July 17, 2014 by katie
A design fiction film providing an example of what could be created by our automated ‘Protagonist’ service.
The Team:
Katie Day is Artistic Director of The Other Way Works, a theatre company based in Birmingham.
Dr John Troyer is Deputy Director of the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath.
Concept & Content Selection: Katie Day
Example User: Hannah Nicklin
Animation & Video Production: Hazel O’Brien
Music: Mark Day
Protagonist
A software engine to automatically create a video life story from an individual’s social media content, ‘This is You’ is a practical attempt to make sense of our vast stashes of personal data in a human, emotional and narrative way.
‘Protagonist’ is a REACT Strategic Projects Feasibility Study
Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), REACT (Research and Enterprise in Arts and Creative Technology) is one of four UK Knowledge Exchange Hubs for the Creative Economy and is a collaboration between UWE Bristol (the University of the West of England), Watershed and the Universities of Bath, Bristol, Cardiff and Exeter.
About the team:
Katie Day is Artistic Director of The Other Way Works, who create daring and remarkable theatre drawing the audience into the very heart of the experience. We recently produced Bandstand, a collection of audio performances for Bandstands delivered via a location-aware smartphone app. Katie Day produced Theatre Sandbox for Watershed in 2010, and brings that experience of developing theatre and technology projects to her own work on this project. “The Other Way Works is a dynamic young company that is successfully exploring the possibilities of what theatre can and might be” Lyn Gardner, The Guardian
Dr John Troyer is Deputy Director of the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath. His interdisciplinary research focuses on contemporary memorialisation practices, concepts of space and place, and the dead body’s relationship with technology. Dr. Troyer is also a theatre director and installation artist with extensive experience in site-specific performance across the United States and Europe.
April 18, 2014 by katie
We were lucky enough to be awarded a ‘CATH’ grant last year, and have been working in collaboration with some excellent people to create a new concept using our 2008 production Black Tonic as its inspiration.
Agent in a Box is a collaboration between:
Katie Day – http://www.theotherwayworks.co.uk/
Alyson Fielding – http://www.pyuda.com/
John Sear – http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/facilities/digitalhumanitieshub/staff/sear-john.aspx / http://wallfour.co.uk/
Inspired by The Other Way Works’ 2008 immersive theatre production ‘Black Tonic’
This pilot project has been delivered through the Collaborative Arts Triple Helix, a research project by the University of Birmingham in partnership with University of Leicester, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council as part of their Creative Economy Knowledge Exchange programme.
Agent in a Box will eventually be an hour-long spy thriller, theatre game experience, to be played alone in an anonymous hotel bedroom.
Agent in a box is an exciting creative content offer for those boring evenings you spend in chain business hotels when travelling for work with only CNN for company.The experience is delivered in the form of a portable box (the size of a box of chocolates), which can be purchased for yourself or as a gift. An interactive story of espionage told through paper fragments, phone and text messages, provoking the player to accept the invitation of the anonymous hotel room to become someone new if only for one night.
We are now seeking partnerships to help us develop the project.
April 17, 2014 by katie
Technology Feasibility Study – ‘Protagonist’
Task:
Deliver a technical specification and development plan for a prototype of an online app that automatically generates a short film memoir about a user from their social media content.
Fee:
£1,000 to deliver the Feasibility Study. We would estimate this to be 2 days work.
Background:
‘Protagonist’ is a practical attempt to make sense of our vast stashes of online personal data in a human, emotional and narrative way.
This is an early stage research project funded by REACT (http://www.react-hub.org.uk/protagonist/) and is collaboration between Katie Day, Artistic Director of The Other Way Works, a theatre company based in Birmingham, and Dr John Troyer, Deputy Director of the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath.
