Case Study - Rafael Lozano-Hemmer

MEFT3353 - Performance in a Mediatised culture

By: Rachel Jang, Michelle Goodman, Caroline Moss, Sarina Huang

Intention and How

To outline the methods in which Rafael Lozano-Hemmer reflects both immersion and interactivity through two of his key works “Pulse Room” and “Pulse Tank”.

Background

Pulse Room is an exhibition displaying hundreds of incandescent 300w light bulbs suspended from the ceiling. Each bulb represents the heart-beat/rate of each participant who has visited the exhibition, and placed their hands on the metal sensors displayed at the front of the exhibition. Each participant who holds onto these sensors for 30 seconds, has the sequence of the heart-beat pattern displayed onto the closest hanging bulb. When a new participant touches the sensors, their heart beat is displayed on the first bulb, thus pushing the previous participants heart beat down the line. This project therefore, incorporates an interactive work of 300 hundred individuals blinking in their unique rhythms.

Pulse Tank is an installation allowing any participant to take part in the work. It takes the heart rates of a person, once they insert their finger into one of four available cylinders, then converts the heart rate into ripples in a tank of water. It then is converted into different lighting patterns projected onto the ceiling of the room and below the tank. There are two main ways to create the ripples and light effects. The first, through the pulse in your finger, or by placing your palms to a panel that also measures your heart rate.

Outside influences

Lozano-Hemmer draws his interests and influences from many sources but in particular for Pulse Room, the 1960 motion picture film “Macario” directed by Roberto Gavaldón assists in the setting of the lightbulbs in this installation.

Key questions

1. How it affects our senses?

2. How simple actions generate complex responses?

Michelle

In continuation to Pulse Room we would like to contribute the immersive context to the installation and answer the question of “How simple actions generate complex responses”. This idea is relevant in our piece as the audience becomes immersed by a function that we are all aware of and that is known to every human being. This section will reflect and explore the mobility of the heart within Pulse Room and how it embraces the effects of immersion.

Materials

· Link to Pulse Room in operation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-w9yeGIqcLg

· Text by Marie-Laure Ryan – Immersion vs. Interactivity: Virtual Reality and Literary Theory

http://www.humanities.uci.edu/mposter/syllabi/readings/ryan.html

· Youtube link to “Macario” – Lozano-Hemmer’s creative inspiration for Pulse Room. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxuatGW7yNY&feature=related

· Also, the bitforms gallery website has heaps of info on him too because they represent him

http://www.bitforms.com/rafael-lozano-hemmer-gallery.html

· Auslander, P. 1999, 'Live Performance in a Mediatised Culture' Liveness: Performance in a Mediatised Culture, Routledge: London and New York, pp10-44.

By Michelle Goodman

Project proposal - Rafael Lozano-Hemmer

MEFT3353 - Performance in a Mediatised culture
Group members: Rachel Jang, Michelle Goodman, Caroline Moss, Sarina Huang

Intention and How
To outline the methods in which Rafael Lozano-Hemmer reflects both immersion and interactivity through two of his key works “Pulse Room” and “Pulse Tank”.

Background
Pulse Room is an exhibition displaying hundreds of incandescent 300w light bulbs suspended from the ceiling. Each bulb represents the heart-beat/rate of each participant who has visited the exhibition, and placed their hands on the metal sensors displayed at the front of the exhibition. Each participant who holds onto these sensors for 30 seconds, has the sequence of the heart-beat pattern displayed onto the closest hanging bulb. When a new participant touches the sensors, their heart beat is displayed on the first bulb, thus pushing the previous participants heart beat down the line. This project therefore, incorporates an interactive work of 300 hundred individuals blinking in their unique rhythms.

Pulse Tank is an installation allowing any participant to take part in the work. It takes the heart rates of a person, once they insert their finger into one of four available cylinders, then converts the heart rate into ripples in a tank of water. It then is converted into different lighting patterns projected onto the ceiling of the room and below the tank. There are two main ways to create the ripples and light effects. The first, through the pulse in your finger, or by placing your palms to a panel that also measures your heart rate.

Individual presentation
Through an assessment of interactive artwork, we begin to understand how Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s Pulse Room is a highly interactive form.

The element of interactivity in Pulse Room is assessed through;

• The physical elements of interactivity (sight, touch, sensors, motion)
• The emotional/sensorial elements of interactivity (feelings and thoughts)
• The direct and indirect interactive elements of the project
• The intimacy of the project
• What does intimacy achieve, and how does Pulse Room relate to this intimacy
• The comparisons or differences in interactivity according to Auslander and/or in Marie-Laure Ryan’s work Immersion vs. Interactivity: Virtual Reality and Literary Theory.

