March 29, 2005
Liquid Gold
An Artery of Liveness
Liquid Gold--by the Transmute Collective--was a live performance event that spanned the globe, using the Internet to link several sites and audiences into one entire 'net-worked' performance. It consisted of several intensely quirky performances, accurately coordinated across multiple time zones. Liquid Gold demonstrated a new kind of net-work, using the Internet as the artery that spreads a new performance experience of networked 'liveness' across the world.
Liquid Gold brought together filmmakers, artists, musicians, network specialists and writers to make a new work of live art both in real space and throughout the global electro-o-sphere. It employed a custom built chat server ('idea animator'), running in the physical live venues and on all Internet located audience's browsers. This allowed writers in both Australia and England to describe what they saw locally in their own performance venue - putting back some of the 'liveness' lost through the lo-fi images and sounds the web currently allows.
Liquid Gold used its novel approaches to present one woman's journey of reconciliation - a trip that will allow her to reconcile the ghosts of her chequered past and travel towards the new futures that her vivid imagination are now making possible.
Performer Lisa O’ Neill, in the persona of adventurer and strong woman 'Ling Change', was filmed live on video as she traveled throughout the stunning internal landscapes of the Brisbane Powerhouse Centre for the Live Arts, an old industrial site now converted into a major arts complex.
Her journey proceeded from the depths of the 'turbine room' and finished in the dramatically patterned glass of the main atrium.
Video imagery of this journey was streamed live across the Internet to Site Gallery, Sheffield, England. There an assembled audience watched as Keith Armstrong directed the work, mixing the Australian streamed vision with further performance vision and audio, unfolding a bizarre narrative which developed in real time between the live and pre-edited footage.
The two steams of video (From Brisbane, Australia and Sheffield, England) were projected upon adjacent screens in both the physical spaces, with the audiences 'editing' their own performance from these two images.
The work was webcast live for online audiences and incorporated a custom interactive chat facility, called an 'idea animator'.
LIVE WEB CAST: The live webcast showed prerecorded footage of the main character ('Ling Change', performed by Lisa O'Neill) traveling through animated landscapes mixed live with the images from the live performance in Brisbane. This mix was undertaken by the show's artistic director Keith Armstrong in Sheffield. All original sound for the show was composed by Guy Webster.
These dual narratives showed Ling's journeys in some past time, and now in the present, as she moved through strange industrial landscapes. (filmed live in the striking industrial interiors of the Brisbane Powerhouse). Hence audiences were asked to construct the narrative online, as the characters' actions shifted from virtual to actual architectures"
Online viewers with high specification machines and plenty of bandwidth could enjoy the luxury of participating in both the video stream and interactive chat dialogue, whilst also surfing background information. The video stream was kept as minimal as possible to avoid excluding other users on slower computer systems.
IDEA ANIMATOR: The 'liveness' of this work, particularly for the web-based audiences, was enhanced by a idea/animator/custom chat server which allowed two writers, situated both in Brisbane and Sheffield, to comment in real time upon their impressions of the performance as they saw it evolving in their respective venue.
The writers at each physical venue referenced performers, imagery, audience, environment and global communication. Remote viewers, and those present at each venue, watched the writers words appear in real time on their screens alongside the performance imagery. Throughout this poetic dialogue key words/ideas were extracted from each writer's texts and became animated upon a large projection screen.
This idea animator software, designed and constructed by Gavin Sade, allowed keywords and ideas to float onto the screen and animate.
When online users logged in their presence was seen by all those also logged via the Internet along with those audiences present at the two live venues. Online users could participate by selecting words already animating on the screen by clicking upon them... this caused the ideas/words to regroup and grow according to the online audience interactions. [Related]
Posted by jo at March 29, 2005 12:17 PM