Requirements for the Prototype:
1. Gathers social media content from user’s accounts (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Google+);
2. Produces a video from user’s social media content;
3. Content of video aims to be of significance to the user (it is anticipated that this would be achieved by automated classification and clustering of content);
4. Video looks attractive and professionally produced;
5. Video is 1-3 minutes in length;
6. It should be cost effective and seek to use pre-existing assets, services and tools;
7. Cost of Prototype development does not exceed £40,000.
Requirements for the Feasibility Study:
1. It will include a proposed technical solution;
2. The development plan will include effort estimates and suggested delivery timescale;
3. The technical specification and development plan should be clearly and realistically costed;
4. A list of the technologies required;
5. Person specifications for developing and integrating these technologies, and leading the project;
6. A Skype meeting with Katie Day after the study is complete to discuss the proposal.
Application Process:
Please get in touch with Katie Day via email to info@theotherwayworks.co.uk by 6pm on Friday 25th April 2014 to express your interest in delivering this brief.
Please provide a brief overview of your relevant experience. Include any links to your CV, portfolio or existing apps.
We have more detailed requirements and use cases for the prototype that we will supply to the selected applicant.
February 18, 2014 by katie
Avon Calling is back on the road this spring & summer…
Curve, Leicester
Sat 12th April 2014
Sun 13th April 2014
– Avon Calling is part of Curve’s Inside Out Festival and is not on sale to the general public. Shows were won as part of a competition.
www.curveonline.co.uk
Warwick Arts Centre
Sat 10th May 3 & 7.30pm 2014
Sun 11th May 3 & 6.30pm 2014
www.warwickartscentre.co.uk/whats-on/2014/avon-calling/
Black Country Touring
Sat 21st June 2014
Sun 22nd June 2014
– Avon Calling is available for BCT Promoters and 2 performances are on sale directly to people living in the Black Country
www.bctouring.co.uk/
The Lowry, Salford
Sat 12th July | 2 & 7.30pm 2014
Sun 13th July | 2 & 7.30pm 2014
http://www.thelowry.com/event/avon-calling1
November 22, 2013 by katie
We were very excited to find out that our Bandstand project has been selected by Sync as one of their recent “10 digital arts projects we love”.
They said:
“it’s a beautiful way of finding new ways to read these historic spaces through digital technology.”
You can read the full article here.
We are in rather excellent company, with other highlighted projects including Hello Lamp Post and the V&A’s recent Memory Palace Exhibition.
August 23, 2013 by katie
If you don’t have access to an iPhone or Android Smartphone, but would still like to experience the Bandstand Audios in situ, then you can now download the mp3s from below (right-click and save file as).
We recommend that you visit the featured Bandstand when listening to each track. The audios have been designed with specific locations in mind and contain audience instructions and narrative content that refer to the specific environments.
Bear in mind that listening to the mp3s at home or at the office is a bit like reading a play script rather than going to see a full production performed at a theatre, i.e. its not the full experience.
Lightwoods Park, Bearwood
Lightwoods mp3 (for solo listening)
Recommended Listening Instructions:
> Go to Lightwoods Park Bearwood (B67 5DP)
> Find the Bandstand
> Stand at the bottom of the Bandstand steps
> Put your headphones on and press play on the Lightwoods track on your audio player
> The track lasts for 40 minutes
> Enjoy
West Park, Wolverhampton
West Park WOMAN mp3 (for solo or 2-person listening)
West Park MAN mp3 (for 2-person listening)
Recommended Listening Instructions:
> Go to West Park Wolverhampton (WV1 4PH)
> Find the Bandstand
> Stand at the bottom of the Bandstand steps
> Choose the WOMAN track if you are listening alone
> If you are listening as a pair, one should choose the WOMAN track and one the MAN track
> Put your headphones on and press play on the selected track on your audio player. If you’re listening in a pair, make sure you press play AT THE SAME TIME
> The tracks lasts for 20 minutes
> Enjoy
August 14, 2013 by katie
I recently convened a session at the West Midlands Theatre Open Space Event called “Beyond Emerging: What opportunities are there for theatre makers who have been working for 10 years or more?”
