User:Max Dovey/Reading Writing Research Methodologies/maxgradprop

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Title When the technology performs (Working Title)

Intro

Performance art has become networked and no longer bound to physical time and space. Real-time technology and networked communication is reconfiguring the ontology of performance, the ephemeral live act can now be performed and experienced in multiple locations simultaneously. 

Now that hyper-connectivity enables a shared presence between viewers and the performer becomes both here and there, the idea of the auratic object that Walter Benjamin claimed to be bound to physical presence has been reconfigured by its technological mediation

When referring to the aura of performance I locate it within tension of the unexpected, the improvised nature of the live moment that cannot be recreated.
Performance art has a long history of challenging the relationship between technology and the live aura and the discussion over reproduction and live art documentation has been fought since the 1960s.
We now find that Walter Benjamin’s argument needs to be revised, as artists are utlizing real-time technology and wireless networks to generate live performances with technology.
The medium can now operate within the live moment, processing and responding with the action so that the technology is no longer a reproduction detached from its authentic origin but a player in the act; generating the aura of the live moment in a relational mediation of events.
My enquiry for the graduation project is how does technology mediate performance and our experience of liveness?
I am interested in how networked performance art uses real-time technology to imitate immediacy and create a shared presence with audiences. In this configuration the technology becomes a live player in a networked act of performance where the unexpected, enigmatic aura becomes distributed through people and devices.


Content
The project in June 2015 will be a performance with real-time video projection(s) that will present the ideas of aura in networked performance and virtual reality.
A performer will be live streamed into the exhibition space and will be simultaneously acting in both a physical and virtual environment.
The live representation of the performer will disrupt the relation between the audience and the action to call into question the origin of the aura in live performance.
My own methods of performing via computers with a live audience will be applied to reveal the questions regarding immediacy and mediation.
By performing actions that are instantly mediated by computational processes, the direct affect of real-time technology on experience is revealed. The value of performance, in its ephemerality and originality can be revealed through its technological mediation.


Practical Steps
I have begun some small prototypes to begin this process –

  • Sample rates –
  • In an attempt to sonify sub-divisions of a second I have been processing recordings of my voice to present how the speed and treatment of technology can mediate performance. examples
  • Video Streams –
  • Working with live video streams I have been creating interruptions to reveal the latency and the mediation of the technology.
  • http://headroom.pzwart.wdka.hro.nl/~max/24fps/
  • Networked performance –
  • In collaboration with an artist in London we have begun planning durational-based pieces that occur simultaneously in two different locations. We are interested in how two events can be performed with real-time technology.
  • Last December we began performing in real-time in different locations
  • http://3screens.eu/
    • Previous Work
    http://vimeo.com/ 95677127
    ‘Foley Narrative’ 2014
    Throughout my time at the Piet Zwart Institute I have developed a methodology for performing with computational data and a live audience.
    In ‘Foley Narrative’ (2014) speech to text software ‘listens’ to the noise I create with objects and translates my actions into words that are projected on screen. The relations between the objects and myself are interpreted by the computer speech to text and program and generate an instant (mis)interpretation. I improvise with the direct mediation between the performance and the computer’s interpretation of my act.
    align right

    More recently I have performed an analysis of real-time technology. In ‘Real-real-time’ (2014) I examine the representation of live in film and computers, deconstructing the illusion of ‘real-time’ and analysing different temporal illusions in media that depict reality. Presenting the illusion of liveness in technology allows us to see the affects of technological mediation of our sense of time. The website uses a live video stream to mirror the viewer into a real time representation.

    http://vimeo.com/ 19704973
    'Twitter Theatre' 2010
    In ‘Twitter Theatre’ (2010) performers improvise from real time twitter feeds that are projected into the space.
    The performers respond to the continuous streams of data by using the tweets as scripts for an improvised performance.
    Here performers react with the speed of networked technology and create a performance between live data and the audience.

The rough schedule for this research will be -

  • November – Letters and The postal system
  • January – Telephony and telecommunication
  • March – Radio and the Wireless
  • May – Television and TV Broadcasting
  • June – Internet and Real-time streaming


These experiments in performing via communication technology will become a survey of research on the effects of mediation on performance. By writing texts on how each medium and documenting the a performative response from each reader. A collaborative performance with networked mediums will reflect on the relation between the media and the live act.

The project in June 2015 will be a performance with real-time video projection(s) that will present the current tensions on how liveness is mediated.
A performer will be live streamed into the exhibition space and will be simultaneously acting in both a physical and virtual environment. The live representation of the performer will disrupt the relation between the audience and the action to call into question the origin of the aura in live performance.
My own methods of performing via computers with a live audience will be applied to reveal the questions regarding immediacy and mediation. By performing actions that are instantly mediated by computational processes, the direct affect of real-time technology on experience is revealed. The value of performance, in its ephemerality and originality can be revealed through its technological mediation.

Previous work

http://vimeo.com/ 95677127


‘Foley Narrative’ 2014 Throughout my time at the Piet Zwart Institute I have developed a methodology for performing with computational data and a live audience. In ‘Foley Narrative’ (2014) speech to text software ‘listens’ to the noise I create with objects and translates my actions into words that are projected on screen.
The relations between the objects and myself are interpreted by the computer speech to text and program and generate an instant (mis)interpretation.
I improvise with the direct mediation between the performance and the computer’s interpretation of my act.

More recently I have performed an analysis of real-time technology. In ‘Real-real-time’ (2014) I examine the representation of live in film and computers, deconstructing the illusion of ‘real-time’ and analysing different temporal illusions in media that depict reality. Presenting the illusion of liveness in technology allows us to see the affects of technological mediation of our sense of time. The website uses a live video stream to mirror the viewer into a real time representation.

In ‘Twitter Theatre’ (2010) performers improvise from real time twitter feeds that are projected into the space. The performers respond to the continuous streams of data by using the tweets as scripts for an improvised performance. Here performers react with the speed of networked technology and create a performance between live data and the audience.


Context

A historical context begins with Futurist performances, Fluxus, Allan Kaprow’s Happening’s, John Cage and current gameplay theatre of Blast Theory and Tate Modern’s video streaming platform ‘BMW Tate Live’.
Artists and organizations across a broad cultural field are challenging how performance can be experienced with networked technology.
The theoretical context is currently situated between arguments put forward by Phillip Auslander in ‘Liveness’ (1999), Peggy Phelan’s ‘Unmarked’ (1993) and Matthew Caurey’s ‘Theatre and Performance in Digital Culture’ (2006).
These three texts all describe performance in reference to the Walter Benjamin text ‘Art in the age of technical reproducibility’ (1936).
Their writing will support my practice in locating the authentic in performance with networked technologies and provide a critical framework for my graduate project.


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