Saul Albert (London, The People Speak): In the midst of the furore over rigged TV 'voting' competitions, spurned elections and missing referendums, London-based art collective 'The People Speak' have recently been rekindling enthusiasm in the democratic process. Their latest show, 'Who Wants to Be?', mixes direct-democracy decision making, interactive animation and improvisation into dangerously spontaneous entertainment.
Using a computer vision voting system designed for use by hoards of rowdy people, an audience at the Albany Theatre in Deptford was recently asked to decide what they - collectively - wanted to do with the £850 that they had paid at the box office. Weaving through the crowd toting a wireless microphone, host Mikey Weinkove illicited suggestions from the audience for the first test vote of the evening, just to get things going. 'Princess Diana'! Someone called out. After briefly discussing people's views on the issue, the lights, music and drama began, with the audience's three options shown on the laser display screen. 'Hold up green voting cards for Accident, yellow for Conspiracy, or pink for Don't Care'. Pink won by a landslide, although several incredulous members of the audience insisted on re-staging the vote with manual (rather than computer) checking of the numbers.
The following 40 minutes were a heaving tumult of ideas and debates, some factions of the audience fiercely in favour of modifying the voting system, others clinging on to their simple direct vote. Eventually, after much microphone running and crowd-control, a vote was arrived at: changing the decision making process to 'representative democracy', 'qualified majority' or 'get on with it majority rule', with the latter snatching 70% of the impassioned and impatient audience.
Drinks during the interval seemed to have a focussing effect on the audience. Now the decision-making system itself had been decided on, the real decisions came thick and fast: 'we should spend the money on something shared by everyone present', 'it should be something worthy', 'it should be something concrete'. Finally, the decision boiled down to two ideas: that we buy a bike and a camera, and then plot a relay route between all of the audience's homes and document a massive relay ride with photos and blog postings, or (the eventual winner) that we collectively buy a piece of woodland. The audience gave their names and email addresses for official entry on the deed, and left their hosts with the bizarre task of buying £850 worth of British Woodland (about 65 square meters) and placing it in the joint ownership of over 80 people. You can find out how they get on in this task, and sign up for upcoming 'Who Wants to Be' events at their website: http://whowantstobe.co.uk