By Caroline Moss

R.Goderie K.Williams PROJECT PROPOSAL

MEFT 3353
Performance in a Mediatised Culture
Presentation Proposal


Rosanna Goderie and Katie Williams





Performance Project:
The multimedia dance Installation/Performance ‘As You Take Time’ (2007 premiere in Sydney and 2009 Japan) as part of artist Sue Healey’s ‘In Time Series’.

Intention: Discover the interdisciplinary and multimedia nature of dance performance in contemporary mediatised society in regard to principles of immersion and interactivity. Time-based art emphasising Healey’s experiments with the sensory experience of changing modalities of time, and how this idea is explored and extended through technologies.

Method: Drawing from historical and theoretic accounts of dance and technology, documentation of work and personal interviews with artist.





Key Questions:

• How do the performing bodies relate to one another, technology, and audience?


• What various types of multimedia technology were utilised? How did these further the artistic intention of the piece?


• How do the diverse range of multimedia aspects along with the live bodies of performance relate to theory of performativity, fusion of live and mediated mediums (Auslander), Human sense perception and desire for proximity (Benjamin), immersion and interactivity?


• What is the future for dance performance as a genre in a mediatised society that offers alternatives to the human body as mode of artistic communication?

Examples of Multimedia elements within work:

• Street entrance of performance space intended and accidental audience are confronted with two live performing bodies and two large TV screens that display a live feed of two dancers and the spectators watching in the shop window. Each TV distorts the live feed to show the footage in a different way e.g. extreme slow motion.


• A room with manipulated images of a Japanese Geisha being prepared with traditional dress and make up projected on walls with interaction from the live body.


• Another room with large movable screens, projectors from behind and in front. Footage taken in Japan projected onto shirt of performer.


• A stack of TV’s with flickering images in confined space.Real time motion capture of dancer in a white room is compacted, and the animated image of the dancer projected onto a white block within millisecond accuracy of live performer. The virtual figure is manually controlled each performance.
  
  
  

Proposal

William Yang

Key Questions

The key questions that will be posed will also be a rough indication of how the slide show will be formatted.

Who is the artist and what is the specific work?

How does his work (My Generation) relate to…

· Remediation?

· Integration?

· Composition?

How do the mediated and the live contribute to this performance?

What are the different mediums that contribute in the work?

How does he integrate his work to create a point of view to the audience?

Where is the audience and how or are they influential to the piece?

(These are the three themes that we will be looking at in relation to William Yangs ‘My Generation’ work.)

William Yang in brief…

Born William Young in North Queensland in 1943, he changed his name to William Yang in 1983. He moved to Sydney and became a photographer who focused on the everyday social life of the gay culture. His work is autobiographical and is a representation of his identity.

Through the projection of photography and live performance, William Yang creates a new presentation of ones identity. The integration of photography, projection, music, and his live presence, we are able to, as the audience, connect with the artist and relive history through his point of view. This is also a place to note the concept of Phelans notion of live and mediated and its place in the memory and the performance being placed in the present. What are the different narratives being raised in terms of performance? (Yangs past and present, the audience?)

My Generation is the performance that we will be looking at in detail. My Generation is the tenth performance that William Yang has done. It offers a glimpse of the gay/art culture in the 70’s and 80’s in Sydneys night/ social life. He delivers a commentary to his projection of photographs, and takes the audience on to a journey through his past.

References

Auslander, P. 1999, ‘Live Performance in a Mediatised Culture’ Liveness:Performance in a

Mediatised Culture, Routledge, London and New York,

Auslander, P, and Scheer, E. 2005, ‘After Liveness. An E‐Interview’ in Performance Paradigm Journal of Performance and Contemporary Culture, Routledge, London and New York

Williams Yangs Home Website -

http://www.williamyang.com/

(Group - Tanya Moore & Bernice Ong)

Project Proposal

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: Pulse Room + Pulse Tank

MEFT3353 - Performance in a Mediatised culture

By: Rachel Jang, Michelle Goodman, Caroline Moss, Sarina Huang

Intention and How

To outline the methods in which Rafael Lozano-Hemmer reflects both immersion and interactivity through two of his key works “Pulse Room” and “Pulse Tank”.

