Could a virtual performance take place?  An interesting concept, and following that to its logical conclusion, perhaps, should art reflect and become digital?  But digital is just information, a grouping of ones and zeros placed in a particular order surely no art can come from such an ordered system, than need a machine to decipher its meaning.  Is it even possibly to become immersed in purely digital, is there not some human interaction needed for us to connect to it?  Or, does it become something different when a performance is only digital, does it change how we connect and immerse ourselves with the media.  We surely live in the digital age and all know that we our surrounded, bombarded by media every day; it is inexpiable, so it is only naturally that art, performance, should incorporate it.

Firstly let’s look at the example of Janet Cardiff’s 40 Part Motet: a performance in which a choir of 40 people sing ‘Spem in Alium’.  The sings are, in this case, replaced by forty six feet high speakers, each on the voice of a single person arranged around the room in a curricular formation and all playing this song in harmony.  Here we have an example of post-human performance with multimedia.  The voices where of course human to begin with, and have been recorded in very high definition and is now broadcast through these speakers.  The way in which the audience is able to interact with this media becomes very different from that of seeing the performers live.  You could stand in the middle and let it wash over you as if you were there at the original recording, or you could go up very close to one of the speaker and it would be as if that person is singing in front of you.  Clearly this can emeries the audience in a number of ways and in a very different way to the ‘normal’ performance method.

Another example if Blast Theory’s Can You See Me Now?: in this a digital version of a city is created exactly as it exists in reality.  A user in then able to login to the game via a computer and walk around the city.  Within the physical city there are people with GPS technology, a feed to the game so they can see where the digital people are and cameras, their aim is to find the digital you walking round the city and in effect catch you.  This works on a number of levels, there is the physical you siting at the computer, the digital you that you are controlling and the physical people running round the city.  This is according to Peggy Phelan, a performance that disassociates a person from their material body, blurring the lines between present and absent.  A wonderful example of Post-Human performance.

It is important to see the difference between the real you and the online version of you.  Whether intentional or not there will be difference between how you act online and how you would react if that person was standing in front of you.  We also performed a small piece of post-human performance on Twitter #lincolnnoir.  We went around the city producing a sinister account of what we found.  An interesting example of how easy post-human performance is to do, although this was nothing compared to the scale that others have done it.  Post-human performance clearly has a place as we all use technology to help us within our lives and it is this type of performance that allows us to see where technology may take us and make us question how and why we use it.

 

Rosemary, Klich and Scheer, Edward: Multimedia Performance, CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne (2012)

Birringer, Johannes: Performing Arts Journal, Vol 9, The American Theatre Condition, Performing Arts Journal Inc. (1985)