- See Clip 2 (https://intermedialpraxisandpar.wordpress.com/2015/08/21/video-text-what-is-live-intermedial-practice/) and Commentary 1 (https://intermedialpraxisandpar.wordpress.com/2015/08/20/literature-practice-review/)
Introduction
This chapter provides a route into the central arguments pursued in the book—firstly outlining and then positioning the practice of live intermediality, through comparison with related work in the field. This allows the writing to move towards delineating the distinctive nature of live intermediality, while indicating the main threads of inquiry, which I continue to ‘hold’ and trace through the book.
The subject of and vehicle for this research is live intermediality, which is practice where the performer is also the activator of technical mediums 1 to generate intermediality 2 in an improvisatory mode. It therefore always involves the ‘work’ of the performer, activating intermediality through interaction with various technical mediums and the results of such activation, in the form of amplified sounds and projected images.
Live intermediality is constructed as it is received, and indeed such construction is always part of the event generated. The primary mediums present are as follows, along with the ‘technical medium’ (in bold) which enables their activation:
- Live feed projected images—live feed camera, laptop with VJ software, 3 projector
- Pre-recorded projected images—laptop with VJ software, projector
- Both of the above mediums can be manipulated and merged in various ways with the aid of a vision mixer or through the VJ software itself.
- The live voice; amplified, looped and layered—microphone, loop pedal and speakers
- Pre-recorded sound—sampler, synthesiser and speakers
- The above media can be merged through the use of an onstage sound mixer
- Objects
- Bodies
- Both of the above can exist in relation to, fused with, and/or within the mediums of image and sound created through the onstage technology.
The different ‘movements’ of a live intermedial event are created through combinations of the above mediums, which are generated by the performer in real time, in the presence of and sometimes with the ‘experiencers’, 4 according to an improvisatory mode of construction.
Processes of Creation
In order further to delineate and define live intermedial practice, this section outlines the broad processes of creation which underpin the work. As is explored in Chap. 2, such processes are not stable and fixed, but have shifted throughout the project. However, certain features have remained in place and these will be highlighted as indicative of what renders the work distinctive as a live media performance practice.
The two main groups of elements which are put in place prior to a live intermedial event are the technical mediums and the samples, excerpts and fragments of sound, image, text and object which I bring to the event. The triangulation between performer, this pre-existing material and its activation through the technical mediums present, forms much of the action of the event, while simultaneously producing it. This is also augmented by the ‘live’ elements of sound, text and image which are generated in the moment, not through activating and combining existing material, but through generating new texts, sounds and images.
Though the technological kit has shifted and developed throughout the project, two key pieces of equipment—the live feed camera and loop pedal—have remained constant and are part of what makes the practice distinctive within the field of live media performance. Both these aspects of the kit inform the central ways in which this practice engages directly with an interrogation of liveness and mediatisation, 5 the actual and virtual, 6 through producing a lively mediatised space. Such interrogation through practice is part of how live intermediality ‘thinks’ and operates as ‘praxis’ or ‘theory imbricated within practice’ (Nelson 2013, p. 33). See Chaps. 3 and 5 for further discussion of the ‘lively media’ in live intermedial practice.
The first vital and consistent tool employed is a live feed camera, beneath which objects, texts and hands can be placed and transformed into projected images. Its presence and the representation of the live moment it generates consistently offsets and contrasts with the often more heavily processed, pre-recorded video footage. As I go on to argue in this chapter, this makes live intermedial work distinct from much VJ-ing 7 and live audio-visual performance, through its insistent focus on and examination of the actual in digital practice.
The second and defining piece of kit I employ is a loop pedal, which enables me to generate a variety of vocal soundscapes live. Similarly to the live feed camera, the loop pedal was an original element of the practice and has remained consistently in place as part of the composite kit of technical mediums I employ, throughout its development. It has the capacity to generate simple looped lines of sound or complex choral pieces, all of which are constructed using my amplified voice (see Clip 3 (https://intermedialpraxisandpar.wordpress.com/2015/08/20/video-loop-pedal-montage/)). Within this play between the live voice and its mediatisation is an examination again of the lively mediatised moment. This is explored in detail in Chap. 4.
