performingTECH

performingTECH w. jamie allen

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my take on performingTECH / what is performance?

CRITIQUE, don’t be a puss…

 

  • Framework for criticism in this class:

    1. Describe (what elements are there? what is going on here?)
    2. Analyze (how do elements work together? why?)
    3. Interpret (what is the intended communication? what is the actual communication?)
    4. Decide (what works for you in the piece and why? what does not and why? what more would you like to know)
  • The key to good criticism is being specific!

 

 

Jim Pomeroy stand-up theorist (1945-1992)

Pomeroy was both a self-proclaimed “militant pessimist” and the ‘militant populist.’ He fused the theatre of montage with the “toys” of technology. His weapons were puns, irony, farce, countermastery and fun; his medium was a fusion of sound, performance, video, writing, and installation; his tools were the debris of culture-gasoline cans, plastic Godzillas, inflatable globes, Bunsen burners. monopoly tokens, stereoscopes, and Spuds McKensey. Circulating amidst this repertoire of parodic paraphernalia, the performing body of the jester inserted himself into techno-ohjectivity. Timothy Druckrey and Nadine Lemmon, “Theater of Operations,” For a Burning World Is Come to Dance Inane: Essays by and About Jim Pomeroy, Critical Press, 1993. from a longer quote provided by Jeff Ward

The Boy Mechanic
Mechanical Personae in the works of Jim Pomeroy
Paul DeMarinis
Jim Pomeroy was the quintessential Boy Mechanic. He used this moniker to describe a certain breed of American artist who grew up in the military-industrial culture of the sputnik era: artists who had been inculcated with the codes of science and technology, but who had reterritorialized them to identify technology with culture, and electronics with communication.1 The Boy Mechanics were artist-tinkerers who bypassed or defied the intended uses of technology, who disrupted the hierarchy of the messaging apparatus. The Boy Mechanic was the primary mythical character whose mercurial vicissitudes animated many of the characters and voices that Pomeroy assumed in his roles of artist, performer, and teacher.… (more)

Digital Video Samples The Avenger
Akira Mizuta Lippit on Pomeroy

 

ASSIGNMENT 1

yoko ono’s Cut Piece

while i was watching:

starts out with people prepping her as if she is fake, a mannequin, although her blinking is apparent. different people or “performers” cut off pieces of her clothing, seemingly unrehearsed and a little tentative. soundwise you hear footsteps, people laughing, conversing, and leaving the scissors behind. sound cuts out for a few seconds-technical blip? yoko stays in exactly the same position. each “cutter” assumes a different method, placement on her body, and takes away the cut material triumphantly. the stage is barebones, she is lit and never moves, the flooring creaks and there is no background music. the cameraman is free to roam and document as he pleases, getting in close and panning out, but never showing the audience clearly. no one overtly cuts a sexually revealing piece off except the young man who cut her a nipple hole. i enjoy that as black clothing is cut off, white undergarments are revealed- not necessarily nudity. you can hear the cameraman a couple times stating the cassette number. the same young guy who cut the nipple hole now cuts her out of her undergarments. yoko moves! she is bothered by the amount he is cutting and even glances down. her face reacts, she is impatient. it seems that her ‘rules’ are being breached. “stop being such a dweeb!” “cornball” are things that the audience yells as the next guy compensates by cutting only a little bit.

what i thought:

Yoko is communicating that she is free and waiting for others to manipulate her presence. They can customize her as they please by cutting fabric, which brings in notions of embarrassment, revealing too much, touching, harming. The young man is the only one that first provokes by cutting a hole at her breast, not simply a piece hanging off. He later comes back up and raises everyone’s eyebrows and voices, including Yoko’s when he practically disrobes her. He thinks he is being courageous, pushing the meaning of her performance, pushing interaction and reaction- and people do scoff at him. It breaks Yoko’s attention which she had held so well thus far and she herself questions her own rules and barriers in this open game.
This performance does not do as much for me as if I were to be in the audience actively participating, glancing at others, almost scraping Yoko with scissors, and physically acting on stage as the performer affecting a still prop. She plays with notions of intimacy, modesty, and gender. She covers her breasts when they are finally revealed and shows without moving, the difference between a male and a female approaching her.

PERFORMANCE MAP

<..>

ASSIGNMENT 2

Repetition as a signifier – Does technology help us uncover identity?:

Emphasizing the Performance of/Erasure of Identity – Technology to rid ourselves of identity?:

Marc Lafia’s Self Exposure

Marryourdaughter.com

SEMESTER ASSIGNMENT:

ARRANGE (your own) MARRIAGE
qiran.com and shaadi.com

desirous of wif who is fare simple and will love my family above all.
wanting immediate marriage, no sense in making new friends. pls respond.
i’m reporting you as a scam.