Background

Pulse Room is an exhibition displaying hundreds of incandescent 300w light bulbs suspended from the ceiling. Each bulb represents the heart-beat/rate of each participant who has visited the exhibition, and placed their hands on the metal sensors displayed at the front of the exhibition. Each participant who holds onto these sensors for 30 seconds, has the sequence of the heart-beat pattern displayed onto the closest hanging bulb. When a new participant touches the sensors, their heart beat is displayed on the first bulb, thus pushing the previous participants heart beat down the line. This project therefore, incorporates an interactive work of 300 hundred individuals blinking in their unique rhythms.

_{Pulse Tank is an installation allowing any participant to take part in the work. It takes the heart rates of a person, once they insert their finger into one of four available cylinders, then converts the heart rate into ripples in a tank of water. It then is converted into different lighting patterns projected onto the ceiling of the room and below the tank. There are two main ways to create the ripples and light effects. The first, through the pulse in your finger, or by placing your palms to a panel that also measures your heart rate.}

Outside influences

_{Lozano-Hemmer draws his interests and influences from many sources but in particular for Pulse Room, the 1960 motion picture film “Macario” directed by Roberto Gavaldón assists in the setting of the lightbulbs in this installation.}

Key questions

1. How it affects our senses?

2. How simple actions generate complex responses?

Breakdown of Individual roles

(Sarina)

In Pulse Tank, the materials used in the installation include- Ripple tank, heart rate sensors, solenoids, computer, spotlight, custom software and hardware. I will be exploring how these work together as a live interactive installation and their effects on our senses and responses.

* Interaction between live + mediated ([human heart-rate & real water/water ripple effects] + [computer sensors, tank, solenoid & lighting]). I will be linking this with Auslander's theories of live and mediated performance. Also I will be highlighting the two elements of mixing the organic/natural presence with the technological.

* Active audience participation with technology in terms of physical presence/movement/motion (e.g.putting hands and/or inserting fingers in)

* Time- in real time. Environment responds to user’s actions live.

* Installation shape/set-up/spacing allows more than 1 person to interact (e.g. 5 people can go up with a tank at the same time. Space- indoor room, open space allows ability/freedom of movement- giving individuals choice in active participation or passive observation (standing further away, watching the active participants).

Project Proposal - Rachel

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: Pulse Room + Pulse Tank

MEFT3353 - Performance in a Mediatised culture

By: Rachel Jang, Michelle Goodman, Caroline Moss, Sarina Huang

Intention and How
To outline the methods in which Rafael Lozano-Hemmer reflects both immersion and interactivity through two of his key works “Pulse Room” and “Pulse Tank”.

Background
Pulse Room is an exhibition displaying hundreds of incandescent 300w light bulbs suspended from the ceiling. Each bulb represents the heart-beat/rate of each participant who has visited the exhibition, and placed their hands on the metal sensors displayed at the front of the exhibition. Each participant who holds onto these sensors for 30 seconds, has the sequence of the heart-beat pattern displayed onto the closest hanging bulb. When a new participant touches the sensors, their heart beat is displayed on the first bulb, thus pushing the previous participants heart beat down the line. This project therefore, incorporates an interactive work of 300 hundred individuals blinking in their unique rhythms.

Pulse Tank is an installation allowing any participant to take part in the work. It takes the heart rates of a person, once they insert their finger into one of four available cylinders, then converts the heart rate into ripples in a tank of water. It then is converted into different lighting patterns projected onto the ceiling of the room and below the tank. There are two main ways to create the ripples and light effects. The first, through the pulse in your finger, or by placing your palms to a panel that also measures your heart rate.

Outside influences
Lozano-Hemmer draws his interests and influences from many sources but in particular for Pulse Room, the 1960 motion picture film “Macario” directed by Roberto Gavaldón assists in the setting of the lightbulbs in this installation.

Key questions
1. How it affects our senses?
2. How simple actions generate complex responses?

I will be focusing on the second half of the presentation. That is, by focusing on how immersion is similar but different to Pulse Room, using similar concepts of a pulse to create the interactivity and immersion. As Pulse Tank focuses on different aspects of the human body, I bring up again the question of how simple actions of the human body transform into large performance installations. Immersion is defined by Marxism as a deep mental involvement. Therefore, all the ideas and concepts behind immersion are based on this definition.

Other key issues that will be brought up are:

• The different senses used in an installation such as Pulse Tank and its effects on us.
• Concepts of live and how it is related to live.
• A comparison between a live performance, and a live installation will be made, in terms of how you cannot choreograph an installation, as it changes every time, but brings Austlander's theories "of mutually dependent technology relying on each other to create a performance.
• How immediacy and intimacy is created and used to establish an audience connection from artist to audience.

