The Devil's In The Detail

Emergent Behaviour's final project at Goldsmiths.

You (the audience) are escorted by a Vegas show girl down to the Deptford Old Police Station where you are told to write your address on an envelope and a memory personal to you. You are waiting to get into the club situated in one of the containers and a bouncer picks you one at a time to enter into the Casino. You enter alone into Level 5 of Casino Purgatorio where you meet Midas and Pygmalian your eternally grateful hosts. Here you are able to swap your memory for a gambling chip and are given the chance to gamble with a piece of yourself for potential loss or gain.

Chance dictates your future and therefore the next stage of the game. The outcome of the game of blackjack determines the next room you enter or does it? Your hosts guide you to one of two rooms and there you will embark upon the next stage of your solitary journey for 3 minutes. Are you a winner or a loser? Is there any such thing as heaven or hell? Will you always want what you can't have? Do your outlook on life affect your experience of it?

Once you have explored the space for three minutes you are then asked to leave and are told that you have one more chance to gamble. You are invited to leave your chip to see if you are the final winner of the grand prize of which you will receive acknowledgment by post. This allows the piece to continue long after the piece has been destroyed.

The Devils in the Detail

Live Art Speed Dating

‘We must try to believe that man’s will is free, that he can consciously exercise choice, and that his choice can be decisive to all eternity.’ Dante’s Inferno.

Welcome to Level 5. Are you the betting type? Have you ever taken a gamble in your life? Why not, what have you got to lose? Maybe nothing, maybe everything for an infinite amount of time?

Our piece 'Casino Purgatorio' was an excerpt from our final piece 'The Devil's in the Detail' which will be performed as part of Goldsmiths Low Brow Live Art festival and Dirty Cop at the Old Police Station In Deptford on Friday 26th March. It was a fantastic opportunity to get our work seen by members of the public and have feedback from a real audience that are unfamiliar to us.

We performed as part of Stoke Newington International Airports Live Art Speed Dating at Camden People's Theatre last night. The premise being that the audience pay for their tickets, are given 'date' cards and then proceed to have four minute 'date's' with each piece. After five dates Michael Jackson plays and everyone dances before resuming back to the date format. Live Art Speed Dating compare the event with DJ interludes.

There were a variety of dates, some behind partitions and some at tables, one in a lift and one in the toilet, but most were generally based on the theme of dating. From Renaissance etiquette to chatroulette.

'Memories of the Future'

There was a space where a man once lived, breathed, dreamed and then finally disappeared. We took this space and our memories from it, turning these mental images into something new. Characters from films and books become a reality. We now welcome you into our reality, our new vision of the future created by the past.

Influenced by the ex-bedroom of Mr Robert Monk we brought to life characters inspired by David Lynch and our imagination. The general public were invited to view this 'museum' before engaging in memory bidding. Each audience member was allowed to swap a memory of their own for a memory from the museum in auction scenario.

Disco Toilet

After our birth into this harsh, cold, world, Emergent Behaviour brush off their jackets, shine their shoes and created their first piece of interactive theatre. Here we turned a public toilet into a 'disco' where we submerged our audience in our world sensuously. We used lighting/music/costumes/drinks/makeup for this total installation. The audience were told their clothing was unsuitable for the club and were given a choice of alternative attire from which, they were allowed to pick something. Each participant went through individually and were designated tasks to undertake via an allocated ticketing system. They then documented their experience using the camera provided.

Our Mission Statement

‘Behaviour of whole systems unpredicted by the behavior of their parts taken separately. More accurately known as Emergent Behaviour.’

Emergent Behaviour are a two-part 'Live Art Duet' that act as mediators between their worlds. People are constantly identifying themselves through their gender, race, sexuality etc and this is creating boundaries. In order to overcome discrimination we must surpass this terminology and therefore create new 'utopian moments' through which people can identify themselves. Why must we be alone in a crowded place such as on public transport? We explore the ideas of togetherness and inclusion; how this can be created within a defined environment, and experienced by a diverse range of people. We hope to create for the individual a sense of community, that we feel is often absent in a great deal of live art, as well as in our society in general. We aim to take these issues out of the everyday and place them into an extra-daily world.