Its something that I and others have been thinking and talking about over the last year or two. A series of things have pointed to the fact that I as a theatre maker, and the theatre company that I run (www.theotherwayworks.co.uk) are no longer ’emerging’: A waning desire to participate in ‘scratch’ platforms for little or no money; Spending less time scanning things like (the excellent) ArtsAdmin e-digest for opportunities; Ignoring training in things like ‘starting a theatre company’; a greater sense of the work we’d like to make and the ability to pull a programme and a team together to deliver it; Being too old for all those under-21/25/30 opportunities.
A rejection from a development scheme sealed the thinking when it informed us that the scheme wouldn’t be suitable for us as we had ’emerged’.
But emerged into what?
The start of ‘mid-career’? Whatever that means? It feels a bit early for that to me.
The landscape for emerging artists has changed considerably since we started out in 2003-4. When Jane Packman and I started trying to run The Other Way Works as a professional theatre company in Birmingham back then, we were pretty much the first new company of its kind in the local scene since companies like Stan’s Cafe had started out about 15 years before us. The ‘scratch’ phenomenon hadn’t really got off the ground yet, and there were no formal ’emerging artist’ development schemes for us to take advantage of.
In around 2005 we got heavily involved with the early days of Pilot – now a long-running and successful regional development platform, regularly showcasing work there, and working as co-pilots. As the years went by we were lucky enough to benefit from development programmes run by China Plate, Arts Council WM strategic projects and presentation and commissioning support from mac. In the last few years it feels like there’s been a real blossoming of programmes, training and showcasing opportunities aimed at emerging artists, both in this region and nationally. Larger organisations and regional houses have taken on board the idea that they need to invest in the next generation, and this is great news.
But what happens next? I can’t stay forever emerging, and I wouldn’t want to. I want to move to the next level with the work I make: get more ambitious; widen the scope, the market; build on good partnerships and experiment with new ones; improve production values.
Back in around 2006, looking forward to this point, we had (not unfounded) expectations of where we might ‘be’. If we kept working hard, making better work, getting successful Arts Council Grants for the Arts applications under our belt, then we could well expect to become an RFO (Regularly Funded Organisation) in 5-7 years time. Whilst never exactly the treasure chest at the end of the rainbow, RFO status would at least mean some security, provision for core costs like paying you a reliable wage, and recognition of quality or at least pedigree within the sector.
Looking around me now I see a very different scene. RFOs have become NPOs (National Portfolio Organisations), and fewer of them with much higher demands in terms of reporting and what they give back to the sector. Having (unsuccessfully) applied to be part of the National Portfolio in the last round in 2011, I wouldn’t consider doing so in the next round. There are likely to be even fewer organisations funded, and inevitably the portfolio, and the demands upon it, will be skewed towards larger, building-based companies, making it an unsuitable model for a micro-organisation like mine.
I think the expectation is that once beyond the emerging artist schemes Companies would have built sufficient relationships with venues, funders, commissioners and audiences to sustain them. This is not exactly the case in our situation. Of course we have built relationships and are lucky to have a good record of receiving funding, but theatres’ commissioning budgets are squeezed as budget cuts bite, and funding is only ever project focused which leaves inevitable gaps where I essentially have to work for free in order to keep the wheel turning. Whilst we have many friends and supporters in the industry its still incredibly difficult to get anyone to actually put up some money to commission or co-produce work. We are strong in our region (West Midlands), and have made some good contacts nationally, but we are yet to break into the international market despite some efforts over the years.
I don’t feel that I’m alone in this. There are I know many theatre artists and companies currently in a similar boat. And I’m wondering what we as a cohort of recently ’emerged’ artists and companies can do to address the situation? Can we develop a peer network to support each other and lobby within the sector? How can we make a career of this? Can we make a strong enough case for support that will see the support of ’emerged’ artists become just as important as that of ’emerging’? There are more than just the bottom and top rungs of a ladder. How can the sector support the development of artists all the way up the ladder?