PROJECT PROPOSAL

By James Thomas and Jessica Keogh

 

Our research project will involve a close study of the experimental film works of Martin Arnold, particularly focusing on one of his more recent works, “Alone. Life Wastes Andy Hardy” (1998), but also referencing “piece touché” (1989) and “passage a l'acte” (1993), among other pieces. “Alone...” is a fifteen-minute work which makes use of footage lifted from three of the popular Andy Hardy films of the 1930s and ’40s, starring Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland. Key to the construction of Arnold’s work is the concept of remediation, through which we will see how the artist has created strange new narratives out of the fragmented pieces of old films – reconstructing every moment and relationship on screen through careful and creative editing work.

 

The key questions of our presentation will concern what Arnold does and how he achieves it – in a career which has interestingly moved from the use of a homemade optical printer and the assistance of a film editor, to completely digital work with “Alone...” We will examine Arnold’s process, and detail the methods by which he achieves his finished pieces. More importantly perhaps, our presentation will engage with the specific creative intentions of the filmmaker, highlighting his theories, ideas and goals in “Alone...” and other works, and offer personal and critical reflections on the effectiveness of his films.

 

Arnold has said he believes that the cinema of Hollywood "is a cinema of exclusion, reduction and denial, a cinema of repression”, and that he is more interested in considering what is “behind that” – which is not represented. We have discovered that in Martin Arnold’s films, the amount of information and the depth of the unspoken ideas which the viewer can absorb from each little flicker of repeated movement and every reversed gesture are limited only by the viewer’s imagination – and so Arnold’s challenge to Hollywood cinema can be seen and felt in the new narratives that emerge from these appropriated moments, and the new life unearthed in what were once mundane and unremarkable scenes.

 

In our presentation we will show video samples of Martin Arnold’s work as well as screen captures, to illustrate and support our points. We will talk more broadly about the importance of the editing process in creating a film project – demonstrating the ways in which films are mainly constructed and all kinds of different narratives can be told simply through choices made in the editing room. We will present Arnold’s creations as Hollywood film deconstructions, appropriations, experiments in redefining film time and attempts to construct a new cinematic language, which challenges our viewing assumptions and demands us to consider the viewing experience as a deliberate exercise in patience and active, thoughtful engagement.

 

We will also speak about Martin Arnold’s reworking of footage in terms of how it reconstitutes the idea of performance. In “Alone…” the original intentions of Arnold’s actors are wiped away and the characters are manipulated into expressing new emotions and motivations. In our presentation we intend to particularly focus upon this idea of the human performance being recreated through remediation, and the role that technology has played in realising this distorted version of performance.

 

References:

 

·         Lippit, Akira M.: Martin Arnold's Memory Machine. In: Afterimage.
The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism. Vol 24 No. 6, Rochester, NY 1997

 

·         MacDonald, Scott: Martin Arnold. In: A Critical Cinema: Interviews with Independant Filmmakers. University of California Press, Berkeley/Los Angeles/London 1998

 

·         Huston, Johnny Ray: What makes you tic/Out Loud. In: San Francisco Bay Guardian. Vol 33 No 25, San Francisco, March 1999.

Morris, Gary: Compulsion at 24 frames per second. Films of Martin Arnold at Cinematheque. In: The Bay Area Reporter. Vol 29 No 12, San Francisco March 1999.

 

·         MacDonald, Scott: Sp.. Sp.. Spaces of Inscription: An interview with Martin Arnold. In: Film Quaterly. vol. 48, no. 1, fall 1994, S. 3 - 11.

Gavin Broll, Emily Newbould and Rebecca Levy: Group Proposal

The question we are addressing:
How has the technology of the earpiece drawn performative aspects out of the game of football?

How we intend to explore and answer this question?
We intend to discuss the incorporation of the earpiece within the National Football League (a.k.a. ‘Mic’d up’) and how this has shifted the sport into a more performative realm due to this technology. Our project works with the interactivity of the football players, integration of technology within football and how the earpiece has developed immersion between the players and the audience which surrounds them.

