Final Post Ever!

I fear the time has come to type my last ever blog entry.......
In some ways I would like to say that I will keep a blog again but in all seriousness I don't think its going to happen.

Using this blog has been a steep learning curve for me and there have been times that I have enjoyed making it (mainly choosing the colours!) but I also do not feel any desire to keep one for fun.

I have myself had at times very conflicting opinions on the ideas of virtuality within performance. At times I have been thoroughly impressed and felt that I understood the use of such mediums and on reflection this seems to be mainly in the work of professional companies. Maybe this is because they really justify their uses of these mediums? To me having a purpose and intention (other than finding you own fame) has and always will the making of a valid performance. There have equally been as many times when I have been disinterested and angered by the things that virtuality and technology seems to allow. Exposure to it that I have not wanted especially in the form of the internet has simply made me hate it even more.

So........ goodbye blog, goodbye computer, goodbye mind-numbingly boring screen......

Im FREE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Virtuality Presentations

Well................. weren't they good!

I actually find myself having to admit that I was very impressed by the different presentations that groups gave. I find myself wondering if any of those pieces would have worked as well and been as entertaining without the use of technology and virtual performance and I feel that my answer has to be no.

I was really interested to learn more about the game second life, something I had myself research a little. It seemed so bizarre to watch their avatars walking around talking and communicating to one another. I thought that the way the group highlighted the idea of being able to create perfection in the virtual world was really interesting and very valid in today's society. The extremes to which second life can be taken to, for example having cybersex on screen, were really quite shocking for me. In no way did finding out more about this virtual world make me want to join it or really even investigate it any further. I feel that there is such a danger with this sort of expansion of people living life in the virtual that areas of social behaviour and interaction may be seriously damaged. I hope so much that in my life time or even my children's, people do not begin to forget about real life and feel that they can use the internet as their main means of communication. PLEASE!

I also think that I took most from 'Rachel Loves Steph' where the group had created two characters both teenage girls and made a video diary that they posted on you tube. They used this to tell a story of how the girls used the internet to try and find new friends and it was amazing to see the comments they got. They created part of the story themselves and eventually had one of the pair go off to meet someone they had supposedly met on the net and it all turn horribly wrong. I was firstly shocked to see that no one suspected the video of being spoofs and secondly I was horrified that while the videos have received nearly 2000 hits when it became clear that Rachel had gone missing only one person left a comment simply saying 'you must be the dumbest girl ever'. I think it really made everyone think - you never can know who the person you are talking to is.

Surveillance Camera Players

First founded in new York in 1996, this group of performance artists create pieces of politicall yaimed theatre. They are using performance as a peaceful protest to campaign against the use of surveillance cameras in public places as they feel this is a violation of human rights and peoples right to privacy. I have been drawn in by this company as this is an issue that I feel strongly about and the amount of infringment the government and indeed companies have on our details and whereabouts is very scary. I am also keen on the way that they are using the technology as part of the performance, but still clearly promoting a negative message towards it. They use specially adapted plays and short scenes to perform directly infront of these cameras, often meaning that only those surveying the footage would see the performacne but I like this idea. In a lot of ways it is more their message that is then spread through forms of media that makes their point. The group welcome others to spread their message and even want to allow other groups to take on their name. Their website includes a 'how-to' manual, to show others how to create these forms of protest. I have been really inspired to try out such a performance and love the attack the company is making on advanced forms of technology that I also believe are becoming exsessive and damaging the individual. As they say "DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER"

Update!!!....

It has been a while since my last post. Its seems that I still find it hard to stay on the net if I am not being encouraged to. I may have learnt a few thing about the internet and computer technology but for me no great love afair has developed as such. Not to worry.....my blog has developed greatly and I have been focusing most of my thoughts lately on my group project. We have established our blog as a pair and have also got a wiki site to allow us to script write over the holidays, (and I have to admit this is a useful tool) so we are on our way. I have been really interested by the material I have been finding to back up our investigation. Trying to prove that the internet contributes to a lot of negative behaviour and occurences is not actually that difficult. I have also been considering the best way to present our ideas, and after looking at the form of home made videos which I have gone into a bit more in detail on the previous blog I am keen to attempt to create an amature video for our piece.

I have also been interested to start reading about the Surveillance Camera Players.
Check them out via this link
http://www.notbored.org/the-scp.html
Or watch this space as I hope to give a report on my findings soon .....

The Proffesional Video

The Amature Video

The Hidden video

Home made videos

This week I have been looking at home made videos in relation to my project. I wanted to look at different types that people have used and draw some inspiration for my project as we feel that the best format to promote our idea will involve us creating a 'home-made' video to place on our blog.

