2/16/03

A: Face projections:

Videos of different faces projected on Al’s live face (We had to cover the face up to get a good projection surface, in this performance we used a hat)

These face projections will function in several ways.

1: They highlighted the way that Al is moving through different users (or rather, the users are moving through her). Her body becomes a vessel, an empty container, a body without organs.
2: They displace a “unified” body image. We created a kind of face-machine, something nomadic, changing, constantly unfolding.
3: You get the “one and many.” This live body situates the image. It is static. The projections create movement, multiplicity, flow. This breaks down the dichotomy of “one” and “multiple” that D&G always talk about. YOU CAN HAVE BOTH.

Logistics:
1: What kind of text should these faces say? This was a question of cohesion within the show. The faces were talking about their faces. This addes another dimension of self-reflexivity, sure. But the distortions of their faces, when placed on top of Al's, created another performance of self-perception. It worked. I don't know how it worked, but it worked.
3: Getting actors? People on the street (no… we needed good sound quality) We ended up getting NYU actors, some of Al's friends from Northwestern. Not many people showed up, but I don't think it mattered. The section only lasted for 2-3 minutes. The faces cut fast between characters.

B: Interactive interface:

Online users drew and their images were projected on the stage in real time. This interface was supposed to allow users to translate text into form. This is an important translation for us (had it actually worked during the show). Just as the performance translates text into bodies, the interface should be strikingly different from the textually driven forum. It should be a DIFFERENT kind of creative space. Well, as you can see. The picture's not pretty and neither was the execution. We're still stumped as to how to make the drawing interface function during the show.

1: draw
a : moving text

C: Technology as a mirror:

1: By manipulating Al’s realtime image, the mirror becomes distorted… Thereby rendering technology an imperfect mirror. This was a stretch. It didn't seem to make any sense. I kept reading response after response from users with the overwhelming feeling that everyone was trying to SEE, I mean really, see themselves. They were writing into themselves, not simply as a way to reveal themselves. Unfortunately, this idea was lost in the show. It made for a decent visual, but the idea (which is good) just evaporated.

2: The camera is POWER. It’s a question of WHO is controlling the image. Laura Mulvey analyzes the scopophilic nature of cinema as well as the voyeuristic pleasure in looking, claiming female spectators must take on a male identity in order to participate and obtain pleasure.

Pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure, which is styled accordingly... man is reluctant to gaze at his exhibitionist like. Hence the split between spectacle and narrative supports the man's role as the active one of advancing the story, making things happen. (Mulvey, 116)

Mulvey’s criticism of Hollywood film does not implicate film as a technology but as a representation, an iteration of the visible. The camera becomes the singular universal eye, the culmination of what an audience wants to see. Mulvey’s notion of masculine pleasure and the gaze are firmly entrenched in ways of seeing, not limited to the film technologies that reveal and instantiate these cultural constructions. The camera magnifies the subject/object relationship by aggressively manipulating the image to suit what the spectator wants to see. The spectatorial eye of the theater audience is still guided and controlled by the staging, spotlight technologies, and microphones. Many ‘live’ performances aggressively manipulate what the audience sees in the same way that the camera does.

3: The image WANTS to be looked. (Think about Auslander and live concerts with video technology). It’s a question of liveness. How does the live performer COMPETE with the image?

D: Online communities as therapeutic. This integrates several concepts of Epithelium.

1: interrogations: We asked so many people to explain themselves. Some of them answered honestly. Some didn’t. But there was an interrogative element to our structure and we wanted to acknowledge it. There was also a confessional nature to the way people told of anything (and everything) about themselves. In the picture above, of the first show in Chicago, we tried to get at this notion by using the frame of a therapy session. Failure. Failure. I was asking Al questions. The questions came faster and faster. As did the answers. But somehow, the notion of interrogation just didn't get across. It looked like Al and I were going crazy up there.

2: Translation: In a way, by translating user responses… we are interpreting dreams. Taking bits of data, images, words and constructing desire. This desire isn’t connected to a subject. It’s desire-as-immanence. An unfolding. Not universal desire, but an energy, a flow.

3: mental illness: This gets a little complicated. Does Al become a schizo when switching between different characters during the performance? Is she a nomadic subject?