Post Edit Home Help

Key Pages

Home |
News |
Project Outline |
User's Guide |
- |
Research Groups |
Presence |
Documentation |
ABC of Presence |
CAVE |
Presence Project Bibliography |
Life to the second power |
- |
Extended Documentations |
Blast Theory |
The Builders Association |
Lynn Hershman Leeson |
Gary Hill |
Tony Oursler |
Ken Goldberg |
Paul Sermon |
- |
Workshop Documentation |
Tim Etchells |
Julian Maynard Smith |
Bella Merlin |
Vayu Naidu |
Mike Pearson and Mike Brookes |
Fiona Templeton |
Phillip Zarrilli |
- |
Presence Forum |
- |
Links and Resources |
- |
Contributors to the Collaboratory |
- |
References |
- |
Acknowledgements |
-

Changes [Jun 23, 2009]

Home
CAVE EXERCISE 1
The Builders Associ...
The Builders Associ...
John Cleater | Pres...
Presence
John Cleater
   More Changes...
Changes [Jun 23, 2009]: Home, CAVE EXERCISE 1, The Builders Associ..., The Builders Associ..., ... MORE

Find Pages

The Builders Association and dbox, SUPER VISION: PERFORMING TO CAMERA


SUPER VISION tells three stories

1. As he crosses successive borders, a solitary traveler gradually is forced to reveal all of his personal information, until his identity becomes transparent, with no part of his life left outside the boundaries of datasurveillance.

2. A young woman (Jen), addicted to the white noise of constant connection, maintains a long-distance relationship with her Grandmother. As she makes efforts to digitally archive her Grandmother's past, the Grandmother slips into senility.

3. A father covertly exploits his young son's personal data to meet the demands of the family's lifestyle. This ploy escalates beyond the father's control, until he is compelled to disappear. His wife and son are left with a starkly diminished data portrait, and his escape is shadowed by the long reach of the datasphere.


Much of the time in the performance you seem to be looking away from the audience and towards the camera.

Moe Angelos: I am looking at a monitor almost the entire time. And since I am doing a ‘web cam performance,’ it is sort of ‘real,’ because that is what you do when you are chatting to someone on a web cam. You are sitting at your computer, looking at this little eye that is the camera, and you are watching them and they are watching you. So my situation replicates reality in a certain way.

Can you see the outcome of what you are doing?

Moe Angelos: On my monitor is a very long shot from the back of the house, so I can see the whole stage; I am seeing what the audience sees, basically. When I am projected, I can see myself. A lot of times, though, I can just see Tanya Selvaratnam in the corner. She is a tiny little image sometimes, depending what is up on the big screen.

So you’re watching the outcome of your own performance.

Moe Angelos: Yes, I am. It is odd, but I use it to frame myself, which is a very, very important part of being in a Builders’ show. It’s often like being in a film. You have to hit a mark very precisely because if you miss the mark you are out of the scene. That’s why they give me that big picture, so that I can adjust. Because sometimes the shot is very tight. In the last few scenes of Granny it’s very close, and if I am a little off, I am out of the picture. On the camera itself there is a little video monitor, and that little screen is turned towards me, but how I am framed up there is also altered by the video guys, so I have to be aware how I look on the big picture and not just on that small screen.

So that suggests a kind of slightly curious loop, in which your performance and focus has an element of privacy to it.

Moe Angelos: Yes it is strangely voyeuristic, or narcissistic, in a certain way, because I am just looking at myself in the same way as when we walk past a mirror. It’s the same thing. I am sitting there, and I catch myself looking at myself – watching to see where I am: am I framed properly? Or even when we are rehearsing, I’ll look at myself in the camera - and its very annoying! I annoy myself with it, but we do watch ourselves.

That is really utterly different from film, even though it engages with the language and process of film performance.

Moe Angelos: A film actor is not able to see what they are doing.

It has all those properties of edit and framing, but you are performing those edits and frames.

Moe Angelos: I am able to influence that – it is sort of in-the-can edit. I am physically doing it – moving myself into frame – the camera is static, stationary. Although, at one point I zoom the camera into me before the last shot. I reach over and push a button, but again that is all a little hit or miss as to where I hit myself on the zoom because there is no real number or anything I can calibrate it to. I just I think that kind of looks good. So I do adjust those things. If I look and see that the camera is just looking at my right eye and my ear, I will move back so that it sees more of my face.

The way you describe it sounds like a task element of doing the performance – and that a kind of directorial aspect is heightened for you.

Moe Angelos: Yes, sure, sure.


SUPER VISION credits

References - Print
Page last modified by nk Mon Oct 16/2006 05:10
Site Home > The Presence Project > PERFORMING TO CAMERA