Hi Victoria (and all),

> *Can non-human entities perform?  *

Down the AI rabbit/robot-hole this one goes (again, and again). Such dialogue always turns on the difficulty of nailing down what "human" is (you'd think we'd know by now, being human and all). So even though it seems like folks are proceeding in rational dialogue about some universally agreed upon topic, we always wind up implicitly asserting what we each suspect human-ness is. Turing was wise enough to sidestep this quagmire early on by choosing to focus on behaving human-like (sussing seems-ness) rather than focusing on "being" human (sussing essence). So, is performance "seeming" or "being?" Some have said that theater is seeming and performance art is being.

Derrida (sorry, can't help it) got into this issue with Searle regarding JL Austin's attempted marginalization of promises made by actors during a theater performance. Were such theatrical promises "serious" or "non-serious." Were they performative or merely constantive (or some third-order thing). Does risk in perfornace somehow prove authenticity, immediate presence, aura, human-ness? Interesting that the initial reason algorithms failed the turing test was their inability to lie. Can an algorithm improvise stand-up comedic timing based on its affective reading of live audience cybernetic feedback loops? And who would be the judge of its success? An audience of humans? An audience of algorithms?

Thorny topics indeed.


> *Does performance require an audience?*

I will bite at this!

Below is something I posted on the CRUMB list in 2009, I beleive in the context of time and performance. It is also here, with some other things:
http://www.nictoglobe.com/new/articles/cloninger_continua.html

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A Taxonomical Continuum of "Artist/Audience" Relationships

 To look at art through the filter of time is to ask "when?" To look at art through the filter of media is to ask "how?" To look at art through the filter of concept is to ask "what?" and "why?" To look at art through the filter of control is to implicitly ask "who?" Of course all these questions/lenses are related to and ineluctably imply each other. Here I am interested in the "who?" question, particularly because it seems the question most pre-supposed and less critically analyzed, particularly when discussing "gallery/museum" art. It is a question of anthropology (and ethology, and systems theory) that quickly leads into contested areas.

 Below is an attempt to perspicaciously think about art it in terms of "artist mode" (whatever that may mean) and "audience mode" (whatever that may mean). This thinking eventually leads into areas that arguably lie outside of "art," but which nevertheless may prove useful in developing a critical vocabulary with which to recognize and discuss certain moves in contemporary art. I come up with a taxonomical continuum that runs something like this:

 

1. single human artist making art for an audience of several other humans:

Sums up most gallery art, but also a lot of network art. Duchamp rightly points out that all art is a collaboration between artist and audience, but he is still presuming and trying to expand this one-to-many Beaux Arts model.

 

2. several human artists/participants/users making art for an audience of several other humans:

Sums up all collectives and much "interactive" art.

 

3. single or multiple human artist(s) orchestrating/contextualizing input from natural/cultural sources for an audience of several other humans:

Encompasses most of the rest of "new media" art, whether visualizing source input from earthquake tremors or google searches or whatever. cf: mattburnettpaintings.com , brianderosia.com

 

Beyond these three, it gets less orthodox:

 

4. single or multiple human artists making art for an audience of themselves:

Theoretically this is Kaprow's Happenings, but there were always onlookers, and documentation was taken of the events to show to a future "audience" of non-participants, thus situating Happenings more properly under #2 above. Some "art brut" work fits here.

 

5. single human artist marking art for an audience of another single human:

Theoretically, this is patron-commissioned art, but the pope wasn't the only one to see Michelangelo's work. Some forms of craft and gift-giving fit here.

 

6. single human artist making art for an audience of God/angels/demons:

Perhaps Henry Darger, arguably very early Howard Finster, much art we'll never know about.

 

7. single human artist making art for an audience of non-humans:

St. Francis preached to the birds. The monks of Iona preached to the seals. A bit more theatrically contrived but still related, ( St. Joseph preached to the hare) and ( the wolf ).

 

8. single human artist making art for a presumed but unknown audience of humans/non-humans:

On Kawara's date work seems to want to fit here [theoretically], but it doesn't since he has a dealer and knows it. Danny Hillis/Brian Eno's "Clock of the Long Now" fits here ( ).

 

9. non-human "artist(s)" (the flux, systems, "nature") making art for an audience of several humans:

This might be called simply (cf: "the world." . This video is obviously a critique of conceptual art, but the actual "work" featured seems to fit into this category.) Robert Smithson's writing touches on this kind of work. A human curator/contextualizer/intentional_observer becomes crucial to bring the "work" to "light."

 

10. non-human "artist(s)" making art for an audience of non-humans:

If-a-tree-falls-in-the-forest-and-no-one-sees-it art. Heidegerrian zuhandenheit (ready-to-hand) art; or more properly, Graham Harman-esque "tool being" art (cf: http://lab404.livejournal.com/55271.htmland http://www.turbulence.org/Works/itspace/ ). Latourean networks (weather systems, the interweb "itself"). Theoretically, but probably not, www.viewingspace.com/genetics_culture/pages_genetics_culture/gc_w05/cohen_h.htm

 

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This continuum presumes the myth of the dividuated human self. Once that myth breaks down, once "individual human" is understood to be merely a matter of scale -- individual human as a conflux of sub-systems (circulatory, respiratory, etc.) participating in larger macro-systems (economy, family, ecology, etc.) -- once we make for ourselves Bodies without Organs, then the above continuum becomes even more fluid.

I propose this cursory continuum not to codify anything, but hopefully to open things up. Theory is useful not because it canonically freezes things, but because it slows down the raw chaotic flux of every undifferentiated thing enough to begin to reveal contours that may be useful to a practice.

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Best,
Curt