Live for real
Image 1: The message that appears on YouTube when a video is no longer available.
Paper Course
Digital Music Cultures
Professor
Isabella van Elferen
Student
Lukie Stalenhoef
Studentnumber
3027740
Date
29-‐01-‐2010
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Introduction The use of digital technologies in the music industry raises questions about the way music is made, but also about the ways we experience music. While in the past music could only be heard when people went to see the artist(s), nowadays we can hear music when and wherever we want to. We can listen to songs on our MP3-‐player or watch a clip of a concert on Youtube. Apparently, people don’t have to be physically present at a musicperformance in order to hear or experience the show. This has lead several theorists in the field of performance studies to make statements about the ways in which a live performance differs from a mediatized one. When looking at the way live-‐video is used in a club however, a distinction between what is and what is not mediatized becomes hard to make. It seems that traditional notions of ‘liveness’, ‘mediatized’, ‘performer’ and ‘audience’ are not sufficient anymore and need to be redefined. While Auslander (1999) argues how digital technologies are superior to live performance, I want to focus on how digital technologies such as live-‐video can enrich live performance.
A ‘live’ ‘performance’ Throughout history, different technologies are used for the production and reproduction of sounds. Frith (1996) uses the ‘technology of music’1 to divide the history of music in three different stages, each organized around a different technology of musical storage and retrieval. While music, in the first stage, was only “stored in the body” (262) and retrieved through performance, music can now, in the last stage, be heard everywhere because it is digitally retrievable (1996). Previous barriers of time and space seem to disappear and terms like ‘liveness’, ‘thereness’ and ‘mediatized performance’ are introduced to address new relations between sound, space and the body. Questions considering when and whether we can and should talk of an ‘original’ and ‘authentic’ or a ‘fake’ and ‘unrealistic’ performance have surrounded the work of several theorists in the field of performance studies.
Before giving an overview of the ongoing discussion on this matter, I will first offer some
definitions of the terms mentioned. When defining ‘liveness’, Philip Auslander, author of Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture (1999), refers to the definition of ‘live’ that is given in the Oxford English Dictionary: “Of a performance, heard or watched at the time of its occurrence, as distinguished from one recorded on film, tape, etc.” (71). He adds that ‘liveness’ “often invokes the performer’s materiality” (71). Although the term is variable in its exact
1 According to Firth (1996), the ‘technology of music’ “simply refers to the ways in which sounds are produced and
reproduced” (262).
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meaning, the essence of ‘liveness’ often lies in the “’presentness’ of a performance” (Mock 2000: 2). ‘Presence’ refers to the experience of ‘being there’. ‘Thereness’, which is somewhat similar to presence is commonly defined as having the sense that the performer is there (Frith 1996).
While generally there is a consensus on the terms described above, ‘performance’, on the
other hand, is less easily defined. Jem Kelly (2007) even mentions that it is not possible to define the parameters of an ‘artistic performance’ as the term employs multiple meanings for different contexts, genres and modes of expression. However, he also stresses the importance of an investigation in the light of musical mediated expression, the kind of expression that is central to this paper. This investigation will therefore not focus on giving a clear definition of the parameters of a musical mediated expression, but on showing that spectators of a ‘mediated performance’ can participate in a ‘live performance’ and that disagreements on what a ‘(live) performance’ is, are mainly rooted in the notion of what a ‘(live) performance’ should be. Feminist Peggy Phelan, sees performance, in a strict ontological sense, as nonreproductive (1993). In Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (1993) she states that: “Performance’s only life is in the present. Performance cannot be saved, recorded, documented, or otherwise participate in the circulation of representations of representations: once it does so, it becomes something other than performance” (146).