It seems to me that I have been witnessing 3 main types of 'home-made' video.

1) The professional - although these are videos made by your everyday Joe Bloggs they are clearly attempting to be as professional as possible. The aim is clear that they want to make a proper performance and sell themselves on the internet. These people are looking for fame!

2) The amateur - these videos are much more slap-dash with little thought over camera work, visual etc. however there is still the acknowledgement by the people in the video that they are doing this for people to watch and for effect. Although they seem much less conscious than the professionals you still are witnessing some level of performance.

3) The Hidden - I've have chosen to call the last category the hidden as these videos are those that seem like the camera is hidden from the people or at least that they are taking very little notice of it. There is very little sign of performance and what we are viewing is like a 'big-brother' view of something or someone.

In my opinion I have found 'The Hidden' the most entertaining to watch. I find something very refreshing about these videos and really quite enjoy viewing them. Although they are clearly not set out as looking to create a performance when then posted on the internet as video blogs in a clear framework, they seem to become a performance. I think this idea or performance without trying to be a performance is something that has begun to emerge in the ideas of some contemporary companies.
The Amateur is what I think will work best for our project as we want to look like we are normal people without amazing camera and editing skills but still want to acknowledge the fact they we are creating the video to place on a blog. There will definitely be a strong element of performance in our video and what we are saying and doing is clearly for the effect of our viewers.
The Professional was sometimes very entertaining to watch but at others was almost too good to want to watch. I find it much more entertaining if there is some element of risk of something going wrong or if the action does not appear pre-planned. It is also very off putting when you are aware of how desperate the performer is of trying to create a field to promote themselves and like in the majority of videos of this type I have viewed the performers actually aren't very good. There is something a little sickening about it and I want to tell the people to start living in the real world!

Watch this space and I will try and upload a good example of each type of video....

The Builders Association continued

Their project 'Invisible Cities' which ran between 2005 and 2007 I have been particularly interested by. The title referred both to virtual worlds created through the means of technology but also to the 'sub-cities' that the teenagers of New York, their audience, were a part of.
The project was a community based piece working with a group of "at-risk" high school students selected from The Brooklyn College Community Partnership. The Builders Association facilitated the use of complex graphic design, digital editing and 3D modeling software for a group that didn't otherwise have access to these tools in an aim to bridge the 'digital gap'. The material generated from these groups of teenagers resulted in a multimedia installation at 3LD Technology.
Following on from this, their project 'Continous Cities' looks at how information is distributed to a world wide audience.It has provided an opportunity for anyone anywhere to enter the project via a social networking site in which the company hopes 'local participants will form a kind of video Greek Chorus for the performance'. It is an investigation into ones sense of 'place' and how this works globally with electronic connections.

The Builders Association

This contemporary company founded in 1994 New York-based performance and media company have created work looking to investigate the boundaries of contemporary technologies and extend these into the theatrical world.Through their work they blend elemants of text, sound, architecture, video and stage performances that explore the impact of technology on human life and societies.Read on for some of their work....

Media Installation Art

Looking through the week seven blog I became very interested in the work of David Rokeby. He is a media installation artist something which seems to be becoming more and more popular as a form of 'performace' in todays society.
I was interested by a lot of his work as I viewed it as a positive approach to exposing new forms of media and technology. It was a live form of performace in the sense that it brought the art straight to the people.
The piece 'Vienice Biennale of Architecture' seemed to merge media into the urban landscape in a way to become part of the place it was 'living' in. I found the piece very powerful in its imagery, I viewed the images as a progression through the look of a city. Working from the old foundations through to a new cemented street. The beauty however of installation art I believe, is that people can draw from it whatever they chose.
However, I wasn't keen on his sound installation piece >>n-cha(n)t<< class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">conversations and relationships via a 2D screen, taking away from people being able to make interactions with others face to face and loosing the social skills needed to create a good society.

Hypertextualities

As a complete computer-phobe I found this theory very difficult to get my head around. I have however attempted to summise it briefly in my own words.......

Hypertextualities are froms rendered through HTML. Described as "non-sequential writing with reader controlled links" (Nelson 1992). This form allows the viewer to merge into the sphere of the art work itself and often allows them to continue and expand it. For me this seems a strange situation being part of the real and the virtual simultaneously.
Whilst being blocks of text all interlinking one another, hypertext also has no centre, you can enter and exit anywhere. I liked the idea that this gives the reader control over the outcome rather than the author.

Technology and Art

This post comes from a reflection on a reading from Gabriella Giannachi's book 'Virtual Theatres'.

It is interesting to note that the consideration of technology as art only really began to emerge around WWI. It came from a new found obsession with mechanics which can be seen in the work of Meyerhold and also Schlemmers dancers of the Bauhaus. The Futurists movement can be seen to praise the technological age feeling it was their new art form.

