W.H. Auden (and Internet, too?)

Last night, I attended an event at the 92nd St. Y. The event honored poet W.H. Auden through photography, readings, anedotes, and music. It was a lovely event; it had just the right combination of humor, thoughtfulness, and nostaligia.

I couldn't help but look at it through the lens of our work, and I was pleased to see the extent to which multi-media, though only in a small way, was incorporated. As presenters took the stage to make brief remarks or to read poems, a large screen behind them almost impreceptibly changed photographs of Auden from different periods of his life.

The music was settings of his poetry by Ned Rorem, performed live by Ned Rorem and tenor Scott Murphree, a friend of mine who teaches here at NYU. Again, behind the performance were the pictures of Auden.

Most interestingly, at the end of the performance, they played a recording of W.H. Auden reading at the Poetry Center in 1966. It was both beautiful and somewhat arresting-the feeling of being transported to another time as both his voice and his poetry filled the room.

Would the performance have been better served with more advanced media or the involvement of other sites? It's hard to say. Because the evening was organized in such a sensitive and interesting manner, I did not feel that anything was missing from the experience. I wonder if it would have felt somehow anachronistic to honor someone from an earlier generation with advanced media techniques, but then I wonder if it depends on the work that is being honored. An evening honoring John Cage, for example, or Milton Babbitt, or even Andy Warhol, might seem unsatisfying without the use of new, cutting-age technology.

However, in this setting, the easy transition from readings to reminiscings, to song and finally, to Auden himself, was quietly exciting, in the same way that reading his poetry is.

I think this experience proves what we have been saying all along, that I2 is a new media, a new tool with which to communicate or experiment, and while it opens so many doors for us as researchers and artists, it is nice sometimes to attend "old-fashioned" performances, and retain something of the feeling of artistic development before the advent of such technologies.

It was not so long ago, really, and remembering it can only give depth to our work now.

Playing with words-Thoughts on 2/27 UCI/NYU meeting

I really enjoyed last night's connection with UCI. I was struck by the beauty of the phrases the dancers created on the text. In particular, I enjoyed that the phrases took the words and added a level of abstraction to the presentation of the text. I think experimenting with abstraction in the text itself might be a fun way to explore ulternative methods of its presentation-such that lines of the text do not always have to be read "in time," "in meter or rhythm," "in order," or with any kind of regular intonation or stress. I think that if we are going to present text, it might be interesting to, at least as an experiment, consider that the text is, like a dance phrase or a musical phrase, a structure upon which we can be free to improvise.

Also, I offer that if we are lost, we must also explore the concept of "found," otherwise, what is lost? (pun intended)

And if improvisation is itself a form of play, I offer here, although not improvised, my own brief "play" with some of the words and text from last night:

Alone

a one L

La one

Le ona

nae, Lo

Lo, an e

No ale

O, lane

On ale

On Lea

Between the past and the future, we are lost.

Lost the past between we and the future are.

Past and we are lost between the future.

The past and the future are lost between we.

Bet the past and the future are lost, we are ween(ed).

Alone, between the past and the future, we are lost.

On ale, the past and the future are lost and we are ween[ed].

Lo, an e between the past and the future, lost are w[e].

O, between the past and the lane, we are future.

Nae, we are past; lo, we are between the future.

One la, lost between the past and the future, we are. Let us sing.

Truckers and Trackers

I recently viewed a performance on the Body, Space, Techonology website entitled "Truckers and Trackers. Alien Unmade" produced by On Air Productions. It can be found at:

http://people.brunel.ac.uk/bst/vol07/home.html

This was a really cool performance. I'm not totally sure how they did it, and was unable to find an article about it before posting this. At any rate, one actor read the voices of three characters and the use of the screen behind the actor was thought-provoking and entertaining.

It was interesting to see an actor portray different characters nearly simultaneously using technology. I'm not sure how the slightly different costume changes and things worked, as the actor was in full view on the stage at all times, although it was clear that he was the voice and face on each screen.

