Welcome


Welcome to the Performance in a Mediatised Culture blog, 2009. This is a space for you to share images, ideas and experiences throughout the course.

IMPORTANT!! CLASS EXCURSION WEEK 6:
Contrary to what your course outline says, please meet at 9.30am in the usual classroom for the week 6 excursion. We will go from there.

ALSO: AVAILABLE RESOURCES
Selected works that we have watched are now with Iain Murray at the Level 3 Webster desk and are available for you to borrow and watch on campus. You can use these for your essay preparation:

Level 3 desk:
- ‘Cesena’ and ‘Brussels’ in Tragedia Endogonidia by Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio
- Chunky Move Mortal Engine or Glow
- Blast Theory Uncle Roy All Around You and Can You See Me Now?
- The Wooster Group Route 1 & 9 (The Last Act)
- Granular Synthesis Modell 5

unsw LIBRARY:
- Einstein on the beach[videorecording] :the changing image of opera /
- The Builders Association [videorecording] : Show excerpts and trailers, 1994-2007

Bill Viola documentaries (COFA):
- I do not know what it is that I am like[videorecording] /
- The passing[videorecording]
- Selected works[videorecording] /

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

DizzyCinema…the iCinema experience.

Ugh, going over the bridge…reminded me of feeling sea sick, Christina I know where you are coming from. But! Despite my discomfort and need to look at the floor for a couple of minutes, isn’t it incredible just how much these ‘artificial’ worlds can affect us in the ‘real’ ’live’ world.

A few people commented on feeling disorientated and uneasy, but there were also a lot of people who commented in the blog and on the day about feeling as if they were “in a lift” as the image in the rainforest was moving. This same deception of the senses takes place in the mining scenario, your perception of reality is so engaged that you end up dodging bolts in the ceiling (as I’m sure many of us did) or, say in Griffithas case, end up feeling “slightly claustrophobic”.

Lyndell made a comment about the potential sedentary effect this kind of experience could have on people’s experience of travel. As Jocelyn says in her response “if they could take images from all over the world and create the same illusion there would be no need to travel”. And I agree, at least with the possibility of this deep immersion into an artificial world. 

The mind can be tricked into feeling motion sickness and vertigo. The senses of sight and hearing are already taken care of. If the technology can be developed to replicate smell , taste and touch, then really what is there in that world that allows us to differentiate between it and our own.

Someone said while we where standing ‘in’ the ruins that if there had been a breeze it would have completed the feeling of being there. Imagine if you were born into that world. It would be just as real as…well, ‘reality’ is. Something I find a little unnerving. Bring on the Matrix?

Despite the distant implications of this technology I think that Karolina makes a very valid point in saying “performance can be mediatised in order to more fully convey the thoughts and ideas of the performance piece, it doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing.” 

It’s easy to develop a negative perception of the way technology impacts performance and society as new information and possibilities challenge what we are used to. But I agree, this medium allows for some very interesting approaches that diversify and develop how we appreciate what we can achieve through performance. 

It was a great experience and it will be interesting to see how this technology develops…

...or did we ever really leave?

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