Re: Alternative performance devices

[tad <tad@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 5/29/03 at 2:55 PM, Michael Arnold Mages <marnoldm@xxxxxx> wrote:

> -- where (culturally speaking) the performers maintain a degree
> of authority even in less structured or participatory listening
> situations --

Michael-

Are you suggesting here there performers need to (re)assert this
authority with the audience at each performance? Aren't there tacit
roles that artist and audience enact in the performance of a particular
genre? (Or flout in violation of...)

> It is difficult to maintain visual contact with an audience
> while staring intently at the screen.

What do you see as the value of visual contact?

> Doesn't playing a laptop induce the same degree of
> audience-performer separation, and the same performative
> spectacle as playing a guitar?

I'm not sure what you're saying here; it came after Wooten's comment
about feeling disabled behind a drum kit.

Are you saying that a laptop introduces the same "disabling" separation
as the drum kit? And are you saying that a laptop performance is
theatrically (I don't like "spectacle" in this context) equivalent to a
guitar performance?

Best,

Tad

<tad@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>