Originally published in Switch, Vol. 5, N. 3, 1999. http://switch.sjsu.edu/web/v5n3/G-1.html

The New Performer: Data as Performer and Performance

By Sheila A. Malone

I.

Introduction: In pursuit of the virtual performer

The nature of all performance includes the elements of time-based experienceand space as "stage". I use the term "stage" as a simplereference point to describe the space in which a performer performs andnot as reference to the theatre. The nature of performance in the computerage includes these elements of time and stage as space. A simple definitionof performance is : that which is feigned or pretended. It is action. Itis speech. It is anything performative. The nature of the performer includesany entity who/which feigns, pretends, acts, and speaks. So, it is naturalto include non-human entities, such as robots, cyborgs, and databases inthis discussion of performance. Baudrillard might describe performing andthe performer as more real than real, so real that they are virtual. "Ofcourse we have a multitude of objective, real proofs, but what does onedo with historical reality in a system which itself has become virtual?"(1) New media's complex nature has influenced the nature of performanceto become something many don't consider performance. Anything involvingaction, interaction, time, and space is performance. Therefore, performingis both real and virtual, becoming more real than real through the verynature of simulation. Performance on and of the net includes everythingfrom virtual actors (interactors) interacting with real actors, Moos, Mud's,Mucks, Games, Chat groups, telepresence, Database as performance. The performeris data. The performer is virtual. The history of virtual performance beginswith interaction between the real and hyperreal in time-based experiencein a space referred to as the stage.

II.

Humans have romanced with the real since the beginning of our existence.With cave drawings, petroglyphs and Egyptian hieroglyphs, ancient civilizationsmarked stone with symbols and icons representing the world around themand their beliefs about the world. And so, through the centuries humanbodies have invented new ways, new mediums to describe the world aroundand inside them. Each medium used through the ages has acted as a vehiclefor the performer or describer. In the past 75 years our romance with thereal has become even more intense. We have seen the most explosive anddynamic changes in performance as a direct result of the invention of thevacuum tube, the transistor, and most recently the silicon chip. Radio,sound effects and actors' voices performed images on audiences' ears, exploringthe medium to convey the ideas in the scripts. With the advent of television,visual information created a way to mimic reality and record reality. Thefamily situation shows of the 1950's were a hyper reality, reflecting backto the public their own "perfect" image. With the age of thecomputer, visual, aural, and text are combined as mediums for the performerto describe and rescribe the world around and within. What is real becomesvirtual through the act of performing. What does this mean in terms ofthe performer? It means there is a new kind of performer, stage, and performance.

III.

The Early Years: Technology and body

According to Village Voice writer Cynthia Carr, John Jesurun's play,"Deep Sleep" (1985), was one of the first performances to illustrateBaudrillard's concept of the loss of the real or how virtual is more realthan the real. In "Deep Sleep", film projections of actors andlive actors argue over who is real or alive. "The youngest actor,a boy of perhaps twelve (Michael Tighe) who responds with the most conviction...iscertain he's not a projection."(2) The presence of real actors andprojected actors and the subsequent interaction begins to warp the linebetween real and hyperreal. The audience is forced to question their ownperceptions of real. Performance and computers have a somewhat recent pastwith the personal computer's short history paving the way. One of the earlycrusaders of performance art using computers was Joe Lowery. In 1983, inthe piece titled, "Discrete Packages", Lowery uses his newlyacquired Atari 800 microcomputer to generate designs of some of the ideasand philosophies explored within the text and structure of his performance."(He) was interested in the different metaphors society uses to viewitself, and ended up intertwining computers, performance, and Kabbalah..."(3)Lowery believed that the programming aspect of computers was a metaphorfor performing. Lowery says, "...the questions are basically who'sbeing programmed and how do you respond to the programming?"(4) Lowerywas exploring issues that are still at the heart of computer interaction.

IV.