MARCEL MARCEAU (1923-2007)

Paris: Marcel Marceau died this past weekend in Paris. He was 84 and had been anticipating his death at least since July 1997, when he spent an evening on the terrace of a palace near Salzburg talking about his concern that when he passed the art of mime might die with him. He had a right to be concerned.

His name became synonymous with his art. In the 1950s and 1960s, Marceau elevated this finely nuanced silent form of art, L’art du silence, as he called it, to a form of mass entertainment. He won an Emmy for his performance on the Max Lieberman Show, and appeared with Johnny Carson, Merv Griffin and Mike Douglas. In 1976, he made a cameo appearance in Mel Brooks’s “Silent Movie.” When Brooks asks him, in subtitle, if he is willing to appear in the film, Marceau provides the only soundtrack line in the movie, a tart, distinctly French flavored, “Non!”

ASSIGNMENT 3

Construction of minimal narrative 1: Construct a >1minute narrative using minimal shapes (no sound)

For this piece, I used a bank of images from a previous short narrative I had created out of a box, simple materials, a handheld light, and a digital slr.

The original stop motion is 1.20 seconds long and has a couple layers of sound.

Adapted for this assignment, I had to think about what the shapes were conveying without the aid of any rhythm that could provide flow to the story / audience’s imagination. The original story between the set and characters was not clear to me anymore, although it was definite when first put together.

Pauses on black become silence instead of a highlight to the soundtrack and respite from visuals. Rhythm becomes slightly jolted. Light and movement create sound.

After working without sound, I had to cut out many parts that simply seemed boring. Black pauses were severely shortened although I could have left those uncomfortable silences to see how the audience would react. This might necessitate the visuals to be more compelling or it might create a stronger urge to connect the narrative all together as one silent piece.

The story does end up changing, the characters meeting goes faster and they fall for each other more spontaneously. The beginning rather than a slower expose to the set and characters, ends up quickly shuffling us through the whole story at a similar pace.

ASSIGNMENT 4

Going to the movement session made our class walk back smiling, jubilant, chests puffed, and  talking rapidly. Everyone should do it. Shake yourself out, make a bunch of faces, crawl on the floor, under a chair, in mirror with someone else.

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ASSIGNMENT 5

CAUGHT green-handed

Isn’t sitting in grass a birthright? Wouldn’t you be happier if you were just sitting peacefully telling stories in the sun surrounding by green? Well that’s what my buddy and I thought one gorgeous fall day-summer ending, live blues playing. Yes, there was a slight ‘fence’ of the material of trashbags. No, there were no signs saying “Don’t sit on the grass.” So we did. And stories of childhood fishing and favorite sandwiches, porches, and rooftops flowed out.

Lo and behold, after what seemed like too comfortable of a moment, two officers in *green* uniforms show up. Park protection officers. Good Cop, Bad Cop. One wrote us tickets and told us to stand yards away as if we were threatening him with our grass stains. The other quipped, “undisputed,” “absolutely agreed,” “undoubtedly,” as I calmly explained to him that we were simply enjoying nature. Both of us got $50 tickets from his stainless steel ticket-issuing case-no eye contact. He wrote in horrible grammar, which irritated me above anything else.

Both of us remained happy and calm the whole time, not scoffing, just with the knowledge that Bad Cop would have his own soon…I calmly offer that if he spent more time in the grass, perhaps with his wife, he would be a lot less disgruntled on such a gorgeous day.

Bad Cop offers us numbers to find out when grass areas in NYC are open before we go to parks and one to profess our desire for more natural areas in the city. Thanks, good day. As we left, we talked to passerbys, and found a gorgeous statue, the likes of Socrates with his beard flowing in the air.

Quoted below the statue:

“Every law not based in WISDOM is a menace to the state.“

ticket-part.jpg

We end up going to court two months later, a grueling, wasteful process- It wasn’t even criminal court (ok, i’m fine with that) but civil court– specifically in the Department of Quality of Life. The first lady we encountered called us “grass-sitters” jokingly. We end up waiting for ever only to be called by a number, walk down a hall of identical doors, have our rights read by a junior judge, and speak into a lame cassette recorder. I said, “I sat in grass, it was wonderful, and I had no idea you couldn’t do that in this world because damn.” A letter will be mailed to me sometime next month with the verdict. ooooooohhhhh

ASSIGNMENT 6
eye-eye meditation

Last summer was the first time I experienced a technique of meditation, apparently earlier than one ’should’ in the mastery of meditating. Eye-to-eye meditation is when you sit across from another person (back straight, feet at 90 degrees). Both keep eyes open, both look into each other’s eyes. It’s intense and difficult. But you can own it in a second.

