Josephine, Helen, and all,

A personal performance experience regarding net_lag:
Annie Abrahams and I are preparing for a live telepresence duet. We 
will repeatedly perform a short phrase ("love") from U2's "Till The 
End of the World" for an undetermined duration. She is in France, and 
I am in the US, but the server connecting us is in France. So my 
delay is several seconds and her delay is shorter.

Preparing for the performance brings to mind Pauline Oliveras's "Deep 
Listening" CD. Oliveras (playing accordion) + a vocalist + a sheet 
metal percussionist improvise music in a giant underground metal 
chamber. There is a long 15-second echo in the chamber. The 
performance varies greatly not only depending on where the musicians 
are located physically in relation to each other in the chamber, but 
depending on where the recording microphones are placed within the 
chamber. Oliveras observes that in addition to playing their own 
instruments, each of the musicians is also playing a shared second 
instrument -- the chamber itself.

The net lag in our performance feels like that -- in a sense we are 
playing the network (or the Atlantic Ocean) itself. I am playing a 
Rhodes electric piano, and the pace of my playing falls into a kind 
of delayed, wobbly arhythimic synch with my own lag time from the 
net, a lag which itself occasionally hiccups and shifts. Oddly 
enough, only we performers "feel" this delay (because there is a 
differential between our "local real-time" input, and the net's 
mediated output). But those watching on the net will not have our 
same experience. Annie will be performing in a gallery in France 
where the net projection will be shown, and I will be performing at a 
gallery in the US where the net projection will be shown. We could 
stage these gallery spaces so that there was no audio bleed-over 
between our live input and the net-lagged output in the space. This 
would be the hermetically sealed approach. It would overcome the 
"failure" of the technology, and in so doing it would conceptually 
fail at inviting in these multiple scales of time.

At first, we had this wild (incorrect) idea that someone watching the 
performance live via the net in London would experience a different 
mix than someone watching the performance live via the net in Tokyo. 
This would be truly and wonderfully freaky -- if our individual 
broadcasts were time-lagged separately and only reached the viewer 
based on the different distances between the US, France, and wherever 
the viewer was. A kind of geographical remix via triangulation. But 
of course a single server broadcasts a single discrete mix of both of 
us from France.

I am reminded of this scene from Yellow Submarine:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=creY6fQ4WYI
And Serra/Holt's "Boomerang":
http://www.ubu.com/film/serra_boomerang.html

Best,
Curt



At 12:22 PM +0300 9/8/09, helen varley jamieson wrote:
>lag/delay in live internet performance can introduce 'difficulties' 
>but it's a feature of the landscape - even on the best connections 
>it can occur, at random; & we have found that it is also an 
>important verifier of the liveness of an event. i think the only 
>time i've experienced a totally lag-free cyberformance was when 
>avatar body collision performed at the virtual minds congress 
>(bremen, 2004) & afterwards people were questioning whether the live 
>web cams were in fact live, or prerecorded video. when we assured 
>them that it was all live, people then asked why did we risk doing 
>it live, when it looked like it had been pre-recorded.
>
>random lag can be really frustrating but it also heightens suspense, 
>tension & liveness; & the 'normal' delay of the internet can be 
>played with, for instance in layering of images, or creating a 
>different sense of rhythm & timing.
>
>h : )
>
>Josephine Bosma wrote:
>>dear Sarah and other Crumbs,
>>
>>
>>Just some thoughts...
>>
>>Since the discussion is going in many different directions I 
>>decided to look back at your initial call and theme, which is in 
>>the subject line of this mail. Am I mistaking when I think this 
>>topic is first and foremost not so much about time, but about 
>>presence, access and connectivity? I have always found this aspect 
>>the most intriguing issue in art using any kind of electronic 
>>media, because of the sensitivity and vulnerability involved. In 
>>this area one time aspect appears that was not mentioned here yet, 
>>and this is delay. Delay is of special importance in decentralized 
>>performance. I remember how VRML and sound performance Adrift by 
>>Helen Thorington and Fakeshop between Vienna and New York in 1997 
>>was difficult because of it. I am not sure how and if it is of 
>>influence in 'decentralized' installations, like for instance in 
>>Atau Tanaka's Global String.
>>
>>Delay only really matters in case of actual real-time experiences; 
>>there are also real-time simulations. The beauty of all media 
>>(print included) is of course the possibility of some sort of 
>>presence despite of distance. In the 19th century the museum's 
>>reach for example was expanded through the publication of 
>>photographs and collector's albums and magazines. A very 
>>interesting text about photography/reproduction and the artworld is 
>>the PhD of Friedrich Tietjen, which was not published as a book yet 
>>as far as I know. Radio, TV and Internet create a much stronger 
>>sense of real-time presence though, which can feel very real even 
>>when faked. I think of for instance Debra Solomon's project 
>>'The_Living' in which she combined chat-performances with fake 
>>webcam input of her and her keyboard under water, on a bicycle, or 
>>on a boat in an Amsterdam canal. It took a while before her 
>>audience realized one could connect a video camera/player to the 
>>webcam input quite easily. This theatrical side of electronic media 
>>(think also of War of the Worlds or in some ways the Truman Show) 
>>is well known and discussed, like in Zizek's text about the Matrix. 
>>It undermines a sense of reality, and thus of engagement. I like 
>>very much how questions of presence, the tension between local and 
>>distant interaction, and the importance of intimacy/closeness for 
>>an experience of reality can be investigated and displayed through 
>>the theme of Real-Time. I hope some of you can share some nice 
>>examples of exhibitions or artworks that explore these topics. 
>>Technical issues are most welcome to hear about too... ;-)