The Recent Years: Virtual performers

More recently, the use of virtual performers can be seen in George Coates'Performance Works. According to George Coates, "(The George CoatesPerformance Works) produced a show called the "Nowhere Band"that included an inter-actor named Ralph who arrived on-stage via the internetevery night at 8:30 PM PST for a five week performance run - This was thefirst distributed live performance ever to occur as part of a regularlyscheduled theater run. Audiences in our theater would see Ralph blow intohis pipes to sound a `C' note in Australia establishing the musical key,as the Nowhere Band in San Francisco tuned their instruments to his bagpipefor the first number played in the show. This show premiered at our civicCenter theater in San Francisco in 1994."(5) The idea of space andreal are connected with the idea of a time-based experience. The relationshipof live characters is absolutely dependent on the interaction with thevirtual characters. George Coates takes these ideas of real and hyperrealand completely mesmerizes audiences with the production of "20/20BLAKE: The Visions Of William Blake." George Coates describes theperformance, "at one point we had even hacked a way to make two SGIgraphics engines run simultaneous stereographic interactive animation programsenabling audiences wearing polarized glasses to experience stereo 3D illusionsof volumetric space interacting in real time with live actors on a stage.(This enabled, for example, a flock of birds to appear to hover over thestage and audiences, swooping down to harass the live actor, chasing theactor around the stage wherever the actor chose to go - in real time)."(6)Here Coates and his company of actors, technicians, and virtual imagesare merged with the audience into a space created and controlled by thecomputer and its operators. The definition of performer has changed. Butthe presence of space and time are consistent common denominators in theperformance.

V.

Virtual Verbiage: Textual performance of Moos and Muds

Performance in real time made virtual is exactly the environment foundin Mooing. Moo stands for mud object oriented, which is a hybrid of Mud,multi-user dimension. Mud is a text based virtual reality world. A moois an electronic "place" where people log onto a network or serverand talk simultaneously, electronically through the computer. In orderto Moo, one needs a way to telenet, i.e. a computer system at a university.Mooing and Mudding are descendents of the computerized game "Dungeonsand Dragons". Participants can Moo by teleneting through the Internetfrom a host computer to another host computer, which is the domain of theMoo. Users can also access Moo's through the Internet, using a client serverprogram, such as "mutt" which will actually allow the user tolog on to several different Moo's at once.(7) As in "Dungeons andDragons", the participants can take on many personas in one sessionand thus actually interact with themselves. This is truly virtual performance."Craggy Island" is "... a Lambda-based MOO, themed aroundthe Emmy Award-winning British Channel4 sitcom, "Father Ted"."Craggy Island" itself sets to capture some of the atmosphereand stunning scenery of Ireland, as well as the general inanity of itsadministrative staff. Here you will find many things, some of which willamaze you, others may just scare. There's online login and character requests,links to other great "Father Ted" sites, a guided tour of theIsland, archived mailing lists, and best of all, drink!"(8) The virtualcreative performance potential of Mooing is limited only by a person'simagination and language skills and of course programming skills and access.The popularity of Mooing is huge, with classes offered by distinguishedEnglish professors, and departments specializing in Moo and Mud creativewriting. The result is a Mooing and Mudding frenzy across the nation andacross the university circuit. People take on personas, describe themselveshow they want to be perceived, accomplish tasks, and interact with otherparticipants. They can visit make believe places, interact with 3-dimensionalobjects all through Mooing and Mudding.

VI.

Virtual Bodies: Robots, cyborgs, and artificial intelligence as performers

The new 3-dimensional graphically represented self comes in the formof robots, cyborgs, and artificial intelligence. After all aren't we thereal intelligence? Or are we the virtual intelligence? The intersectionof real and virtual is similar to the intersection between audience andperformer. It is precisely this intersection in time and space that SuziGablik calls, "the key that moves art beyond the aesthetic mode."(9)Eduardo Kac, an artist with roots as a performance artist, is working withthis idea of the intersection. His work encompasses telepresence and interactiverobots. Most recently his project "UIRAPURU", a combination oflocal network, remote network, virtual space, and real space, was namedone of the top three entries at the ICC (InterCommunication Center, Tokyo,Japan) Biennale '99 exhibition(10). Kac uses the mythical and real Amazonianbird as a structure and vehicle for the work. Kac says, "(his) versionof the legend reinvents Uirapuru's dual status as a real animal and a mythicalcreature through an experience that is at once local and remote, virtualand physical. The flying telerobotic fish is a blimp that can be controlledboth through a local interface and through the Web."(11) For over20 years Stelarc, an Australian based performer has been working with robotics,artificial intelligence and their relationship with the human body. "(Stelarc's)work explores and extends the concept of the body and its relationshipwith technology through human/machine interfaces incorporating the Internetand Web, sound, music, video and computers."(12) From 1968-1970 Stelarccreated what he calls "Multimedia Performances."(13) His romancewith the body and technology is evident in his subsequent work. From 1972- 1975 Stelarc worked with " sensory deprivation events"(14)suspending the body with harnesses. By 1976, he was investigating the impactof artificial intelligence on the body "real." Stelarc has recentlybeen performing interactively with the Internet. "While the body isunder the control of the flux of information streaming through the Netduring these performances, live images are uploaded and samples have beenarchived for viewing."(15) Stelarc's work is most significant to allof the mutations and form performance has taken in the past twenty years.His innovation and continued exploration moves new media forward with eachnew project he envisions and executes.

