User:Max Dovey/Reading Writing Research Methodologies/maxThesisoutline
Thesis outline Max Dovey Jan 14/01/2015
How does technology mediate performance and our experience of liveness?
To investigate authenticity in performance and the mediation of the live act.
Introduction
I am investigating the notion of live with performance and technology.
I perform with data streams and computer feedback, the transient nature of real time data can create an authentic, ephemeral moment with technology. The infrastructure of the internet and its mobility means information is continually transmitted and becomes 'live' with real-time interfaces and always on devices.
I want to analyse what live is in a technological and performance context and how its authenticity can be mediated. Through doing this i can further my understanding of why my performance based practice, that combines real-time media and embodied physical presence, challenges the authenticity of liveness and its relation between temporal and physical ontologies.
Theory background
it has to be agreed that liveness has more to do with time and 'now-ness' (Dixon:132)
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).
Phelan defines the aura of live in its unreproducability and ephemerality while Auslander defines live by its reproducibility, that before recorded media the live didn't exist. Both look at the authenticity of live to be a phenomenological ontology and define liveness with the aura of presence, but when presence is (re)created with this 'now-ness' of real-time technology the aura of live becomes technological, not physical.
In my work i challenge both theoretical positions because i combine embodied performance with real time technology to explore the authentic within live performance.
My approach will be similar to Caurey :
The ontology of performance (liveness) which exists before and after mediatization has been altered within the space of technology. (Caurey)
to look at performance within the ontology of the technological, specifically performance and real time technology.
The existing debate looks at performance as a physiological ontology, id like to look at liveness as a temporal object so that the debate around authenticity in performance can be looked at within the networked, computational context (e.g. data and performance).
Structure
Part 1
Performance
Chapter aims - present theorists on the authentic being the real, the unmediated moment that is a physical ontology, not technological. arguments in popular culture that the aura is located as a physical attribute detached from media.
- 'Put away your phones' Live events and technology in mass culture . The current urge in music events and theatre for audiences to put away their phones to experience the live moment. The essentialist idea that the authentic live moment is physical and isolated from (mobile) media.
- The psychological sensation of the real & the authentic occurring in the body
- media as simulacrum - Baurdrillard
- A sense of presence (or the persistent problem of presence)
Part 2
Real-Time
Chapter aims - Real-time as a technological form creates the authentic liveness. Performing against them
- The authenticity of the immediate - live as a temporal ontology
- The illusion of real-time (media object)
- Living in perpetual now (Douglas rushkoff 'Present Shock')
- A brief history of Real-time - Makul Patel
Part 3
Interviews - conduct interviews with some theatre makers, artists who use technology in their work to create a live experience.
Part 4
OUTPUT
- Chapter Aims - To bring examples of my work and others into the debate to highlight my position in relation to the the Phelan / Auslander debate.
- Essay on method
- real-time performance
- Bots, computational data & improvisation
Bibliograpghy