What is 'Live' & 'Real Time' ?

[skulpture]

A bit of a headache subject for me...

Since completing my Digital Performance MA I keep on thinking back to the assignments I did. A lot of them focused upon meanings and definitions to or around the notions of 'liveness' and 'real time' (realness?)

So just a though.... When you are watching a football match in the pub, you know that the football is 'live' in the sense that you may have a mate at the game, or the news,magazines, newspaper tell you that the match is on today at 3.00 o'clock. If you were physically at the match you would be there so you are watching it live. So if you are sat in the pub watching it 'live' - are you?

Obviously there is delay from the processing of the video image etc but can we watch something when not at a location but still consider it to be live and in real time?

For more reading check out Philip Auslander ;)

[sleepytom]

Live as opposed to recorded..
realtime as opposed to prerendered.
waste of time - spending ages discussing or redefining words which have very broadly accepted meanings.

perhaps this is why digital art is so slow to evolve - rather than creating work people spend huge amounts of time reinventing the words to describe what they are thinking about doing.

[complexvisuals]

This a technical or philosophical question?

[skulpture]

waste of time - spending ages discussing or redefining words which have very broadly accepted meanings.

perhaps this is why digital art is so slow to evolve - rather than creating work people spend huge amounts of time reinventing the words to describe what they are thinking about doing.

Haha OUCH!
People have been discussing the theory and history of words for centuries, its in our nature. If we can not challenge the notions and literature of words and meanings how can we develop our understandings? - Particularly so in an artistic context such as VJing or AV art.

I can not see how communicating individual ideas and opinions hinders the evolvement of 'digital art' as you put it. Interesting though never the less :)

complexvisuals - I guess its more of a philosophical question. Technical aspects do come into this as we are talking about the 'digitalisation' of certain media; ie: TV/live streaming etc... But I am just interested in what people associate real time and live to be described as. I like sleepytom's quote for example:
Live as opposed to recorded.
realtime as opposed to prerendered.

[SiliconPumpgun]

in my opinion the difference between live and real time is the feedback. in live you don't have a certain feedback which is guaranteed in a certain time.
i guess there does not really exist real time systems in vjing i know, since most of the realtime systems are done on microprocessors and not on pc-based system since the operating systems window, mac, linux are no real-time systems.

You can abstract the term and think of interaction and feedback with the audience, light jockey, dj,etc. and say i do interact realtime. This description might also be nonsense.

In the common meaning of live tv broadcasts is that there are no recorders involved. Sure there is time delay, but what's said in on air.

So I guess all the works that i have seen is live visuals.


cheers SPG

[complexvisuals]

complexvisuals - I guess its more of a philosophical question.[/I]

Thats me tuned out so...

[vj_jasper]

hey, just tuned in to this thread .. its great!

sure the question was long-winded, but at least you got a really neat answer from tom.

Live as opposed to recorded.
realtime as opposed to prerendered.

the answer begins and completes in those two mini-sentences.

of course, there are variations on the theme .. and why not? :)

[bryandod]

For more reading check out Philip Auslander ;)

Philip Auslander was recently criticized for plagiarism in his new book Theory for Performance Studies (Routledge 2008) . It turns out that 90% of the book was plagiarized. If anyone should know better, he should. I've always thought his performance theory was a joke, but now it looks like he's proven it. IMHO, this should end his professional career as a performance theorist. For more information, check out Plagiarism, Greed, and the Dumbing Down of Performance Studies
by Richard Schechner. (http://74.125.113.132/search?q=cache:8FFoYjrA2g4J:www.interregnum.dk/pdf/Plagiarism%2520and%2520Performance%2520Studies%252 0DRAFT%25202.pdf+philip+auslander+plagarism&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&client=firefox-a)

[deepvisual]

A bit of a headache subject for me...
So just a though.... When you are watching a football match in the pub, you know that the football is 'live' in the sense that you may have a mate at the game, or the news,magazines, newspaper tell you that the match is on today at 3.00 o'clock.

Chinese student murder: Football Betting Scam related?? (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/15/football_betting_scam/)

..football matches shown on television in China have a delay of up to one minute after live action in the stadium, so allowing gambling organizations to place employees at games who send a text when a goal is scored, up to a minute before it happens 'live' in China.

[Gumby]

Philip Auslander was recently criticized for plagiarism in his new book Theory for Performance Studies (Routledge 2008) . It turns out that 90% of the book was plagiarized. If anyone should know better, he should. I've always thought his performance theory was a joke, but now it looks like he's proven it. IMHO, this should end his professional career as a performance theorist. For more information, check out Plagiarism, Greed, and the Dumbing Down of Performance Studies
by Richard Schechner. (http://74.125.113.132/search?q=cache:8FFoYjrA2g4J:www.interregnum.dk/pdf/Plagiarism%2520and%2520Performance%2520Studies%252 0DRAFT%25202.pdf+philip+auslander+plagarism&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&client=firefox-a)


Naughty naughty. we, as i'm sure you all did, got warned about this at uni. First time you get caught you have to redo the essay, second time you get thrown off the module, third time you get thrown out of the university.


this is a good thread. I'm currently working on an essay for one of my film modules where the question is

"Cinema is not a realist medium- but rather one which uses a wide variety of techniques to engage an audience. The pleasure of cinema is immersion, for both film maker and audience, in these techniques.”

