “red vs blue” style team tug-of-war where the actions would be categorized as either good or bad and users would see which type of action was “winning” overall.
I will hopefully get feedback from a comment box or text input on the website, to hear what people’s thoughts are and if they have any other ideas for commands. In 0.0.1 there was an option for people to write out their own commands but I think it led to the opposite-intended effect where people were reluctant to put any commands because they wanted to put something clever.
User Personas
Role-based
Many users of this playtest will simply be playing the role of a supportive friend, and will want to interact minimally and only enough to make them feel like they are helping my art (usually something positive, unless they are a good friend, then they will do the extreme ones — I’ve found that only your best friends love you enough to be cruel to you).
Some will take the role of stress-tester / troll and will delight in pushing me and my piece to its limits. I was hoping for some of these people in my first playtest, but no one opted to choose hyper-repetitive actions.
I wonder if anyone will take the role of protector and feel bad enough to try and skew the actions towards good ones or at least ones that are easier for me to perform.
User Journey
User encounters me in the room, or a crowd watching me in the room.
Either by asking someone or by seeing the big sign over the room, they see they can log onto a website to interact with me.
Pulling up the website, they see a series of menus with different buttons. Each button has clear labels of what each action is.
After pressing a button, they can look to the screen inside and see their action queue up behind the others.
They might be annoyed at the way the queue unfolds?
The rest of the experience is a feedback system of watching me and pressing buttons until either they get bored and leave or the performance ends.
