<x-flowed> Warm greetings to all. Thanks to everyone for sharing so many interesting ideas! I would like to add a point which I feel hasn’t been addressed, namely the nature of interactivity itself and the issues surrounding this. Interactivity - ie communication - is never neutral or balanced but carries with it questions of control/power/manipulation and loss of control/passivity and vulnerability. In web events, it is fascinating the degree to which the viewer behind the screen is/will be able to control and manipulate an event, choosing camera angles etc, acting as director of the event. Here control is solely in the hands of the person manipulating the cursor/buttons/apparatus. In live performance however, the nature of the communication between audience and performer is unique and unreplicable. Here interactivity exists not only between the performer and the audience, but between audience members themselves... the space we share with other viewers is powerful and affecting of our visceral experience. Meaning and the power of experience is generated by a collective of individuals who together occupy one physical space. This is very different from the spatial environement of the web, which is both at once highly personal and global. Here space exists between you and the screen, the screen and cyberspace. Direct physicality between you and another is non-existant. This will change the experience and creation of the event. A certain vulnerability of experience seems lost - a vulnerability of presence, and of the unknown. In the end, I wonder how much control we as viewers/participants really desire and need in web peformance. How much manipulation is creatively interesting and how much of it is just about manipulation? Passivity of audience members was once an issue of real-time/space performance, which gradually changed by involving more audience interactivity (Happenings etc). The web has taken this notion of interactivity to another level, both fascinating and questionable. How much control do we really need? Do we want to see all the angles all the time, and what does this say about how we experience our physical and spatial environment(s)? Motria Sabat From: "john.mitchell" <john.mitchell@asu.edu> Reply-To: dance-tech@lists.acs.ohio-state.edu To: dance-tech@lists.acs.ohio-state.edu Subject: Re: performance for the internet Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 23:27:41 -0700 Robert Walton has started a very wide-ranging discussion that I have found quite interesting. I would like to add just a couple of observations to the last couple of entries. As far as live-and-on-the-web is concerned, if there is no feedback between the web viewers and the performers then the whole thing may as well be pre-recorded. At leaset in terms of the web audience there would be no difference. So in the football analogy, we are told that the game is live but how do we know that it is not time-delayed?(even if we watch it on TV.) Or even staged for that matter. Basically we believe that it is live. We have faith. This brings us into the discussion of the importance of knowing, whether it is in regards to the mapping of an interactive piece or whether a distance performance is live or memorex. Does it matter if we know or not? Is it enough to think we know (i.e.to have faith)? If it is important, then why? Does the suspension of belief talked about in the theatre extend into this territory? It is interesting to note that high-dollar seats in football stadiums have been fitted with computers to access this online info that Richard talked about while watching the game from the stands. This idea might be worth consideration in the performing arts, especially opera. We are currently working with some of the issues mentioned by Richard, from web-controllable cameras that web audience members can use to get the desired perspective of a live work, to web interfaces for stage media that would give the internet viewers the opportunity to change lighting, sound mix, video projection mix etc. Of course the problem is that only one user can access the controls at a time, like the radio talk show, but at least we are not screening, preping or in any other way controlling the activity of the users. Stage works will change under these conditions. I also appreciated Scott's discussion of input, mapping, and output in interactive works. I believe you were suggesting, Scott, that, in some cases, the mapping could be considered the work of art itself. In the same way the Kac speaks about the fact that the work of art in telematic pieces may actually reside in the web interactions themselves, perhaps the same is true of some interactive works with regards to mapping. Does the mapping have a more primary force in the work than the actual performers? Are the performers actions ameliorated to such a degree as to lend precedence to the connection between the input and the output? How then do we bring an appreciation of the mapping to the viewers? Through the web? Finally, in response to David Sadowsky's comments regarding casting of the new in old and familiar forms. I see that we always try to use new technologies to re-create what we already know and do with existing technology and practice. Often this produces a less than satisfactory result. Perhaps this is a way of understanding the differences between the new and the old, or a method of learning and understanding something new. Ultimately, for new technologies to truly be interesting they must come into their own, and dictate their own terms. Or, conversely, we must listen to the new and follow its lead. This is often what I feel when working with telematic performance and in web-based performance situations-a struggle to see through the clouds of the old in order to see the true form of the new. jdm John D. Mitchell Arizona State University p.480-965-2709 f.480-965-2247 _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com </x-flowed>
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