The tongue-in-cheek comedy of the computer voice was really well-timed-in fact, the entire performance was very clever and cleverly executed. It might be interesting to experiment with the idea of different charaters and voices interacting on screens and in person...I guess in a way that is how our performance will take place anyway, but with more than just one performer. It was fun to see the slight mocking of technology in a piece that uses technology as such an integral part of it's execution.

I2 and the Big Screen

Since my last post had to do with a movie, I decided to look around and see if there was any kind of Internet2-Entertainment Industry collaboration going on. I found a few articles, one of which can be found here:

http://news.com.com/Hollywood+seeks+Internet2+tests,+P2P+oversight/2100-1026_3-5458537.html

The most interesting aspect of this article was easily the statistics. Although we have talked about, read, and viewed many performances and articles discussing the potential and implications of I2, nothing really says it more impressively than this quote:

"...of a network powerful enough to allow a full DVD to be transferred even faster than an ordinary MP3 might be today.

Recently, researchers successfully sent data from Switzerland to Tokyo at speeds of 7.21 gigabits per second. That was enough speed to transfer a full-length DVD anywhere in the world in less than five seconds, researchers said."

The Motion Picture Association of America has been talking to I2 for about a year now, and although this article is brief, it does point out that a main focus of the talks has been piracy.

And this is quite a hot topic these days. Quoting from the above article, the following link presents an interesting discussion of the implications of such a collaboration:

http://rhizome.org/thread.rhiz?thread=16486&page=1#31435

This same article can also be found at:

http://www.turbulence.org/blog/archives/000674.html

And from the post:

"No Hollywood exec is going to sanction a business model that lets Joe User download a movie onto a hard drive faster than the time it takes to launch his Web browser. Forget streaming video on demand. Hell, that isn't even enough time to watch a BMW ad.

The technology behind Internet2 *breaks* anything remotely resembling a broadcast business model, which is why the MPAA will do its best to disarm the technology by installing Digital Rights Management directly in its routers to stop interesting
content from ever getting into the pipeline."

And to anyone who doesn't think this issue is already making real national headlines, who perhaps has already forgotten the lawsuits about illegal music downloading:

http://p2pnet.net/index.php?page=reply&story=4527

or

http://www.internetnews.com/ec-news/article.php/3550836

Most of the people I tell about our project have never heard of I2 and therefore are completely ignorant of its incredible potential to unify and/or divide. Looks like that won't be the case much longer.

Silence, I2!

The other night, I watched the film "In the Bedroom." I found it to be surprisingly suspenseful, and I think this was in large part due to the use of silence, or perhaps the lack of background music. This got me to thinking about silence in performance, and silence in life. What do we hear when we allow for silence? Why are so many people afraid of silence? We've all met them...people who will say anything to avoid the natural lulls in conversation, or the less natural "uncomfortable silences" that we have all experienced.

And what about silence in performance? Why are so many singers (and other musicians?) afraid to allow silence to enter into a performance? Afraid to observe the fermata over the rest? What are we afraid of communicating in silence?

For sure, silence must be very powerful. If so many of us are afraid of it, it must be a big, scary, empty space wherein we are completely vulnerable. Or, is it perhaps not empty at all, but rather full of all kinds of things we are afraid of? Or, is it simply that it is full of SOMEthing, and we are afraid of what that might be?

But what, then, about the audience? Are they afraid of it? I think, in contrast, that audiences crave it. Not because they don't want to hear music, or text, or whatever, but rather that the audience craves the anticipation that silence creates. Think of the silence in the theatre in that beautiful moment where the lights are dimmed but the curtain hasn't yet risen...the silence of watchful anticipation. What is so scary about silence if it is viewed through the eyes of the audience? It ceases to be scary and uncomfortable, and becomes exciting and compelling. It pulls the audience in; it makes them want more.

I have been thinking of this in light of our performance, and so did a search for I2 projects on the web involving silence. I had very little luck.

