Wednesday 29 May, Chapel Arts Centre
Super Connected was working on us online from before the show started - not enough artists think about this part of the experience, but the anticipation phase has been part of the show for centuries - and it’s rare to get such a complete package at Fringe/Emerging Artist level. The show of the film of the album inspired by the book [this last NOT by Tim Arnold] ran for album length, a little over an hour. We were invited to bag up our phones for the duration [me I only reach for the phone anyway when I’m bored or distracted, not the case here] which I’ve encountered in immersive performances - but as a topic that Arnold returns to this wasn’t inappropriate, and a bit of fun.
The songs are relatable rock-pop middleweights: highlights were the use of familiar mobile alert tones on ‘Finally Everybody's Talking’, and the most electronic number - I think it was ‘Start a Conversation’ but I lost the paper with the printed setlist - which also featured the best of the visuals, with the Lindsay Kemp -inspired whiteface mime makeup. Of course had I already been acquainted with the album my experience would have been different, some of the choruses had catchy echoes and might have rung the bells when heard again, but you have to start somewhere…
The film resembled one of those mini ‘Plays for Today’ that the more ambitious ‘80s artists [Kate Bush for one] used to do as music videos, and it too had its moments: a couple of tear-jerking scenes [one down one up]; a believable but suitably cheesy VR device, and the boxing, delivery and unboxing of same.
Some of my issues with the experience come down to the size of the show: I’d say this was better suited to a larger hall, rather than Chapel Arts, which as we all know is a great place for an intimate show when you feel close to the artist, and tho’ we’re probably all used to the events where the screen draws your attention more than the figures on stage, that’s an experience for an outdoor or large capacity event. A bright coloured fast moving image is going to capture your eye first, and prioritise visual over aural, and sure we can keep looking back at Arnold to see he’s put down his guitar, or whatever, but the interaction between the two was for me weak. Then, the music is the full production of a studio-crafted album, and with a single keyboard and a guitar buried in the mix it’s manifestly not all coming from the two people on stage, which then puts Arnold into the problem of looking like he’s miming to his own video, tho’ I’m utterly sure he was singing live, and sometimes the emotion of that managed to burst the screen. Now I’ve been to plenty the large show where that would be standard, and fine, so maybe this just needs to go stadium sized and we’ll be happy.
I’m also not really sure that the connection between the Black Mirror -styled Corporation & its Device, and the phones temporarily not in our pockets, was made. Perhaps that came in the framework of the show, and the post-show discussion which I didn’t stay for. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not denying that it’s the case, and I applaud Arnold and team for taking the subject on, but I’d have like to see the argument made more forcefully. What is it in us or our contemporary metaverse that gives the Devices and Corporations that power? Isn’t that what’s really going to make us question what we’re doing to ourselves? But maybe it’s enough to start the train of thought and the conversation…
The show was well attended, and when the applause finally came properly and fulsomely - it had been confused and sparse at the end of some of the songs, as the music itself forged on ahead to the next one - it was sincere and deserved. This was a minor technical tour-de-force, and an unusually structured show: good to see it and good to see it in Bath.
Dr Zeno
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