ADAM JOHN ROBERTS

In 2018, Liverpool John Moore’s University invited me back to choreograph an ensemble dance work for their undergraduate dance company, namely JMUpstart. Due to their improved theatrical facilities, i.e. two additional cycloramas, it was my choice to base this work on the history of mobile phones and the emoji language – a new ensemble work that utilised technology.

​

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Background Research

​

The first mobile phone was invented in 1985. It was a luxurious item afforded by businesspersons. Overtime, it has become an essential part of modern-day living – a smartphone which connects us via social media, allowing us to watch television, listen to the radio, access the world wide web, and use satellite navigation to guide us to where we want to go…yet merely use these portable, wireless devices to make and receive telephone conversations, and not forgetting to mention they include a camera for us to record/capture and share the aspects of our daily lives (Linge and Sutton, 2015).

​

In fact, the origin of the mobile phone began earlier in 1947 when police forces used walkie-talkie radio sets – also referred to as radiophones - in police cars throughout the 1950s.

​

Fast forward to 1971, there were 10,000 privately owned and managed radio base stations which operated in the UK and supported over 100,000 mobiles, growing at rates of 17% per year. By that time, the General Post Office had opened the South Lancashire Radiophone Service which extended itself with a London branch – the London Radiophone Service – in 1965. In 1973, the birth of the mobile phone (or cell phone) was found in the handheld prototype DynaTAC telephone owned by Dr Martin Cooper of Motorola. The 1980s saw the Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT) service open in European countries such as Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland whilst Vodafone, Panasonic, and Mitsubishi were established in the UK and Japan. Nokia was the iPhone of the 1990s, due to releasing its range of phones until perhaps beyond the 2000s.

​

As from 2007, Nokia launched the first yet another mobile phone of its kind in the 21st Century – the smartphone – featuring a large screen with the QWERTY keyboard. Mobile phones had become all-in-one multimedia miniature computers. Nokia were joined by manufacturers made popular in the 21st Century, i.e. Samsung, HTC, Blackberry and Apple, speaking of which, the iPhone was the best innovation of the year, dating back to 2007.

​

“…a ‘smart’ phone being defined as a wireless phone with mobile internet capability…Smartphones were among the earliest devices that deployed the electronic keyboards which featured emojis as standard.”

(Evans, 2017:21)

​

The word ‘Emoji’ is an anglicised version of two Japanese words: e = picture, and moji = character. These picture characters, or Emojis, are visual representations of a feeling, idea, entity, status or event. They are colourful symbols embedded as single character images, or glyphs, in our digital keyboards. Emojis are substitutes for words in text-based communication. For instance, if someone writes: “Have you fed the cat?” the word ‘cat’ is replaced with the corresponding emoji. 

​

An array of questions are posed: Is this all a gimmick? Could Emoji ever truly replace language in our digital communication, or will it develop into a fully-fledged language in its own right? Why is it that the younger generation are the most avid Emoji users? What about literacy and spelling standards beyond this? Are they inevitable casualties of the rise of Emoji? What does the uptake of Emoji mean for language, and for the future of human communication in the digital age?

​

What is Virtual Reality (VR)?

​

“…a headset produces sights and sounds from virtual worlds created on computers, fooling you into thinking you are somewhere else.”

(Challoner, 2017:4)

​

VR can take you places you would not normally be able to visit. Looking into a VR headset is like looking into a different world. You are looking around the virtual world as you move your head whilst wearing the VR headset. The things you see are three-dimensional (3D) but look so real. On the outside, whatever you are seeing, and touching are not there.

​

Historically, the first VR viewer called Sensorama was invented in 1957, displaying imagery and sound. A Super Cockpit VR device was used by the US Air Force for pilot training by 1980.  Throughout the 1990s, computers were becoming expensive, thus the development of VR slowed down. In 2012, Oculus VR was founded, giving the VR revolution a kickstart with the Oculus Rift Headset. Two years later, in 2014, Google invented their very own VR headset – Google Cardboard – then many new headsets became available the following year.

​

People use VR for entertainment and education, even for work. Surgeons particularly use VR to see inside a patient during operations, using a 3D camera supported by instruments to relay information to the headset. In the future, doctors may have the opportunity to carry surgery on a patient from the other side of the world whilst others may be able to watch concerts and theatre shows from home.

​

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Creative Process

​

Using Butterworth’s 4th Process (2009), we devised approximately 42 sequences as a result of a 4-week creative period.

​

During the first week, we explored emojis. The textual stimulus was Professor Vyvyan Evans’ source titled The Emoji Code (2017) which featured picture diagrams of emojis he collected for his research. These picture diagrams were quotes from children’s stories such as “Off with her head!” from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland (1865) and “Second star on the right and straight on ‘til morning…” from J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan (1911), and Tweets by Julie Bishop and Andy Murray that contained emojis of which were correspondent in replacement of select words.

​

The second week looked at landscapes, some of almost anything we can capture using our smartphones. In sub-groups, the dancers were given landscapes of which were rural, coastal, urban and intergalactically abstract in trios and quartets.

​

The third week focussed on the mobile phone as a motif, developed as duets and trio sequences. I explored flocking further with the dancers as a full ensemble. Everyone followed the leader with the extended arm and flexed hand to represent the smartphone device attached to the selfie stick and took turns.

​

The focus of the fourth week to conclude the creative process was Virtual Reality (VR). The textual stimulus was a children’s book about VR (Challoner, 2017). There were five themes explored: Land of the dinosaurs, the colosseum in Ancient Rome, a pond where some dancers played tadpoles and other dancers played flying insects, and the international space station. In duets, there was the Zarya and Zvezda modules (1998-2000), and the laboratories (2005) as a trio sequence. Altogether, the group task was a volcano. Here, the dancers were the magma turning into lava. Not all the sequences were chosen during the structuring period, due to the time length regards the chosen accompaniment.

​

I collaborated with a video producer who curated film to be projected on the three cycloramas. I wanted the background imagery to be a mixture of three-dimensional still/moving images, some of which have that 360◦ effect associated with VR. However, there was a juxtaposition between the background imagery and the live performance which could be considered as deliberate. It would have also been effective to have one thing projected on one screen, the second thing projected on the second screen, and the other thing projected on the other screen, but this did not matter.

​

I think Butterworth’s 4th Process was easy for the students than them embodying an individual’s movement style – both as a cohort and as individuals, except learning each other’s solo choreographies as a gradual development. If LJMU invited me back to reconstruct Gear VR Oculus, I would re-structure the work, so the film projection becomes the influence and each sequence after another is no longer juxtaposed, in terms of their origins.

​

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References

 

Butterworth, J. and Wildschut, L. (2009) Contemporary Choreography: A Critical Reader. Oxon: Routledge

 

Challoner, J. (2017) All About Virtual Reality. London: Dorling Kingsley Publishings

 

Evans, V. (2017) The Emoji Code: How Smiley Faces, Love Hearts and Thumbs Up Are Changing the Way We Communicate. London: Michael O’Mara Books Ltd.

 

Linge, N. and Sutton, A. (2015) 30 Years of Mobile Phones in the UK. Gloucestershire: Amberley