Download Otter for your meeting notes

ep.30 Parasocial - West Park Park Bench Podcast | Otter.ai

ep.30 Parasocial - West Park Park Bench Podcast

Caron Lyon28min

Caron Lyon

00:03

Welcome to Episode 30 of the West Park Park Bench Podcast. Today's episode is going to be titled Oh, there's another one. It's called parasocial parasocial.

Caron Lyon

00:27

I wasn't sure if I was going to do this one until next week, but it is flying around in my head. And it seems to be the thing that my brain wants to talk about. It's been a couple of weeks since I've been able to be on the park bench to record these podcasts and I'm not quite in a position where I can do on benched podcasts just simultaneously or spontaneously.

Caron Lyon

00:56

I need to have a preparation time and that time going into the swim pool. And being here is the right place at the right time for me to be doing these reflections. Because these reflections aren't. They're not produced podcast. They are the my audio blog. And the reason why it's an audio blog and not a written blog is dyslexia. And I just the act of sitting down to have to go from brain to keyboard to text. I never really say what I want. So these kind of 15 to 30 minute reflections are really useful for me.

Caron Lyon

01:39

So before I get on to the parasocial part, I want to just give a bit of a heads up for East Midlands creators about what is here. What? What am I talking about? The last couple of weeks I've been doing the last few workshops of the Mixed Reality Lab LEADD:NG immersive workshops, which have culminated in the opening of a VIP studio, which is a virtual immersive production studio. I had hoped that that would be virtual production as in LED volumes. But it turns out that it's not but it's kind of better because it's a studio of technologies that are available to projects to be able to explore this stuff. I mean, not necessarily make a project. But just if you want to get your hands on some immersive tech, because you think it might suit a project. And they can be half an hour sessions to just see what the kit looks like. It could be a two hour session where you get to plug it in and play with it and take away a file so that you can do some stuff. Some of that is possible. So what am I talking about what technology is there? Okay, so Nottingham University have Kings Meadow Campus, and it's what was the old Carlton Studios. So there is studio quality space so the room that we were in, it was fully soundproof. You close the door and you are in that beautiful black box. Silence, fantastic acoustics, great for recording audio. But in that space, they have got a conglomerate. of technologies. The main one in there is a green, green box of how it's best it's probably three metre square probably might even only be two metre but I think it's about three metre square cube, it's green inside so the green screen anything but it's got two sets of cameras one is volumetric video, and one is motion capture video. So if motion capture is a thing that you want to do, if volumetric video is something you want to explore, the tech is there finding time to get one of the technicians to be able to give you an introduction is the tricky bit and that's kind of where I come in. So if that is in interest to you, let me know. And I'm in the process of keeping a channel of conversation open with the department so that you can get your hands on this stuff before you put it in an application or what is that tech. So that's one thing, the other thing they've got there it's really good binaural and he won't say symbiotic. Binaural and there's two types of microphones anyway, one of the microphones looks like a head and it's got silicone ears on it and the microphones within it. Make it sound like you would hear from your head. So it's very, very good for for that binaural ambisonic ambisonic sound is the other one. The other microphone it's an ambisonic microphone, and that is a globe microphone with multiple capsules inside. It records for tracks of the audio. And that goes into a little studio portable studio zoom h five I think it might be and that gets you the audio. They also have a 360 camera, which has got 4k recording but there's some techniques that the user I'm really keen to get my hands on that. So that's that they've also got a virtual reality headset Vario...

Caron Lyon

06:01

I will put a link I will put the list of equipment in the show notes but the thing for this is just for me to get this get this conversation going so that I can take it into text form because that is the benefit of doing these podcasts is I then have a transcription in which I can then take a blog post out of if I need to. It's the equivalent of getting my thoughts down on paper. It's thoughts down on audio.

