Creating Charlies thought constellation
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The composition of 'Charlies Flunstellas Constellation' was carried out in the Weatherhead High School Dance Studio, by myself and the Weatherhead Flunstellas group.
We used a combination of People Flocking & Constellation Designing.
People Flocking
In which each participant plays the role of a Flunstella, translating it's psychological and emotional relationships to other Flunstellas into different kinds of movements. The group explored how these individual movements combine to create group level behaviors.
Constellation designing
A step by step guide to creating a simple Flunstellas constellation that centres around the ideas, emotions and memories of one individual.
Background
Having taken the decision that for the installation we would create a constellation of giant 3D papercraft versions of the girls Flunstella shapes, I simplified their shapes in Blender. Once number of polygons (faces) had been reduced to under 100 they they could be used within Pepakura to create papercraft nets. These nets were printed on huge sheets of card & built by a team of artists at Fact, but for the constellation to mean something the young people had to decide which Fluntsellas would go where and why.
The group had already explored creating Constellations of Flunstellas using a Balloonascope, and so were familiar with the idea of relating ideas and emotions in space in relation to characters. To compose Charlies Constellation, we asked them to use their bodies in space, to represent where they thought Charlies Flunstellas should be positioned.
Preparing Behaviour Scripts
Earlier in the project the young people sculpted different shapes to represent different types of Flunstellas. They imagined what the characters in their classroom drama might be thinking and feeling. Before we went to the dance studio, the young people used Knex to attach information onto their shapes, describing how their Flunstella related to others and how it would behave when it was nearby them.
An Hyperactive Idea & its connections
A Sad Memory and its connections
The Dance Studio
We took the group to the school dance studio so that they could each take on the role of one of Charlies Flunstellas. They performed a series of movement based 'People Flocking' activities, responding to behaviour scripts they had written to describe how the Flunstella they were playing might behave when nearby other Flunstellas. Becky stood in the middle of the room playing the role of 'Charlie'.
Becky would indicate to the rest of the group when to start moving around the space in relation to one another, by clapping once. When Becky felt like the girls were in interesting positions, she would clap again and they would 'freeze frame' exactly where they were stood. Each girl in the group would then decide how high or low their Flunstellas should be, based on the idea that the higher up it is the more positive it is, the lower down it is the more negative it is.
We discussed the composition with the rest of the group, and after a couple of tries we arrived at a composition that most of the group felt happy with.
I made a 3D sketch of the constellation using Blender, giving the girls a chance to adjust and negotiate where they wanted Charlies various Flunstellas to be positioned in space.
Blender Models
Composition Workspace
The final .blend file can be opened in the open source 3D content creation software Blender, it is the workspace as it was set up to document the Constellation composed by the group. It features a model of 'Charlie' in the middle, a floor space and a set of Flunstellas models, currently offstage.
To learn how to navigate around it, you can follow this tutorial, Navigating 3D Space in Blender.
To move the shapes around and create your own composition, follow the tutorial above, and then...
• To select shapes, double click on them.
• Click and drag on the arrows that appear on the shapes when selected, to move them up, down left or right.
Charlies Flunstellas Constellation, (final composition).
Click here to download.
This is the model of 'Charlies Flunstellas Constellation' that was used to capture the young peoples composition. Again it can be opened, viewed and edited in Blender.
More Flunstella behaviour scripts
A Bored Feeling and it's connections
A Confused Memory
A Creative Idea and it's behaviours
A Long Winded idea and it's connections
In future to improve activities like this one, I would.
• Give more time for the group to explore different movement scripts and how they play out when a group uses them.
• Found ways for the group to input more into the movement scripts, with more lead in a preparation, the group could have had a lot of fun inventing their own movements.
• Been more restricitve about steps and the speed that the group could move with, this would have allowed more interesting behaviours to emerge.
• Used a percussion instrument to 'set the pace' e.g. one step per click.
• Had a video camera set up above the space, to capture a birds eye view of the group, the group could use this for live feedback of their composition.
• Make sure that the 3D model of the constellation be projected up large somewhere in the space so that the whole group can see the constellation as it is being composed.
• Setting up a separate role of 3D modeller, so that someone from the group is using Blender (or some other 3D software) to capture the constellation.