How we connect these ideas to the question we’ve chosen?
The idea that technology such as the earpiece becoming involved in such a physical performance provides an insight or should we say an inner ear (pardon the pun) on football as a popular sport. By drawing performative aspects other than the players physicality seems surreal yet has given new light to football players and the sport itself. By drawing emotion from the player within their moment of game, it becomes a three-dimensional performance rather than a purely corporeal act. By enforcing sports players to present their audience or spectators with raw emotion and commentary towards their games it provides a in depth character for audiences to now relate to, We become involved in their character. The spectators are connected to their team like never before and can share in all the emotion and drama as if eavesdropping – this lends a sense of inclusion for the supporters in the play by letting them in on the decisions being made on the field as well as the emotion of missed plays and injuries.
The game allows the spectators to interact with the football players on a completely new level, they are now not only physical beings but also emotive ones. The integration of state-of-the-art technology within sport has now led us to look at sport in a completely different way as we view it now, football has now become more so entertaining for the viewer, furthering a connection between the spectator and the football player by means of providing a stream of consciousness.

How we intend to present this theory?
Through the analysis of a particular game between the Detroit Lions and Cleveland Browns we can see a performance drawn from the football player Matthew Stafford. We will be studying his commentary upon the game, his emotional responses and the physical pain in which he shares with the audience, these aspects can be provided thanks to the technology of Mic’d Up. With this marriage of sport and emotional performance we will also explore how traditionally we would refer to the viewer of a sport as the spectator but due to this incorporation of technology their position as spectator has shifted and become the audience member. We will also discuss the advantages and disadvantages of this technology for example the advantages that the earpiece provides audiences with the ability to have the game narrated by the actual players as the game takes course and proceeds. This earpiece technology is unlike any other sport. The disadvantages being that it takes away the opportunity of seeing an actual ‘live’ performance, where the commonly the crux of going to a football game is to sit in the stands, observe the game, and formulate your own opinion of the events as they occur.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION:
You Tube - Sound FX: Matthew Stafford ‘mic'd up’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEaFYsKg-7c

Woods, R. “Social Issues in Sport” 2007

Tenenbaum, G & Eklund, R.C. “Handbook of Sport Psychology” 2007

Khanin, U. L. & Hanin, Y.L “ Emotions in Sport” 2000

Wenner, L. “Mediasport” 1998

Other Websites:
Getting technical: defining the latest sports technology advances - http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FIH/is_2_73/ai_n18616317/

http://florence20.typepad.com/renaissance/2005/08/technology_inno_4.html

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=jp-allstar071106

Group Presenation proposal

Jenny Armas and Paraskevi Moutopoulos

Bruce Nauman is a contemporary artist whose practice has no signature style. As a multimedia artist he engages with text, sculpture, installation, photography, neon, video, and performance. He constantly shifts from one medium to another, never attached to one or two for a long period of time. Nauman’s composition work is devised to allow audiences to investigate the complexities of self. His work is confrontational and provocative, and can be analysed from any of the media effects addressed in this course. We will focus solely on his performances that utilise audio-visual technology to engage with his audience, revealing human behaviour and characteristics he attaches and detaches to provide new meaning of the human figure. Considered the ‘living sculpture’, he uses his body entirely to create his works. With the use of technology, he records his works so that this ‘process’ of filming becomes the work itself.

There are three main questions that will be addressed. How Nauman uses immersion and integration to explain and engage audiences in the concept of human behaviour through performance mediums? How immersion and integration work to manifest this? And from the exterior, how immersion and integration can be used to understand and identify with the work.

Immersion: Jenny Armas
Immersion, according to Randall Packer and Ken Jordan (2001), suggest “the experience of entering into the simulation or suggestion of a three-dimensional environment”. To provide an alternate view, immersion can also mean a sensorial overload, the viewer making use of all or most of their senses upon viewing any kind of performance.

Two works that demonstrate this effect is “Anthro/Socio” (1992) and “World Peace (Projected)/World Peace (Received)” (1996).

“Anthro/Socio” (1992) is an installation set specifically in a dark room where the viewer is surrounded by speakers and TV screens of rotating heads repeating orders in a singsong manner, “Feed Me, Help Me, Eat Me...” The repetition and immersion is bound to make the viewer feel unsettled, ultimately leading to the questioning of our human desires and behaviour.

“World Peace (Projected)/World Peace (Received)” (1996) is another installation work but in two. “Projected” is an installation also set in a dark spacious room where there are a number of large projections of faces attempting to communicate with each other. The work is similar to “Eavesdrop” where the viewer had to approach a particular conversation to listen. The second half “Received” is inverted where the viewer is invited to sit down on a stool, surrounded entirely by TV screens at close proximity with the same faces communicating with each other.