Caron Lyon

06:33

So they've got a VR headset that you can play with which has 4k pass through, now if you're a VR person, you know what pass through is if you've got a if you've got a Oculus quest, if you double tap the side of it, the cameras on the front kick in and you can you can see the outside world and the other thing with the past through cameras, if you walk to the edge of your defined space, those cameras kick in and you can and it breaks the illusion so it's a safety mechanism apart from anything, but it's starting to if you want to do augmented reality you have to have a lot clearer pass through and the pass through on on the Oculus is especially is not good. It's it's white noise grayscale. But the pass through on this particular one is absolutely video quality. And you can also set up some interesting scenarios where you've got a room say the example that we had that there was a kitchen space and it looked like you were in a kitchen and there was the kitchen window over the sink. But the the window passed through to the real world so the people that were in the studio watching me in the headset who were on the other side of that window could weigh that me and it looked like they were waving at me from within the space that I was in and some of the potentials with some of the artists and creatives that I've spoken to in terms of, of illusion and and how how work can can be as stories can be told and people can have their suspension of disbelief played around with in terms of being able to use VR and AR and extended realities.

Caron Lyon

08:19

So they've also got some Tesla suits nothing to do with Elon Musk and Tesla. They are body sensitive suits. So you set up some electric charges within the suit. So enables you to replicate punches and gunshots and there's, I'm sure there's lots of other things but it's not particularly one that struck me as being useful for what I do. The other things that they have is an old technology so anyone who knows about Pepper's Ghost and Pepper's Ghost is the ability to use a transparent plane or a window and the correct lighting to make something show on the other side of the window. So if you've if you will have seen this if you have a cat or a dog, and you have a kitchen door that goes outside and it's got a plane or that a window or if you have a patio doors, and you have somebody stood quite close to the patio doors in the correct light especially at night you can see a mirrored version in the other side of the mirror. And that illusion is Pepper's Ghost and there's been some use of Pepper's Ghost to be able to create analogue holograms really so that you can see a replication of a video person as a little little little character that can move around. And there's some really interesting stuff there.

Caron Lyon

09:52

If you've come to this podcast and this is your first one, you're probably thinking what is she blathering on about the title of this as parasocial and she hasn't even started talking about it. Now because I've had a few weeks away there's been a few things that's happened. There's quite a lot of stuff on the horizon. And I tend to like to have these podcasts as topic driven and not just updates on what I am happening to be doing. But it's kind of fallen into that because I really just feel that I've come out of winter. It is April it is not even the beginning of April but winter for me was hard. Really hard. And the podcasts I did just before Christmas, which kind of set me up to listen to myself. If it was going to be hard. I gave great information I gave some I gave some pep talks to people who might have been listening essentially didn't really listen to my own advice or at least I didn't know the advice was there. I think that's why I recognised it was so hard. So I I've been coming out of funded work. So I had my developing creative practice which is an Arts Council piece of funding, which enables you to explore horizons for yourself. And I've been able to do that for a year and bring it into these first few months because fortunately, I had some of the money that was supposed to take me to Bristol to explore immersive technologies, which actually meant that I could do this in Nottingham so these courses over the last few weeks as I was coming out of winter and finding it very hard. I've been able to subsidise that despair with some final learnings before I submit my final report.

Caron Lyon

11:38

So with that done, and immersive technologies please this first part of the podcast immersive technologies, if that's your thing, and that's why you tuned in and that's what you're interested in, get in touch with me. I'm really keen to make sure these technologies