VII.

Data Performer: The most true and most real performer on the virtualstage

The most natural performers in cyber environments are databases andthe data itself. In her essay, "Will the Real Body Please Stand Up?"Allucquere Rosanne Stone describes the nature of the cyber-experience." The "data" in some of these virtual environments are people--3-Drepresentations of individuals in the cyberspace."(16) Data can alsofunction as the stage or environment for performance. Data can also bringtime notions together, holding a performance together by its own processing.In the book, "Technoromanticism: digital narrative, holoism, and theromance of the real", Richard Coyne discusses the nature and functionof data in virtual reality. "(Performers) use computers to representspace, as in computer-aided design, virtual reality, and geographical informationsystems. Such systems employ databases in which numerical and other attributedata based on some coordinate system or other are stored, which can bemanipulated according to the rules of mathematics and geometry. The prospectof immersion in three-dimensional virtual worlds captures the romanticimagination."(17) The group Knowbotic Research uses data environmentsto create simulated and network experience for participants. Working forover 6 years in the field of computers, research and art Knowbotic Researchhas collaborated with other scientists and artists in VRML experience making.In 1996 Knowbotic Research's "SMDK Simulation Space Mosaic of mobileDatasounds" brought performance into the definition of database asperformer and data as stage. Knowbotic describes this project as a complexself-organizing system that is processed on, thus creating a new systemfor the visitor. "The chaotic basic structure of SMDK, the self-organizationfeature, the real-time composition of public sound material and its fragmentation,the continuous visualization of (mathematical) processes and the opennessof the entire system to the outside world through data networks representa complexity that challenges the visitor to construct his or her own orientationsystem, within an interactive database.(18) David Rokeby is an artist workingwith computerized interactive sound and video work. He uses data as "thereal performing body"(19) and data processed on as a virtual experienceprovided through computers. In a recent work, "Universal Translator","the interface ... is a microphone with a micro video camera embeddedin its head so that the camera looks directly at the mouth from very closeup. The sound of the voice and video of the moving lips are captured bycomputers. These sounds and images provide most of the content, and areused to control most of the interactivity of the work. A computer monitorfaces the interactor and displays the processed mouth images."(20)

VIII.

Conclusion: The politics of virtual performance or virtually performingin the future of the hyperreal

