AS MINE EXACTLY is a personal and intimate VR work and performance that gives us a glimpse into the life of its director Charlie Shackleton and his experience with epilepsy.
This is not the first time we talk about the boundaries of technology. Sometimes pushing them means creating completely new tools. If you visit a festival today you will find yourself participating in at least one panel or discussion on artificial intelligence, deepfakes, chatGPT… and all that is undoubtedly stimulating if you are a curious person or are trying to make your way in this field.
What is sometimes forgotten, however, is that the person behind the technology can sometimes do a different kind of pushing, one that is in some respects even more exciting… and that is to push the use of a now-familiar – and in some respects even old! – tech to access with it new modes of communication and new forms of storytelling.
We have found both these perspectives in the projects selected for the CPH:Lab 2022-2023 and, if you have not yet done so, go and read the articles about them we published on our website (part 1 – part 2 – part 3).
Today we want to reflect on another piece we discovered at CPH:DOX Inter:Active, one that has been touring various international festivals for the past year. Titled AS MINE EXACTLY, it was recently presented at Go Short, too, and is a work directed by documentary filmmaker Charlie Shackleton.
As Mine Exacty revolves around the topic of epilepsy, but is not intended to be specifically an informative piece on this condition. Rather, it is a work that takes you into the life of a person touched by epilepsy, directly and indirectly, and allows you to emotionally enter the situation and return home with a clearer understanding of what it entails.
A mother and son revisit the medical emergency that reshaped their lives, and the remarkable fragments that remain of that time, in this intimate blend of virtual reality and performance film. AS MINE EXACTLY is a half-hour performance for an audience of one, by documentary filmmaker Charlie Shackleton.
The hour-long performance is simple and incredibly effective. Without giving away the details, let’s just say that it involves the use of an old headset and a kind of slideshow that the director takes us through to immerse ourselves into his own past. The use of the words ‘simple’ and ‘effective’ is not random, but perfectly describes what AS MINE EXACTLY is: a VR piece where every single choice was thought out, revised and reworked so that only what was essential to the story remained and nothing distracted the user from intimately connecting with what they are seeing and with the person who is telling it to them. What Shackleton achieves is a deeply personal work that feels more like a conversation between two people than a beautiful (but potentially distant) work of art.
I have met people who have been working in VR for much longer than Charlie Shackleton and yet understand much less about its potential and how to make the most of its limitations. It is clear that the author cared about the story he wanted to share, because everything revolves around it and not the other way around. Works in which the story is at the service of technology can sometimes impress, but one soon realises that there is not much soul behind them and thus are easily forgotten. Because of its focus on storytelling and its consistency with what it wants to say, AS MINE EXACTLY ends up creating a bonding moment with a stranger that you may never see again, but which is nonetheless meaningful and which you will remember in the future and that’s what I really loved about it.
We talked about this work with its director to find out more about how it came about and how he achieved the essential form that characterized his performance at the Copenhagen festival.
Looking at the origins of AS MINE EXACTLY
AGNESE – What’s the story behind this piece, Charlie?
CHARLIE SHACKLETON – My background is in documentary filmmaking and everything that preceded AS MINE EXACTLY was more related to the film industry.
I got to know XR a little bit by working on a project I was part of and I was very impressed with the technology, but in a way that I felt was opposite to a lot of the work we are seeing made for VR. What fascinated me about it, in fact, was the innate feeling of experimentation that comes with wearing a headset and being able to decide what to use it for, but often having to deal with technical problems and moments when things don’t work as they should.
All of this made me think that it could be a tool for something very exploratory, impulsive and not too polished. So I started to reflect on this medium in relation to another idea I had, which was to revisit, as an adult, this chapter of my childhood, when my mother was diagnosed with epilepsy.
I thought about our relationship at that time and also about many of the photos and videos I had of those days, and they had always seemed almost too delicate to be shared, or at least shared through the film medium I was used to. The thought of having all that out there, in the content ecosystem, felt wrong to me; I felt I needed something that could better convey that sense of intimacy that these memories gave me.