Other key elements which are predetermined within a live intermedial set up, as already noted, are the video clips, sound samples, fragments of text, song lyrics and objects which I bring to an event. These elements are present as raw material to be activated within the triangulation described above between the chosen elements, my response as performer and the onstage technical mediums through which they are activated or ‘brought to life’.
The business or ‘work’ of live intermedial practice is to merge and combine such elements and to ‘activate’ intermediality through these combinations. The mode of practice is broadly improvisatory, in that the activation is ‘something that happens in “real-time,” on the fly, in the moment’ (Cooke 2011, p. 10). However, as acknowledged by Grayson Cooke and as I explore later in this chapter, the pre-existence of samples, objects and texts disturbs any notion of ‘pure’ improvisation and relates to Cooke’s term ‘comprovisation’, which is ‘a way of recognising the intricate interweaving of the com-posed with the improvised’ (2011, p. 11). Finally, and as noted above, live intermedial practice complicates even this hybrid notion, in that it also involves the live generation of text, sound and images, connecting it to Smith and Dean’s definition of musical improvisation as ‘the simultaneous conception and performance of a work’ (1997, p. 3).
Occupying a space between improvisation and comprovisation, I identify the specific practice of generating live intermediality as intermedial improvisation. Though it shares qualities and actions with both improvisation and comprovisation, it is distinct in its demands and processes. In particular, the range of modes of activation and manifestation in intermedial improvisatory practice generate a productive problematic for the performer. The specific demands and implications of intermedial improvisation are addressed in Chap. 5, and the exploration of improvisation, as a line of inquiry throughout the project, is detailed in Chap. 2.
The actual space of a live intermedial event can be characterised as fluid, in that the experiencers are encouraged to inhabit it as they choose and to move around and within that area. Another feature of this practice is an appeal to experiencers to contribute to and interact with the live and developing intermedial event. Throughout this research project, as detailed in Chap. 2, I have tested different models of opening the work to the experiencers present. Through this experimentation, two distinct modes of interactivity have emerged, which can be broadly characterised as follows:
Secondary Interactions
Experiencers are asked to offer prompts to the ongoing construction of live intermediality in various forms, for example, words whispered in the performer’s ear, song suggestions placed in a box, slips of paper bearing words and or/images which are placed in the technical area for the performer to encounter.
Primary Interactions
Experiencers’ actions form part of the construction of intermediality in real time, for example generating live feed images using the onstage webcam, placing themselves in the projected light to interact with the images created, singing into the microphone/loop pedal to contribute to the sonic aspect of the work.
As a solo, improvising performer, I am also the activator of the different materials and mediums, as described above. This lends me diverse forms and levels of ‘presencing’ 8 in relation to the intermediality generated and the experiencers. In order to foreground the instability of the role, the term performer-activator is employed as an acknowledgement of the shifting duality of the state of the performer within this practice. The nature of this dual role is explored initially through the lineage analysis in this chapter and then in further detail as a defining feature of the practice, in Chap. 4.
The connections and relationships between the performer-activator, the material gathered, the technical mediums and the experiencers in space are also shifting ground, by their nature questioning singular definition. In the final chapter, however, sustained and distinct features of live intermedial events are unpacked, namely the lively mediatised space and distanced proximity they generate.
Lineage and Analysis
- See Commentary 2 (https://intermedialpraxisandpar.wordpress.com/2015/08/19/commentary-2-the-lineage-review-as-analysis/)
In order further to delineate this work and position it within a lineage of practice, the following section interrogates live intermediality in relation to a number of relevant and resonant examples of current and historical performance and art.
Live audio-visual performance, or ‘the live and improvised performance of audio-visual media’ (Cooke 2010, p. 194), is an umbrella term which incorporates VJing, live cinema and other live media practices within its broad parameters. It is practised, among others, by Grayson Cooke, an interdisciplinary scholar and media artist. He describes live audio-visual performance as
an emerging area of new media arts practice that crosses between, and draws upon, multiple artistic traditions and trajectories. Under a range of nomenclatures – VJing, Live Cinema, Live Media, Expanded Cinema – artists work sol...