I am trying to make a document, about performance documentation, but I'm struggling to document how many different documents there are, in my documentation.
Fuck sake.
Monday, 24 November 2014
Factory Reset
The 'download' folder on my laptop takes at least 2 minutes to open up fully. There are 345 items in it, collected over the past 2 years.
I should really delete everything in there, but I don't in case I might need something from it in the future.
I've never needed anything from it.
I should really delete everything in there, but I don't in case I might need something from it in the future.
I've never needed anything from it.
Saturday, 22 November 2014
Where does the 'live' live?
I can't legally watch my beloved Arsenal play football at 3pm on a Saturday.
(Luckily, today they're on the late kick off)
There's a rule that bans any British TV station from showing those matches. It's a way of keeping up physical ticket sales apparently.
Because if it was on TV then no one would ever go see it live. Naturally.
The view on TV is better anyway.
But when I really want to, I can bypass this rule. I live in Plymouth so I can't go see the Arsenal play in North London every week anyway. Even if I could get a ticket I probably wouldn't be able to afford it.
So I stream the match.
I use the FirstRow website to find an obscure broadcast of the game from another country. It's commonly a FOX stream from the US, or even a stream from Mexico or European countries like the Netherlands and Spain. I prefer FOX though because it's in a language I can understand.
The problem I have is that the quality of the stream is often quite rubbish. It's either so juttery or fuzzy that sometimes I can't make out Oxlade-Chamberlain from Keiran Gibbs.
My work-around for this is to use a 'live commentary', in particular the Arseblog commentary. It provides live, textual information in short bitesized chunks. Very similar to a twitter feed.
Using both of these methods, I feel as though I am as close to the game as I can be.
Through my video, I get a constant roar of the crowd and a rough indication of where the game is being played.
With the commentary, I get the little details and analyses, (which are most of the time are more informed that I ever could be).
I think, at least...
The relationship between these two different representations gives me a better view than if I had bought a ticket.
Albeit with a short time lag.
I think, at least...
In other news that is completely not associated in any other way at all, I am utterly engrossed in this: http://www.forcedentertainment.com/quizoola24-stream/
(Luckily, today they're on the late kick off)
There's a rule that bans any British TV station from showing those matches. It's a way of keeping up physical ticket sales apparently.
Because if it was on TV then no one would ever go see it live. Naturally.
The view on TV is better anyway.
But when I really want to, I can bypass this rule. I live in Plymouth so I can't go see the Arsenal play in North London every week anyway. Even if I could get a ticket I probably wouldn't be able to afford it.
So I stream the match.
I use the FirstRow website to find an obscure broadcast of the game from another country. It's commonly a FOX stream from the US, or even a stream from Mexico or European countries like the Netherlands and Spain. I prefer FOX though because it's in a language I can understand.
The problem I have is that the quality of the stream is often quite rubbish. It's either so juttery or fuzzy that sometimes I can't make out Oxlade-Chamberlain from Keiran Gibbs.
My work-around for this is to use a 'live commentary', in particular the Arseblog commentary. It provides live, textual information in short bitesized chunks. Very similar to a twitter feed.
Using both of these methods, I feel as though I am as close to the game as I can be.
Through my video, I get a constant roar of the crowd and a rough indication of where the game is being played.
With the commentary, I get the little details and analyses, (which are most of the time are more informed that I ever could be).
I think, at least...
The relationship between these two different representations gives me a better view than if I had bought a ticket.
Albeit with a short time lag.
I think, at least...
In other news that is completely not associated in any other way at all, I am utterly engrossed in this: http://www.forcedentertainment.com/quizoola24-stream/
Wednesday, 12 November 2014
Website Degene-trans-formation
I'm currently reading a paper by a Dr Paul Stapleton regarding performance and the documentation of the ephemeral.
Written in 2007, over half a decade ago, he explains how he has developed a sort of online wiki-archive of live performance. A moving archive, that is able to store, document and generate discussion of 'live' works. It's name was/is LiveArchives.org.
Sounds interesting. So I typed in the URL to my search browser on chrome, and something peculiar happened.
www.LiveArchives.org is a Japanese credit card comparison website.
Perhaps the original LiveArchives website was deleted and this replaced it?
I guess I'll never know.
Or maybe I should give him a call...
Written in 2007, over half a decade ago, he explains how he has developed a sort of online wiki-archive of live performance. A moving archive, that is able to store, document and generate discussion of 'live' works. It's name was/is LiveArchives.org.
Sounds interesting. So I typed in the URL to my search browser on chrome, and something peculiar happened.
www.LiveArchives.org is a Japanese credit card comparison website.
Perhaps the original LiveArchives website was deleted and this replaced it?
I guess I'll never know.
Or maybe I should give him a call...
Monday, 3 November 2014
Start Menu
I've been thinking a lot about remembering and forgetting.
What the difference is.
Where the similarities are.
Why that's relevant to me.