So these two ideas in mind – VR as an experimental and intimate format and a story I wanted to tell in an intimate way – merged… but even so, it took a long time to figure out exactly what this piece would be.
An experimental quest for simplicity
A. – In our last chat, Mark Atkin, curator of CPH:DOX Inter:Active, pointed out how some immersive works use technology in really interesting ways: not because they choose the most advanced technology, but because from an extremely simple technology they manage to create something unique, progressive and meaningful. This is one of the aspects that I appreciated most in AS MINE EXACTLY: its simplicity of means and of story, which gives way to an extremely intimate, personal experience and creates a connection with the user. How did you achieve all this?
C. H. – Actually, simple is a key word for me, because I do think there’s a power in simplicity when it comes to the execution of an idea but it took me a while to get there.
I added many elements that the piece didn’t need and then I had to undo a lot of that work. When I started working on it, one of the first things I did was to shoot a lot of 360-degree video. I think I was just doing it because it’s the obvious thing to do when doing VR. For a long time those videos were incorporated into the performance, but then I realised I wasn’t using them for any good reason. You see, my piece, at the beginning, is a total void, there is little to see, visually speaking. So as soon as I place just one little thing, I know that’s where the audience will look and that’s how I direct their focus. However, I noticed that when I showed them these 360 videos, suddenly the focus I had generated in this way was completely lost.
So, in some ways, AS MINE EXACTLY had to become more complicated to become simpler. Because it was only in this way that I recognised what was actually essential. This all happened through performance. Because obviously, over and over I have constant feedback on the reactions of the audience. I notice if there’s a section of the piece where, for example, the attention wanders and then I know that’s the area I need to work on and I can think about why. And being a very ‘do-it-yourself’ piece, with no build to go back to, I can change things instantly between performances, do things differently and get immediate feedback, making the work more and more consistent every time.
A. – How has the piece changed during the months?
C. S. – The work doesn’t change much now, because I’ve obviously had time to refine it, but in the beginning there were whole extra sections of the piece that were more about the historical and medical background of epilepsy and the cultural background of how different artists represented it: all of which were very interesting to me, because I was learning a lot about what I had experienced as a child. However, as I performed the piece with these sections, I realised that they inevitably became a lull in the performance, as they were not clearly connected to the central line of the show.
A. – It’s a very experimental way of developing a very clear idea.
C. H. – This is the most exciting thing for me about any new or new-ish medium. I feel like people are only now getting to grips with what is unique about XR and for me there is no need to constantly try to push the technical boundaries. You just have to look at what the story needs and think about how this can be artistically productive.
The one I am using is an incredibly old headset and I would never want to upgrade it, because certain things, I would say certain limitations of this headset, have ended up being fundamental to this piece. You’re looking through the first Oculus, and it’s almost like looking through binoculars, the colours blur and, because it’s an LED screen rather than LCD, the blacks are very black, so you can really feel the darkness. This was all part of what AS MINE EXACTLY was about. I tried using new headsets and it just felt wrong, the work lost a lot of what had formed its creation.
On creating a deep connection with the audience
A. – You seem very aware of even the smallest audience reactions to your work. What is this relationship with the viewer like for you?
C. S. – Actually, that was the biggest change in the performance of AS MINE EXACTLY over the last year. When I started, I was so focused on everything I had to do, technically, physically and verbally, that I didn’t notice much else. As I have become more familiar with my performance, and now that my work is more like muscle memory, I am able to pay much more attention to the other person in front of me. The ability to look at them almost the whole time completely changes the meaning of any performance, because it becomes so informed by what the person is doing – even if they are essentially doing nothing, they are just sitting there… but little things in the way they shift their body or the way their facial features minutely move can completely change the course of the piece emotionally. And this for me is the most exciting aspect of the work: even though I have done this performance hundreds of times, each time it is different. And it’s strange because often I can’t even describe what’s different. It just feels different. There is just a different atmosphere.