While Phelan solely employs the term ‘performance’, Roberta Mock distinguishes both ‘performance’ and ‘live performance’ in Performing Processes: Creating Live Performance (2000). The latter resembles the way in which Phelan defines ‘performance’: “A ‘live performance’ […] is one which is still happening and still has to happen, which feeds off the reception, which is unfinished, which always contains within it the potential to change” (3), while a ‘performance’ in Mocks vision (2000) is that which Phelan perceives to be something other than performance, namely: “the (re)production or documentation of a series of events which may, or may not, still be in the process of occurring” (3). When drawing this distinction, Mock (2000) concentrates on the way ‘liveness’ and ‘thereness’ are necessary elements for creating a ‘live performance’ that happens in real-‐time: “[Live performance] includes the potential for change in its every moment of delivery through the dialectical processes which need to be experienced – via, for example, the body of the performer, the physical context of its venue, the relationship with the audience – in order to make it a ‘whole’. When it is ‘finished’, it reverts back to (mere) ‘performance’, its trace documented (even in memory) and recalled by other means” (3).
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According to Mock (2000), the terms ‘performance’ and ‘live performance’ cannot be used interchangeably. This is where she goes straight into what Auslander (1999) considers to be one of the single most important questions facing all kinds of performance today: “Are live performances and recordings really different from each other?” In order to address the dominant role digital technology plays in our culture, Auslander has adopted the term ‘mediatized performance’ (1999). ‘Mediatized’, a term borrowed from Jean Baudrillard, is used to indicate that a particular cultural object is a product of mass media or of media technology. Performances that are captured by reproduction technologies such as audio or video recordings can thus be categorized as mediatized performances. He defines a ‘live performance’ quite similarly to Mock (2000).
In the first instance, a mediatized and a live performance seem to be in conflict with one
another, however, when you view a live performance today, one should ask the unavoidable question whether there really is a difference between the two. Cleary, live-‐events are becoming more and more mediatized. Replay screens in a sport hall are quite common and rock bands frequently use video screens during their concert, for instance to show the audience real-‐time images of themselves playing on stage or to show a music-‐clip which they made beforehand. Recently, live-‐videos are used more and more often in clubs. In this context, using ‘live-‐video’ means that images are captured by a camera and are shown real-‐time on video screens that most of the time are in front of the stage where a DJ is playing. These real-‐time videos enable the audience to see each other dancing at the same time, in the same club. This is exactly when it is inevitable to ask the question whether there is a real difference between live and recorded. When using live-‐video in a club, there is both a live performance as well as a mediatized performance going on. While the audience watches the recorded, mediated live-‐video images, the music in the club is still playing and the audience is physically there. It seems as if the audience can thus experience a live and a mediatized performance at once. Image 2: Rockband Van Halen using a live-‐video screen during their live performance.
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When we take this a bit further and focus on the music that is commonly played in a club we also encounter a point at which a distinction between live and mediatized performances seems hard to make. Although it seems obvious to suggest that a rock band gives away a live performance, a DJ playing Electronic Dance Music (EDM)2 is claimed to be rather inauthentic or not live, something Ferreira calls ‘the problem of performance in EDM’ (2008). In his article, When Sound Meets Movement (2008), he states that an ‘EDM performance’ can also be considered live, because technically reproduced sound (a mediatized performance) do promote a non-‐stop dancing experience in a club (a live performance). When referring back to the definitions of ‘(live) performance’ given by Phelan (1993) and Mock (2000), we can support this statement since performance in EDM is happening in the present, experienced through the body of the performer (the DJ), the physical context of its venue (the club) and the relationship with the audience (dancing). Maybe this is why Auslander (1999) states that: “Because live performance is the category of cultural production most directly affected by the dominance of media, it is particularly urgent to address the situation of live performance in our mediatized culture” (2).
Although there is evidence for the belief that we should not contrast live and mediatized performances, apparently, Mock (2000) and Phelan (1993) do feel that there is an ontological difference between these concepts. In my opinion, however, there are two reasons why most of their arguments can be considered as no longer relevant.
Participation in live-video First of all, most of their arguments are based on the premonition that recording technologies cannot be real-‐time and implicate the absence of a participation of the spectator. Of course, live-‐ video was scarcely used or not even used at all when Phelan (1993) wrote about ‘liveness’. However, Mock, in 2000, still emphasises that watching a mediated reproduction, e.g. video, is “incomplete, or at least very ‘different’, […] one must re(construct) the atmosphere and feelings evoked in the course of the performance” (2). Later on in her Editor Introduction, she remarkably makes the point that “there is no reason to suggest that ‘mediatized’ performances cannot be live. Some are and some are not” (6). Unfortunately, she does not mention how some mediatized performances can be live. Instead, she focuses on how mediated reproductions make a performance incomplete.
