What does the digital future mean for performing arts?

By futureofanimation | Published: September 22, 2009

LIVENESS. What roles, now and in the future, might there be for live performance in an increasingly digitized economy? How can live performance be harnessed to address the needs and issues of communities in relation to the digital revolution (eg accessibility, empowerment)?

STORYTELLING. What new forms of storytelling – and what kinds of new content – might be made possible by the interaction between digital technologies and live performance? How can we encourage creative experiment in this area, and what could political and cultural institutions (government, BBC, etc) do to foster and support such a creative atmosphere?

SCIART: how can science and (live) art collaborate to produce new knowledge, new forms, etc?

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I guess something to bear in mind that the audience can also go through significant changes also. Not only the notion of broadcasting through a network, but also co creating through the network is an interesting proposition. There are many examples of this. I just picked up on a perfomance happening here http://www.clickgreen.org.uk/news/national-news/12690-orchestral-performance-broadcast-over-web-to-venice-climate-conference.html
I expect many other exmaples exist?
posted by: srobertshaw - view / reply
Live performance will go virtual; using the VR capabilities of web.alive and the real-time capabilities will enable 1000's to enjoy real-time events without all the travel.
posted by: rob rigby - view / reply
The only problem of creating large audiences for events at say the dCollesium would be allocation of bandwidth to cover the event over that period of time. Server providers assure that this can be arranged and by optimising your connection to game mode will reduce the lag and latency in the system providing a smooth display.
posted by: rob rigby - view / reply
I don't think live performance needs to be 'harnessed' but rather to continue to evolve to reflect the changing experience of people who are living between worlds, and inventing new kinds of storytelling. Live streamed performance is being picked up as a really useful device in making cultural content ubiquitous (NT:Live is the strongest example in the theatre world).

However at the same time there is a move towards using ethics of digital storytelling in a live context, which shouldn't be dismissed for all the interesting things that can be produced with live storytelling in a digital one. A brilliant example of this is the 'pervasive gaming' of companies such as Hide&Seek and their collaborations with theatre companies - they replace passive audience with single or multi player, often using digital tech as interface/tool in the work. They apply an open source ethic to developing their pieces, and they are all about the player as protagonist - taking gaming to a live world. I don't think liveness is all, but there's no way it should be dismissed. Likewise there are different ways of using tech in delivering an event online - straight streaming is very good at amplifying content - but social media tools are also excellent for amplifying a process and an experience...

Live streaming is less interesting to me, because all you're doing is replacing one frame, with another.

Lots more I could go on about :) but I guess what I'm saying is that the question should not be only 'what can digital tech do for performance' but also 'what can performance do for digital tech'.

IMO art exists to test societies' ideas, performance needs to be at the forefront of that, exploring online identity, experience, ethics... so I'd say instead of blithely accepting that 'live performance will go virtual', we instead need to redefine and question virtuality and liveness.
posted by: Hannah Nicklin - view / reply
Real-time tele-immersiveness will provide non-linear entertainment. education, and information. Exploration of many environments with domains filled with high-resolution artefacts, 3D spacial sounds, inhabited with people and AI to converse and interact with will socially include different age groups. Performances will be ad hoc and non-linear the limitation is endless. The technology exists the fear is of change not of desire.
posted by: rob rigby - view / reply
I think what you're describing is advance VR... Do you not think VR is a bit of an outdated (or at least simplified) concept now? There's a problem when digital worlds try to recreate analogue spaces/methods of communication/experience. The real world will always do that better- that's why stuff like Second Life is such a dead end, and also why the MSM and academia hang onto it so, because they speak its language- what's much more interesting to me is exploring the gap between real and online, and enhancing both with the other. As thus AR is much more interesting to me within a theatrical/games context, than vast online spaces that seek to imitate rather than invent. There is value in liveness, just as there is in the limitlessness of opportunity represented in an online space. When you talk about the idea that "Performances will be ad hoc and non-linear" is what you're describing is a kind of virtually situated Live Art? I don't think people who resist crashing online worlds with live performance fear change, I think they don't understand why it is relevant - that's where I think the discussion needs to lie, sure it's possible, but is it valuable? What is valuable? What should performance do? That's why it's such a bloody interesting discussion to have :)
posted by: Hannah Nicklin - view / reply
I don't think you have experienced web.alive and the immense possibilities; http://apex.chainsaw.com offers a one click solution for fast entry and 3D spacial audio, gestures, text, 2d presentations, etc.
Http://furnace.chainsaw.com can help understanding. [ed: removed company link]

