Electronic communications technologies enhancing real-time performance (Non peer reviewed) Melanie Knight-Smith ABSTRACT
				Arts technology, what most people mean by multimedia today, is a relatively new and unevolved with respect to performance within the arts. Great fun and great potential but, with very few exceptions, barely out of the canned presentation and cartoon stage, however, current Performance Multimedia has deep historical roots. It undoubtedly evolved from ritual multimedia, which emerged during the dawn of human intelligence. Singing, chanting, natural/crafted/invented sound instruments, dancing, body painting, painting on cave walls and animal skins, costumes, found and created symbolic sculptures, pantomime, light and shadows of dawn, and fire were most likely found in many combinations in the ceremonies of our most distant ancestors. All of those elements existed alone or in combination throughout the historical development of multimedia forms. And they’re still with us today. All that’s changed is the technology for the electronic arts of sound and light and the styles of expression and production. The original technology remains intact and possibly even more powerful because we’ve had eons to practice. In the twentieth century electronic media are supporting a transformation of musical identity. Telephone, radio, film, television, the computer and now its integration as "multimedia" has dreconfigure words, sounds and images so as to cultivate new configurations of musicality. This phenomena is not just specific to music, it has embraced the arts as a whole. However the current problems with the integration of technologies and the arts is the large aspect of indeterminacy concerning its use. In the artistic performance arena for example, this indeterminacy takes shape as a lack of coherent agreement about the significance of technology and its use. These issues also concern the artists as well as the technologists wishing to integrate the 2 mediums. For example, if there is a shift from the traditional music technology influenced music in performance, jazz music, and the arts, to what extent does this take form in the agenda of an artist's career? The questions this transformation poses are as basic as they are urgent: What kind of musical culture will now take shape? And what are the implications of these changes for a musician’s career life? Basically, how does an artist combine their evolving practise with respect to the type of technology they use? February 1998 a group of performance artists met at the Academy of Performing Arts to begin a Master of Arts course. Although sharing nothing in common in the way of artistic style they all made use of one thing - the Internet. It is the priority of this research group to discover how the technology can harness each particular area to create a new breed of performance artist. For musical artists within the Conservatorium new electronic communications technologies will significantly enhance a new type of real-time performance artist. We will be using animated performance tools with the incorporation of real-time communication technologies to explore this aesthetic. Contact Details Melanie Ann Knight-Smith Computer Engineer Faculty of Science, Technology and Engineering Edith Cowan University 2 Bradford Street, Mount Lawley 6050 Phone: (08) 9370 6116 Fax: (08) 9370 6311 Email: m.knight_smith@cowan.edu.au Return to top