I want to post this up to explain a bit about who Cara Yeates is and why we use her name in my work.
When we started the Codes & Conventions project at uni, no one wanted to work with me (probably because I'm yet to prove myself as an animator). So when discussing the groups on Facebook, I said I was with Cara & Sarah. It went from there. Of course these girls are not real, but I wanted to see how far I could take the joke, I wanted to see if I could create them.
Here is a copy of the final brief & analysis of the project. It is written as a letter because due to unforseen circumstances, some people were offended and thought that her character was to made to bully/take the piss. It was never meant to be taken that way.
Codes and conventions:
A study into identity and Facebook culture.
Conventions and codes control us, everyday we live up to some sort of standard that is excepted of us. We call it "being ourselves".
But who are we really?
When I'm with my parents, I am not the same as I am around my friends, when I am walking down the street, I act differently to how I act when I am at home. We've always adapted ourselves to our surroundings for security and safety.
Facebook and the Internet, has allowed for a further persona to develop. The online persona, where we can be anything and anyone, talk to and interact with many people in multiple ways. We publicly open ourselves up to the world, but not to those who are there for us in real time.
We build relationships, friendships, feelings for people we've never met, never interacted with outside of the digital domain. We let people into our lives, tell them our deepest secrets, yet will never really know them, and we hide these from the REAL people in our lives.
Ben Wingrove is massively interested in identity and Facebook culture and has been for some time. His distrust is public knowledge, his mother has worried that by being outspoken of his mistrust, he could be endangering himself. That is why he dislikes any information of the REAL him being broadcast.
This brief project, which was not meant to be anything, comes from a study of interactive theatre and seeing how far he can push things.
Ben wanted to explore the idea that everyday people are living their online personas. Many people are perfectly happy to build relationships online with people they've never met and to trust what these people tell them. Ben wanted to see what could happen if these two worlds combined.
By creating two characters, and putting them into a scenario where he had the ability to monitor it, he wanted to see if these characters could live through the "participants" of the project, both those in the know and those not, he could take them from the safety of their online persona and make them come to life.
With time and planning, whole scenes could be acted out, friendship, arguments, love, heartbreak, even death. These characters could become friends, could become part of something. Can we remove the screen through which we view entertainment? Is breaking the 4th wall to this degree too much?
The issue of morality comes into play, when we ask "is it a lie?" "is it art?" "is it theatre?" Ben calls it pushing interactivity in art, these sort of projects/plays/stories could replace television due to how easy they are to set up and how far they can go. The project raises questions about forced participation in art, does knowing you are involved change the experience, does knowing make it more or less real? By being involved but not knowing it, you become part of the art, and by knowing you become part of the performance.
The project raises all sorts of questions, this has just been one outcome of many possible endings.
Ben meant no offense or discomfort and apologises for any upset that may have arisen from this experiment but only because the quality of the project didn't merit the reaction. Had he planned it better this could have been something much more fun for everyone which is what it was meant to be, a bit of fun.
You may not hear from me again, but I hope that I have made you think and that I remain with you in some way.
Cara Yeates x
When we started the Codes & Conventions project at uni, no one wanted to work with me (probably because I'm yet to prove myself as an animator). So when discussing the groups on Facebook, I said I was with Cara & Sarah. It went from there. Of course these girls are not real, but I wanted to see how far I could take the joke, I wanted to see if I could create them.
Here is a copy of the final brief & analysis of the project. It is written as a letter because due to unforseen circumstances, some people were offended and thought that her character was to made to bully/take the piss. It was never meant to be taken that way.
Codes and conventions:
A study into identity and Facebook culture.
Conventions and codes control us, everyday we live up to some sort of standard that is excepted of us. We call it "being ourselves".
But who are we really?
When I'm with my parents, I am not the same as I am around my friends, when I am walking down the street, I act differently to how I act when I am at home. We've always adapted ourselves to our surroundings for security and safety.
Facebook and the Internet, has allowed for a further persona to develop. The online persona, where we can be anything and anyone, talk to and interact with many people in multiple ways. We publicly open ourselves up to the world, but not to those who are there for us in real time.
We build relationships, friendships, feelings for people we've never met, never interacted with outside of the digital domain. We let people into our lives, tell them our deepest secrets, yet will never really know them, and we hide these from the REAL people in our lives.
Ben Wingrove is massively interested in identity and Facebook culture and has been for some time. His distrust is public knowledge, his mother has worried that by being outspoken of his mistrust, he could be endangering himself. That is why he dislikes any information of the REAL him being broadcast.
This brief project, which was not meant to be anything, comes from a study of interactive theatre and seeing how far he can push things.
Ben wanted to explore the idea that everyday people are living their online personas. Many people are perfectly happy to build relationships online with people they've never met and to trust what these people tell them. Ben wanted to see what could happen if these two worlds combined.
By creating two characters, and putting them into a scenario where he had the ability to monitor it, he wanted to see if these characters could live through the "participants" of the project, both those in the know and those not, he could take them from the safety of their online persona and make them come to life.
With time and planning, whole scenes could be acted out, friendship, arguments, love, heartbreak, even death. These characters could become friends, could become part of something. Can we remove the screen through which we view entertainment? Is breaking the 4th wall to this degree too much?
The issue of morality comes into play, when we ask "is it a lie?" "is it art?" "is it theatre?" Ben calls it pushing interactivity in art, these sort of projects/plays/stories could replace television due to how easy they are to set up and how far they can go. The project raises questions about forced participation in art, does knowing you are involved change the experience, does knowing make it more or less real? By being involved but not knowing it, you become part of the art, and by knowing you become part of the performance.
The project raises all sorts of questions, this has just been one outcome of many possible endings.
Ben meant no offense or discomfort and apologises for any upset that may have arisen from this experiment but only because the quality of the project didn't merit the reaction. Had he planned it better this could have been something much more fun for everyone which is what it was meant to be, a bit of fun.
You may not hear from me again, but I hope that I have made you think and that I remain with you in some way.
Cara Yeates x
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