Why digital art performances suck...
I'm not in a very nice mood, sorry, but it's because I have just been to a digital art performance which despite all it's promises left me rather disappointed - once again. Several experiences with digital art has led me to believe that many digital art performances suck, because:
1) The designer(s) is more in love with making concrete a concept than with creating content
2) The designer bases hirs "non-linear" performance/story on a random proces taking place in a virtual world/programme etc, which is completely invisible to the viewer of the piece
3) ..as is the causal relationship between what goes on in the storygenerating space and what goes on in the storyoutput space
4) because 2+3 is not accounted for visually or symbolically in the storyoutput space, the designer has to write or produce a lot of supplementary text to explain what makes things happen during the performance
5) and this text is necessary, since if you don't know that it is a very elaborate concept etc that lies behind what you are watching, you would think that what you are watching/"taking part in" is linear, non-random and fairly chaotic
6) the text that is the result of 4) most often fails in explaining the concept and what makes things happen because the artist(s) is not a trained pedagogue, nor a well trained speaker/writer and hence hir is not really able to make his ideas clear to the layman, hirs audience.
7) thus, although the performance concept might be really original, it rarely results in performances/stories :
which are interacting with the audience and making clear to them why things happen
which are worthwhile repeating or watching more than once
which are generating content which makes you think that this was a great piece of work even several days after you watched the thing

Yes, I confess: I want content, I want conceptual clarity, I want more than neat 3-D pictures and a high-brow script of metaphilosofical musings or mundane observations disguised as art - and I believe it should be possible to produce digital texts which are able to meet my requirements.

But nevertheless, you might think that Hotel Pro Forma's/Cross Cross'/Morten Søndergårds Site Seeing Zoom is breaking new ground. It runs in "Kanonhallen" in Copenhagen for the next couple of weeks. The soundscape is really nice and the concept of the crossed screens is cool, so if you like immersive soundscapes and cool pictures you can cicrle around, go. If you buy my arguments above, don't.





# posted by Lisbeth at: 18:26