While modern citizens are busy keeping up with communications technology, they are missing out on many human elements in communication like presence and authenticity. While some say we will get used to life mediated by screens and some prefer to wait for technology to get fast enough so we can recreate some of those human elements, there is value for artists in exploring the expressive potential of liveness as a unique dimension in a performance. Aesthetic concepts are established to show what is lost when a performance Continue reading
Tag Archives: media
Structure in the Dimension of Liveness and Mediation
Leonardo Music Journal, vol. 18. While technological developments can replace some aspects of live performance, they have also opened a new dimension of musical structure: that of liveness and mediation, which requires live performance in order to be meaningful. Liveness itself can be used and manipulated as a distinct musical element. The author describes these concepts at work in his compositions that explore mediatization as a device of intermedial imitative counterpoint and formal structure.
Fostering a Culture of Creative Interdisciplinary Innovation at Texas A&M University
International Journal of Art, Culture and Design Technologies (IJACDT), vol. 2, no. 1. As a relatively young department in an aesthetically conservative, remote college town, the Department of Performance Studies at Texas A&M University is building a culture of innovation through strategic facility development, a focus on students sharing work through public performance, and a commitment to interdisciplinary collaboration. The authors have embraced the celebrated strengths of their university in STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) by developing interdisciplinary experiences and inspiring facilities (through technology and curriculum grants). These experiences contribute to the university at large by demonstrating how technology can connect with the human element and how technology impacts human expression. The authors’ Music, Performance Studies, and Theatre Arts students benefit by joining the faculty in exploring the new and also rediscovering the traditional
Fresh Minds Festival
Texas A&M University invites fixed media works of visual music or other non-narrative fine art animation, video, or film in which the sound/music and visuals play equally important roles in the work, for a presentation on the Texas A&M University campus called the Fresh Minds Festival. The event will be mass curated by hundreds of TAMU students learning the elements of visual and musical design with the goal of presenting a program of works that are engaging and rewarding to curious newcomer audiences. This is an event filling the gap between “for experts only” and “people’s choice” type events. Each year, several hundred students co-curate the festival. Each year’s evaluation cycle is launched with the screening of the previous year’s finalists.
A faculty panel will use the students’ evaluations of submitted works to shape a program. Creators of selected works are encouraged but not required to attend the event. Multiple entries will be accepted. There is no entry fee.
Due to the large number of students participating in the selection process, works will reviewed in stereo on student-owned equipment, delivered via internet links for evaluation. Works selected for the event will be presented in full quality in surround sound, spatialized live by TAMU students.
Weblogmusic
Using the structure of today’s screen-mediated communications, these performers contribute their parts one at a time, responding to what was played before, and together they build “born digital” performances that expose the delays and glitches of network communications and make something genuinely *human* with it. As the audience, we witness performances that only exist in our web browsers, in the moments we’re viewing it. There is no “definitive version” of the performance!
This isn’t “pop music.”
It’s not likely to be danceable or singable, so if that’s the only way you define music, then you can call this “sound art” or“performance art.” It’s free improvisation in the avant garde tradition: adventurous and skilled improvisers building a performance together spontaneously, without any pre-written melodies or chord charts. They’re simply having a conversationtogether in music, sound, visuals, and performance!
Embracing a Mediat[is]ed Modernity: An Approach to Exploring Humanity in Posthuman Music
Performance Paradigm, vol. 4. In the nineteenth century, the reputation of Beethoven’s music persisted long after his death, causing younger composers to feel as if they were competing against the “flood” of Beethoven’s influence. Many composers like Johannes Brahms and Gustav Mahler reconciled themselves in this situation by referring to or adapting materials of Beethoven’s but using them in their own ways. The advent of recording technology extended this effect to every composer that could be recorded, without relying solely on history to recognise Continue reading
Live sampling in improvised musical performance: Three approaches and a discussion of aesthetics
DMA Dissertation. A discussion of issues raised by these works includes aesthetics, ontology, performance, and the role of the composer. Non-interactive indeterminate compositions are ontologically thin, because some composerly agency is required of the performer. An interactive work can be ontologically substantial if it makes distinct and significant contributions to performance, even though it may not make sound on its own. Although reproducibility reduces ontology and eliminates aura, live sampling within a performance can deepen the ontology of the Continue reading