It seems like it's been a very fast 3 days - but so much has happened - in another sense, it seems longer. Our group - which is made up from Yuri Sazuki from Japan, now living in London and Leticia Caceres and Angela Betzien of the Austrialian theatre company Real TV and myself. We have been set the task to collaborate and respond to the theme of "The Playable City".

To the right - a picture of 'Yuri In the Fabric Bin' during the epic trip to the scrapstore.  

After a first day of short introductions where we all shared a bit about our work (hugely inspiring), followed by some equally interesting talks. We then had just a few hours to get together in our group and start our project. It was perhaps a challenge for us to find a way to 'start' on this task... especially after we'd had so much input to process from the talks. However, we followed the advice of James Brindle (who shared his work and process with us earlier in the day) - "going for a walk is always a winner". So - we drifted into the centre of town. Being the only Bristol 'resident' in the group - I tried to answer questions about the city - history, different areas, and we settled in a cafe in St Nicholas market to chat over a cup of English tea. We started to discuss whether any of us were 'in love' with a city - where we lived - or elsewhere. This lead us to think about why we felt affinity with certain places - and we started to discuss 'love' and 'location' and how we can attach such strong feelings and memories to a place if something emotional had happened to us there. First of all, we tried to outline what it was we all wanted to achieve through this collaboration - (which I found quite hard, as, really, I wasn't sure, because it was the very start of a project, so - at that point anything could happen). We did keep things quite general though, and called it a 'wish list'

we would like to make something that applies locally to Bristol - but could be transferable to another city - yet maintain a 'local' or site specific nature wherever it happens.

we would like to combine hi tech and low tech

 we wish to 'leave something behind'  ... these all seemed like reasonable aims, and good for us to keep in mind.

 Somehow  (and maybe it was because we'd just wandered through a number of stalls selling old records) the topic of 'mix tapes' came up - and we all enthused about how the culture of making a mixtape for someone special aswell as receiving one was very much part of our shared history, and something we fondly recall. We all felt a sense of nostalgia towards the mix tape - especially with the amount of effort it takes to compile 2 sides of a D90 (I used to obsess about making sure the tracks fitted as exactly as possible onto each side, with only a few seconds of 'blank' - always mentally noting short tracks that could be useful for this...) - mmm considerably more effort than sharing a playlist. So - we had these thoughts in our mind... and thinking back - i'm not totally sure about the order of ideas springing up - but we seemed to have some kind of 'eureka' moment causing Leticia to leap up off her seat and wave her arms around (and i think the rest of us definitely bounced in our seats) - when we connected the idea of mapping moments of love to locations - to make a mixtape of local people's 'songs for their loved ones' - and to then use the tape physically in these locations - maybe to create a 'playable' heart shaped object from tape that was a culmination of these chosen songs....  

 We then came up with an idea to have a phone app to guide people to these locations, and for there to be a link between the location and a song from the mixtape. It was a luxury to be working with a writer - because,  very quickly, we emerged with some poetic ways of crystalising out thoughts into imagining a 'heart cartographer' who 'maps Bristol's Heartlands'.

Following on from that, we came up with the thought that the phone app could guide the audience in a way that didn't use a 'map' - but, instead gave away clues to your proximity to a 'love location' by indicating whether you were getting warmer  (closer) or cooler (further away). These would be accompanied by messages from the Heart Cartographer that would increase in intensity as you approach - from 'you are starting to blush' to 'you have butterflies in your stomach' and 'your heart is racing' as examples. This has developed into thinking about a 'heart compass', - to 'follow your heart' to find your way,  and many other thoughts on how we can signify more layers of meaning (including relating to who else is using the app, and where they are heading towards) through very simple visual means, without too much information, or a clutter on the screen.

The event is designed to take place on a certain day (Valentine's day) and we decided to create small installations or 'live moments' at each location,- each relating to a song from the mixtape. These would require the audience to have a matching object from a 'bag of trinkets' they collect from a start location.,... Ok - now it feels a bit complicated to explain...

 I feel we have really worked up the idea in many interesting ways - but we've all had (in turn) a few moments of doubt about how it all fits together... Have we overloaded it? - is it too complicated? is the mixtape still relevant?  It's such a short time to make a piece - and we came up with lots and lots of suggestions quite early on, and one downside of this might be that we have all been thinking of the piece slightly differently.  So - tomorrow (thursday) is the time to 'weed the garden' and see how things fit together, making sure we are not afraid to chuck out ideas that don't work... hey - they might work with something else... 

There are still elements I'm not sure I totally 'get' - but also, I'm really confident we will clarify the piece tomorrow. I've been thinking about a text a good friend of mine (and phenomenal musician / composer) wrote, Maja Ratkje, called Nine Prerequisites for Inspiration. - have a look here - http://ratkje.no/2010/10/833/

I think we've done the 'maximalism' - and maybe tomorrow we need to "mentally ‘clear the desk’ in one accomplished, virtuoso swipe"... well - maybe just a bit of a tidy up is all that is necessary.

Also - I'm excited about the fact we have arranged to work with a performer for a few hours tomorrow to try out staging a 'moment' with the 'Heart Cartographer'... more to follow.