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Mock’s (2000) conviction that a mediated reproduction is incomplete might be based on what Lev Manovich calls the ‘the imprisonment of the body’, which means that “[t]he body must be fixed in space if the viewer is to see the image at all” (2007: 104). Here, video functions as a window that separates the ‘normal space’, the space where our bodies reside, from the ‘space of representation’, which has a different scale than our space. When Mock (2000) states that a video screen implicates the absence of participation from the spectator and thus the potential for the spectator to influence or move the presentation and the reception of a performance in a clockwise direction, she thus seems to refer to this imprisonment of the body. By saying this, Mock seems to overlook the fact that Manovich (2007) distinguishes a dynamical screen from a real-‐time screen in which images can change in real-‐time. Although Manovich does not mention what using a real-‐time screen means for the imprisonment of the body, he does point our attention to the fact that there are different types of screens that also have different possibilities. Nowadays, we can be present at a live performance while watching a real-‐time screen with real-‐time mediated images of the performance that we are physically witnessing. In this perspective, it does not seem right to say that the video screen represents a different scale than the space in which the spectators reside and that a spectator is not able to influence the performance as well as the reception in a clockwise direction. Of course, some real-‐time screens do represent another physical space than the one we are in and do imprison our body so to say, however, technical developments do make it possible for the spectator to participate in a live performance. Nowadays, we can imagine ourselves behind our computerscreen watching real-‐time images from a live performance while participating in a chat conversation with the performer. For instance, the service Ustream.TV describe themselves as: “[A] live interactive video broadcast platform that enables anyone with a camera and an Internet connection to quickly and easily broadcast to a global audience of unlimited size. [The] one-‐to-‐ many live interactive video encourages broadcast-‐to-‐viewer and viewer-‐to-‐viewer interaction, empowering a much more engaging experience for everyone involved” (About us)
Apparently, live-‐video enables participation from the spectators not only when it is used in a club. An interactive experience for both the spectator and the performer can also be created when a performance is watched through a window that separates the space where the spectators body resides from the ‘space of representation’. Even though interactive videos are not the type of video that is focussed on in this paper, it does present us with evidence that Mock’s (2000) arguments, which are based on the premonition that recording technologies implicate the absence of a participation of the spectator, are no longer relevant. A video screen
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does not always present a different scale than the space in which the spectators reside and when it does, a spectator can participate and influence the performance as well as the reception in a clockwise direction. To put it even more bluntly, in some cases, like when live-‐video is used in a club, the existence of live-‐video is dependent on the participation of the spectators.
The value of liveness Secondly, many disagreements on what a ‘performance’ is, are mainly rooted in the notion of what a ‘performance’ should be. Several theorist privilege a live performance over a mediatized performance based on the value they attach to liveness. For instance, Phelan (1993) mentions that liveness incorporates a certain ‘tracelessness’, because it honours the idea that a limited number of people in a specific time/space frame can have an experience of value which leaves no visible trace afterward. She also claims that live performance’s inability to participate in the economy of repetition “gives performance art its distinctive oppositional edge” (27). Mock (2000) argues that rather than to claim that live performance is ideologically resistant, it is more useful to suggest that the ontology of live performance somehow provides the potential for ideological resistance. In order to explore this further, she offers a model that she perceives to be ‘the nature of live performance’ (5)
Here, Phelan and Mock can be said to valorize and privilege the live over the mediatized.
This has lead Auslander (1999) to quickly become impatient when he was investigating the cultural valence of live performance. According to him, the greater part of the claims that are made to prove that there is an ontology of liveness can be considered as traditional, unreflective assumptions that fail to get much further in their attempts to explicate the value of ‘liveness’ than invoking clichés and mystifications like “the magic of live theatre”, the “energy” that supposedly exists between performers and spectators in a live event, and the “community” that live performance is often said to create among performers and spectators” (2). Although Auslander (1999) admits that these concepts do have value for performers and may even be necessary for them, “they yield a reductive binary opposition of the love and the mediatised” (3) and all too often, the qualities performance theorists cite to demonstrate that live performance forms are ontologically different from mediatised forms “turn out, upon close examination, to provide little basis for convincing distinctions” (159).
