Having learnt from the last choice of handshakes, have tried ot stay away from ones that are too hand centric, and concentrate on ones that are more about the body, and larger gestures that involve the whole arm moving. Also I am moving more towards replicating sporting ones. From examining these I have started to see patterns emerging. There is the idea that the particpants don’t really acknowledge each other, they look away. When the player goes through a team of people, each seems to have their own allocated handshake. This fits in with the viral schoolteacher and class video where each student in a class has a specific handshake. Seeing patterns in the structures, why do football ones have the chest thump and the click fingers? Anyway found that this time my choices were better suited for me and Chris to actually achieve them. I also began to trial the idea that the handshakes are done as a respone to a small victory. In this way, it kind of brings an epic in the everyday quality to it. Also rather than accumulating handshakes, which I personally found a bit tough mentally, I went for you only learnt one handshake and then the next to progress. The victories were, remembering to bringing lunch, making cakes with daughters, managing to get some kind of card green screen for the students at sheff and people turning up for a workshop in Gatesehead.
I like the idea of copying existing handshakes and then seeing how the interpretations look against them, I think whole routines are a structure. Though Chris and Murray fed-back, that maybe doing smaller bits and allowing people to accumulate their own handshakes could be better and more gameful. This returned us to the spinning fortune wheel that Chris seems desperate to make. I think of this as a game for teams of players in twos, all trying to get to the centre of the magic circle. I like the small victories as it gave it context, and an added biographical element. We learn something about that players. I found myself playing up to this more as the game progressed. I think it does have a firm end goal, move up through the rungs to the centre. I think relating it to their own lives, with a small victory, gives it the biographical stamp, like Suzzane Lacy writes about the artist as documentary maker. Next need to get a number of people together and see how the moving in towards a centre goes with competing couples. Also have not tried it outside yet at all. Will try the two structures, one where it accumulates, and one where you learn only a set of handshakes to progress. Though how to sort out how to give them out. We talked about the chance element, and about maybe using dice, though want to stay away from actual game components. It would be worth noting and recording how long and how many times you have to watch the clip in order to learn the shake.
research 