>>> Richard Povall <Richard.Povall@oberlin.edu> - 9/2/99 6:55 PM >>>
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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