Re: [-empyre-] performance anyone?

[<magesm@mindspring.com>]

At 21:29 -0400 10/7/02, valerie wrote:
>I am curious as to what kinds of online performances are bring done 
>presently. This is the other half of my persona - performance. I 
>have a Website which I've been playing around w/ online personae 
>called The Advice Bunny (http:/www.mobilegaze.com/advicebunny) An 
>scoop on how performance is being presented online? Is anyone 
>involved in this? 

Not to be shamelessly self-promotional, but I recently completed a mixed-space
performance event called "Mutual Assured Deconstruction".  The event was a
musical-interactive installation, the general idea being  economies of power
in the composer-performer-audience relationship, and space and virtual space
as represented aurally.

During the installation, 10 musicians were placed throughout the gallery
(though it can be performed by any number, any instrumentation). Each musician
was given a sheet of 24 leitmotivs. Each leitmotiv was played in response to a
specific action of the proximate or remote participants. Remote participants
could hear the sounds of the space, and could place themselves at various
locations within the space. Both remote and proximate participants were
encouraged to engage in a synchronous on-line chat with other participants.
Proximate participants were free to move around, speak, dance, or otherwise
become involved in the activities. Chat dialog and movements triggered the
response of the musicians, and determined the outcome of the work. There is an
archive of the installation up at <http://rhizome.org/object.rhiz?3099> that I
think is now working.

You bring up some great questions. What is the nature of on-line performance?
The Western (please excuse sins of omission here) performance model tends to
be very structured, highly ritualized, with hierarchical relationships
implicit in nearly every aspect of the event (architecture of the space,
ticket takers, ushers, separation of performers and audience).  Perhaps
networked performances are less structured (digital hootenanny?) as a rule? 
Though my personal prejudice is that performances are synchronous, and involve
humans interacting with humans.  To me, a movie is not a performance--it is a
record of a performance.  I think that the same goes for interaction with an
interface--unless there is a human component driving the interaction from both
ends (Auriea Harvey & Michael Samyn's Wirefire
<http://www.entropy8zuper.org/wirefire/>, I would call a performance). 

A lot of the stuff I have seen is after the model of Wirefire, a sort of
"virtual whiteboard" where artists interactively VJ with Flash and video
clips? or the same sort of whiteboard that is less media-rich, but open to
anyone. I would be very interested to see other models of networked
performance.

Michael