By claiming that there is a certain distinctiveness inherent to performance, Phelan and
Mock automatically raise the question whether a live performance can be independent of a mediatized performance. According to Phelan (1993), performance is linguistically independent from mass reproduction; since a performance is non-‐reproductive and writing is a form of
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reproduction, it could obviously not capture performance. Auslander (1999) asserts that this claim is based on a tautological argument. Performance, according to him, cannot claim to be linguistically independent from mass reproduction as mediatization, the technology of reproduction, is embedded within the language of live performance itself. Consequently, he makes the statement that: “If live performance cannot be shown to be economically independent of, immune form contamination by, and ontologically different from mediatized forms, in what sense can liveness function as a site of cultural and ideological resistance, as Phelan and others claim? (1999: 7).
As I have shown before, live performance is becoming progressively less independent of media technology in our mediated society. It becomes hard to make a distinction between what is and what is not mediated. Nonetheless, some theatres have tried to attach value to their program by designing banners that emphasise the exclusivity of the non-‐mediated, live performances. For instance, at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta the sign ‘Not Available on Video’ was hung up (Auslander 1999). What the theatres were probably not aware of was that this demonstrates exactly why it is impossible for live performances to be independent of mediatized ones. Auslander explains this very clearly by saying that: “the only way of imputing specificity to the experience of live performance in the current cultural climate is by reference to the dominant experience of mediatisation” (1999: 6).
Valid terms? By showing that spectators of a ‘mediated performance’ can participate in a ‘live performance’ at once and that disagreements on what a ‘(live) performance’ is, are mainly rooted in the believe of what a ‘(live) performance’ should be, I hope to have shown that some of Phelan’s (1993) and Mock’s (2000) arguments can be considered to be no longer relevant. When we look back at the definitions that are given at the beginning of this paper we encounter this as well. For instance, the definition of ‘live’ given by the Oxford English Dictionary holds that this kind of performance distinguishes itself from a recorded one, because it is heard or watched at the time of its occurrence. As we have seen before, a recorded performance can be heard or watched at the time of its occurrence, experienced through our body and the physical context of the venue. It is unfinished and contains the potential to change. We can even participate in it real-‐time and interact with the performer through it.
The question that still remains is when and whether we can and should talk of a
‘performance’. Can we say that using live-‐video in a club is a ‘performance’? And what about
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Ustream.TV? According to Phelan (1993) performance becomes something else when it is saved, recorded, documented or when it otherwise participates in the circulation of representations of representations. This of course depends on how the parameters of a performance are defined. For instance, Frith (1996) even states that ‘liveness’, whether defined in social or psychological terms, is not essential to musical meaning: “It is clear that to record a work is just as much to interpret it as to perform it in any other way” (229). Like Kelly (2007) mentioned, this shows exactly how the term ‘performance’ employs multiple meanings for different contexts, genres and modes of expression. This is, however, not what I wanted to conclude from this all. What I want to make clear is that, when we look at a musical mediated expression we might consider to revise the terminology that is commonly used by performance theorists, such as Phelan (1993) and Mock (2000). It is not a matter of choosing to use the terms ‘performance’ and ‘live performance’ interchangeably – they are interchangeable. Instead of focussing on what the difference is between those two types of performance, we should thus focus on how they participate as parallel forms in the same cultural economy. This means that, as Auslander (1999) points out: “the relationship between live and mediatized forms and the meaning of liveness must be understood as historical and contingent rather than determined by immutable differences” (8). When looking at performance in EDM, Ferreira (2008) demonstrates very clearly why the terms we employ may no longer be useful. He describes how theorists often look upon performers in EDM, mostly DJ’s, as having ‘localized agency’, whereas the agency of machine-‐ made sounds they produce is not paid attention to. According to Ferreira (2008), this argumentation results from the tension that resides at the very core of modern life – that between the human body and the machine. In EDM, however, we should treat performance as “the effective mediation between recorded sounds and collective movements” (Ferreira 2008: 18), since, as mentioned before, human movements make visible what machine sounds are making audible. Consequently, Ferreira (2008) states that: “the performance-machine relation [in EDM] is not a matter of opposition but of association and transformation in the technological actualization of the sound-movement relation” (18). Similarly, music composer Ben Neill (2002) mentions the following: “[O]ne of the key ideas surrounding recent electronic pop culture is the way traditional notions of “performer” and “audience” are completely erased and redefined. In this new, so called ‘rave sensibility’, the artist is not the centre of attention, only the channeler of the dance floor’s energy […] and the provider of a backdrop for social interaction” (in Ferreira 2008: 17).
