"Ignore."

For my second performance piece I wanted to involve my audience more. My audience being the general public. My original idea was to create some kind or directions or orders that people will see and think, what does that mean? or what does that represent? I wanted to create something that would provoke a reaction, whether it be positive or negative and ultimately I wanted to see if I could influence people's direction of movement. I began to experiment when I realised a great opportunity, winter had just begun and there was a thin sheet of ice/snow on the ground. Local to my house there is a valley where I thought would be a great place to test out some of my ideas. So one day I walked down there and began to scribe directions in the ice discreetly, but not just on the floor but also on walls, benches and any where I could do really. These signs were just spontaneous drawings which I got from the top of my head as it was only really an experiment to test the strength of the idea. The valley was a fairly busy walkway so I could watch peoples reactions secretly from the tree's. A couple of people seen the designs and ignored them, but some people reacted in a happy manner. They were smiling but didn't take the sign's seriously.

I took this on board and realised that my experiment wasn't a failure it just helped me understand what I needed to do so that people took my idea seriously. My original designs didn't look official so I can see why people wasn't following them. I came up with a better more official looking sign design and with help from college I was able to get it made professionally for me. I drew up my design on illustrator and then Green Lane Campus drew it up on CAD and had it cut out from red plastic. I chose the colour red because it catches the eye more than most colours and also as the road sign rule, red represents danger. I went down to Green Lane and was taught how to transfer text stickers onto material. It was at this stage I had my text "ignore." transfered onto my sign. My official looking sign was now complete, all I had to do was to see if it work. My design was intended for pedestrians so I had to be careful in where it would be placed so that it doesn't cause any real danger. My sign was designed for no other purpose than to almost trick pedestrians so that their movement is influenced.

                                                                                                             The actual design is a red rectangular shape with a circle attatched to the side of it. I also has the words "ignore." wrote on the sign. You already know the reason for the colour and the shape is just as important. I used both shapes so that the sign doesn't replicate something already in use and more importantly a circle because this represents an order, hopefully people will realise this. Also the circle represents a frame because there is a hole in the middle. What can be seen through this hole could be conclusive. "Ignore." is wrote on the sign purely to confuse the pedestrians even more to provoke a reation. The performance will be created by the pedestrians; the success of the performance is hanging in the balnce, it will all depending on how their movement is affected. I'm not 100% sure how I will record the performance yet, im thinking about using photography or sound as I used video for my other performance.

Check my blog later for the results of this test.