Comments on: A Post-Show Conversation about Super Vision by Off-Leash Area Directors Paul Herwig and Jennifer Ilse http://blogs.walkerart.org/performingarts/2005/10/14/a-post-show-conversation-about-super-vision-by-off-leash-area-directors-paul-herwig-and-jennifer-ilse/ Sat, 06 Sep 2008 06:28:51 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.3.3 By: Robert C. Hammel http://blogs.walkerart.org/performingarts/2005/10/14/a-post-show-conversation-about-super-vision-by-off-leash-area-directors-paul-herwig-and-jennifer-ilse/#comment-32 Robert C. Hammel Mon, 17 Oct 2005 23:46:23 +0000 http://blogs.walkerart.org/performingarts/2005/10/14/a-post-show-conversation-about-super-vision-by-off-leash-area-directors-paul-herwig-and-jennifer-ilse/#comment-32 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. 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.

]]> By: Mark Fox http://blogs.walkerart.org/performingarts/2005/10/14/a-post-show-conversation-about-super-vision-by-off-leash-area-directors-paul-herwig-and-jennifer-ilse/#comment-30 Mark Fox Fri, 14 Oct 2005 17:34:16 +0000 http://blogs.walkerart.org/performingarts/2005/10/14/a-post-show-conversation-about-super-vision-by-off-leash-area-directors-paul-herwig-and-jennifer-ilse/#comment-30 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. 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.

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