After reading chapters from The Audiovisual Breakthrough (Fluctuating Images, 2015), I find that live audiovisual performance is defined as time-based, media-based, and performative “contemporary artistic expressions of live manipulated sound and image”.1 It heavily focuses on improvisation: contents are captured and presented simultaneously while an action is happening and the use of technology allows for realtime production. It is a generic, broad term that extends to all manner of audiovisual performative expressions, including practices such as VJing, live cinema, expanded cinemas, and visual music.2 It is inclusive because it also covers specific works that fit within neither of the particular expressions mentioned above, and “does not comprise a specific style, technique, or medium”.3 We are able to find “complex dynamics between the presence of the artists and the meaning for the final result presented to the audience”.4
Live cinema according to Mia Makela is similar to VJing but is being shown in a setting such as “a museum or theater”.5 However, it is more conceptual than the VJing context and suggests “instantaneous feedback between the creator and the public”.6 Live cinema can be developed with loose, linear narratives, and is of “extensive freedom of configuration” and thus suggests “improvised, free-flowing abstractions”.7 Artists such as Toby Harris employs “continuity within and between episodes [in live cinema], invite[s] the audience to construct narrative and cultural critique”.8 Live cinema asks for appreciative audiences from whom there arises “in-the-moment awareness, responsiveness and expression”.9 I see an interesting hierarchy is formed among various live audiovisual performance styles: artists agree on live cinema being “in essence artistic,” and therefore can be set apart from VJing. Unlike VJs who follow popular trends so as to seek simple but effective audiovisual experience in more commercial circumstances (such as club environments), live cinema takes place in “a place equivalent to that of film auteurs, whose goals ‘appear to be more personal and artistic,'” and asks for more conceptual feedback from the audience.10
VJ
This is a typical VJ performance whose audio and visual are manipulated in real-time, designed for club environments. There aren’t any specific deep meanings to the audio or visual, but they together form a “cool,” “high” audience experience.
Live Cinema
This is a live cinema show by Writer Duncan Macmillan, director Katie Mitchell, and video director Leo Warner. They use basically all the settings that cinema/film production needs to produce the work. It is a narrative about The Forbidden Zone, which asks audiences to sit down and appreciate it just like watching a film. The visual effects are all manipulated in real-time. Compared to the VJing example above, it’s quite obvious that live cinema performance is more thoughtful and artistic.
Live Audiovisual Performance
This is a Kinect light audiovisual performance by Robert Henke. It is achieved by live light projection that is responsive to the designed audio. It is abstract, conceptual, providing an immersive experience at its own flow.
Reference
1. Carvalho Ana, “Live Audiovisual Performance,” in The Audiovisual Breakthrough (Fluctuating Images, 2015), 131.
2. Carvalho, 135.
3. Carvalho, 131.
4. Carvalho, 133.
5. Menotti, Gabriel, “Live Cinema,” in The Audiovisual Breakthrough (Fluctuating Images, 2015), 85.
6. Menotti Gabriel, 87.
7. Menotti, 87.
8. Menotti, 89.
9. Menotti, 91.
10:. Menotti, 93.