Caron Lyon

11:59

these technologies we have dog visit

Caron Lyon

12:01

it's beautiful day now some catch

Caron Lyon

12:17

so that brings us to the end of that kind of technology dump. I apologise because now I will come on to parasocial. And the reason why parasocial has been going around in my head is living in a digital world. And being a digital stage manager and digital producer. A lot of the relationships that I have with the majority of people end up being quite parasocial. Now parasocial as far as I understand it is usually with celebrities in terms of you create a bond with a celebrity because you know much more than them because you can look at their internet profile, you can look at them online, and you kind of feel that you have a connection with them, and especially when they're very good on screen, and especially for YouTubers, you can kind of get this sense through the screen that they're talking to you. You might even meet them once and you know all that information about them. So that first meeting with them is really significant. But for them, they've never met you before. They've never searched for you on the internet. They don't know your name. They have no idea who you are, and never will unless you have several meetings and they get to know you. I think parasocial is a very is a very one sided relationship. And I think the reason why parasocial has been going around in my head is I spend a lot of time using Facebook and Twitter as a way of keeping up and being interested in people that I just think are awesome. People that are in my local area who I might bump into occasionally, which is usually why I have them on my Twitter. I don't just follow random people. But it is a mixture of people who I admire and respect and want to follow and engage with and the other are people who I've met once or twice, and they're doing amazing things and I want to be able to retweet them and I want to be able to see them progress. And as a result, and because of the way my personality sits in being quite a I think the best term I came across was gregarious introvert. And that gregariousness and my introversion does lead me to having very intense conversations with people once and then maybe never seeing them again or seeing them again and then feeling quite embarrassed about how gregarious I was the first time I met them and I try and temper it down and the more I meet people I try and and step back a bit because I realise that they don't know me or they've been really excited about what they told me and I've gone to look them up and I'll look at their website and I'll look at their YouTube and I'll and I'll find out about them. I'll share them and but I do realise that that's a very, very, very social parasocial relationship. But the problem is I don't really know the difference between who my friends are and who I'm parasocially connected to. And parasocial also has that there's I'm sure there's no accident in the entomology of parasite and parasocial and the one thing I never want to be is irritating to anybody.

Caron Lyon

15:58

So parasocial is something that I'm wrestling with at the moment because one of the reasons why I wanted to turn to producing was not to produce theatre, but was to produce an environment in which I could fund theatre. And that means that all of the people that I've met over the years, who have expressed an interest in funding or they've expressed an interest in being part of future projects I'm involved with. I've got to get back in touch with them. And ask them for money. There's a point when you're going to be funding where you have to actually ask for money. And that I know is hard. I don't have a great relationship with money. But that is something that the people who I have been close with and admired in terms of how they secure their finances, and how they talk about money is something that i i I want to adopt and with my year of balance, you know that gear of balance is about my time and time has moved into being able to finance that time. So I want to a year's journey which is is quite important to me. And this notion of a parasocial world. I kind of feel that everything is parasocial. I don't really have a close circle of friends that I spend a lot of time with anymore. They drifted away over the years as digital has become more and more invasive. And there's a tragedy to that and there's a sadness to that. But on the other hand, I can still see what they're up to. And that that is these pods, these these podcasts aren't just about me, spouting off about what I'm about to do, and they're not also about trying to share people share what I want to share, but there's also a component about if people do listen to these. And I know people do listen, and I know they're my friends. But I'm not always sure who my friends are. And I think one of the things I wanted to do with these podcasts is just to have that reflection when I'm in the space where I'm most comfortable, which is here.

Caron Lyon

18:41

What are the things that come out? What are the things that that matter to me because I don't get to talk to people enough about what matters to them or to me and I think the parasocial specifically, I've discovered a YouTuber, Philosophy Tube. I'll put the link in and the video essays which I wish I could write and research and maybe I will try one coming out of this year of balance with a deeper time respect for myself that I might be able to do something like that. But Philosophy Tube is hosted and devised and written and scripted and performed by Abigail Thorn. And I found her podcast, I found her YouTube video. And I watched quite a few of them. And then I watched one of the videos, which was essentially about identity and that identity video was her coming out video. And I hadn't watched enough of her videos to realise where her transition had come from. So I've been watching a lot of her work and it's so polished is so well scripted is so professionally delivered. She's a philosophy graduate and also trained at E17 in acting, or E15 Acting School, which is what then led me on to the algorithm putting in front of me the stage show that she has written, which is The Prince and The Prince is an amazing play about Shakespeare meets The Matrix. It's about a parallel, it kills Rosencrantz and Guildenstern but in the modern world, and I've only seen trailers and I think it was Stratford East at the beginning of the year, I definitely want to see it. I want to read the play. I want to find out more about her. I would love to meet her I've seen and this is where I then go. This is the depth of parasocial This is the depth at which even if I met her the first time unless that we'd exchanged a direct message. So where does that take you on a on a on a list because that isn't meeting that is not is not a solution to parasocial

