i am very disappointed. we had our presentation today and everything technical that could of gone wrong did indeed go wrong. there was no sound on the first clip for an unknown reason. then Lowri's laptop couldn't be connected to the projector so we moved the PowerPoint file to a computer the would attach to the projector but then the embedded video wouldn't play and for some unknown reason the hyperlinked video would not go to the default browser and then wouldn't play any clips from you tube.

luckily we had a contingency plans in case of such technical difficulty. i had previously uploaded all the the videos into you tube. and they could be accessed through the default browser. it was a shame because it didn't have the professional edge that we had worked so hard to achieve but none the less we were able to give a presentation and make all the points we intended to.

All and all i have really enjoyed the module. i have found it to be very thought provoking and challenging in and positive way. It has made me think about points i had never even considered before.

I went up to Lowri's house again to put the PowerPoint presentation together and rehearse the presentation as a whole. Last night i made an image for the slide show that looks like a
graphic from a late night news program. lowri put it onto the first slide and then we put on a musical acompaniment as you might find on the opening title of a news program. initially we made a piece of music from scrach on Lowri's mobile but we couldn't seem to get it to play in powerpoint. so next we went through the music the slide show software came with. we found an appropriate piece of music and then organised someslide to co-ordinate with our script.

We struggled with the technology in placing the videos in the powerpoint presentation. The camera phone video as it refuse to embed onto the slide so i placed all the videos onto youtube and then created a hyperlink. Lowri then embeded the manifesto onto the next slide.

we rehursed the performance all the way through until we were confident with the piece. were going to meet 2 hours before we a due to start the presentation incase any technical difficulty arise.

Today i went to Lowri's house to do our filming. The weather was really good, which was a great relief . Lowri got all dress up as a miner and i put black stuff on her face to simulate soot. we filmed the miner escaping from the mine on her camera phone and this is what it looked like.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfO35ADYsEM

Later in the day we filmed our manifesto. we practiced a couple of time with alternate paragraph and then we filmed the footage on webcam. We messed up a couple of times and you can see our finished manifesto and all our mistakes on our joint blog.

http://someminerinformation.blogspot.com


it was a really productive day and i feel we worked really well as a team.
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We went to the library today to find out exactly what a manifesto was and to research some information to include in our manifesto. i found out about hypersurface and cyborg theatre.

Hypersurface is where both the real and virtual world meet. it's simultaneously real and representation and it's benefits are that you can' enter the work of art, be part of it as well as interact with it.' in other words it's a liminal space so the viewer can have a double presence. they can be in both the real and virtual worlds simultaneously and modify one through the other. the reason that it's successful in performance is that the audience member enters a world of simulation whilst maintaining a rapport with their own environment. 'it's not immersive but it simulates emersiveness.'

cyborg theatre uses cybernetics as part of it's method and practice. enmeshing the human with the environment in the simulated world of the world wide web. 'it takes place through and on the body of the performer. where the body itself becomes both the laboratory and the theatre of the piece.' it allow the audience the possibility of not only enter the piece but become one with the performers body.

Lowri and I looked through the manifesto book and found it to be little help but we believe a manifesto is basically a detailed argument for or against a topic that is used to inform and persuade. Lowri and I decided to write half each and read what our own words.

We have decided to film the footage of the miner on a camera phone as if a passerby has shot it. our reasoning is that it will illustrate just how easy it is to record and transmit information in the digital age.

Also today we wrote our script- the basic outline of which was the presenter would interview the miner about his experience underground then the interviewer would ask some question via email and the miner would ask what an email was- which would then lead onto a discussion of what the Internet does and it's function- then we will go to our pre-recorded manifesto as if it was a news report. i suggested that we should do our manifesto about virtual theatre and that we should argue for it's inclusion of digital technology as we both new quite a bit about that anyway.

Lowri came up with the idea of using a welsh miner (She luckily already has the accent) who had been trapped in a mine and had missed out on forty years of our country's evolution but still had the basic knowledge of what a computer was. we then discussed ways to successfully move from prerecorded footage and live action and we thought the format of a news show would enable us to do that. we decide we wanted to use you tube, emails, web cams and camera phones to illustrate how easy it is to record, transmit and access information now.

Lowri and I decided that the animation would be unfeasible to achieve in our time frame so we discussed our idea for using a character who doesn't understand the Internet with Ian. He suggested that we use an historical character which initially seemed a good idea but we realised that the use of an historical character would mean to much explanation of the basics (such as electricity and computers) before we could move onto the topics we wanted to discuss.

We also played with the idea of using the website http://secondlife.com/ to create digital versions of ourselves and having our presentation take place entirely in the digital domain but it was decided that we wanted to interchange between both real and virtual world.