Sources I will be using:
Rush, Michael, “New Media in Art”, Thames & Hudson, New York, 2005
van Assche, Christine, “Bruce Nauman”, Hayward Gallery, London, 1998

Integration: Paraskevi Moutopoulos
It is vividly present that Nauman’s visual compositions have significant interactions and interdependencies that operate in terms of the integration of technologies. Each individual element is just as powerful and imperative. The Art Newspaper, Electronic Arts Intermix and various National Galleries are important sources which discuss Nauman’s art practice and how it functions.

Learned Helplessness in Rats and Mapping the Studio are two examples of multimedia works that operate through integration.

Learned Helplessness in Rats is a plexiglass maze, closed-circuit video, with video projectors, and scanners. The screens display recorded images of a rat trapped in a maze, a boy playing the drums and a live fed of the maze. On a similar scale but with a different agenda, Mapping the Studio uses lights, screens and projectors to showcase various angles of Nauman’s studio.

The layout of this presentation will be image based, in order for the class to visualise Nauman’s work and understand the properties of immersion and integration. Bruce Nauman is a strong case study that can easily incorporate many of the ideas and theories introduced and raised throughout the course. His art practice and multimedia works provide concrete examples in tying many of these concepts together.

Presentation Proposal

Group Members:
Jan Duong
Maribelle Oliver
Karisha Tumbel
Xixi Chen

‘My body is an electronic virgin, I incorporate no silicon chips, no retinal or cochlear implants, no pacemaker. I don’t even wear glasses, but I am slowly becoming more and more a cyborg.’ [Andy Clark]

In this presentation, we want to research the emerging culture of the cyborg image. Starting from human biology to how advancements in technology have affected us humans in every aspect to become more and more hybridized with technology. Being modern cyborgs are not in the merely superficial sense of combining flesh and wires but in the more profound sense of being human-technology symbionts: thinking and reasoning systems whose minds and selves are spread across biological brain and nonbiological circuitry. Thus, in order to present the idea of the ‘cyborg’ we must start in our brains.

Firstly, we will present the idea that we humans are ‘natural born cyborgs’. The modern cyborg is not merely an image of a human-machine hybrid or the physical merging of electronic circuitry. We will explain the idea of ‘natural born cyborgs’ by exploring the relationship between the human brain and its abilities to merge, readapt and rebuild with new technologies creating new environments.

Secondly, through the examples of artists we want to show a reflection in technology used in everyday lives, and how it has allowed us modern cyborgs to transform our sense of self, of location, of embodiment, and of our own mental capacity. E.g. user sensitive, interactive and mind expanding, technologies such as mobile phones, computers, Internet etc.

Examples:

Starting off with early experimentation of cyborgs, 1981 a Professor of philosophy at Tufts University Daniel Dennett, participated in an experiment where his brain is removed and kept alive in a tank. His body on the other hand is kept alive with multitude of radio links to remain its normal function where the eyes, ears etc can still transmit information back to his brain. When a nurse, takes Dennett into the room where his brain is kept, there he is staring at his on brain. Or is he? This is an early experiment of technology stretching our nerves and expanding our mind beyond its distance.

The second presenter will explore one of the symbolic performance artist in cyborg culture – Stelarc. In his signature aphorism – ‘the body is obsolete’, he suggests that the human body is limited in its potential and must be combined with technology, he explores ways in extending the human body and mind. One of his famous works was ‘the third hand’ where he had to train his body muscles and nerves to control his robotic third hand.

The third presenter will explore a photography artist Sajsa; creates representations of the living and the dead through doll bodies using technology. Through digital simulation of the human body the subject is lost and through dolls, the human body is turned into a technical simulation. In her life-size digital photo prints, Inez van Lamsweerde also produces artificial humans, who at first glance appear to be real, but at second glance are perceived as construed bodies with doll-like characteristics. They are indications of perfection and beauty mania, much like we encounter them in the mass media, whose potential feasibility is promised to us daily by plastic and non-invasive surgery and, not lastly, biotechnology.

The fourth speaker will present an installation artist – Lee Bul, the futuristic installations explore how the notions of beauty and the monstrous are at play in contemporary culture. Her deformed bodies and cyborgs suggest a world in transformation and the possibilities of bio-technological innovation. She pulls apart and re-engineers the body, questioning our faith in technology and its claim to right human imperfection.

In conclusion, after seeing the examples of different artists’ perception of the modern cyborg, where are we? In our everyday lives, where has technology stretched us modern cyborgs today?