I'm taking the line that i agree with the statement totally, because there is no live interaction with film, where as with something like VJing its nearly always live and can be affected in real time and is not just the exact same performance everytime.

[deepvisual]

ha
I finally found my old dissertation.

here's a small bit

Cinema Spectacle Festival

Looking at the above history of projection we can identify three distinctly different approaches to projection in public spaces in the 20th century.

1 The Cinema, with its formal, intimate setting with images separated from the audience.
2 The Concert, with the audience still separated from the action onstage but at the same time immersed within a sonic and visual space created by the action onstage.
3 The Dance Event, with its informal and more impersonal environment and the projected images occurring within, upon, above and around the audience.


In the case of Cinema, Mulvey gives us a psychoanalytical assessment of the basic pleasure of viewing.
“The cinema offers a number of possible pleasures. One is scopophilia (pleasure in looking). There are circumstances where looking itself is a source of pleasure, just as in, in the reverse formation there is a pleasure in being looked at. Originally, in this Three Essays on Sexuality, Freud isolated scopophilia as one of the component instincts of sexuality which exist as drives quite independent of the erotogenic zones .At this point he associated scopophilia with taking other people as objects , subjecting them to a controlling and curious gaze. Mulvey (1975) pp 324



Looked at from this perspective it is easy to see the allure of the cinematic experience. A safe discrete, dark window from which to gaze into a dream that unfolds before you.

Dave Herman
“I had never even heard any Pink Floyd music when I was taken along to see them aged 14. But to be in that room, and see them play the whole of Dark Side of the Moon, a live band with the most exquisitely beautiful gospel singers and the projections -its something you would never see anywhere else - especially the footage. Nothing like any movie or TV show. I just couldn't believe that a performance could be that beautiful.” (interview 4)

Here we see, projection moved up a level from the cinema environment. Certainly with a band like Pink Floyd, there was very much an element of cinema about it - they used a cinema projector onstage, but this was also blended within a live performance environment. The amplified sound, smoke and stage lighting, all working to draw the onlooker into the performance. This style of projection would reinvent itself in the 1990s as the mainstay of the dance artist's live performance. Bands such as The Chemical Brothers and Orbital were heavily reliant on onstage projection to supplement the actions of the DJ performers, who could barely be seen behind a wall of keyboards and who were forced by the complex technology of dance music to remixing multiple pre recorded tracks instead of creating music live.

Moving on a step further we have the Dance Event.

“A heavy deep bass booms towards us from a long distance. We walk in the direction from where the music comes, through a long corridor which has been dimly lit by some blue and red spots. Everywhere people shuffle past us, arms raised, moving in the rhythm of the music. In the low vaulted hall the atmosphere as sweltering and sultry. With its 120 bpm the music batters on the sweat covered heads. The nervously flashing strobe lights cause one to be hardly able to walk straight. Everyone is in a state of mobility. The hall, on stage, even at the bar people get a kick out of the fast rhythm of the music. It's party time.” Karin de Lange (1989) pp 171

“Spectators see only the surface, but the ravers are already part of the scene, in the machinery. Beyond the spectacle lies total immersion; the end of the spectacle. Plant (1993)


From this it seems that the club is virtually the antithesis of the cinema - An environment that participants become immersed within. Lights sound and projection are anywhere and everywhere. With the frequent use of psychoactive drugs like LSD and MDMA breaking down the few remaining barriers between subject and object.
From this analysis it appears that there are at least 3 main distinctions within public projection performance. These represent a progression with the audience passing from onlooker through participant to component, a perceptual gradient whereby the observer becomes the observed. This seems to be closely tied to cultural ideas of space and the perception and relation of the observer within space.




1. Projection as Cinema.
2. Projection as Spectacle
3. Projection as Festival.

[Rovastar]

ha
I finally found my old dissertation.

here's a small bit

When was that written 1904? or before in the the 19th century?

[mowgli]

It does mention the 20th century.

[skulpture]

Philip Auslander was recently criticized for plagiarism in his new book Theory for Performance Studies (Routledge 2008) . It turns out that 90% of the book was plagiarized. If anyone should know better, he should. I've always thought his performance theory was a joke, but now it looks like he's proven it. IMHO, this should end his professional career as a performance theorist. For more information, check out Plagiarism, Greed, and the Dumbing Down of Performance Studies
by Richard Schechner. (http://74.125.113.132/search?q=cache:8FFoYjrA2g4J:www.interregnum.dk/pdf/Plagiarism%2520and%2520Performance%2520Studies%252 0DRAFT%25202.pdf+philip+auslander+plagarism&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&client=firefox-a)

I've just downloaded the PDF... going to have a read over it. can't quite believe this if its true...

How did you find out about this?