Around the 1960's emerged the idea of 'Cyborg art'. In 1984 William Gibson wrote a science fiction novel from which came the term 'Cyber Space'. The book has been so influencial in modern thinking and it is now hard to imagine art, fiction and technology being separated. For me I view cyberspace as quite an alien thing, although I am sure it has affected my life in some ways. I also view the form of cyber space as it creating a new social group in the world. A virtual community on a scale larger than any other previously experienced.

Many views suggest that it is the viewer that constitutes a 'real' performance of virtual theatre. It made me think when it was supposed that the difference here is the performer is inside the work of art.

Live Vs Recorded

I do feel that I have a strong feeling that there is great difference between live and recorded performance, in terms of impact, excitement and passion.

I have personally never been able to reacreate the sort of connection that I get with live actors on stage or vice vera when performing myself the electricity that comes from an audience which enevitably makes every show exciting and different, when watching recorded performances.

For me there is something very stale about watching a T.V. programme or an internet video, its old and you can turn off the switch whenever you want. In a live performance the 'actors' must work hard to keep you drawn in and at the end of the piece you feel appreciation for their visable efforts. With the 'live' every time is different, mistakes may happen or spectators reaction may put a completely different spin on events.

When you watch a performance it is you and only the others sharing that experience with you, who will ever witness that event in that exact way.
There is something special about that, isn't there?

What Constitutes a Performance?

What a difficult question.........
It is something that i have been encouraged to think about for a few weeks now, and I am perhaps a little clearer about it in my mind.

I feel a performance is...........
* A group or individual presenting themselves in any form of time and space.
* Something which is witnessed by others
* An occurance or event which leads to some kind of provokation of thought for
spectator or performer

I feel a performance does not have to be.....
* A planned event
* Ocurring in any defined space such as a theatre or T.V studio
* Justifiable

It seems that Auslander believes that one should not attempt to distinguish clear differences between live and recorded performance. Rather he draws on their similarities. For example saying that much like a T.V. image can be there and gone in an instant so too can a live performance.
Auslander writes:
"On this basis, the historical relationship of liveness and mediatization must be seen as a relation of dependence and imbrication rather than opposition. Similarly, live performance cannot be said to have ontological or historical priority over mediatization, since the live was brought into being by the possibility of technical reproduction."

You Tube Glory!

This was something I heard on the news this weekend, and was yet another reason for me to hate the publicity people can receive from posting on blog or video sites.

It is a story about an ex-army officer who urinated on a dying women -

"Sue Jacobs, prosecuting, said Anderson first kicked the helpless woman and when she groaned but failed to move or open her eyes, fetched a bowl of water and threw it over her. "Apparently urged on by the fact that Scott Clement and Simon Whitehead found this amusing, you then stated that you were going to urinate on her. Simon Whitehead cleared space on his mobile and recorded Anderson urinating all over Christine's body." One of the group shouted: 'This is You Tube material.'"

When considering the question of what is performance? This group of people obviously thought that they could have some kind of fame or glory (however sick that may be) by showing this act world wide on you tube. It was a form of virtual performance recorded on a mobile phone intended for publication on the Internet.

With the virtual world it seems that anyone can make themselves a 'star' or at least have their 15 seconds of fame!!! One of the main reasons I feel people want this is due to the importance of POWER in the Western World today. I think it will take a lot of questioning as to why people are not happy to keep videos etc. of themselves private.

If there was no you tube would the terrible acts committed by these people have ever occured?

Will Virtual Kill the Real?...

This post is copied from a website questioning whether Virtual Plays Kill the Real Theatre?

When talking about watching plays on the Internet they argue.......

"Except, of course, the thing they will be reacting to will not be theatre, but an electronic imitation of it. The virtual audience might well declare the show a classic or a flop, as Duffy suggests, but their assessment can only be deeply flawed. What makes theatre special, the more so in this era of DVDs, computers and TV, is that it is not pre-recorded or mediated, it is there in front of us. Not only does it have three dimensions, but it also has presence. You can smell it. And on a good night, you can taste the sweat.

I've never seen a recording of a theatre performance that is not flat and lifeless. The rules, the rhythm and the spontaneity of a live event are meaningless on the small screen. Call me a Luddite, but the Second Life musical is not the future of theatre. By giving a distorted impression of what theatre is like, however, could it actually damage its real-world equivalent?"

The site for this is: http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/theatre/2007/08/will_virtual_plays_kill_real_t.html

Hello this is my attempt at a blog.

I don't know if it will work as my computer skills are next to none.

But here goes..........