The Evolution of Multimedia Performance
- Early media/art experiments:
early art and science experiments linked emergent technologies such as photography with performative actions in scientific settings, in a way which suggests later new media practices. Eg. three foundational nineteenth century photographic experiments:
1. Duchenne de Boulogne’s experiments for The Mechanism of Human Facial Expression (1862);
2. Oscar Rejlander’s images for Charles Darwin’s treatise Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872);
3. Etienne-Jules Marey and Georges Demenÿ’s chrono-photographic plates in their Studies in Artistic Physiology (1893)
These inspired Duchamp’s Nu descendant un escalier number 1 or 2, 1911-1912. Duchamp explicitly cites Marey as a source for this painting with its accumulation of perspectives on a moving body: ‘I saw in an illustration from a book by Marey how he had shown people fencing or horses galloping with a system of dotted lines delimiting the different movements. This gave me the idea for the execution of Nu descendant un escalier. ‘
- The happenings, John Cage and time-based art.
Cage develops Duchamp’s concept of the time based art work into a paradigm for art in general.
1950s – the happenings:
• John Cage (September 5, 1912 - August 12, 1992) an experimental music composer and writer, possibly best known (some might say notorious) for his piece 4’ 33’’ Joined Black Mountain College in 1948. New School for Social Research in New York: Experimental Composition' classes from 1957 to 1959. Origin of Fluxus.
• Allan Kaprow developed a language for the ‘happenings’ in the late 1950s. Happenings were non structured site specific group improvisations of an extended duration
Video. I have Nothing to say and I am saying It Dir. Allan Miller 1990
- fluxus and performance art.
Origins.
• Futurism 1909 Italy F.T. Marinetti. Synthetic theatre
• dada 1916-1923. Hugo Ball. Cabaret (Café) Voltaire in Zürich ‘But all living art will be irrational, primitive, complex: it will speak a secret language and leave behind documents not of edification but of paradox.' Flight out of Time: A Dada Diary. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.
• Surrealism 1924- 1950s. Andre Breton
1960s:
• Fluxus - George Maciunas, Nam June Paik, John Cage, George Brecht, Wolf Vostell
• Yoko Ono (1933-) Works:
PAINTING TO SEE THE SKIES
Drill two holes into a canvas. Hang it where you can see the sky. 1961 summer
PAINTING TO BE STEPPED ON
Leave a piece pf canvas or finished painting on the floor or in the street. 1960 winter
Cut Piece, during which she sat on stage and invited the audience to use scissors to cut off her clothing until she was naked.
The book of instructions called Grapefruit. This book, first produced in 1964, includes instructions that are to be completed in the mind of the reader, for example: "Hide and Go Seek Piece: Hide until everyone forgets about you. Hide until everyone dies." The book was published several times, and most widely distributed by Simon and Schuster in 1971, and reprinted by them again in 2000.
• Joseph Beuys (1921-1986)- social sculpture. Beuys created and carried out 70 actions between 1963 and 1986. During this time, he also created approximately 50 installations, participated in more than 130 solo exhibitions, and conducted numerous interviews, seminars, lectures, and discussions. ‘Everyone is an artist’
• Performance Works: How To Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare (1965) I like America and America Likes Me (1974 New York) 7000 Oaks (1982-87)
- Theories of Multimedia
Systems that support the interactive use of text, audio, still images, video, and graphics. Each of these elements must be converted in some way from analog form to digital form before they can be used in a computer application. Thus, the distinction of multimedia is the convergence of previously diverse systems.
www.tamu.edu/ode/glossary.html
Randall Packer and Ken Jordan (2001) suggest five characteristics intrinsic to computer-based multimedia:
• integration, the way different media and art forms are brought together in certain works
• interactivity, spectators or users can determine the structure of the work through their own interactions with the work
• hypermedia, following the links
• immersion, sensorial overload
• narrativity, forms of conceptual organization (often non-linear narratives)
- ‘Overture’ Multimedia: From Wagner To Virtual Reality, New York: W.W.Norton and Company, Ltd (xii-xxxi)
‘These terms offer a starting point for developing a language in which to articulate the forms and processes inherent to multimedia performance.’
