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

[Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>]

This work touches me tremendously on many counts - particularly as Barbara 
says, the interaction - which is only apparent - between code and content. 
What stymies me is the referencing of early 
conceptualist/electronic/musique-concrete sound - which seems common 
online. There's no reason the code couldn't represent an avatar, an atomic 
explosion, the dna of the horseshoe crab; what I saw instead was the usual 
minimalism. On the other hand, the representation as if the code were 
itself performative, the resonance in the wysiwyh, is terrific - Alan


On Wed, 16 Mar 2005 14:39:51 -0500, Barbara Lattanzi 
<threads@wildernesspuppets.net> wrote:
> 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
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
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