"... Today enters into the same domain of indeterminate, undefinedinterpretations or into the principle of indeterminacy. And this not onlyapplies to the past, but also to the future as well as to the present."(21)Baudrillard's comment on history and the past can only point to the future.And the future is marked by the ability to become what it will become,real or not. According to Peggy Phelan in her book, "Unmarked: ThePolitics of Performance", "Performance art usually occurs inthe suspension between the "real" physical matter of "theperforming body" and the psychic experience of what is to be em-bodied.Like a rackety bridge swaying under too much weight, performance keepsone anchor on the side of psychic Real. Performance boldly and precariouslydeclares that Being is performed (and made temporarily visible) in thatsuspended in-between."(22) The "psychic experience" becomessynonymous with the virtual experience, and the "performing body"is no longer synonymous with the human body. The body is changing fromthat of the person to the body of the computer. And at times the data particlesof the information being acted upon becomes the performing body. Cyberperformancehas many different characteristics from that of traditional performance.But, ultimately it is still a time-based experience in some sort of spacewe can call the stage or cyberspace. We are still in the Lacanian "MirrorStage" in which we use our virtual selves to perform actions, ideas,and language. " A never-resolved assemblage of virtual and real (making)up the very fabric of human subjectivity."(23) The politics of cyberperformanceare embedded with data representing and unrepresenting the world aroundand within us.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Auslander, Philip, From Acting to Performance: Essays in modernism andpostmodernism. (London: Routledge, 1997) 90-1. Banes, Sally, SubversiveExpectations: Performance Art and Paratheater in New York, 1976-85. "JoeLowery logs On" Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 1998)261-3.Batchen, Geoffrey, "Spectres of Cyberspace," an essay from thebook, Visual Culture Reader, edited by Nicholas Mirzoeff. (London: Routledge,1998)273-8. Baudrillard, Jean, from CTheory interview "Vivisectingthe 90s: An Interview with Jean Baudrillard" by Caroline Bayard andGraham Knight Blau, Herbert, To All Appearances: Ideology and Performance.(London: Routledge, 1992) 152-3. Carr, Cynthia, "Realms of The Unreal"from On The Edge Performance At The End Of The Twentieth Century, (Hanover,New Hampshire: Wesleyan University Press, 1993) 219-20. Coyne, Richard,Technoromanticism:digital narrative, holism, and the romance of the real(Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1999)73-4. Gablik, Suzi, The Reenchantmentof Art (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1991)151-2. Goldberg, Roselee, Performance:liveart since 1960 (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Publishers. Inc.,1998)190. Phelan,Peggy, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (London: Routledge, 1993)167.Stone, Allucquere Rosanne "Will the Real Body Please Stand Up?"An essay first published in the anthology Cyberspace: First Steps, editedby Michael Benedikt (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991): 81-118.

URL BIBLIOGRAPHYhttp://www.georgecoates.org/who.html http://www.cas.usf.edu/english/walker/spring/articles/art90s.htmlhttp://necro.mcc.ac.uk:6666/ Craggy Island http://www.ekac.org/uirapuru.htmlhttp://www.stelarc.va.com.au/ http://www.t0.or.at/~krcf/smdk/smdk1.htmlhttp://www.interlog.com/~drokeby/trans.html http://www.simulation.dk/articles/a24-vivisecting_90s.htmlhttp://www.t0.or.at/~krcf/

 1. Jean Baudrillard, from CTheory interview "Vivisectingthe 90s: An Interview with Jean Baudrillard" by      CarolineBayard and Graham Knight (http://www.simulation.dk/articles/a24-vivisecting_90s.html) 2. Cynthia Carr, "Realms of The Unreal" from On The EdgePerformance At The End Of The Twentieth      Century,Hanover, New Hampshire, Wesleyan University Press, 1993. Pp. 219-20.  3.Sally Banes, "Joe Lowery logs On" from the book, Subversive Expectations:Performance Art and      Paratheater in New York,1976-85. Ann Arbor, MI, The University of Michigan Press. 1998. Pp.261-3. 4. Ibid  5. http://www.georgecoates.org/who.html  6. Ibid 7. http://www.cas.usf.edu/english/walker/spring/articles/art90s.html 8. http://necro.mcc.ac.uk:6666/ Craggy Island  9. Suzi Gablik,The Reenchantment of Art. Thames and Hudson, New York, New York, 1991.Pp. 151-2. 10. http://www.ntticc.or.jp/special/biennale99/preface_e.html11. http://www.ekac.org/uirapuru.html 12. http://www.stelarc.va.com.au/biog/biog.html13. Ibid 14. Ibid 15. http://www.stelarc.va.com.au/ 16. Allucquere RosanneStone, "Will the Real Body Please Stand Up?" An essay first publishedin the anthology      Cyberspace: First Steps,edited by.      Michael Benedikt (Cambridge: MITPress, 1991): 81-118. 17. Richard Coyne, Technoromanticism:digital narrative,holism, and the romance of the real. The MIT Press,      Cambridge,MA, 1999. Pp.73-4. 18. http://www.t0.or.at/~krcf/smdk/smdk1.html 19. PeggyPhelan, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance, Routledge, London, GreatBritain, 1993. P.167 20. http://www.interlog.com/~drokeby/trans.html 21.http://www.simulation.dk/articles/a24-vivisecting_90s.html 22. Peggy Phelan,Pp.167-8. 23. Geoffrey Batchen, "Spectres of Cyberspace", anessay from the book, Visual Culture Reader, edited by      NicholasMirzoeff. Routledge, London, Great Britain, 1998. Pp.273-8

Back to Kac Web