Rosie Klich
- Early media/art experiments:
early art and science experiments linked emergent technologies such as photography with performative actions in scientific settings, in a way which suggests later new media practices. Eg. three foundational nineteenth century photographic experiments:
1. Duchenne de Boulogne’s experiments for The Mechanism of Human Facial Expression (1862);
2. Oscar Rejlander’s images for Charles Darwin’s treatise Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872);
3. Etienne-Jules Marey and Georges Demenÿ’s chrono-photographic plates in their Studies in Artistic Physiology (1893)
These inspired Duchamp’s Nu descendant un escalier number 1 or 2, 1911-1912. Duchamp explicitly cites Marey as a source for this painting with its accumulation of perspectives on a moving body: ‘I saw in an illustration from a book by Marey how he had shown people fencing or horses galloping with a system of dotted lines delimiting the different movements. This gave me the idea for the execution of Nu descendant un escalier. ‘
- The happenings, John Cage and time-based art.
Cage develops Duchamp’s concept of the time based art work into a paradigm for art in general.
1950s – the happenings:
• John Cage (September 5, 1912 - August 12, 1992) an experimental music composer and writer, possibly best known (some might say notorious) for his piece 4’ 33’’ Joined Black Mountain College in 1948. New School for Social Research in New York: Experimental Composition' classes from 1957 to 1959. Origin of Fluxus.
• Allan Kaprow developed a language for the ‘happenings’ in the late 1950s. Happenings were non structured site specific group improvisations of an extended duration
Video. I have Nothing to say and I am saying It Dir. Allan Miller 1990
- fluxus and performance art.
Origins.
• Futurism 1909 Italy F.T. Marinetti. Synthetic theatre
• dada 1916-1923. Hugo Ball. Cabaret (Café) Voltaire in Zürich ‘But all living art will be irrational, primitive, complex: it will speak a secret language and leave behind documents not of edification but of paradox.' Flight out of Time: A Dada Diary. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.
• Surrealism 1924- 1950s. Andre Breton
1960s:
• Fluxus - George Maciunas, Nam June Paik, John Cage, George Brecht, Wolf Vostell
• Yoko Ono (1933-) Works:
PAINTING TO SEE THE SKIES
Drill two holes into a canvas. Hang it where you can see the sky. 1961 summer
PAINTING TO BE STEPPED ON
Leave a piece pf canvas or finished painting on the floor or in the street. 1960 winter
Cut Piece, during which she sat on stage and invited the audience to use scissors to cut off her clothing until she was naked.
The book of instructions called Grapefruit. This book, first produced in 1964, includes instructions that are to be completed in the mind of the reader, for example: "Hide and Go Seek Piece: Hide until everyone forgets about you. Hide until everyone dies." The book was published several times, and most widely distributed by Simon and Schuster in 1971, and reprinted by them again in 2000.
• Joseph Beuys (1921-1986)- social sculpture. Beuys created and carried out 70 actions between 1963 and 1986. During this time, he also created approximately 50 installations, participated in more than 130 solo exhibitions, and conducted numerous interviews, seminars, lectures, and discussions. ‘Everyone is an artist’
• Performance Works: How To Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare (1965) I like America and America Likes Me (1974 New York) 7000 Oaks (1982-87)
- Theories of Multimedia
Systems that support the interactive use of text, audio, still images, video, and graphics. Each of these elements must be converted in some way from analog form to digital form before they can be used in a computer application. Thus, the distinction of multimedia is the convergence of previously diverse systems.
www.tamu.edu/ode/glossary.html
Randall Packer and Ken Jordan (2001) suggest five characteristics intrinsic to computer-based multimedia:
• integration, the way different media and art forms are brought together in certain works
• interactivity, spectators or users can determine the structure of the work through their own interactions with the work
• hypermedia, following the links
• immersion, sensorial overload
• narrativity, forms of conceptual organization (often non-linear narratives)
- ‘Overture’ Multimedia: From Wagner To Virtual Reality, New York: W.W.Norton and Company, Ltd (xii-xxxi)
‘These terms offer a starting point for developing a language in which to articulate the forms and processes inherent to multimedia performance.’
Rosie Klich
