Search results
performance (planning, design, production and performance). This process is informed by insights from the commissioners of the performance, the artists, their collaborators and the participants. Prior to my field research, I was able to identify some of the actant-mediators in A Machine To See With and make the necessary preparations to observe them. However, several other actant-mediators emerged through my observations of several iterations of the performance, my own participation, and the interviews that I conducted with participants, artists and collaborators
through online cloud computing, video conferencing and real-time online collaboration. All of these factors facilitate new modes of participation. Performance art events provide a way of analysing the effect of such technologies on contemporary urban living without pre-empting their participatory outcome. They reveal multiple modes of participation that are influenced by the translation of the artistic narrative by the participant, but also by the emerging assemblage of expected and unexpected actants. These do not necessarily fit in with the digital introversion
mysterious. From this point onwards, you are engaged in a narrative that will challenge your perception of the city and how you interact with it (and within it) through a digitally mediated narrative conveyed to your mobile phone. The following section is a description of my experience as a participant in Blast Theory’s performance art project A Machine To See With , which took place during the Brighton Digital Festival in September 2011. The extracts that follow are part of the script (Blast Theory, 2011a ) that was specifically adapted for Brighton’s urban space and
citizens from oppressive machines. Instead, performance art probes, disassembles and reassembles the machines that constitute the city while demanding active interpretation. In this reflective journey through performance, unforeseen assemblages emerge between incongruous actants, which in turn generate narratives that are much richer than any forms of technocentric narratives. Some of these narratives extend beyond the performance itself, and into quotidian urban life: a beer mat becomes a prop for an intense conversation between a participant and a bystander; a
, fallibilism and experiential learning provides a necessary counterpoint to agonistic theory, pointing scholars towards more generative ways of thinking about difference in democratic life. For Dewey, engagement across difference is important because it provides experiences that help people to test and revise their assumptions about the world; people learn from the experience of negotiating conflicting ideas and values and this in turn produces new political opportunities. A scholarly focus on contextualised experience surfaces concerns that preoccupy political participants
the experience of the assemblage of media, performance and participation defines contemporary urban living. I adopt an open-ended definition of performance art, generally described as live performances that combine ‘diverse disciplines and media’, with the use of provocation as a strategy to respond to change – ‘whether … political … or cultural, or dealing with issues of current concern’ – and that are capable of triggering reflection in the participant (Goldberg, 1998 : 12, 13). Such projects define participants as performers, whose ‘responses to an art work are
issues using GPS as a positioning system in Can You See Me Now? ( 2001 ), they decided to ask street participants in Uncle Roy All Around You ( 2003 ), to self-report their location through the handheld computers given to them. As I described in Chapter 1 , some of the participants sought to take advantage of this technological constraint by reporting their location ahead of their arrival, enabling them to ‘get information in advance’ from the online players (Benford et al., 2004 ). Nine years later in 2011 – at a time when locative media-enabled mobile phones
quandaries, many activists are able to resolve their tensions. The different ways in which they do so can be isolated into main tendencies, but such classification illustrates some of the basic diversities (and incompatibilities) between participants of the British environmental movement. The chapter is structured into four parts. It begins with an appraisal of the attitudes to technology espoused by environmentalists, then more specifically explores their views on CMC and their understandings of the environmental consequences of computer usage; the third part of the
of potential benefits, the main themes being enhanced well-being and reduced distress and stress (Eime et al., 2013a ). In a more recent review of the social and psychological health outcomes of team sports, the most frequently reported participant outcomes were emotional social support, sense of belonging, higher self-esteem, social networks and social interaction (Andersen
The first theme identified relates to the ‘vital human need’ of access to space to grow food for self-sufficiency and sustenance. The practicality and its effect on household nutrition (Ober Allen et al., 2008), food access (Crush et al., 2011; Zezza and Tasciotti, 2010) and self-sufficiency (Mok et al., 2014) cannot be ignored. A participant from Chan et al. highlights the importance of this after Hurricane Sandy (2015): 25 26 Urban gardening and the struggle for justice Praccality Injusces Feeding families ‘sustenance’ through self-sufficiency. Food