Week 3 Debate 1: Adjudicators Report

Topic: There is no inherent opposition between live and mediatised performance

Notes before the debate:
• The meaning/s of liveness
- These meaning have blurred and changed over time to no longer represent the first meaning of original and new experiences. "You have to be there to experience it"
- Due to the changed meaning of "live", the lines have blurred so much that live and recorded have now formed the meaning of "live replay".
• Non-matrixed performance and approaches to performance
- There is a difference between live and mediated due to actions that cannot be understood without mediated forms - new technologies
• Immediacy and Intimacy
- Immediacy - direct involvement with someone and the sense of urgency. Austlander's reading includes the example of live performance in the theatre - filming television with a live audience
- Intimacy - viewer and the screen: making a personal connection - being involved in a drama on a TV show and getting to know the characters, OR in a theatre performance, the development of a character through dance moves
• The acceptance of technologies that change the nature of sport, video games (wii), music and television
- Walter Benjamin's argument of destroying the aura of the original - by filming a work, it is no longer "original". Also, by replaying something that was filmed/captured when it was "live", it is no longer original and the only copy
- The wii also, captures real time movements but transforms them to an image you can see on a screen - Austlander's example is a music concert that uses television monitors to remediate an experience
• The relationship between viewer and performer
- Between the television and live events: how TV is structured from theatre and performance and how theatre and performance was then structured and mediated by TV later on
• A lot of works include media - performance wise - performances now include projections onto a dancer's body and or wall
• Emergent technologies
- Present verses past in different media forms
- According to Austlander: TV vs. Movie's - TV is the present, movies represent the past
• How the "live" structures events and how the meaning of live has changed dramatically over the years
• Key people in the reading are Margaret Morse, Walter Benjamin, Michael Kirby and Peggy Phelan

Marking Scheme:
- Case line and follow through
- Structure
- Main points

Key points on debate:
Affirmative team
• Modern society has become desensitized – through advent modern media forms
• Strong introduction with the opening point of desensitized
• Mutually dependant – social and internet liveness – audience affection
- Social networking
• Closeness and proximity
• The live and historical
• 2nd speaker: differences lie within cultural economy
• 3rd speaker: Mediated being an extension means there is no difference
- Expect the mediated performance
• Perceptions of the world – constructed by live and television

Negative team
• Subjectivity – Peggy Phelan
• Remediation and intimacy of a live audience
• Opportunity to make it our own – truly live and mediated
• Enables visual choice
• Can’t go back and view a live performance – can’t make it our own
• Temporal space – virtual physical space still exists
• Social liveness is a form of live performance eg. Skype
• Mediation further extends upon the live
• Different courses for acting and tv and film
• Immediacy and intimacy
• 2nd speaker: skype acts as an extension of the person
- Don’t need a camera to watch
• Extension is mediated of the live
• Encapsulate the experience – extend what you see and hear

It was good to see that the affirmative team related their argument closely to the reading, by stating that the differences lie within the cultural economy. However, instead of staying down this path of the cultural economy, their argument was weakened by not explaining how. Another strong argument that they brought up was that the live and mediatised have become desensitized and mutually dependant upon each other. This strengthened their case as they closely related to Austlander’s argument of the nature of technology.

The negative team we felt presented a clearer case as they had a strong team line that “the mediated is an extension upon the live”. Even though this relates closely to Austlander’s reading, how the technology evolves with the technology, they argued well that it is merely an extension upon the live, therefore removing the added options of technology to enhance the visual appearance. What reinforced their argument was their examples of a live concert and skype, presenting technology still has a physical presence, but allows you (the audience) to encapsulate the experience by extending what you can already see and hear. As they backed up their argument with examples, this is what allowed us to come to the conclusion that the negative team should win.

I felt that what both teams did not argue enough on the perspective that the technology evolved due to audience participation, and Walter Benjamin’s argument of destroying the ‘aura’ of the original. I agree that the technology is mutually dependant, but it is also a remediation.