Art Installation Uses Audience's Text Messages As Inspiration
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Passersby communicate with performance artists via text at the Lower Manhattan installation of “The Attendants.” NY1’s Adam Balkin filed the following report.It's not often the audience at any type of performance is asked to please turn on and use their cell phones during the show, but that was exactly what people were instructed to do while watching a recent performance art piece called "The Attendants." The latest creation of theatrical incubator The Nerve Tank, for 48-straight hours a cube at the Winter Garden in the middle of the World Financial Center was manned by two rotating performers. Some of what passersby saw was pre-rehearsed, but for the most part, the two inside the tank were reacting to text messages being sent in from the crowd.
“If you have an urge to communicate with performers inside the cube, you can communicate by texting a message into the cube and the performers can respond to that message. The message, once you text it in, turns up on the screens and it can be seen by both the audience outside the cube and also by the performers inside the cube. Here we're encouraging the audience to be a participant and, in fact, a co-creator of the piece itself,” says Melanie Armer of The Think Tank.
New messages were displayed about every 30 seconds. Of course, there was someone screening them to make sure they were appropriate for all ages to read. The show's creators say this is designed to be something of a commentary about how connected we all are at all times here in 2011.
“I think people don't often realize the volume of information they're taking in and sending out, and I think this will make them have a pause and an understanding of how quickly we are communicating and perhaps put a little thought into how they're communicating,” says Debra Simon, artistic director of “The Attendants.”
Seeing as this is a relatively high tech performance, people in Lower Manhattan weren't the only ones who got to see and interact with the piece. There was also a live stream online with a spot for sending a message in from anywhere around the globe.