I don’t know how we can answer these questions yet, and we’re not going to get this sorted straight away. But we’ve got to start talking about it and getting it on people’s agendas if we’re going to start seeing some change.
by katie
We have been awarded a £15,000 Feasibility grant from REACT to research a new project.
Have you ever wished that someone would make a film of your life?
What if you’d already done most of the hard work without even noticing?We’ll take all the stuff that you’ve posted online – the status updates, the shaky-cam videos, the happy snaps, the moments of poignancy and of triumph – and weave them into a personal life documentary using our specially made digital curator bots, and watch them transform these scraps into a brief, beautiful visual memoir.
The grant will fund pre-prototype activity on this project.
Protagonist is a practical attempt to make sense of our vast stashes of personal data in a human, emotional, narrative way. Using their own social media content, we want to create a short film memoir of an individual – with the output feeling meaningful, personalised, beautiful and potentially provocative. And we want to see if we can create this using an automated process.
Our ambition is that the Protagonist service will be used within the Afterlife Retreat, but also as a commercial, stand-alone, direct-to-consumer product.
July 31, 2013 by katie
Our Launch events were blessed with sunny afternoons, and we had a great turnout at both. Here are the lovely things people wrote in our comments book after they’d listened to the audios.
Bandstand Audience comments in Guest book
West Park Wolverhampton
Wednesday 10th July 2013
A very enjoyable experience!
Absolute delight. Enchanting performance that had you oblivious to the other happenings in the park. Thank you.
A lovely experience, thanks
An enchanting experience, bringing a historic park feature to life!
My friend and I listened to the man/woman stories which created a sense of tension, unease and finally was very moving and affecting. The first experience of this kind I have taken part it, and thoroughly enjoyed it.
A delightful interlude in my day.
A lovely story. I much preferred the woman’s story to the man’s as I thought it was more complex and interesting.
Really enjoyed this in beautiful sunshine. Something very moving and thoughtful about the ‘voice experience’. Lovely! Thank you.
Transported to another world. Dreamlike experience. Excellent.
Totally absorbed in the story.
Lightwoods Park, Bearwood
Thursday 11th July 2013
This was so lovely. Will come back again and bring friends too. Excellent!
Amazing! Shame it finished too soon – gripping stories! A great afternoon and my second visit to this park.
I really enjoyed it. It’s excellent. It made the whole park into a kind of set, like a piece of art that was part of the play. Interesting doing the moves – becoming the characters for a moment. Loved the music and blend of different voices. Interesting watching the kids gliding on their bikes right next to where the ice rink was set. Great job!
Intrigued by the play of ‘fact’ and fiction. Sense of different landscapes – real, imagined, absent, hypothetical. Also enjoyed the threads of narrative and collisions with space/time eg frozen ice, broken slats round the bandstand.
Congratulations to all involved. A really enjoyable experience on a beautiful sunny afternoon. I liked the variety of characters and how the narrative unfolded, the integration of local knowledge and history really placed the work in the setting. Nice to be invited to move around and engage with the environment, help to keep you engaged. Will look out for more!
I thought it was great but I didn’t like listening to myself but I loved it I’m gonna come again! MAKE MORE!!
Superb experience, fantastic site-specific audio. Thoroughly absorbing. Enjoyed the natural backgrounds, sounds and rhythms. More please.
Beautifully layered and transporting. Really enjoyed it and impressed how all the voices are sewn together. Will recommend to others! Thank you!
An intern’s view – by Marie Woodhouse
December 20, 2013 by katie
My name is Marie Woodhouse and I am a 22 year old University student studying BA (Hons) Theatre at the University of Falmouth. As part of my education in my third year as well as conducting my own practice in context project I was asked to find a placement for the duration of my first semester. Always being interested in immersive theatre, I contacted Katie Day from The Other Way Works to ask if there was the opportunity for some work experience. Following an initial meeting in early September 2013 I began to shadow Katie and the company’s work for three months by attending meetings, workshops and working at the company’s head quarters in King’s Heath.
