Hi. Hi. Hi, I know we're not really meant to be talking to each other. I heard a voice confess. I had someone
who was in love with me. At the time I thought it was quite funny but also you
know very brave. It's very mysterious. I hope he texts her. They were being very
vulnerable
it's funny and it's little window into someone else's life it's really lovely
so we've been doing community work since about 2006. This will be our seventh
production this year we're in a production called Rise. It's probably going
to be the biggest production we've ever created there's lots of different
elements to it community worker is really key to The Old Vic. Digital was an
exciting way to make it more accessible. So The Old Vic approached Flying Object and ask
whether we could help bring together interesting people who could input into
the process so some digital people, theatre people and some people from the
community company itself at the moment we're at a workshop so all these people
come together. Three really different worlds three different perspectives kind
of towards the same thing you actually do come out with something much richer
and what we realized today is the fact that actually we all have ideas about
digital. We all think about it we all can find ways to use it. One of the key things
that came out of the workshop was the idea connectedness can we use this
project to try and connect people in London in a new way
so what we're gonna do is build booths, three phone booths around the theatre
will ring periodically and people passing by will be able to answer the
phone and when they do they're gonna hear a message from someone else in
London. We're gonna have to bring people together to help us we'll need some
audio specialists some technical specialists and developers and someone
to help us design and build the phones. We went into The Old Vic
to do a workshop with members of the community cast we asked the cast members
to leave genuine voicemails to people they knew. There were three categories of
calls they can make confession unexpressed thought or the expression of
gratitude to somebody in their community the kind of calls that we got were
genuinely diverse from light-hearted through to some very serious confessions
there were a lot very emotional calls. So this is the the contents of the phone
unit that were using so everything that runs it is inside this box the main
component is the Raspberry Pi which is our mini computer which is doing all the
work is so you when to ring the phone and one and then play messages that
people some point in the day it'll fire offer a ring signal and that uses these
audio boards to make this speaker ring and that will attract someone's
attention and they can come and pick up the handset when they do they'll trigger
this switch the order all gets routed through the normal handset just after
the audio output of the computer the question which needs to be resolved was
what the beats were going to look like I think the key driver of the designers
decided communication and how to communicate to the potential users first
of all the fact that this is an object to be interactively been used but it
also needs to have this slightly parallel universe kind of quality where
it's off communicates that something very out of the ordinary is going on
it's part of this thing kind of universes the play you can lift it
the city as being made up of things like phone boxes which are underlying this
like huge functioning kind of engine in which the parts of people but there's
also a recording inside it which is this personal like intimate moment which is
going on
it's a story and it the project is bringing those two things together into
the same place i think it does inspire some community I think people being
aware of everyone else has a story of their own makes you think about that
they're more when your actions and that's contact play is obviously about
community values and about actual community and the cast is a community
costs and one of the things which is clear through the plays that sometimes
people don't really behave like they all the community and they withhold secrets
from each other
London Calling is partly designed with that in mind and asking the question
what if we did tell people what we were thinking what effect would that have on
community
so tonight is the first preview of the play so you can hear some of that going
on behind me and so audience will be coming here for the first time and while
they're waiting hoping they would experience on the according to the first
time as well we try to create an experience that gives people an insight
into someone else in London and a moment in which they can survive maybe imagine
themselves in the other person's like having the ova can bring back on-site
make that happen this kind of environment created an environment where
we can experiment to try something out
it's really exciting to see it come to life in order to see the public interact
with this little calling isn't what you would expect our digital project but I
think that's what's exciting about it it's really taking the themes of rise
and what the community company were exploring and bring out further and
trying to bring that to a wider audience . you can say thank you and and i know
this is really off that