Liveness- Performance in a mediated culture
On the subject between Theatre and media, Auslander debated about whether they are rivals or partners. Despite much frowned on the idea of using media is not a live performance for some people, Auslander argues that media has influence live performance and vice versa. "Television translates previous forms (theatre, film, radio) and recombines them”(Dienst 1994) Originally television performance and setting is based on theatre setting, and comedies were often shown in a live audience. So it is as if one are sitting in a theatre with a room full of people, but only in actuality one is sitting in the comforts of one's own home.
Auslander went in and argues in modern times, it is hard to see a live performance without some form of mediatization, for example, amplifiers of some sort. MTV unplugged, I believed it happens in the early 90s, change the format of live performance by "emulating mediated representations, and have become second hand recreations of themselves as refracted through mediatization.
Susan sontag contrasts theatre and film by asserting that whereas “theatre is confined to a logical or continuous use of space, cinema …. has access to an alogical or discontinuous use of space."
As the instance of film, I believe it would be hard to argue it is a live performance. I have been working in film shoots, and I have to say the performers are still live performaning in front of a rather large crew. It is only filmed in different angles and a lot of other effects before showing in cinema. So when one goes to the cinema, one let down your guards and in a dark room, one is transcend to the world the director's mind of his or her world.
In class, even some of my fellow peers still believe that theatre is much superior than digitized theatre, and mediatized theatre is much outcast. They argue that they are still in a different form, I would only agree if all theatres are still doing in shakesphere globe, and there are no microphones and actors or actress have to say their lines on the top of their lungs, and it is performed in daylight with no sorts of lighting effect. I have been doing photography since the 1990s. I was in the analogue age, I still think that film has a quality that cannot be replicated. And I don't like digitized image that much, but I can't deny that in the commercial world, it is more practical to use digitized film for the clients. Especially the campaign only runs a short time, and reduces its cost. I also do not like too much CG on screen, they look like illustrations, so much so like using too much photoshop, every person looks like wax figures. But I do find a good thing with digitized theatre now, it adds a new element and I like theatre with the right amount of mediatization. Of course anything overdone will not work. For example, I think the play "Curious incident of the dead dog at night" has a subperb execution as it was illustrating the boy's inner turmoil of his mind, whereas the play "wonder.land" was a big disappointment for me, especially I loved the alice in wonderland story, and I think everyone who went there as a Lewis Carroll fan, the projection was used unnecessarily, the graphics, I see they spent a lot of time in the animation, meaning a lot of money is spent, at the background is not even doing anything and is absolutely dull. I really do not know why they have make that choice to be that way, even the interactive exhibition is absolutely no good.
In conclusion, I think as a designer, one has to think really carefully when or when not to use mediatization, and use accordingly. I do also believe lighting and sound effects are equally important. Personally I have never really been a theatre person before and prefer film, because I am more into submerging myself into a different world, a fourth dimension, as the same with video games on a quest. I have no interest in a play with no lighting or sound and have actors performing in a simple set, but I prefer to see plays with a lot of transformation, whether using mechanical rotation or rigging or mediatization. Depending on the play, I think the right amount if suited will do the trick.
Quotes from the book
Theatre and the media: rivals or partners. at the level of cultural economy, theatre (and live performance generally) and the mass media that our current cultural formation is saturated with, and dominated by, mass media representations in general, and television in particular. Television not only remediates not only live performance but film, in a way that film has never remediated television. Although television was originally dependent on cinematic technology for its own reproduction, the advent of videotape liberated television and gave it the means of transforming film into a televisual discourse to the point that, by now, much of our experience of “film” is actually a televisual experience. Television translates previous forms (theatre, film, radio) and recombines them”(Dienst 1994)
-Susan sontag contrasts theatre and film by asserting that whereas “theatre is confined to a logical or continuous use of space, cinema …. has access to an alogical or discontinuous use of space.
-the irony that whereas tv initially sought to replicate and, implicitly, to replace live theatre, live performance itself has developed since that time toward the replication of the discourse of mediatizstion. the multiple ways in which live performance now endeavours to replicate tv, video and film, and to incorporate digital media.
-Mtv unplugged, to the extent that live performances now emulate mediated representations, they have become second hand recreations of themselves as refracted
through mediatization.
- conclusion- almost all live performances now incorporate the technology of reproduction, at the very least in the use of electric amplifiation, and sometimes to the point where they are hardly live at all. Some live performances are shaped to the demands of of mediatization. madonna and Beauty and the beast live performance recreate mediated performance in a live settingin many instances, the incursion of the mediated into the live has followed a particular historical pattern. Initially, the mediated form is modelled on the live form, but it eventually usurps the live form’s position in the cultural economy.
-Since the late 1940s, live theatre has become increasingly like television and other mediated cultural forms. To the extent that live performances now emulate mediated representations, they have become second-hand recreations of themselves as refracted through mediatization (p.183)Some rock fans do insist that live music is authentic in a way that recorded music is not, the relationship of live and mediated performances in rock culture was never a relation of opposition in which the live was seen as authentic and the recorded as inauthentic. Rather, authenticity was produced through a dialectical or symbiotic relationship between live and mediated representations of the music, in which neither the recording nor the live concert can be perceived as authentic in and of itself. MtV unplugged- with the emphasis on liveness and acoustic musicianship- and the strategic awarding of grammys enable the industry to simulate the ideological distinctions on which rock culture is based, thus maintaining its power as the arbiter of those distinctions.
-Auslunder view of cultural economy holds that at any given historical moment, there are dominant forms that enjoy much greater cultural presence, prestige, and power than other forms. Non dominant forms will tend to become more like the dominant ones but not the other way round at present, television is the dominant cultural form. Since tv usurped the theatre’s position n the cultural economy, theatre has become more like tv. But has tv gone on to become more like theatre-as-tv? the relationship between live and the mediatized is volatile and subject to significant change over time, as is the definition of liveness itself..