The tension that originates from ‘live’ bodies interacting with technology in a performance event has lead artistic director and lecturer Henry Daniel (2000) to propose the concept ‘re-‐cognizing
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corporeality’. He uses this concept not only to suggest that we cannot rely on previously established methodologies to fully explain the presence of new media technologies in performance – he also suggests a new approach that addresses and identifies “those feelings of ‘otherness’ that are the inevitable result of working with ‘sensitive’ and ‘intelligent’ electronic systems” (9). This ‘otherness’ results from the idea that the creative process, inherent to a performance, lies as much in the actions of the performer and the spectator as in the environment itself – actions that demonstrate how technologies have an interactive and a performative character when used in performance (2000).
According to Daniel (2000), the relationship between performers and spectators is at
base an interactive process, because there are energies that automatically resonate back and forth between spectators and performers. Interestingly, he also proposes that any electronic device, tool or material that performers directly use as extensions of themselves and/ or the space itself (in short, any object on which our attention becomes focussed), can influence the reorganization of interactive energies that occur during performance and thus be interactive. These actions can also be performative in the sense that they are part of an interactive process which is open to creative manipulation by individual intent. Consequently, Daniel (2000) argues that: “Through the interactive and performative character of technology, performances can acquire a new density and complexity of references that resonate across the physical, biological and cultural institutions out of which our bodies have emerged” (62).
This new density and complexity of references that performances acquire thanks to digital technology, has led Auslander (1999) to declare that live performance is increasingly dominated by other types of performance with greater prestige, presence and power: “the general response of live performance to the oppression and economic superiority of mediatised forms has been to become as much like them as possible” (7). Although I agree with him that we must raise the question if there really are clear-‐cut ontological distinctions between live forms and mediatized ones, it is problematic to make statements such as these. In fact, by making a statement like this, Auslander makes the same mistake as Phelan (1993) and Mock (2000) did – he privileges and valorizes one type of performance over the other and he opposites different types of performance which appear interchangeable. Instead of arguing how digital technologies are superior to live performance, a better way to approach the density and complexity that performances acquire might be to investigate in which way digital technologies, such as live-‐ video, can enrich live performance.
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Daniel (2000) has already begun to answer this question. According to him, the fields of
interaction that digital technologies produce allow audiences to participate more actively in performance events. Nicolas Collins (2008), electronic music composer and editor-‐in-‐chief of the Leonardo Music Journal, discusses some of the claims that have been made about the influence of technological innovation on the development of music. He discusses cabaret artist Dieter Hildebrandt who has argued that the perfection of the piano-‐ forte in the 19th Century (made possible in part by improvements in iron-‐casting technology) simultaneously fueled the rise of the professional concert virtuoso and introduced amateur music making into the homes of the middle classes (7).
When talking specifically about the way live-‐video is able to enhance live performance,
the book Theater & Technologie3 by Kattenbelt et al. (2007) offers some insight. Video images, in their opinion, are part of the performance and play a role in the art of a performer. They explain that when the basic principles of expression are combined with cinematographic images, the notion of movement, speed, duration, size etc. are primarily dependent on the mutual connection between the physical presence of the performer and the visible space that surrounds him or her by projected images. This is even more the case when live-‐video images are used during a performance; when images are real-‐time and directly derived from the performance, it derives meaning from the tangibility of that which it reflects (2007). What Kattenbelt et al. (2007) seem to point our attention to, is the way in which digital technologies enable performers to, in a certain sense, play with notions of movement, speed, duration and size of the performance – the expression which is communicated by the performer during a performance. We might also consider this to be true for a club experience, only in this case, the real-‐time images that are used reflect the dancing audience rather than the DJ. When we look at it this way, digital technologies indeed seem to have an interactive and performative character, just as Daniel (2000) showed us before. This also clarifies how traditional notions of ‘performer’ and ‘audience’ are completely erased and redefined. Clearly, the new density and complexity of references that come to existence in a performance through the interactive and performative character of technology do not only redefine traditional terminologies – they enable a whole new type of live performance wherein mediatizations are an integral part of the musical experience and are certainly not an enemy.