I feel as though I hold a contradictory position as a 'Performance Academic'. Performance, at least by the definition of Peggy Phelan, is essentially attached to its disappearance. Performance lives 'in the moment' and any other attempts to capture that 'moment' change it into something other than performance. Kind of like quantum physics. But not really anything like quantum physics.
Academia on the other hand, is dedicated to the storing and generation of knowledge. It's not about the 'moment', it's about how you store, articulate and define whatever happens to/by/from/because of that moment. I think anyway. The first thing I learnt about Performance Studies is that definitions are blurry.
There's some sort of contradiction here. If Academia is about remembrance, and Performance is about forgetting, where does the Performance Academic stand?
Somewhere completely different perhaps.
Or maybe the Performance Academic shouldn't move at all.
Maybe Academia and Performance should move.
If A Tree Falls In The Woods And It's Not Recorded On Social Media Did It Ever Make A Sound?
There's a huge contradiction in how I started with this. With how I started researching performance.
The particular type of performance that I enjoy, I learnt about through academia. Through reading and writing and watching videos of people like
Marina Abramovic,
Bob Flanagan,
Chris Burden,
Vito Acconci,
Robert Wilson,
The Performance Group,
Brian Lobel,
Igor Stromajer.
A bunch of artists who 'do' performance, yet all I know about them is through academia. That's still performance to me. In my memory.
How should I navigate this...
Now I'm blogging about this process. This research process. I'm storing it online, in an internet that takes and spreads everything ever published, storing it everywhere via cookies and internet histories and Timehop and livestreams and Google searches. Once this article is published, for example, it will be everywhere and unable to delete, fully. Unable to forget. Unable to disappear.
Fragments will always exist, somewhere.
The internet (2.0) could be the ultimate archive. Everybody's personal stories stored on social media, or on Dropbox or iCloud.
The internet (2.0) also holds a lot of potential for performance. It's participatory nature is a fertile ground for all kinds of human interaction and theatre.
Not only that, but I feel that the internet, through its remembrance of everything and all things, could teach us more about the beauty of forgetting than forgetting ever may. I hope anyway. Or else my research process is fucked before it's even begun.
This particular blog post will act as my start menu. It hasn't gone in depth, is incredibly scattered, but hopefully it'll be useful.
A lot of what I write probably won't be for You (the reader). In fact, a lot may be for Me (the reader), yet also some of it will be for Me (the writer).
If you're interested in You (the writer) then you can comment. It'll be an open forum for discussing things. Please do actually. It'll help me both validate certain ideas whilst also opening up others.
My next post will be research.
What the difference is.
Where the similarities are.
Why that's relevant to me.
I feel as though I hold a contradictory position as a 'Performance Academic'. Performance, at least by the definition of Peggy Phelan, is essentially attached to its disappearance. Performance lives 'in the moment' and any other attempts to capture that 'moment' change it into something other than performance. Kind of like quantum physics. But not really anything like quantum physics.
Academia on the other hand, is dedicated to the storing and generation of knowledge. It's not about the 'moment', it's about how you store, articulate and define whatever happens to/by/from/because of that moment. I think anyway. The first thing I learnt about Performance Studies is that definitions are blurry.
There's some sort of contradiction here. If Academia is about remembrance, and Performance is about forgetting, where does the Performance Academic stand?
Somewhere completely different perhaps.
Or maybe the Performance Academic shouldn't move at all.
Maybe Academia and Performance should move.
If A Tree Falls In The Woods And It's Not Recorded On Social Media Did It Ever Make A Sound?
There's a huge contradiction in how I started with this. With how I started researching performance.
The particular type of performance that I enjoy, I learnt about through academia. Through reading and writing and watching videos of people like
Marina Abramovic,
Bob Flanagan,
Chris Burden,
Vito Acconci,
Robert Wilson,
The Performance Group,
Brian Lobel,
Igor Stromajer.
A bunch of artists who 'do' performance, yet all I know about them is through academia. That's still performance to me. In my memory.
How should I navigate this...
Now I'm blogging about this process. This research process. I'm storing it online, in an internet that takes and spreads everything ever published, storing it everywhere via cookies and internet histories and Timehop and livestreams and Google searches. Once this article is published, for example, it will be everywhere and unable to delete, fully. Unable to forget. Unable to disappear.
Fragments will always exist, somewhere.
The internet (2.0) could be the ultimate archive. Everybody's personal stories stored on social media, or on Dropbox or iCloud.
The internet (2.0) also holds a lot of potential for performance. It's participatory nature is a fertile ground for all kinds of human interaction and theatre.
Not only that, but I feel that the internet, through its remembrance of everything and all things, could teach us more about the beauty of forgetting than forgetting ever may. I hope anyway. Or else my research process is fucked before it's even begun.
This particular blog post will act as my start menu. It hasn't gone in depth, is incredibly scattered, but hopefully it'll be useful.
A lot of what I write probably won't be for You (the reader). In fact, a lot may be for Me (the reader), yet also some of it will be for Me (the writer).
If you're interested in You (the writer) then you can comment. It'll be an open forum for discussing things. Please do actually. It'll help me both validate certain ideas whilst also opening up others.
My next post will be research.
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