RE: undemanding fish2

Richard Povall (Richard.Povall@oberlin.edu)
Thu, 2 Sep 1999 17:55:50 -0600

Hi Johannes...

>
><<there is a qualitative difference between a piece made with interactive
><technologies where there is a real, hopefully deep, link between
>performer and
><the environment, and an exquisitely controlled choreography/video/lighting
><scenario.
>
>Why should these two kinds of work be *fundamentally different* - if both
>performances are in fact composed to be interactive? I don't disagree with
>Richard that the interactive programming and scenario perhaps pursues a
>specific
>aesthetic goal and explores a specific relationship (in space) between
>performer
>and music, moving images, light, which will also require a specific kind of
>sensitivity and rehearsal on part of the performers. The performer moves the
>music, let's say, rather then moves to the music. The difference is subtle, I
>think, not fundamental.

Thanks, as ever, for your clear thinking on these tricky issues. What I
believe to be the fundamental difference between an interactive, or to use
a different phrase, an intelligent environment and a highly choreographed
and rehearsed performance with all the elements tightly in sync, is that
the environment is just that - and environment that exists in the moment
and for the moment. If the connection is THERE, if it's really working and
there is a real sense in which the performer(s) is living and breathing and
moving within it, then there is a sense in which that performer, that body,
has the supreme control over that environment. A choreographed moment can
be subverted, subtly changed, or completely transgressed - in the moment -
because the environment is completely tied to the moving/performing body.
I don't think that's true in any other form of performance - which is what,
for me, makes it fundamentally different.

It's also what makes it so glorious to work with - when/if it finally all
happens!!!

r

R i c h a r d P o v a l l
Senior Fellow, RESCEN (Centre for Research into Creation in the Performing
Arts), Middlesex University (in assoc. with the South Bank, London)
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