Re: [-empyre-] networked_performance 2

[Helen Thorington <newradio@turbulence.org>]

Hi Komninos and everyone else:

The question about liveness is something that should be addressed. You may
remember that in our original post we defined networked performance as "any
live event that is network enabled."

There can be no question about the "liveness" of the work I described last
evening. "Glimmer" took place in a traditional concert hall. It was an
interaction between participators (the audience) and the performers, all
live and present.

I'm going to take a deep breath and say that I think the same can be said
about pretty much all the work we are looking at on the blog. Under the
telematic category we listed work by Mann and Teran. My hope is that they
will soon enter the list and talk to you directly about their work. But let
me say this much:

In the past they worked with the Waag Society to produce a work (I think it
was actually done at least three times) called The Telematic Dinner Party.
There were 30 people involved, fifteen (very much alive and present) having
dinner in Amsterdam, fifteen (ditto) in Toronto.  The point of this work was
not performance as I think most of us understand it. There was no Internet
audience. The point was to eat, have fun, tell stories, and to enhance the
social interaction between the distant diners by making use of a number of
tele-kinetic objects that transmitted physical presence and social gestures
across space and time.

For instance: throughout the meal, the guests made toasts and speeches using
telematic wine glasses. In each of the two cities, Toronto and Amsterdam,
there were four sensor glasses and four mechanical clinker glasses on the
dinner table. Guests in either space could pick up a spoon and strike one of
the sensor glasses in the manner of calling guests attention to a short
speech or toast. This signal was picked up and relayed across the ocean via
the Internet, where it was then sent to one of the mechanical clinkers.
These responded by striking a glass with a motorized spoon. In this way, the
Glass Clinkers - like a number of other telematic devices - provided a
strong sense of both kinetic and sonic telepresence between the two spaces.
What clinked on one side of the Atlantic, clinked on the other. Streaming
video and audio were used to bring the two parties closer together.

Mann and Teran are now doing distributed picnics using wireless, which I
hope they'll talk about. But for me the points are:  1) here are a bunch of
very much alive and present people eating and having a great time; and
communicating with each other across distance in as many ways as are
available to them   2) there is no traditional audience  3) there is no
reliance on the screen and keyboard. 4. the point is communication and
social interaction and how to do it so that you feel closer...

Under our second category -- anyone of the works -- take umbrella.net. Open
the umbrella and you have (assuming there are others around with the same
kind of umbrella) an ad hoc (wireless) network. Once again: communication
between people in a given area, and social interaction.


Very much alive and present, I think.


Re the suggestion that we try and define what we mean by performance, I'm
all for it... 

But, enough for now,

- Helen
 


on 7/3/05 8:12 PM, Komninos Zervos at k.zervos@griffith.edu.au wrote:

> thankyou helen
> 
> your original post was great, very informative and i realise it is a first
> step into this field and not the final word.
> it is difficult for me each month, as it might be for others on the list,
> to familiarise myself quickly with the specialty field that is being
> highlighted.
> your opening post quickly framed the whole discussion and provided a
> quick-start primer for my better understanding of the topic.
> i did not see it as prescriptive of the field but offering enough
> description for further research.
> 
> lucio's point about the 'liveness' is an interesting one. your example of
> the lightbeam concert that engages the audience by their control over the
> direction of the music being played is a valuable one. i wonder if you
> have an example where the audience, artists, and participants are all
> on-line without that live content?
> 
> 
> i remember reading about stelarc's performance hanging from a warehouse
> roof by hooks, his body full of stimulators, making his muscles twitch,
> and the sensors which recorded his neurological responses that got fed
> into a synthesizer and expressed as music, all being controlled by inputs
> from remote computers on the web, or was i just dreaming.....
> 
> 
> when i first started making cyberpoems in 1995 my goal was to remove
> myself from the performance, i had been a professional performance poet
> for ten years prior to this and was very aware of the importance of my
> presence in the live situation. i was criticised by the print based poets
> who claimed, it was my personality that made the poems work. true i was
> the first interpreter of my own work and so sort of set the authoritative
> interpretation.  so,  i was keen to make my cyberpoems perform on their
> own as digital animated sonic experiences whilst trying to capture the
> excitement of live performance using new devices of engagement.  but the
> field you are describing seems completely different to what my concerns
> were. would i be right in saying the works you refer to are using the
> medium as the performance, and the performers are just the early
> interpreters of the work?
> 
> 
> cheers
> komninos
> 
> 
> komninos zervos
> 
> http://www.gu.edu.au/ppages/k_zervos
> http://users.bigpond.net.au/mangolegs
> http://spokenword.blog-city.com
> "Our Workplace Rights are NOT for sale."
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