3 Translated as Theatre and Technology.
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Conclusion
Terms like ‘liveness’ and ‘mediatized performance’ have been introduced in order to address the way in which digital technology establish new relations between sound, space and the body. According to Phelan (1993), these new relations imply that we are talking of something other than performance. ‘Mediatized performance’, a term coined by Auslander (1999), is used to define this ‘otherness’. Commonly, this term is opposed to live performance. However, when we look at how live-‐video is used in a club it becomes inevitable to ask the question whether there really is a difference. In my opinion, there are two reasons why most of the arguments given by Phelan (1993) and Mock (2000) can be considered as no longer relevant. First of all, most of their arguments are based on the premonition that recording technologies cannot be real-‐time and implicate the absence of a participation of the spectator while spectators of a ‘mediated performance’ can participate in a ‘live performance’ at once. Secondly, many disagreements on what a ‘performance’ is, are mainly rooted in the believe of what a ‘performance’ should be. Live performance is becoming progressively less independent of media technology in our mediated society. Consequently, when we look at a musical mediated expression, we might consider to revise the terminology that is commonly used by performance theorists. It is not a matter of choosing to use the terms ‘performance’ and ‘live performance’ interchangeably – they are interchangeable. Instead of focussing on the differences between those types of performance, we should thus focus on how they participate as parallel forms in the same cultural economy. Since performances acquire a new density and complexity of references through technology, we cannot rely on previously established methodologies to fully explain the presence of new media technologies in performance. We need new approaches that address and identify those feelings of ‘otherness’ that Daniel (2000) is talking about. Without privileging one type of performance over another, a way to approach the density and complexity that performances acquire might be to investigate in which ways digital technologies, such as live-‐video, can enrich live performance. As I have shown, Daniel (2000) uses the concept of ‘re-‐cognizing corporeality’ to show how technology has an interactive and performative character which allows audiences to participate more actively in performance events. Kattenbelt et al. (2007) also provide a useful insight as they explain how digital technologies enable performers to, in a certain sense, play with notions of movement, speed, duration and size of the performance. Although there is not a lot of research done on this matter, I hope to have shown that it is necessary to investigate how new media technologies are an integral part of the musical experience and can enrich live performance. In the end, they are live for real.
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References Auslander, P. (1999) Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture. Routledge: London. Collins, N. (2008) “Why Live? Performance in the Age of Digital Reproduction” in Leonardo Music Journal, 18: 7-‐8. Daniel, H. (2000) “Re-‐Cognizing Corporeality” in Mock, R. (ed.) Performing Processes: Creating Live Performance. Intellect Books: Bristol. Ferreira, P. (2008) When Sound Meets Movement: Performance in Electronic Dance Music. Leonardo Music Journal, 18: 17-‐20. Firth, S. (1996) Technology and authority. Performing Rites. Evaluating Popular Music. Oxford: 226-‐245. Kattenbelt, C., Havens, H., de Ruijter, E. & Vuyk, K. (2007) Theater & Technologie. Toneelacademie Maastricht/ Theater Instituut Nederland. Kelly, J. (2007) “Pop Music, Multimedia and Live Performance” in Sexton, J. (ed.) Music, Sound and Multimedia: From the Live to the Virtual. Edinburgh University Press: 105-‐120. Manovich, L. (2007) The Language of New Media. MIT Press. Mock, R. (2000) “Editor Introduction” in Mock, R. (ed.) Performing Processes: Creating Live Performance. Intellect Books: Bristol. Phelan, P. (1992) Unmarked: The Politics of Performance. Routledge: London. Ustream.TV, “About Us”, retrieved 20-‐01-‐’10 from: http://www.ustream.tv/about
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