audiences witness this performance
three different ways
1. as the actors work in their presence
2. as a complex of live video images
captured and displayed on walls
in an apparently seamless connection
with the actors
3. and as video images
recorded prior to the performance
and played during the performance
the pre-recorded narrative video
functions essentially as cinema
or at least I intend it to be
a film-within-the peformance
audiences respond to video images
differently than they would
if the body of the actor
were not in their immediate presence
and they respond to the body of the actor
differently because that material body
dispersed in some way into the video images
sound is amplified and altered
through the use of wireless microphones
processed through a sound mixer
this component of the performance
integrates the physical and the technological
the aesthetic consequence
relates the body of the actor
to its technologically produced image
captured in the video
what occurs is an impossible
fragmentation of the body of the actors
that is distributed among media…
a. the conventional theatrical media of immediate presence
(actor sharing the same space as spectator)
b. the actor as video image
both in live mixed video
and in the pre-recorded video
c. the actor as the sound source
for the speakers projecting voice
this distribution
accomplishes at least two antithetical strategies
such fragmentation accentuates
a perception that the characters the actors perform
is a theatrical image –a representation and aesthetic construction
because that character is subject
to being represented in different media
the spectator disconnects the character
from the body of the actor
views the character more as a fabrication
formed by acting within the space
as an object caught in moment of performance on video
and a sound produced technologically
the mediatizing of the actor/character
authenticates or validates the live actor/character
countering the perception of the figure
as an aesthetic representation
by equating the figure to the omnipresent series of figures
seen in everyday life in ceaseless display on screens
this media validation is not a humanizing authentication
rather it is a leveling process
where the perception of the everyday functions
as a perception of images
in which the everyday becomes interchangeable
with the fictive