THEATRE LIBRARY ASSOCIATION
SYMPOSIUM
Digital Performance: Damnation or Salvation?
If artistic expression in the 21st century had an Endangered Species list, "digital performance" would certainly be found near the top. As the ferocious pace of technological obsolescence in the past decade has proven, anything digital is automatically ephemeral; as if that weren't enough, the ambition of any performance is to reproduce something that resists reproduction.
Yet this most vulnerable manifestation of digital culture may also be its salvation. If we can expand our notion of performance beyond the medium-bound paradigms of Shakespeare and Mozart, then we have a powerful strategy for preserving new performance genres, such as networked video and textual improvisations, as well as works not normally considered performative such as video installations and Web art.
To redefine performance to fit digital culture, however, we will also have to redefine the roles of the artist and the performer. This presentation will touch on how creators from John Cage to Meg Webster to Ken Jacobs have blurred these roles. It will conclude by presenting some paradigm-breaking tools for preserving performative works, including the variable media questionnaire and The Pool collaborative environment.
