About networked_performance

In July 2004, Jo-Anne Green and Helen Thorington of Turbulence.org, and Michelle Riel, Assistant Professor of New Media at California State University Monterey Bay (CSUMB), originated the networked_performance blog. It was our intent to chronicle current network-enabled practice, to obtain a wide-range of perspectives on issues and to uncover commonalities in the work

For this purpose, they defined networked_performance as any live event that is network enabled. They included any form of networking in which computational devices speak to each other and create a feedback loop. They also qualified networked performance as being live, or experienced at the moment of creation or reception.

What the blog revealed and continues to reveal is an explosion of creative experimental pursuits made possible by the migration of computation out of the desktop PC and into the physical world (where it is becoming increasingly woven into the fabric of our lives), and by the continuing advances in internet technologies, wireless telecommunications, sensor technologies and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). In these explorations artists are utilizing pervasive, ubiquitous computing technologies that are inexpensive, readily available, and most importantly, mobile and wirelessly networked. These include technologies, devices, and protocols such as mobile phones, PDAs, GPS cards, wi-fi, Bluetooth, sensors, and open source software. The blog further reveals that these technologies are being utilized by a growing generation of programming capable artists and artistically minded engineers and computer scientists.

In mid-2005, Thorington and Riel reviewed the blog for presentations at Performance Studies International, SIGGRAPH05, and on the empyre list. Thorington has also written several articles for Contemporary Music Review on the blog’s musical explorations:

Networked_Performance_Blog [PDF]

Music, Sound and the Networked_Performance_Blog [PDF]

 
About Helen Thorington

Helen Thorington is the founder and Co-Director of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. whose projects include Turbulence.org and New American Radio (somewhere.org). She is an award winning writer, sound composer, and radio producer whose documentary, dramatic, and sound/music compositions have been aired nationally and internationally for the past twenty-one years. Thorington has also created compositions for film and installation that have been premiered at the Berlin Film Festival, the Whitney Biennial, and in the Whitney Museum of American Arts' annual performance series.

Thorington has produced three narrative works for the web, including the 1998 Solitaire with Marianne Petit and John Neilson; she played a principal artistic role in the 1997-2001 distributed performance Adrift with Marek Walczak and Jesse Gilbert. Between 1997 and 1999 she also participated in numerous distributed musical performances. Thorington is founder and co-director of turbulence.org and somewhere.org and a seasoned speaker on radio and net art. View her web site!

Helen can be contacted at newradio(at)turbulence.org

 
About Michelle Riel

Michelle Riel is an educator, artist, and designer based in San Francisco. She is an Assistant Professor in New Media and Chair of the Department of Teledramatic Arts and Technology, an interdisciplinary program at California State University Monterey Bay. Her current work explores technocultural issues using mobile technologies, networked sensing environments, and real-time video. Her interest in performance and space/time based arts stems from her professional training in scenic and production design focused on the integration of media in live performance and virtual reality sets. Her work has been seen nationally including SIGGRAPH, the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Performance on 42nd Series and has received grants and awards including an Emmy Award for broadcast set design and net art commissions from turbulence.org. Michelle received her MFA in Theatre from UCSD.

Michelle can be contacted at michelle_riel(at)csumb.edu

 
About Jo-Anne Green

Jo-Anne Green is Co-Director of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. (NRPA). Born in Johannesburg, South Africa she graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand in 1981 with a BFA Honours in Printmaking and a major in Art History. She emigrated to Boston in 1983 where she later obtained her MFA in Painting. In 1985, Green co-founded Cultural Resistance to educate the American public about apartheid through the art and culture of South Africa. Until 1991, the organization curated multiple exhibitions, organized video screenings and performances, and published a monthly newspaper.

Prior to joining NRPA in March 2002, Green was instrumental in starting the artist-in-residence program at the University of New Mexico's (UNM) Albuquerque High Performance Computing Center; this initiative led to the creation of the Arts Technology Center (ATC). Green served as program coordinator for both the ATC and the Arts of the Americas Institute at UNM for two years before returning to Boston in 2001. She earned a MS in Arts Administration from Lesley University in 2003. Green has exhibited her paintings, one-of-a-kind artist's books, and installations in South Africa, Boston, and New York. View her web site!

Jo can be contacted at jo(at)turbulence.org

 
GUEST BLOGGERS
 
About Nathaniel Stern

Nathaniel Stern, is a New York artist currently residing in Johannesburg, South Africa. He is an internationally exhibited installation artist, net.artist and performance poet. His collaborative physical theatre and multimedia performance work has won three FNB Vita Awards - including Best Presentation of a New Contemporary Work - and has been featured on the main stage at the Grahamstown Festival (South Africa). Nathaniel’s poetry repertoire includes the US National Poetry Slam competition and the HIV/AIDS Arts, Media & Film Festival (South Africa). His interactive installations have also won awards in New York, and Australia, and his net.art has been featured in festivals all over Europe, Asia and the US.