Group Presentation Proposal - Michael, Nara, Laura and Carmen

For this small group task, we have been asked to develop a Pecha Kucha PowerPoint presentation of which explain a mediatised performance in regards to its combination between technology and performance. In response to this question, our group will be looking at mediatised performances and theories. We will be focusing these theories on various works by Troika Ranch, assisting us in our exploration of technology and performance.

Troika Ranch is a performance company that was established in 1994. As the early 90’s were experimenting and delving their senses into the world of technology, so were Troika Ranch. Their performances consist of physical human movements on stage, both theatre and dance, alongside the integration of medias, such as projections. Some of Troika Ranch’s works that we will be using in our presentation are Loopdiver, Future of Memory, Vera’s Body, and The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz.

We will be interpreting some of the works of Troika Ranch through the perception of four different theorists. These theorists are Phillip Auslander, Susan Broadhurst, Donna Haraway and Matthew Causey. Each group member will choose on of these theorists and the theorist’s key idea, and do a deconstruction of one - two Troika Ranch pieces. In these deconstructions, we will use concepts that we have learnt about in class and connect them to the mediatised performance and the theorist’s ideas.

The first presenter will be presenting the relatively familiar views of Auslander. They will be discussing Auslander’s perspective that technology and physical performance do not have an equal presence on stage, as one is usually more dominant than the other.

In the second presentation, there will be a discussion in regards to the views of Matthew Causey. The second presenter will present his views of the ‘bio-politics’ that have been established in the combination of technology and physical performance.

The third presentation will be addressing the perspective of Haraway. In this presentation, they will be addressing Haraway’s feminist post-modern feminist perception and analysis of the ‘cyborg’ technology and the physical performance create.

The fourth presenter will be addressing Susan Broadhurst’s perspectives of the physical performance and technology. She believes that the human body has been imposed upon the technology in an attempt to create life in it.

Each presenter will be presenting his or her presentation with a PowerPoint slide show and speaking for approximately five minutes each in order to form a twenty minute group presentation.

As there are four members in our group, we will be presenting twenty slides each in a Pecha Kucha PowerPoint presentation, along with presenting our deconstructions. The PowerPoint slides will act as a visual aid to our class and will help in their understanding of the ideas we are presenting alongside the performances we have each chosen. They will help make our speeches far more clear and informative.

With our analysis of these interpretations in regards to mediatised performances and deconstructions of Troika Ranches performances, we hope to give an understanding, as well as achieve a higher understanding of the combination between technology and performance.

research proposal - bernice ong

William Yang: My Generation

Our presentation will be on Australian artist William Yang. Trained as an architect, he is better known as a social photographer and a celebrated auto-biographical performer. We intend to analyse his very effective form of auto-biographical story telling, which encompasses the use of analogue photography, now reviewed through digital means, his live presentation, and at some performances, live music.

A specific performance work we shall be elaborating on is My Generation, which recently had its run at Carriagework's Performance Space. This performance centred on the 1970s and 80s in Sydney and gives the audience a much cherished insight into the lives of important Australian figures – writer Patrick White, actress Kate Fitzpatrick, artists Martin Sharp and Brett Whiteley amongst numerous others. Yang often tells the tale with much retrospective wisdom, referring to those in his photographs in respectful and honest ways, but revealing so much more than the history books would say. If historical records often equivocated a sense of alienation, Yang's performance would articulate the opposite.

With the remediation of old photographs via a video projector, we are able to chronologically compress this recorded past. Through Yang's live presence, the historical events garner a strange effect of intimacy, and integrates the audience into Yang's personal world. In the presentation, I would like to briefly touch on how technological developments have affected Yang's repertoire of performances through the years. I also wish to discuss Phillip Auslander's theory of liveness, especially in this instance where Yang's re-telling of history is synonymous to a contemporary live performance of his photographic material. What then would it mean to have seen Yang perform his photographs 'live'? Yang had also titled the performance 'My Generation'. Judging from the slide content, he is referring solely to the period of his youth. Would he not then be effectively discounting his ownership of the present? While considering the issue of temporal space, the title alone is a point of interest.

In analysing the production's set-up, we realise that the stage is always minimal. In My Generation, Yang stands at centrestage with two screens at the back reflecting images from the projector. Facing forward, he would tell his story while the slides changed accordingly. It is a compelling storytelling method utilising simple new media technology. However, I imagine that had there not been technology, his performance could have still very well have a similar effect with photographic prints, although the extent of visual immersion would be arguably different.

