Dizzy O'Dare Try something new

Mike continues to “try something different” and has to rethink his initial ideas:

Having hit the floor running … things have slowed down a lot!

After first meeting Robin, his stories inspired me to create a new interactive theatre experience – where the audience would travel around LV21 using mobile phone and internet technology to trigger a series of short films. I knew this was ambitious due to time and budget constraints, but felt confident I could pull it off. However, this idea went down the drain – or should I say into the slop bucket! LV21 is a steel structure, and the internet gigglywaves have trouble travelling fast through metal it seems. Yes, I was shocked too!

So next I thought why not stick with the idea but use radios! Yes, radio waves can be troublesome too, but I was going to cheat! I was going to rewire old radios using the expertise of a very clever ShipMate – Colin (yes, the same Colin from Lookout I) – so that I could play MP3’s through them and make them sound like radio transmissions.

New problem, how do you get hold of old radios – I naively presumed people would have useless old radios lying around and I could take them off their hands – but no, it seems people are much better at recycling or disposing of old electronics these days. I tried hard, but did not get a single radio!

So once again, back to square one, very frustrating! … but … this is why the Lookout project is so fantastic. If I were producing a show or event, failure would not be an option and I would stick to what I know works. This project has challenged me to try something different, to experiment. I’ve always been scared of failure but it is very refreshing to be given the opportunity to try something new, even if it fails.

So as you can tell from my ramble the project has driven me close to madness but I still have lots of ideas and plans up my sleeve. One of which includes a making day on May 10th and another on May 17th when LV21 will be celebrating all of the Lookout residencies to date. Please come along and help make some weird and wonderful objects as a tribute to some of the great treasures Robin has found at the bottom of the river Medway. Just bring along any broken but beautiful things, small useless objects, broken clocks or electronics, anything really to make something wonderful out of!

More details coming soon.

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