The following review is courtesy of Paul Herwig and Jennifer Ilse, Co-Artistic Directors of Off-Leash Area
Paul Herwig
Technically the production was really impressive, but the performance side of the production was not engaging to me. Maybe that was a self-conscious choice?
Jennifer Ilse
Yes, technically it was truly fantastic, and not just technologically, not just the dazzling pizzaz of computer images, but the way it was integrated with the performance of the live actors. But, also, yes - the characters & situations were largely based on the latest stereotypes by the political left. As a person on the political left myself, I wasn’t given anything new to discover, neither broader viewpoints nor deeper explorations of the familiar.
Paul
Yes, I think it’s universally accepted that strangers having access to our personal lives is dangerous, but there was no deeply felt threat in the situations that were presented. On a human level isn’t being helplessly absorbed, abused, and spat out by the information age horrible and terrifying?
Jennifer
Yes, the production was sort of high-end technical art “light” - but still exceptionally accomplished. Perhaps this is exactly what they were trying to do, but I couldn’t help but search for something deeper emotionally or intellectually due to the mere subject matter.
Paul
The production’s promotional image that I saw of a character standing in the midst of what seemed to be a three-dimensional digital environment was really exciting to me, something I could place myself inside of with my imagination, but on the stage everything was very flat: the staging, the actual scenic design, and the theatricality.
Jennifer
Hmm - yeah, the difficulty I see in merging live performance with media is that performance can be really strong for all the reasons we love live performance, which can make the media visuals seem disconnected and flat. The Builders Association perhaps chose to eliminate many of the aspects of engaging live performance in order to have the two, media and live performance, meet at a more centralized point, which in this show created an effect of the performers seeming like mere 2-D images in a 2-D environment, and so very integrated. Perhaps that itself is a statement about the subject matter - the reduction of humans to mere bits of 2-D data.
Paul
For me this production was clearly the most successful example of merging live 3-D performers and 2-D screen media that I’ve seen, but in the end I felt the production’s point of view didn’t transcend its devices.
Jennifer
All right, a summary then! See the show if you want to see what is touring on the leading edge of multi-media performance work and want a truly unique visual experience, and perhaps other audience members would disagree, but the content wasn’t challenging in itself nor was it presented in a way that may leave the audience thinking or feeling different about the world of electronic data we live in.
Off-Leash Area: Contemporary Performance Works is an interdisciplinary, physically based performance company in Minneapolis…< a href=”http://www.offleasharea.org”>
In terms of transcending technology, I think it’s fair to say that this was _not_ the point. The technology itself and the transparency of how the performance was being conducted and synthesized, with computers and video cameras etc..., was put before the audience with the “work desk” area. The fact that the “control room” and “staging areas” were in front of the audience, made me comfortably aware of the process being conducted.
The beautiful imagery associated with promotion of the performance (http://media.walkerart.org/3153600.jpg) is animating that idea of the data about us becoming as real as our own physical self; but this is more of a dark poetic visualization of the central theme, it’s not the visual goal of the performance. The aesthetic of the piece was very cutting edge, no doubt, but it did not add any ornamentation to the age of tele-present activity, it may have removed some of the technical grit for a smooth experience but it did not intend to create a glittering hyper-real future (which is what the promo image feels like to me). The aesthetic was decisively to create simulacrum of life using available (high) tech devices - what I believe to be the reason for the flatness of the different layers of the experience.
The reality, and irony, behind the promotional image is that technology is not so immediately transcendental as certain sectors of society would have us believe. While tools exists to exponentially speed up and expand our capability to do things the piece attempted to discuss how human beings are as susceptible to aging, avarice, social stratification, & cultural stereotyping as ever. If anything, it seems the new tools of the data-sphere expand the problems as much the possibilities of contemporary life.
Comment by Mark Fox — 10/14/2005 @ 11:34 am
I saw the show Sunday night — there was a 45 min. technical delay. The audience was Minnesota polite, hoping, I’m sure, for something new and enlightening. The show was technically excellent, but it was not enlightening. It played like an educational program in a children's museum. Teaching us simple facts about data gathering, with no solution presented on how to solve the problems. Does technology interfere with the artistic process? Would it have been better to start the show on time, with just actors and candles and have a compelling story to tell? I’m just asking.
Comment by Robert C. Hammel — 10/17/2005 @ 5:46 pm