Trajectory Theatre has bold creative ambitions. These ambitions involve individuals in and outside the industry, some whom we haven’t yet reached and others that we may not in this lifetime. Our goal to foster collaboration, learning and advancement in immersive technology in the arts cannot be achieved in isolation. It is essential that we share, we support, and we create. On Saturday 26 July 2019 we brought a group of intrepid makers together at Newspeak House in Shoreditch and the Hack and Scratch event was born. But where did this idea originate?

1% inspiration

There is a certain recognisable something I always see in the eyes of a maker when they emerge from their first foray into virtual reality. When a person from any other walk of life returns back to reality they tend to appear charmed and intrigued. Some are sceptical or, if the whole thing has been delivered without proper forethought, completely turned off. The creators however make themselves known with an almost imperceptible twinkle.

Those who know what to look for recognise this twinkle as impetuous, excitable, floor stomping inspiration. It’s the sort of inspiration that fires off like burning jet fuel from a rocket or holds you hostage until you’ve scrawled indecipherable notes across every inch of your bedroom walls. This inspiration cuts through the head of the maker, bouncing from place to place, expanding with every thud. It’s the inspiration you get when a whole new world of possibilities has opened up before you.

This state of creative fervour is enviable and should be encouraged but — and I chose my words very carefully when I say this — it has no value. No single idea has any intrinsic value: only when we combine our idea with labour do we have a chance at creating value. This is not an excuse for us to crush the naivety of impetuous inspiration with the cynicism of experience, quite the opposite. We should foster ideas and value the people that have them. We should rise to fill the many roles needed in the process of creation (mentor, explorer, expert, novice) and expect that these roles will change from day to day and even within the span of a single sentence. This drive, to serve inspiration wherever it may appear, was the impetus behind Trajectory Theatre’s most recent experiment, the Hack and Scratch.

Great artists steal

The concept came from two distinct practices in tech and theatre. A scratch night is a commonly used model for sharing work in progress with friendly audiences who can offer support and feedback and help guide the artist in their next steps. A hackathon is a time limited event in which those involved in software development collaborate intensively on a project, often in pursuit of a solution to a specific problem or in line with a theme. As a digital theatre company it almost seems obvious that we should take these two models and smash them together at high speed to see what forms remained after the smoke had cleared.

The plan was simple enough, two strands working harmoniously together. One group brings ideas and inspiration, the other knowledge and work in progress. We invite the public in to experience what’s on offer and at the end we share what we have learned.

Bridging the gap

Reflecting on the work that was brought along, and that which was made on the day, clear themes emerge. The gap that exists between the different iterations of reality, and how we may manipulate, extend or cross this gap kept resurfacing.

Interestingly, the exploration of this gap was not limited to the digital and real dichotomy, but further asked what this dichotomy could reveal about our interpretation of reality. One hack project asked what we would find from the prisoner dilemma of game theory if it were played out over Skype. Meanwhile, another project again used Skype to take one participant’s point of view away from them and deliver it to an onlooker. The onlooker then had to guide the participant to solve a puzzle. Co-opting such a ubiquitous telecommunication tool played effectively on the nature of such tools, questioning what we can and can’t communicate through these devices, and what conclusions we draw to make sense of the difference.

This asymmetry of understanding is the basis of the IOT social mystery from a group of MA virtual and extended reality students from UWE. In The 2084 Protocol participants receive different packets of information and must decipher the clues these provide. Similarly, the escape experience The Subject does the same though one participant is locked in a small box. In both these examples communication must be performed through a construct (digital in one case, physical in the other) which looks to constrain the passing of information. This idea was picked up by another hack group who streamed a video feed into VR that they could then overwrite with influencing text.

As well as seeing information walled off, we also hosted projects that revealed hidden truths in collections of data. In Serenade of the Woods computer vision is used on footage of forest scenes; the resulting sounds are arranged into a composition that is played back over the images. Blocks Sound also uses computer vision but allows the audience to participate through a tactile reading of the arrangement of Lego to create sound.

In both these cases the digital interpretation of the visual components into sound acts as a co-producer with a performer or with the audience themselves. In Viseral Waves the two ideas are merged. The audience wears an EEG headset and draws on a piece of paper; the drawing and their brain waves whilst drawing are fed into a projection which plays out across a dancer. Between these three pieces we see not just a revelation of data but also the interpretation of that data in a number of different ways.

After the dust settled

The main take away from this day, especially to us as organisers, was the importance of failure. The right to fail is often spouted in the theatre world, and across the tracks in the tech sector the battle call is “fail fast and fail forward”. But have we really internalised that lesson? We are still shy when it comes to advertising our failures, though it has tremendous value not just for ourselves but for those who follow after us. So in aid of that I’d like to present a few of our own failings from the day.

As the clock ticked closer to the 8am start time on the Saturday morning, I was still running head long through code on a project I had planned to present. In fact, showing this little experiment of mine was a key personal motivator. Undeterred, I continued to switch between my dual role as production runner and hapless programmer until I received these wise words:

“You are doing two things badly rather than one thing well”.

It was true. I was too caught up in my world of rubber duck debugging to deal with fires that needed putting out, and too distracted with real world problems to keep the virtual problems in my head. It was only when I accepted failure and stopped trying to resuscitate my plans was I able to get something a lot more personally fulfilling out of the day.

What can go wrong?

The model for the whole event seemed too simple to fail: give the hackers freedom to explore any idea, the scratchers a chance to iterate on what they already had, and allow the event to revolve around a constant interaction between the two groups. But the freedom ended up being counter-productive. The pressure of performance restricted iteration and the set up didn’t allow for the sort of movement of participants that we had hoped for. What can we take from this?

It’s important to embrace the creativity born out of boundaries, a constraint can be a challenge to look at a problem in a different way.

In life most things will take the path of least resistance, if that path is repetition then repetition is the result you should expect. Unless you actively challenge that mode there is very little reason for it to deviate.

It’s important to understand that knowledge in any area is not cumulative. It does not stack in order like numbers, it is inconsistent and patchy. As soon as we evaluate anyone’s experience as having more worth, we imbue it with scarcity and disregard our own vast knowledge in the process. In the case of specialisation this is not a terrible thing.

A glimmer in the distance

I would like to round off this review by celebrating our successes, one in particular. After the day was done, the hackers, the scratchers, helpers and watchers headed up to the Newspeak House deck. The weather was not trumpeting a glorious sunset, instead limping to a dry finish after what had been a drizzly day. There were many tired heads, and drooping feet, but there was also a certain recognisable something present. As people drank and talked, sharing stories from the day, celebrating their practice and claiming their own personal failures, whilst my father (who had been lovingly duped into participating) turned sausages on the grill, a subtle ripple of inspiration shimmered through the crowd.

Authored by Roderick D. Morgan, Director and Producer Trajectory Theatre

Hack and Scratch contributors:
The 2084 Protocol created by Kassie Headon, Anya Tye, Joshua Pawlowski, Maro Onokpise
The Subject created by George Larkwright
Serenade of the Woods created by Lisa Chang Lee and James Wilkie
Blocks Sound created by Christina Karpodini
Visceral Waves created by Joanna Gulcz and Blair Zaye
Mika Hockman, Joe Patrick Shellard, Emily Donovan, Emiliano Cancellieri,
Janet Howe, Eliza Crocker, Thomas Jancis, Ville Aula

(Originally published on Our Trajectory Medium 15 September 2019)