However, the I2Voyager and I had an interesting conversation the other day about silence, and he pointed out that John Cage was very interested in silence-seeking it out, trying to experience it and discovering that, in fact, it was a physical impossibility. Even in a so-called "sound prood chamber, he was able to hear his own heart.

So I thought a bit more about Cage, and went hunting for I2 projects that might involve him. In a sense, the combination of Cage's ideas and the experimentation of this project and projects like this seems natural.

Here is a bit of what I found:

http://greatdance.com/danceblog/archives/podcasts/

This is an interesting idea using "chance" and technology and performance. The audience members, through the use of iPods, heard different different music while viewing the same dance. The score for the dance was randomly shuffled on each iPod, so that the experience was random and different for each audience member. From the article, a review:

Apollinaire Scherr wrote in Newsday before opening of eyeSpace:

Up until "eyeSpace," audience members at least were listening to the same music, whatever they each made of it. Now, they may be watching the same dance, "but they're having a private experience with the sound," Rouse explains. "What happens when you ask people to have both a shared and a private experience at the same time? I don't think that's exactly happened before. The question is, what is a theatrical experience?"

Another I2 project that involves John Cage can be read about here:

http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:1jWvfvDBwpAJ:www.quintet-net.org/info/Quintet-net.icmc2003.pdf+Internet2+john+cage&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=11&gl=us&client=safari

This project is probably best described from the abstract:

Quintet.net is an interactive Internet performance environment enabling up to five performers to play music in real-time over the Internet under the control of a “conductor.” The environment consists of four components: a server, a client, a conductor and a listener. The players interact over the Internet by sending musical (control) streams to the server. In addition, the conductor can log in and control the musical outcome by changing settings remotely, either manually (improvisation) or by executing a score (composition). Quintet.net has additional video and graphical properties, which allow for better interaction and control on a symbolical level: The performers see the music they produce on screen in “space” notation. The conductor, acting as video DJ, can mix films or live video streams to create a truly medial Gesamtkunstwerk. Several compositions have been specifically written for Quintet.net or used it as an integral component...

Only certain kinds of music lend themselves to this kind of performance, according to the article, including some of John Cage's music, which has been arranged for Quintet.net.

Several other musical I2 collaborations have occurred using John Cage's music and ideas; I have only provided two examples here.

I think the idea of silence, however, and what it means in performance and interpretation of performance is important and very relavent to our project. Just like embarking upon a project like ours requires a certain fearlessness, and entrusting chance in the creative process requires a certain trust, so the embracing of silence in our art and in our lives certainly requires both.

Shh...

Playing with space

My most recent foray into the Body, Space, Technology journal found me reading the article found by following this link:
http://people.brunel.ac.uk/bst/vol04/index.html
to the article “Space Rules: Techno-Nomad Theatre” by Petra Kuppers (Performance Studies, Bryant College).
The article discusses an experimental performance the author attended in which the use of machinery, and the interaction of humans and machines, served to engage the audience is participants in a theatrical event. The use of machines and the unconventional use of the theatre space disoriented the audience at first, then ultimately created an overwhelming sense of curiosity in the crowd to explore their unusual surroundings.
This created a space in which the audience members experienced a “play,” or ludus, world. Here I am reminded of a class I took several years ago with Nan Smithner entitlted Creative Play and the Arts. What Kuppers called “nomadic”-“the playful mode of being in thought” we referred to as simply “play.” The performance experience detailed here plays upon audience expectations, and leads them to explore a totally new ritual of theatre (if we can agree that theatre in itself is a ritual act, just as the act of play, in whichever of its incarnations it is experienced, is also a ritual experience). Thus, this playing on audience expectations of a theatre world is in part successful because there are expectations of a theatre performance, and these are in part due to society’s acceptance of the ritual of theatre productions.
All that said, the performance here successfully used machinery to create an alternate world, a “play” world, in which the audience becomes lost in the “flow” of the experience. They, through their play, become active creators of the experience as they interact with the machinery, and through this, the human and mechanic parts of the experience extend toward each other. The performance experience becomes then, as Kuppers calls it “a non-divisionary relation between human, metal, and space.”
In response to Barbara Rose Haum’s comments, think the implications of this for our I2 project are very cool. The interaction of body and space (in our case, vast space) through technology has the potential to orient and disorient both performers and audience in new and unusual ways. The complications of this are only made difficult through the limits of our imaginations. The potential for us to create a space that is simultaneously both virtual and literal within which to play, and to invite the audience to suspend their disbelief long enough to join us is very exciting.

