[-empyre-] Toplap's stage for thought and "the whole human instrument"

[Barbara Lattanzi <threads@wildernesspuppets.net>]

I was visiting the TopLap website today with the Empyre conversations in 
mind.

http://toplap.org

The TopLap website includes a "ManifestoDraft" and links to video 
performance documentation by TopLap members.

http://toplap.org/?node=ManifestoDraft
http://toplap.org/?node=ToplapPeople

I found a worthwhile documentation of a Feb.24 performance by Akihiro Kubota.

http://toplap.org/?node=AkihiroKubota

I am using Kubota's documentation for the following speculative observations:

The gist of the TopLap agenda, as I understand it, is a more transparent 
relationship between the interactions of the performer, the code, and what 
occurs visibly and audibly in the performance space.  Toplappers call 
algorithms "thoughts".  Instead of a graphic user interface that is hidden 
away in order to foreground the mutations of sound and image (as in vjaying 
software), the interface is rawly presented as multiple windows of code 
algorithms ("thoughts") coexisting on the screen with "aesthetic" 
visualizations/sonifications of the code.

It is the ongoing modifications of algorithms, modified live by the 
performer that carry the weight of the performance.  The first line of the 
TopLap "ManifestoDraft" reads:

"Give us access to the performer's mind, to the whole human instrument."

I feel sympathetic to this desire to materially ground the simulacra of 
digital "representations" through the audience's perception of the 
relationship between the visual/audio experience and the "visible hand" of 
the maker.  It also seems to materially ground the experience by means of 
the Multiple:  i.e., compelling the viewer's need to make comparisons among 
several symbolic representations changing over time.

I perceive the display of code on the screen as another "representation", 
since the machine must still interpret the code into its own machine 
language.  It is the "cross-referencing" among various types of display 
that allows me to access the work.

I find a connection to film montage where meaning erupts in the gaps 
between shots.  Here it is the gaps between (or among) simulacra that 
ground the digital.

Barbara