Site Home > The Presence Project > LIVE MEDIA
SUPER VISION tells three stories
1. As he crosses successive borders, a solitary traveller 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.
Nick Kaye: Norman Frisch suggested that when you are given the choice between playing the technology live or running sound or images as recorded elements you always choose to play them live.
Marianne Weems: Absolutely. That is one of the key things that distinguishes this from a movie or some other ‘fixed’ mediatic experience. With any multimedia performance, one can certainly tell when somebody is doing something to a pre-recorded track. It has a kind of deadened quality, I think, that you can sense as an audience member, and there are inevitable glitches, or moments out of synch, etc. As an ensemble, I think that’s why people stick with these shows even though they tour for years and constantly disrupt everyone’s lives. It’s the pleasure of being in an ensemble – of really playing this new set of ‘instruments’ live, from night to night. It is also the terror of it.
Nick Kaye: John Cage said of his early electronic music - which he could clearly have run on tape - that you must always play it live, because when it is live it gains presence.
Marianne Weems: Really. It’s absolutely true. Isn’t that the indefinable aspect of this project?
Nick Kaye: Norman Frisch suggests that, whenever Marianne Weems has the opportunity, she chooses to have the technology played live rather than using a series of pre-recorded tracks in which cues are embedded.
Moe Angelos: Yes, that’s true.
Nick Kaye: This reminds me of John Cage’s statement that, in the performance of electronic music, ‘live’ sounds gain a ‘presence’ in their performance that recorded sounds do not.
Moe Angelos: I think, as an actor, it has been my experience that I cannot - even though I am there as a live person and making that framed image happen - I cannot compete with that framed image. Your eye will always go to the flickering image. That is so much more delicious, I don’t know why, but it takes a lot of focus.
Nick Kaye: This seems connected to the ways in which technology changes things, the ways in which media are not as stable as one might assume.
Moe Angelos: Yes. We have all sorts of technological meltdowns in the show sometimes. Luckily lately we seem to have lately gotten them all smoothed out, but yes sometimes things just don’t want to do what you want them to do.
Nick Kaye: And it is all being played…
Moe Angelos: More like a DJ.
Nick Kaye: Well, this is interesting, as it also suggests a kind of musical framework.
Moe Angelos: I would say it is very, very musical. In my scenes I don’t have a musical score under me, but you should speak to David Pence. David is very musically-minded. He is speaking, but almost singing. His ear is very good. He knows where to fall in the music. And he really is very adept at playing against the score, or with it. It is really lovely to listen to.
Rizwan Mirza: I have never felt stilted by the technology. I have actually had a lot of fun with it and we are very careful to make a flow happen in terms of exchanging dialogue. And we are working on it all the time. In ALLADEEN a year and a half in we were still working on those things. So that also has to do with how you play – how you put the music in and have the video guys – hit the cues live.
see also: double consciousness | immersiveness | musicality | playing to camera |