Nathaniel received his BS in Textiles and Apparel Design from Cornell University, and his Masters from Tisch School of the Arts, NYU, in Interactive Telecommunications. He currently works both in and from Johannesburg, as an adjunct (distance teaching) faculty member of the Minneapolis College of Art & Design, external lecturer and supervisor at the Wits School of Arts' Digital Arts MA, and freelance lecturer at Newtown's Anti-Retroviral Theatre program and The South African School Of Motion Picture Medium and Live Performance. Visit his web site!

nathaniel can be contacted at nathaniel(at)hektor.net

 
About Michelle Kasprzak

Michelle Kasprzak is an award-winning artist, writer and lecturer. As adjunct faculty for the Canadian Film Centre's new media programmes, she designs and delivers curricula that address the most recent creative applications of new technologies. Michelle is also currently a member of the Mobile Digital Commons Network, a cross-disciplinary research group funded by Heritage Canada for the purpose of investigating the transformation of public space through the development and deployment of location-specific content. Since winning the InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Centre Emerging Electronic Artist award in her early career, Michelle has proceeded to exhibit her work and present performances across North America and Europe. She has been featured in numerous publications and on radio and television broadcasts syndicated worldwide. View her web site!

michelle can be contacted at michelle(at)kasprzak.ca

 
About Régine Debatty

Régine Debatty was born in Belgium and has lived in Spain and England. Although she trained as a teacher of Latin and Ancient Greek, she has worked as a journalist, TV documentary director and, currently, a new media consultant for a multimedia and virtual reality park in Turinis, Italy. Régine hopes that, one day, she'll be able to make a living from her passion for blogs. Besides her own blog, Near Near Future, she contributes to core77 popgadget , smartmobs, and worldchanging, and is the occasional blogsitter of Emily's textually and picturephoning.  View her own blog!

Régine can be contacted at reg(at)we-make-money-not-art.com

 
About Yukihiko YOSHIDA

Yukihiko YOSHIDA is dance researcher, critic, and PhD. Candidate at the Graduate School for Media and Governance at Keio University, Japan. He works for WDA Asia Pacific: Research Documentation Network; is principal investigator and project leader for Association for Dance and Performance Telematics [ADaPT], Tokyo; and is assistant to Ted Nelson and Project Xanadu, "The Original Hypertext Project." YOSHIDA was on the International Advisory Board for "Prix Ars Electronica 2005, Digital Community." View his web site and CV.

Yukihiko can be contacted at yukihiko[at]s6.dion.ne.jp

 
About Adriana de Souza e Silva

Adriana de Souza e Silva's research addresses the ways in which mobile communication technologies play an active role in creating "new types of communication and social networks in a hybrid space formed by the blurring of borders between physical and digital spaces…Nomadic technology devices are responsible for producing new social networks in a space that interconnects the physical and the virtual due to their users' perpetual mobility..." (see http://www.turbulence.org/blog/archives/000423.html) Adriana is a Senior Researcher at the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies (GSE&IS) at CRESST (Center for the Study of Evaluation). From 2001 to 2004 she was a visiting scholar at the UCLA Department of Design | Media Arts. She holds a Ph.D. in Communications and Culture at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

 
About Luís Silva

Luís Silva is the curator of Portuguese Netart 1997 | 2004. He studied Social Sciences and is now completing his MA on Communication, Culture and Information Technologies. Silva is finishing a research project concerning the transformations on the contemporary art worlds caused by the use of digital tools in creating art works. He has written several texts addressing the issues of art and technology. Silva has also developed his activity producing contemporary art shows since 2003, mainly of Portuguese contemporary artists. Visit his blog Source Code.

Luís can be contacted at silva.luis[at]netcabo.pt

 
About Jesse Pearlman Karlsberg

Jesse Pearlman Karlsberg is a sound artist whose work engages the intersections of personal narrative, communication networks, and history as embedded in place. His work encompasses installation, music for live performance, tunebooks, web design, audio tours, works for radio, and participatory singings. His areas of interest include the sounds of war and conflict, American shape note music in the northeastern United States and northeastern Alabama, social and religious movements in nineteenth-century upstate New York, and finding sand dollars.

Jesse's masters thesis, a narrative set in western New York's Burnt-over district about a young man who starts experiencing visions in the aftermath of the Great Disappointment, will be realized as a participatory shape note singing in the Spring of 2006 at the Old Songs Community Art Center in Voorheesville, NY. His music has been performed by Pauline Oliveros, Anne Rhodes, Micah Silver, Angela Opell, and Tim Eastman. He has recently presented work at the Tang Museum, Eyebeam, the Boston Cyberarts Festival, Jessica Murray Projects, the Center for Contemporary Culture in Barcelona, Psy-Geo Provflux Festival, Wesleyan University, and at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Jesse blogs about politics, art making, and shape note music at blog.silversand.org. More information about his work is online at jpk.silversand.org.

Jesse can be contacted at karls[at]rpi.edu

 
About Performance Types/Categories Used

We will be listing definitions here that represent our observations on current practice and how practitioners are identifying their work. Please add your own observations and help us build this understanding.

Networked Performance: Any of a number of approaches to performance that incorporates computer networks (the internet, wireless, telephone, or other) or a combination of networks in the creation or distribution of a work. Works may be any mode, format or combination, such as synchronous, asynchronous, ongoing or fixed duration, distributed, local, etc.

Distributed Performance: Music/Theater/Dance/Cinema. Occurs simultaneously in multiple locations via networked interaction. Physically dispersed participants coming together through the network. For example, the performers in two or more locations play to audiences in their performance spaces and simultaneously to worldwide Internet audiences by means of especially created websites.

Collective Net Performance: A network-enabled performance in which a group collectively activates or participates simultaneously in the performance experience. Can be local or distributed.

Augmented Reality: Involves overlaying a virtual world on your view of the real world so that you experience both at the same time. Unlike virtual reality where you cut yourself off from the real world in order to immerse yourself in a computer generated virtual world.

Ubiquitous Computing: Ubiquitous computing seeks to embed computers into our everyday lives in such ways as will render them invisible and allow them to be taken for granted.

more to come