week 3, 2nd debate, Affirmative team 3rd speaker

Rebuttal points: As the negative team argued that live and mediated performance are separate entities, we pointed out that this was an invalid argument as the topic asks wether the two forms oppose, not whether they are different. Also the negative team emphasised the definition of live performance as one of being in the same space and time and audience responses and interactivity. We countered this by arguing that most performances are mediated and a performance has to only lack in one of these characteristics to be still defined live in the new definition of live performance based on mass culture.

Speech summary: Over time mediatised performances have been in representation of the live when live was what the mass culture expected and appreciated. Then the live took the form of the mediated performances due to the mass culture associating mediated performances with natural and real. As Auslander Points out in reference to Walter Benjamin in pp34, ‘Eyes and ears have been conditioned by mediatisation’.

Our second speaker then goes on to clarify the evolution of the term, live performance, due to the integration of mediatisation into the many examples of current live performances. This evolved version of life performance has limitation on either one or more of the fundamental ontological factors of live performance. Such as the limitation on intimacy in the example provided by our second speaker of live broadcasts due to not being able to be spatially co-present where the broadcast is happening. Live recordings was another example outlined, of the integrated forms of live and mediated performance without the factor of intimacy or immediacy however the quality of the content is associated with live as it is not filtered and altered as a purely remediated performance would be. Therefore again we emphasise the interdependence of mediated and live performances.

Our second speaker also talks about online liveness as a meshed example of live and mediated. The internet has allowed for the availability of content more immediately especially news and such. However with performances, it has allowed for the access of such performance which is not actually possible without the mediation and remediation of it through the internet due to the vastness of the spaces between the location of the performance and the location of the viewer.

Most important of all is the audience’s expectation of a performance. As our second speaker has suggested, the mass culture prefers the mediated quality in a live performance as they are accustomed to consuming the mediated performance and viewing it as real and natural. In a culture that expects and integration of the live and mediated performance, it is safe to say that these two forms definitely do not oppose each other but inevitably work together thus becoming a one form of performance.