I2 and Medicine, through Cambodia

Last night, I was tooling around the internet looking for I2 performances to watch. I found a website called the "Research Channel" (www.researchchannel.org) that has several I2-produced films. I had trouble getting them to load, and then, without realizing that it wasn't an I2 production, clicked on a USC-produced film about Operation Smile in Cambodia:

http://www.researchchannel.org/prog/displayevent.aspx?rID=6872&fID=719

I'm very interested in the Third World and would like to do more traveling there, and so I became immediately engrossed in this film, which details visits of western doctors to Cambodia for the purpose of repairing cleft lips and palettes of children. One of the issues faced by the western and Cambodian doctors is the training of Cambodian doctors in new surgical methods and equiptment. It is expensive for the western doctors to come over, and a desired byproduct of this collaboration is the training of Cambodia doctors, over time, in the procedure. As one of the western doctors points out, the best situation would be if the western doctors could come every two months or so, and stay for two weeks, to help teach and monitor the Cambodian medical staff. In this way, the education of the Cambodian doctors happens on a sort of regular schedule, progress can be easily monitored, and the Cambodian doctors and public can be better served by the continuing education of their medical professionals.

Unfortunately, this sort of effort requires a great deal of time and money. Western doctors have practices, jobs, and families in their home countries. And while at least two of the Cambodian medical professionals have been able to come to the statest to advance their training, countless other Cambodian doctors have not, nor have they been able to benefit, at least indirectly, from the advances of their colleagues.

Of course, the whole time I was watching this, I kept waiting for them to talk about I2, since I thought I had clicked on an I2 production. After about 30 minutes, I sort of figured out that I hadn't, and by that time I had also thought about how I2 would be an amazing tool in this situation. Using I2 bandwidth, western doctors could oversee Cambodian doctors while they worked. I2 conferences and workshops could introduce Cambodian doctors to new techniques, materials, and equiptment.

So, I went looking for I2 and medicine. Here are some things I found:

http://www.oit.umd.edu/ITforUM/2002/Spring/internet2/

From the article:

"Internet2 also potentially revolutionizes the field of medicine. In the future, getting a second opinion could be an instantaneous event. Internet2’s videoconferencing and high bandwidth capabilities make the live broadcast of a doctor-patient consultation session to another remote specialist possible, thereby enabling multiple medical opinions and dialogues for a medical case in real-time.

And yet another application, as broadband connections become more commonplace and affordable, remote monitoring of patients may become the order of the day in telemedicine. Furthermore, special and rare medical procedures could potentially be broadcast in real-time to students in the medical profession, thereby making their education richer and paving the way for "virtually experienced" young medical professionals. Virtual surgery is another medical application also under test on Internet2."

And:

http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=100685

From this article:

"Through Internet2, researchers also can share three-dimensional images of the human body.

Medical students can work on digital corpses much in the same way they now dissect actual bodies. It may be possible to make an incision into a digital corpse that would react in the same way as a real body."

and also, from the same article:

"Patients are sometimes forced to carry their oversize mammograms from specialist to specialist. In many cases, efforts to move large datasets from medical clinical trials over the Internet have failed miserably.

But with Internet2, the possibility of getting images and data to the right physicians at the right time finally exists, Senger said. "Even a hand-held computer could provide a window to archived data of the human anatomy."

The implications of I2 to the world medical community are enormous. And, I highly recommend the Cambodia video. It's about 50 minutes long, fascinating, and beautifully shot.