The symposium which I participated was the first and the last, and Annie Abrahams and Jon Cates, they all demonstrated a performance and talked about their own piece, webcam interaction and glitch art. As a third-space audience, it was a very interesting experience and some of audience talked about online chat culture as well (will be discussed later). Even, the online chat was also a part of the performance during this third-days symposium.
Day1. Annie Abrahams
As Annie Abrahams described, the one of reason why she always uses the Internet as a medium for her performance is to “study human behaviour without interfering in it.” In the round table discussion, she emphasized that ”It’s an unknown trading, you are not in the same space and don’t know each other. Between the machine and people, you can make something happen, and everything could be possible”. In particular, this time the performance was a live steam. Unlike the other videos which we can fast forward or go back anytime, as third-space audience, everything we are watching is real and bare. Unpredictable but beautiful. Even under the same situation, each participant will demonstrate in various ways because of the limited environment or different physical status. But still, it showed that the effort of a group of people solving a problem collectively.
Interestingly, I think online chat room could be also a kind of unknown trading, and we were all participating. If the purpose of chat room is to have a general consensus, even just a listener, you can still obtain new information through other’s discussion. Just like Annie said,
“We are alone together and we form meaningful and deeply human connections through networked interaction and performance.”
Audience are not in the same space, don’t know each other and unable to expect what other people will do, but eventually everyone will collaborate together.
Moreover, focused on the symposium theme – An Unfinished Communications Revolution, Annie Abrahams further explained the more possibilities of this piece from her aspect, such as using telematic performance to think about questioning geopolitical barriers or political statements. A multiple voice is a beautiful way to put it and she also tried to use some phrases referencing the issues on it. Concerning differences of languages, political experiences, technologies and cultures is very challenging. In my opinion, perhaps she has answered that “do we come close to achieving the promise of the communications revolution in a complicated world with global, political and technological inequalities”. Possible but not finished yet.
Day3. Jon Cates
Day3 symposium consisted of three main performances, young girls of XXXtraPrincess, #exsanguination and Shawne Michaelain Holloway’s Chamber Series. Different from BOLD3RRR, the previous work I studied, the display and screen of three performances all were quite completed and did not have any glitch. Conversely, the sound became more fragmented, muffled and non-linear. Because of the technical problem with latency, even the audience did not know which part of glitch were arranged and which part were not, such as sounds check or screen adjustment. This uncertain factors made the scenario more realistic, and the objection would be perhaps more profound to be in the performance space.
In the piece of young girls of XXXtraPrincess, there were two girl who looked at their phone screen and took selfie with SnapChat Lens and memes. With the set-up of the camera so you see the avatar and the person. It has a sci-fi feeling and sort of advance guard. As the result, audience can freely move among the phone screen, two performers and the whole environment.
In the round table discussion, the majority of people were more curious about the story and meaning of the performances, and glitch art did not get too much audience’s attraction. Perhaps the chat room offers audience alternative space beyond perfection. Like the discussion of the difference between local people and online audience, on the third-space, there is no geographical boundaries, people will tend to active and conversational. However, online audience could not see at times what was occurring whereas in the same we would able to – different qualitatively. The network almost seems an afterthought to some extent.
Talked about the symposium theme, dirty new media artist, Jon Cates, always enjoys these imperfections, errors and the aberrations. The unfinished undoubtedly is a part of glitch art, and igaies may present well. To summarize, I think the two artists, Annie Abrahams and Jon Cates, they all expressed what the unfinished communications from their piece. Abundant and worth to thinking about.