I suppose media critic Peggy Phelan's theory of liveness offers a simpler and more coherent take on Yang. She argues that live and recorded are distinct concepts that cannot intersect. I will agree that Yang is indeed performing live and his photographs are also mere records of the past. Hence, two narratives are happening simultaneously in the two time frames – one past, and the other, present.

We chose William Yang as a case study, as his performances provide for a research area that allow us to analyse performativity and mediatisation while contemplating the uses of accessible and relatable technology.


(Presentation Group: Bernice Ong and Tanya Moore)

Our Project Proposal (by Junping LI, Anaam Saleh and Jessica Davis)

Sub Questions

Who are the performer(s)?

Who is the audience?

What are their roles in regard to interactivity?

How are the performers influenced by the media?

How are the audience interacting with technology?

How do the mediated and the live contribute to this performance? Are they seperate entities or co-dependent?

Research Project Proposal

For our research project we plan to look in depth the media effect of interactivity and composition. In order to get a thorough understanding of these media effects we will look at the performance that is a result of a video game called 'Band Hero'. We will be analysing what actually results from the game, what it involves, who the audience is, who the performers are and how interactivity contributes to the performance. We will also try to understand how the gaming technology allows for the composition of a performance; but most importantly we will look at the differing nature of our example in terms of mediated or live due to the very heavily mediated nature of the music video game. Despite this the interactivity results in real-time playback of the performance giving it an air of immediacy.

However, in order to answer these questions, we need to understand what our example is and how the performance, arises from the interactivity and composition effects of the technology. In brief, our understanding of the 'Band Hero' game has come to be that it is a very intensive interactive game for Wii, Xbox or PlayStation. It is a music based video game which in most cases has instruments as controllers to give the feel of a music band performance. The aim of the game is to match music notes using the function on the instrument controllers and thus excite the virtual audience. This idea of a virtual audience contributing to your score is a concept to think about in interactive mediated performances. The technology involved is usually a wireless motion detector system allowing detecting motion of the player/performer in real time as well as feed the responses on the controller into the system to make the music which is supposed to match the already designed musical note sequence. This is just the base understanding of what it is and what is does but we will look deeper at how its interactivity and the composition that results is a performance.

We will be employing Auslander’s I999 and 2008 articles as they acted as inspiration for our topic choice, as it emphasized the relationship between the live and the mediated in modern day society. 'Band Hero' illustrates how the interactivity between mediation and liveness is becoming more accessible to the individuals in their own private space, fitting to Auslander’s theory that audiences crave greater immediacy and interaction. Wong, Yuen and Choy’s(2008) article will be adopted into the project as it analyses the transformation of musical instruments and consequently the musical performance; referring to the technology in 'Band Hero'. Gardner and Schou’s(2007) article examines interactive video game technologies and the concept of a “virtual reality theatre”, highlighting contemporary societies transformation of the traditional perceptions of performance. The articles focus on interaction will provide more evidence of the consumers growing dominance, freedom and immediacy, and their ambiguous role as both audience and performer. Mayra(2007) acknowledges the significance of “contextual layers” in the game space, for both the gamers and the non-gamers in the gaming space (Mayra 2007, Pp810). This article will be employed to provide support to our suggestion that the non-gamers are significant in this context as they can act as another example of audience to this particular performance.

References

Auslander, P. 1999, ‘Live Performance in a Mediatised Culture’ Liveness: Performance in a

Mediatised Culture, Routledge, London and New York,

Auslander, P, and Scheer, E. 2005, ‘After Liveness. An E‐Interview’ in Performance Paradigm Journal of Performance and Contemporary Culture, Routledge, London and New York,

Gardener, H, and Schou, T, 2007, A Wii remote, a game engine, five sensor bars and a virtual reality theatre, ACM, New York, NY, USA

Mayra F. 2007, ‘The Contextual Game Experience’: On the Socio-Cultural Contexts for Meaning in Digital Play. DIGRA, Finland

Schou , T, and Gardner, H. 2007, A Wii remote, a game engine, five sensor bars and a virtual reality theatre, Proceedings of the 19th Australasian conference on Computer-Human Interaction: Entertaining User Interfaces, Adelaide, Australia

Wong , E, Yuen, W, and Choy, C. 2008, Designing Wii controller: a powerful musical instrument in an interactive music performance system, Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Advances in Mobile Computing and Multimedia, Linz, Austria