<<interactive works>> For the study remember to compare apples with apples. I would just caution you to remember that interactivity is not at all a new idea in the arts. I suppose we could even say that the loop created by the audience laughing, and the performers adjusting their rhythm, is already interactivity. But live performance has never been limited to this. The magician who brings a volonteer on stage creates a direct contact. The Happenings of the 50s and 60s were almost exclusively participatory and interactive. The German choreographer Felix Ruckert's works Hautnah (consisting of an unlimited number of solos, which are performed each time for a single person in an enclosed space), though not at all improvisational, are effected by the reactions and actions of the single audience member. And his piece Ring is almost pure interactivity. About 20 members of the public are on stage with the 20 performers. The bodies of the audience are constantly manipulated, and other information is exchanged. In my own work a member of the audience, often as an emotional surrogate for the entire audience, is called upon to participate or to be present in the stage space. In my piece Needs, presented in "intimate spaces" - bedrooms, offices, cupboards, bathrooms... - the mere effect of extreme proximity or unavoidable physical contact creates a tacit interactivity that sometimes becomes overpowering. In a performance that I did in 1981, the audience members were required to sign a contract of non-disclosure, before being allowed to participate individually in the piece. In a private space they were placed before a camera on a tripod and told "I want to take a revealing photo of you. Tell me when." After a first photo, they were told "can't you be more revealing?" - and a series of increasingly-revealing photos was made. In a more recent version of the same work, the participant was left alone to participate in the same process, guided by an inter-active but anonymous instruction process. David Vaughn
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