A. – I suspect that this influence is reciprocal and that a sort of counter-reaction also takes place in the viewer, as the piece goes on and you modulate your voice and the way you speak to the user’s reactions. There are passages – and I could feel them – where you unconsciously adapt to each other and in doing so you make the whole piece extremely personal for both of you. It’s beautiful.
C. S. – This was one of the most striking things I read when I started to perform AS MINE EXACTLY. Someone wrote an article about this piece saying that five minutes into the performance they smiled and noticed my narration relax. Oddly enough, it had never occurred to me before that moment that obviously the viewers too are aware of their impact on me, just as I am aware of my impact on them. And that really changed the way I think about this performance. And now I see it as an exchange. Even though I’m the only one speaking, it feels like a conversation.
It’s the first time I experience this uncanny feeling of connection in a work like this: I come out of the performance and I often know nothing about that person, but we feel connected. People often tell me things about themselves, sometimes quite personal, and I think it’s because they also feel that we are close in a strange way. They know a lot about me and I don’t necessarily know much about them, so they try to bridge that gap.
A work and a performance to better understand yourself and reframe the past
A. – How long have you been performing AS MINE EXACTLY?
C. S. – I started performing it about a year ago, and I have been doing it non stop since. I think I could actually reach at some point the 1000 performances. I’m not bored of doing it yet, so as far as I’m concerned it can carry on. (laughs)
A. – You must have rehearsed it a lot at first, but the performance feels incredibly natural, as if you really were just sharing those memories with me and not playing a part.
C. S. – For me, that’s the pleasure: learning to know the piece so well that I can deal with it in a completely casual way and have the freedom to improvise a bit without worrying about getting lost, because by now it’s so ingrained in me.
There was an earlier phase where I got very good at the performance, in the sense that I didn’t make mistakes… but it was quite rigid. I think I’ve moved beyond that phase to a point where I’m looser and can enjoy myself a bit more because I now know the piece so well that I don’t worry about making mistakes. To the point that sometimes I completely disassociate myself for a moment. I can spend two minutes with my mind wandering, perhaps thinking about the atmosphere and the space around us. Then I come back to myself and realise that I’m still talking, I’m still doing everything there is to do, the performance has gone on. But I catch myself doing it and it’s a strange feeling. Other times, I am hyper-focused on every word. This is the inevitable result of repetition: you keep falling in and out of the performance.
A. – And in terms of incoveniences, how do you handle them?
C. S. – The most I have to deal with are things like someone bursting into the room by accident. But even then, I think the advantage is that, in the end, I’m only acting to the extent that I’m acting myself. So if things go wrong, if people come in, if you hear noises or whatever, I can just stay myself and explain what happened, and that is a bit of a saving grace. Because in the end, when things inevitably go wrong, and it’s happening more and more rarely, I think people feel that I’m just a fallible human being and they understand that.
A. – Not only is AS MINE EXACTLY an intimate journey into your life, but it is also very informative about epilepsy, without being too notional. Did it help you better understand what you experienced?
C. S. – Everything I know about epilepsy today comes from the work I did on AS MINE EXACTLY. My mother fell ill with epilepsy when I was nine years old, so my knowledge was limited to what can be said to a nine-year-old child. In the years that followed, I never really made an effort to understand, so it was during the making of this piece that I began to inform myself and gain a historical and medical understanding of this problem. However, what was really important for me about this piece is how much it explained my personal experience and helped me better understand and frame my memories. I didn’t feel like I was attending academic lectures while creating it, but I felt like I finally understood why some things had happened. It gave me clarity.
This piece is still travelling the world to visit festivals and events. You can keep up to date with the upcoming performances on As Mine Exactly’s official page and discover more on its director and his other works on Charlie Shackleton’s website.
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