When I began my placement with Katie I honestly didn’t know what to expect. I was excited and eager to see how a ‘real’ company operates and ready to learn new skills. The first meetings I attended involved the future projects of the company opportunities for funding. Working with freelance producer Thomas Wildish we planned out the next two years for The Other Way Works, including exciting new projects such as After Life and the future of Black Tonic and Avon Calling. During this time I had the pleasure of meeting co-founder Louise Platt, core artist for the company and drama therapist. I was surprised to learn there was a lot more paper work and funding applications than I had anticipated when creating your own theatre company.The reality of work is entirely dependent on the application of money. I realized that to succeed as an artist or a company they are a ‘necessary evil’ in order to produce the work you want to produce.
Following these meetings I was inspired to look at my own work as a student and artist, especially in the context of The Other Way Works’ future project, After Life. The company are basing their performance project on the 1998 Japanese film After Life, directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda. After Life is set in a derelict waystation, a place where dead souls are taken to be processed before they can move on. Each week a new group of souls arrive and check in, and with the help of the social workers have to replicate as accurately as possible their happiest memory. These memories are filmed and then showcased at the end of the week. As the person watches their memory relived on the screen they disappear and move on into the afterlife, a state in which the person lives in that single memory for eternity.
The Other Way Works want to invite audience members on a residency, bringing them to a boarding house or secluded location. The duration of the performance or experience will last roughly a weekend, in which the audience members will undergo a similar process to the dead souls in After Life. They will have a few days to select a memory, duplicate it and record it, the end of the performance resulting in a showcase similar to the film.
I was shocked, surprised and excited when I heard about this project. I was stunned at how similar After Life was to my own. For my practice in context project I have chosen to look at memories, in how we may recreate and reassign them, to resurrect them. I will be working autobiographically and on site to immerse myself back into the memories of my childhood, in particular those related to a dead relative. What is this allure of recreating memories and how can these be used as a cathartic release when mourning a loved one? Maybe it is the idea of being at peace within ourselves, to capture a beautiful moment and relive it. The moments or memoires within our lives are what bind us to being human. Imagine how it would be to have had no memories, no experiences. Memories are the meat on our bones, what flesh us out as human. Could it be that memories are the only thing that can define us as alive?
The workshops that I enjoyed the most were working with Alyson Fielding and John Sear on the CATH project for Black Tonic. Meeting at the University of Birmingham we had two full days of planning and expanding ideas, allowing the creative juices to flow instead of being stunted by funding applications. We researched new technologies to enhance the level of immersion during performances as well as video games and story ideas and formats, in particular an immersive computer game called Dear Esther. The story follows an unnamed protagonist as he travels through a lonely Scottish Island whilst trying to process the grief for his dead wife, Esther. The player is invited to explore the island as the narrator, gaining pieces of the story in a non-chronological order which you have to decipher yourself. The game features a lot of themes such as lonesomeness, the unreliable narrator and mourning. It reminded me of my practice in context project as the beautiful graphics and interactive play acted as a story-telling implement in regards to loss and memories. I am looking at how memories can be fickle as we only rely on the brain to retain them. If we forget our memories do we forget ourselves? How do we remember the people who have passed on, how do they live in our memories?
Katie introduced me to theatre maker and performance artist Francesca Millican-Slater. I met with Fran to have a discussion about my project as her degree show, Me Myself and Miss Gibbs shared similar messages and themes with my own work as we both investigate how you remember people who have passed on through memory.
As a student interested in immersive theatre my life ambition is to begin an immersive theatre company of my own that helps to educate young people by using exciting and immersive performance methods. I throughly enjoyed my time working with Katie and The Other Way Works and learnt in particular how a founded drama company operates, funds itself and creates work and ideas. Working with the company and seeing how it operates strengthen my future ambitions and gave me new aspirations, confirming my decision that if you want to work in theatre and performance it can be achieved if you are willing to work for it.
Marie Woodhouse, 20th December 2013