The first time I experienced this concentration, my partner’s face distorted, I had a slight chill over me, his face distorted, and his eyes inverted. But it wasn’t freaky. It’s quite amazing. A friend said that he meditated eye-to-eye once with someone for almost an hour and went through several emotions, periods of (dis)comfort, ‘enlightenment.’

The goal of this assignment was to frustrate/augment a sense. I was going to make you all pair up and do it. Please try it at home.

ASSIGNMENT 7

Transmission Art: I told a few key people in detail about free103.9 and the residency program. hopefully one of us will make it there!

End of transmission.

(sorry had to say it)

ASSIGNMENT 9
What’s in a name?

Printed out meanings of everyone’s first names. These are of paragraphs of meanings, taken from a couple different sources- one of which is Kabbalarian something or another…At this time I was helping my sister pick names for her twins and we kept emphasizing meaning and then sound/pronunciation.
How many people feel they have been named wrong? What aspects of your life are ‘uncontrollable’ simply because you had no choice in your name? What are the similarities between people with the same name? How do some become more common?

Here’s mine:
* Although the name Piama creates the urge to understand others, we emphasize that it limits your vision, tuning you to technical details.

* This name, when combined with the last name, can frustrate happiness, contentment, and and success, as well as cause health weaknesses in the fluid and elimination system.

* The name of Piama has created a congenial nature with the desire to associate in friendship and understanding both socially and in the business world.

* Peaceful and settled conditions appeal to you and you are naturally desirous of having the security of a home, where your life could follow a definite pattern, and where you would not have to make major decisions.

* You find it difficult to take a definite stand, partly because you lack confidence, and also because you dislike any issues which create dissension between people.

* Procrastination is a weakness of your nature, causing an inability always to complete your plans or to concentrate for long.

yep with a grain of salt.

FOR REAL YO!!! check this down below!!

KoranicFatigue
official bloggity
riz and peep

by Rizwan Mirza and Piama Habibullah

I honestly haven’t worked so hard or with so much passion on any project in a long time and this one broke it all. You’re not supposed to talk about it, but I stayed up for almost 8 days straight, barely interacting with others, composing thoughts and visions carefully, stepping back, and consulting during the day. Honestly I never thought that I would finally push the crap out of me that has been built up for so long through this project, catalyzed by Riz. We spoke about it for an hour and ideas spurred. How do we visualize these thoughts? What’s the soundtrack? What is our angle and sense of responsibility?

Koranic: of or related to the sacred texts of Islam

Fatigue: the weakening of a material or body resulting from prolonged exertion

The play is to show the lack of pan-Islamism despite popular views of muslim=arab=terrorist. Characters are all played by one actor. The emphasis is on being natural, portraying people you may know or have questions about. The time is ripe and we have both grown up in positions to be able to incite dialogue without defending or offending Islam.

For the final, we condensed the proposed 1 hour play into 15 rich minutes- 4 characters. Rizwan, true to himself and 3 other people that delve deeper into people that hold mysteries as the play moves on.

sequence-

the Pledge // Is saying believing?

phatwa // Apostate Exam- Turn your head and scoff.

Dear Son, // Maybe the pen carves into the paper. Maybe the paper bleeds words. The camera captures, deconstructs, and reassembles what we think we saw, what we think we heard.

the Embrace // Beauty without Strength cannot survive. Strength without Beauty will be despised.

Yasmeen // My niece is a good girl.

Future plans include developing the full piece with focus on specific objects and subtle visuals/sounds that relate to each character. We would like to present it to companies that embrace hybrid and experimental theater and work with people who are willing to take risks in a time where dialogue such as this can go in any direction.

ONLINE PROFILE UPDATE

This entire semester I have maintained a profile on a site called Qiran.com. It is a site for Muslims to be able to find like minded people, specifically for matrimonial purposes. This and any other social network I have joined have always intrigued me on an anthropological level. By having a completely honest, detailed profile, I sat back and monitored what would happen. The site is not aesthetically pleasant nor is it smooth to navigate through. As opposed to other sites, it seems heavily used by people in the Middle East and the South Asian subcontinent. Another site I have tried is used a bit more by people in the UK and USA. When you log on, if you don’t deactivate the messenger and someone requests a chat with you, the entire browser is disabled. Nevertheless, I responded to messages, probed profiles, incited conversations, and chatted with people online. I am not married but I am making some interesting observations. Positive ones withheld for personal reasons. Here are some screenshots:

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Young Hae-Chang reaction
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code (bc it won’t upload!)

