Day 1: Thursday, March 29
School of Art, Design & Media, Nanyang Technological University, ADM 3-25
7am-10am CDT-Chicago / 8am-11am EDT-East Coast / 1pm-4pm BST-UK /
2pm-5pm CEDT-Central Europe / 8pm-11pm SGT-Singapore
Being & Connectedness in Telematic Space
Since the 1990s, the Web has sparked live, Internet performance genres including: “desktop theater,” “webcam art,” and “cybernetic performance.” Day 1 of the symposium brings together pioneering Internet artist Annie Abrahams and collaborators performing a new work that explores the various manifestations and contradictions of social interplay, isolation, togetherness, interaction, and alienation in a hyper-connected world. Keynote speaker Maria Chatzichristodoulou will frame the challenges, aspirations of artists exploring, connecting and creating live spaces for telematic art, which as she states, “after the last two decades has witnessed a proliferation of performance practices that unfold not in physical spaces online, but in purpose-built platforms or appropriated virtual environments and worlds.”
8:00pm SGT (Singapore) – Introductions
Randall Packer, Symposium Chair; Vibeke Sorensen, Chair, School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
8:15pm SGT (Singapore) – Keynote
Maria Chatzichristodoulou, Associate Professor in Performance and New Media, London South Bank University, UK
Live Art and Telematics: The Promise of Internationalism
This keynote discusses the work of some of the most well-respected pioneers with a long history of work in the field of telematics. As the use of telematics in art and performance is consistently linked to visions of Marshall McLuhan’s concept of the “global village, where everybody has access to content and entertainment, the keynote will question the outcomes of live art experiments, asking: to what extent have these practices fulfilled their aspiration to connect artists and audiences across geographical boundaries? Have they challenged restrictions placed upon the free circulation of people and ideas, and how have they done so? Have they been able to articulate and dispute geopolitical injustices by advocating for an equitable international platform for collaboration and exchange, where artist and people of ‘first’ and ‘second’ nations cease to exist in hierarchies defined by wealth and poverty?
9:30pm SGT (Singapore) – Live Networked Performance
Online En-semble – Entanglement Training: Directed and performed by Annie Abrahams (FR) with Antye Greie (FI), Helen Varley Jamieson (DE), Soyung Lee (KR), Hương Ngô (US), Daniel Pinheiro (PT), Igor Stromajer (DE), and NTU students.
In this new work by Annie Abrahams and collaborators, they investigate how to be together in a connected world, where machines and humans have to communicate accepting partial overviews, glitches, time-lags, disrupting audience participation and ensuing disorientations. Abrahams considers the intra-active webcam performance situation a good apparatus to train and demonstrate entanglement. They will defy their own and the others’ ideas on performance and online politics in a conversational performance. In order to avoid chit-chat and to get rid of the distracting images of the faces she proposes to converse using objects, prepared phrases and voices. During the performance they create together a changing composition with the objects and improvise a sound environment with their voices and phrases. Because they share the responsibility for the performances’ acoustic and visual appearance it will be interesting to see how they negotiate their individuality and personal thoughts in this environment where they all have equal power. Contradictions, maybe even oppositions, as well as poetry can emerge in this collectively created complexity, where machines facilitate but also prevent. The performers research the limits and possibilities of their own agency in an attempt to be “with” while being separated.
10:00pm SGT (Singapore) – Post-performance Global Roundtable Discussion
Moderators: Randall Packer and Annie Abrahams with collaborators
Day 2: Friday, March 30
LASALLE College of the Arts, Block F, Level 3, Room F309
7am-10am CDT-Chicago / 8am-11am EDT-East Coast / 1pm-4pm BST-UK /
2pm-5pm CEDT-Central Europe / 8pm-11pm SGT-Singapore
Networking the Real and the Fictional
Day 2 features London-based Blast Theory co-founder Matt Adams. Blast Theory is renowned internationally as one of the most adventurous artists’ groups using interactive media, creating groundbreaking new forms of performance and interactive art that mixes audiences across the Internet, site-specific live performance, installation, and digital broadcasting. Blast Theory is made up of Matt Adams, Ju Row Farr and Nick Tandavanitj, who together explore the social and political aspects of technology, drawing on popular culture, storytelling, and games.
8:00pm SGT (Singapore) – Introduction
Steve Dixon, President, LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore
8:15pm SGT (Singapore) – Keynote
Matt Adams: The Here, the Now, the Audience and the Spectator
Matt Adams traces Blast Theory’s history in locative, networked and mixed reality work in the early 2000s through to more recent projects with a strong focus on film. The group’s work is rooted in performance with a strong attention to the here, the now, the audience and the spectator. As the Internet has caused these distinct categories to blur and merge, Blast Theory have created works to explore the limits and possibilities of these new forms. Matt will show excerpts from two projects, I’d Hide You (2012) and My One Demand (2015) to explore the ramifications.
9:30pm SGT (Singapore) – Global Roundtable Discussion
Moderators: Maria Chatzichristodoulou and Steve Dixon
Day 3: Saturday, March 31
School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Dept of Performance, Performance Space 012 (Columbia Bldg basement)
10am-1pm CDT-Chicago / 11am-2pm EDT-East Coast / 4pm-7pm BST-UK /
5pm-8pm CEDT-Central Europe / 11pm-2am SGT-Singapore
igaies (intimate glitches across internet errors)
Day 3 features a new collaborative performance that connects the Noise and New Media communities in Chicago to Singapore and the world. Chicago, referred to as the “birthplace of dirty new media,” a movement that has spawned the international GLI.TC/H Festivals and other assorted hactivist events and DIY workshops, is the location for Day 3 of the Art of the Networked Practice Online Symposium. This event unites an international network of practitioners and theorists in a live streaming performance event and dialogue, a discourse and exposition on glitch as an artistic genre that embraces collaboration, community, performance, and social practices.
10:00am CDT (Central Daylight Time/US) – Introduction
Jon Cates, Associate Professor Film, Video, and New Media, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, US
10:15am CDT (Central Daylight Time/US) – Live Networked Performance
igaies: Directed and performed by Jon Cates (US) with Roberto Sifuentes (US), Arcángel Constantini (MX), Shawné Michaelain Holloway (US), 愛真 Janet Lin (US) & Paula Pinho Martins Nacif (UK) (XXXtraPrincess)
igaies (“Leaders” in greek) stands for intimate glitches across internet errors. This performance event is intended to be a series of small miraculous mistakes, moments of beautiful brokenness, redefining Glitch Art through participatory networks and gestures. The work connects a media installation at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with a performance from Mexico. Together they simultaneously perform a networked collage of actions: Roberto Sifuentes, with leeches being ritualistically applied to his body; Jon Cates live glitching with video cameras trained on Sifuentes’ gestures; Arcángel Constantini, Mexico City, drawing on petri dishes producing live Noise soundscapes; SHAWNÉ MICHAELAIN HOLLOWAY’s hashtagged performance takes place asynchronously in private spaces; XXXTRAPRINCESS’ (愛真 Janet Lin and Paula Pinho Martins Nacif) generate hashtagged social media streams; and local & online attendees live tweet / glitch / remix the performance in realtime.
11:30am CDT (Central Daylight Time/US) – Post-performance Global Roundtable Discussion
Moderators: Jon Cates and Roberto Sifuentes with collaborators
12:30pm CDT (Central Daylight Time/US) – Closing
Randall Packer, Symposium Chair