some theorists
locate special value
in the human performer in live performance
this presence is ephemeral
each appearance is unique
finite
disappears from a spectator’s field of vision
after the moment of display
Performance
in this sense
is distinct from video or film
or anything pre recorded
The same theoretical point of view
identifies the function of the pre recorded document
as a strategy to arrest
the inevitable disappearance of human presence
an attempt
to preserve the moment
the empirical reality of the human performer
which may appear to us as more substantial in performance
palpably there in its corporeality
becomes
in the retrospective moment of theorizing
more fragile
more volatile and transitory
in contrast to the greater recoverability
and endurance of the recorded document
a sense of the relative stability of a recorded document
derives from a perception that
a moment from the past has been captured
but any intense examination of this arrest
reveals that the technology does not wholly recover
the prior event
merely marks a moment
that no longer exists
retains presence
only through the record of some aspects
of its previous presence
this extrapolation from film theory
suggest that prerecorded representations of
a human figure
like the picture or film
signifies primarily
as a reference to an event in the past
Roland Barthes claims
that when we study a photograph
we do not see a presence
“being there,”
rather a presence that
“has been there.”
he claims
there is a peculiar conflation
or
“illogical connection”
of here and then
I recognize the subject of the photograph
displays what is not really here
the still photograph
in this sense
has no projective power
according to Barthes
because the cinema employs narration
fiction
audiences identify film
not as the experience of what
“has been there,”
as in a photograph
but, rather,
responds to the experience as
“There it is.”
yet
Janet Cardiff’s The Forty Part Motet
integrates live performance and recorded media
40 pre recorded segments
displaying the presence of those 40 performers
while inviting
or making
the audience a performing body
rendering Barthes’ distinction
among here and then
and “There it is”
much more complicated
as a spectator
I confront two different presences
one that is empirical–
materially realized in the present moment–
and an other
that clearly reproduces an earlier moment
that on it’s own
holds some projective power
the operation of the pre-recorded vocals
its manifestation of a moment prior to performance
alters the behavior
(or work)
of the audience interacting with it
the interaction reveals an equivocation
between the here and then
with the audience
functioning in the performance
as image
the pre recorded sound
plays a game of being immediate
the spectator recognizes that this “illusion”
is an aesthetic lie
an artistic conceit
but
the audience plays the game of being
in the same time frame as the recorded sound
in a time frame they know
is prior to the performance
despite the artifice of immediacy
consequently
the performance oscillates between temporal stations
in a dynamic that doesn’t ever come to rest
at some level of consciousness
I recognize that the recorded sound
captured an event from the past
and that what I now hear
is only the physical residue left
from that earlier moment
projected in the present
yet
this awareness provides
in my role as spectator
as I witness the audience
move in and out of the space
move amongst the 40 speakers
listening
their facial expressions
their postures
their brief exchanges with each other
leaving me with
a sense of a gratitude
as I recognizing that the plenitude
of a documented prior moment/performance
can be reborn
in a powerful
meaningful
new way
The Forty Part Motet is a forty-part choral performance of English composer Thomas Tallis’s sixteenth-century composition Spem in Alium, sung by the Salisbury Cathedral Choir. The performance is played in a fourteen-minute loop that includes eleven minutes of singing and three minutes of intermission. Individually recorded parts are projected through forty speakers arranged inward in an oval formation, allowing visitors to walk throughout the installation, listening to individual voices along with the whole.