Caron Lyon

21:34

but knowing that there's someone as attuned and doing work that I would so badly like to interact with and engage with and it's, it's on the same page that I want to do. But also so so far away in terms of connection. And yet by looking at all of this stuff so quickly, I could find out so much about her work, not about where she lives, or you know, all those sorts of things are not really important, but there's been this. There's been this connection that has driven me through the last few days and the depth of conversation that that she has within her. Her pod her videocast as I say I'm quite, I wasn't sure if I was going to do parasocial. This is the reason why I wanted to do parasocial. It probably comes over as very bitty and disjointed. And my brain is trying to unpick my relationship to the world and my relationship to people and my relationship to money and my relationship to my future investors and my relationship to the speakers that I'm going to engage to come and speak at this event and on that note, I'm going to wrap this up

Caron Lyon

23:03

I don't know if I mentioned I think I did. I'm doing a TEDx but I can't tell you what the name of it is yet because I haven't secured the licence and TED don't like you to stop planning your event until you have the licence. But I want to do the event before I go away to Treshnish a three week. retreat for me. And I wanted to do it before I go away. So that makes it the 24th of June is when I would really like to have this event. I've booked the venue. I've started talking to some speakers and I'm looking at getting half of the finance in place. Just realised I move the microphone a long way down so it might have been quiet. I do hope the wind hasn't been too bad. It is very, very windy. And I'm hoping that the spoffle on the microphone is keeping that blown as keeping that aside.

Caron Lyon

23:12

So brain vocabulary, speaking words and sentences, often going back and looking at the transcript. A lot of this isn't in sentences or they stop halfway through. I am going to be doing a TED event this year. If it's not in June, it will be in the autumn. But I do need to secure the money. And part of this podcast is me being able to say out loud the stuff that I'm going to hold myself accountable to the TEDx event in the style and manner and comfort to which I wish to deliver it is going to cost me between 12 and 15,000 pounds. For some people that might be how much that to spend. Travel, accommodation venue food all day comfort, sofas, chairs, beanbags. Technicians paying staff properly in the venue. comfortably, being able to give my co hosts a small fee, which coming in rounded about 1000 pounds for the work that they're going to be doing.

Caron Lyon

25:30

So there I've said it before I get to the end of this podcast. So it's been a bit of a round trip. It's been a bit of immersive technologies massive in what I'm doing at the moment and I have access. I don't have the shows to use that technology, but I want to enable and facilitate artists who do so if you are Midlands based especially. And you would like to do a binaural podcast or you would like to do a 360 video blog. Or you would like to have a volumetric captured video of yourself that can be transferred across a room, mike TV style and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as a little hologram. If you would like to see what it is to do motion capture, full body if you would like to see what it looks like when you are doing facial expressions on meta humans because that's something they have let me know because I am really keen to build a transactional relationship with Kings Meadow Campus going forward because there's equipment there. Artists often don't have the r&d money before they get their r&d money. Let me know so there's the technology bit.

Caron Lyon

26:53

Second bit of this podcast was all about my struggle with post parasocial parasocial relationships friendships depths of friendships, what it means to be a friend what circle of friends, that radar target, everybody feels as if they're a long way away from me and I know the same thing about everybody because I have the same data. I can find out everybody's Twitter I can find out their Facebook, I can look at their YouTube. If they've got Wikipedia pages, then you can find out a lot about them. But it does mean that I am left in a very one sided parasocial fortress. And I'm not sure that I like it because I know that these people are not real. And yet they are more real to me than than the gap that I have in my friendship circle because they don't really have one.

Caron Lyon

27:44

So that was sort of the parasocial and then the final part. I wanted to share the TEDx TEDx in the Midlands I did TEDxLaceMarket 10 years ago. I really want to be able to say what one it is, but I'm gonna save it for the announcement. But there will be some more about about that as it develops.

Caron Lyon

28:06

But yeah, it's about me being able to sit here. I kind of don't want to go. But I am. I'm gonna carry on my day. And hopefully, I'll get to swim next week. And I'll be able to come and do another one of these. So thank you so much for listening. If you've got this far and you aren't quite sure who I am. I'm Caron. I'm a social media turn creative producer who wants to take extraordinary new work to places that wouldn't ordinarily get that work? signing off Episode 30 of the West Park Park Bench Podcast.

00:0000:00