–what bothers me is i could NEVER get the words on the beat I wanted, some words get tripped over-sentences no longer make sense. i guess that’s fine although people are very attune to sound. sometimes the words change size, are off beat… WHY

Please copy this into the latest version of Processing:

import ddf.minim.*;
import ddf.minim.analysis.*;

String words[] = {
” “, ” “, ” “, ” “,” “,” “, ” “,
“What”, “happens”,
“when”, “you”, “just sit”, “on a piece”, “of grass”, “thinking”,
“nothing”, “of it?”, “Actually,”,”no,”, “the opposite.”, “When you”,
“feel its tendrils,”, “seek its tickle,”, “respire its aroma.”, “What happens then?”, “(if you let it happen)”,

“You”, “get”, “caught up.”,
“You”, “get”, “caught.”,

“But”, “terms and conditions”, “apply.”,
” “,” “,
“How”, “can you”, “collapse stage”, “dissolve audience”, “shit out”, “your dinner–”, “craved”, “masticated”, “digested”, “and passed through?”,

“Such a “, “linear,”, “prude”, “story”, “though”, “at every turn”, “could”,
“refute”, “or coalesce”, “or obey”, “or convey.”,

“Why do we”, “expect”, “?”,
“Why do we”, “no,”, “What do we”, “expect”, “?”,

“We”, “could”, “make”, “pearls”,”out of”, “charcoal!”,
“We”, “could”, “glitter”, “and”, “sparkle!”,
“But”, “terms”, “and”, “conditions”, “apply!”,
“Life”, “can”, “be”, “so”, “unpredictable…”,
” “, ” “,

“Wait,”, “so”, “let’s meet–”,
“I am Me”, “You are you”, “Now we’re related.”,
“Nice and easy?”, “Sometimes…”,
“But here come those”, “Expectations!”,

“You should”, “arouse Me–”, “even if”, “in a negative way–”,
“involve Me”, “in your”, “action”, “or narrative.”,
“Make”, “Me”, “believe,”, “disbelieve,”, “stop for a second.”,
” “, ” “, ” “, ” “, ” “, ” “, ” “,
“and”, “wonder…”, “…”,” “, ” “, ” “,

“Acconci says”, “about himself,”, “about us all–”,
“If I”, “specialize”, “in”, “A”, “medium,”,
“I would be”, “fixing”, “A”, “ground”, “for myself”,
“A”, “ground”, “I would”, “have to be”, “digging myself”, “out of,”, “constantly,”,”as one medium”, “substituted”, “for another–”,
“so, then”, “instead of”, “turning toward”, “‘ground’”, “I would”, “shift”, “my attention”,
“and turn to”, “‘instrument’”,
“I would”, “focus on”, “myself”, “as the”, “instrument”, “that acted”, “on whatever”, “ground”, “was”, “available”

};

int i=0; //words index
int j=6; //audio decibel scale = 6 to -45
float k=0; //fade out at end
float textsizing; //variable text sizing based on audio level

AudioPlayer song;
BeatDetect beat;

float kickSize, snareSize, hatSize;

void setup()
{
size(1024, 768);
smooth();
Minim.start(this);
song = Minim.loadFile(“TCapply.aif”);
song.setGain(j);
song.play();

// a beat detection object that is FREQ_ENERGY mode that
// expects buffers the length of song’s buffer size
// and samples captured at songs’s sample rate
beat = new BeatDetect(song.bufferSize(), song.sampleRate());
// set the sensitivity to 300 milliseconds
// After a beat has been detected, the algorithm will wait for 300 milliseconds
// before allowing another beat to be reported. You can use this to dampen the
// algorithm if it is giving too many false-positives. The default value is 10,
// which is essentially no damping. If you try to set the sensitivity to a negative value,
// an error will be reported and it will be set to 10 instead.
beat.setSensitivity(235);

textFont(createFont(“HelveticaNeue”, 20));
textAlign(CENTER);
fill(0);

}

void draw()
{
background(255);
// use the mix buffer for detection
beat.detect(song.mix);

//print(“words length: “);
//println(words.length);
//print(“i: “);
//println(i);

// if ( beat.isKick() ) {
if ( beat.isSnare() ) { //progress through text based on snare report
// if ( beat.isHat() ) {
i++;

textsizing = (i/2.5)+15+song.right.level()*200;
//textsizing = constrain(textsizing * 0.95, 20, 50);
//println(textsizing);
// }
}

if (i >= words.length){
i=(words.length)-1;

if (j > (-45)) { //AUDIO SCALE: 6 to -45dB
j=j-2;
k=k+15;
song.setGain(j);
//print(“The current gain is “);
//println(song.getGain());

fill(k);
//text(words[i], width/2, height/2);
} else {
stop();
}

}
textSize(textsizing);

text(words[i], width/2, height/2);

}

void stop()
{
// always close Minim audio classes when you are finished with them
song.close();
super.stop();
exit();
}


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