In our series of experiments in the third space as a shared space, a place for collaboration, a forum for communication, we will create exercise performance events, this time under the guidance of Helen Varley Jamieson, who is directing the symposium performance. As preparation, Helen will lead the class in a set of exercises and actions using Adobe Connect to link our ourselves in real-time. The project will draw from Helen’s performance practices and concepts, using networked manipulation and exchange of texts, sounds and media. Together we will perform a “collective mix,” which involves the transmission and reception of information. Together with Helen, we will begin to develop a vocabulary of gestures, manipulations, and and texts that will expand our understand of webcam performance art and will be our first rehearsal for the performance on March 31st.
Helen Varley Jamieson, Cyberformance Artist
Website: Avatar Body Collision
Helen Varley Jamieson is a writer, theatre practitioner and digital artist from New Zealand, currently based in Munich, Germany. She completed a Master of Arts (Research) at Queensland University of Technology (Australia) in 2008, investigating her practice of cyberformance (live performance on the internet), and works as an independent artist and researcher. Recent projects include: Tales from the Towpath (2014), an interactive digital story-trail; The Salmagundi (2014), an interactive installation for 9-13 year olds in public libraries, We Have a Situation (2013), a series of networked performances and discussions addressing topical issues in France, the UK, the Netherlands and Austria; and make-shift (2010-12) in collaboration with Paula Crutchlow (UK) connecting participants in two geographically separate houses with audiences around the world via a public online interface to discuss issues of disposability and consumerism in domestic and global contexts.
Helen is one of the founders of UpStage, an artist-led open source online platform for cyberformance, and has collaborated in the organisation of six online festivals of cyberformance using UpStage (2007-12). In 2012 she was one of the organisers of the CyPosium, a one-day online symposium about cyberformance and networked performance, after which she co-edited with Annie Abrahams CyPosium – the book, published in 2014 by Link Editions. She is an active participant in open source and feminist networks, and since 1999 has been the “web queen” for the Magdalena Project, an international network of women in contemporary theatre and performance.