I know VR is synonymous with silly head mounted displays still but no other term has been devised; serious games, and others don't work either.
posted by: rob rigby - view / reply
Links should be:

http://apex.projectchainsaw.com

http://furnace.projectchainsaw.com
posted by: rob rigby - view / reply
Come on, please don't patronise me and presume what I have or have not experienced. Of course I understand VR beyond its clunky stereotype. No matter how real and immersive it is, everything I have said still stands. Of course it's interesting, and valuable, but so is live performance, and doubly so the spaces in between.

When I call VR outdated - I mean so in the simplified way its advocates consider it- as if it is some inevitable next step that will replace old methods of media/experience. Has film ever killed live performance? Has home cinema killed the movie theatres? No. Because these are all different languages of experience, and offer different lenses through which you can view the world. This is why I believe you cannot just say that everything will move into these online spaces. Much more interesting has to be the spaces in between worlds, and the spaces between forms, if (as I believe is its role) the arts are able to continue to comment on being/experience/society, they need to be able to stand both outside and inside of everything.

The immense possibilities of VR are great, and I hope you don't think I'm arguing against that, what I'm calling for, rather, is for people to not lose sight of liveness and analogue experience as an equally valuable thing. There are no sides here, only widening vistas. VR does fascinate me, but so does AR, and so does TR (trad reality).
posted by: Hannah Nicklin - view / reply
Sure Radio didn't kill the stage, TV didn't kill Cinema, etc. etc. VR and the next big thing won't kill anything. but whatever it is will become a new media. How popular it becomes; is up to the audience not pundits. Just like the beatles they were "sons of the devil" playing black music until people told the pudits to bugger off.
posted by: Ken Rigby - view / reply

The third industrial revolution

By dvtunstall | Published: November 2, 2009

An insightful piece in The Guardian by Larry Elliott:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/nov/02/globalisation-financial-markets-reforms

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UCLan media factory motion capture project

By dvtunstall | Published: October 13, 2009

We are researching into the potential uses of motion capture for movement analysis in the performing arts. A colleague once said to me that motion capture is really just a very sophisticated measuring stick. There is, though, a point at which raw digital data about human movement connects up with ‘what it feels like to do the movement’. I’m thinking also about a ‘reverse digital puppetry’, meaning we create puppets of varying degrees of sophistication, motion capture them, then actors use the data to imitate the puppet as a form of training in techniques of articulation, dynamics and expressive movement qualities. I research into gesture, and I’m fascinated by the gestures that animators give to their figures to make them seem human. A beautiful puppet doesn’t only give the impression of being alive but often also of being wonderfully economical and elegant in its expression. That interaction between the messy, changeable phenomenological uniqueness of each human being – something we can often only sense in the here-and-now of their presence - and the purity and economy of a controlled communicative act – one which leaves a gap for the spectator’s imagination to complete the act – I want to know how creative technologies can help us to explore that interaction.

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What is liveness for?

By dvtunstall | Published: October 8, 2009

It seems to me there are important notions behind ‘liveness’ that have a bearing upon the debate. One: the event alters, however subtly, in reaction to the reaction of the spectator. For this to work, a community of spectators responding in-the-moment is surely required. Can this be achieved in an immersive environment? I don’t know. Two: this shared experience of participating in altering the event as it happens can not be truly, authentically archived. Digital memory can’t do it, because ‘you just had to be there to know what it felt like’. So there is something in your comment Hannah about not trying to copy the aliveness of real life, but instead of seeking out an interaction – perhaps at times even a conflict – between the two worlds.

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web.alive

By dvtunstall | Published: October 5, 2009

The issue for me would be less to do with the convenience or otherwise of getting to the event. The fact that a live event can be hard to get to, or relatively expensive, is usually held up as a negative, but many people I think would see it as a treat, to be planned for and saved up for. The question for me is to what extent an immersive environment could offer either an equivalent experience for the spectator/consumer in terms of ‘liveness’ (given that there is no actual direct contact between human beings taking place), or an alternative experience for the spectator/consumer that might be considered equally meaningful on other terms. At this stage I don’t know the answer, but I’m very interested to hear views on the subject.

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