Liveness

In five steps this text tries to convey a semiotic analysis of the phenomenon of  ‘live VR music concerts’.Through this paper it becomes clear that the meaning of live music and virtual live music is not always clear. Virtual does not want to be like the real. It does not intend to create the same music experience. It is a globalising trend that seeks to go beyond. In contrast, maybe the real becomes more like the virtual. Experimenting with virtual experiences results eventually in the dissolving of the boundaries between the real and the virtual. The meaning of live music is changing and is strongly interpreted in the context of culture. Pandemic culture insinuated the interpretation that VR is just arriving, but actually it was already here for a while. With the semiotic square we analysed the virtual and real through the ‘here and now’. It is the ‘here and now’ (authenticity?) that gets questioned in live virtual concerts. It is legit to present a live concert in other ways, because that is one of the aims of VR. The virtual concert does not necessarily want to substitute real-life concerts. Peircian interpretations led into new kinds of music experience and new music industries/business models. A virtual concert experience constructs experience of identities of experience of collectivity that are real. Even in a manipulated or determined world the emotions that music creates are real. ‘Liveness’ shows the (intersubjective) power of music.

This book examines television drama in the age of streaming—a time when television has been reshaped for national and international consumption via both linear ‘flow’ and on-demand user modes. It builds on an in-depth study of the Norwegian public service broadcaster (NRK) and some of its game-changing drama productions (Lilyhammer, SKAM, blank). The book portrays the formative first decade of television streaming (2010-2019), how new streaming services and incumbent television providers intersect and act in a new drama landscape, and how streaming impacts existing television production cultures, publishing models and industry-audience relations. The analysis draws on insight gained through more than a hundred interviews with television experts and fans, hundreds of hours of observations, and unique access to industry conferences, meetings, working documents, and ratings. The book combines perspectives from production studies, media industry studies, and fan studies to inform its analysis.

“Brilliantly combining production studies with fan studies, Television Drama in the Age of Streaming is state-of-the-art scholarship. Vilde Schanke Sundet has interviewed an array of industry insiders, expertly analysing executives’ strate-gies, digital flagship productions, and new paradoxes of audience making. Streaming may have shifted contemporary TV drama into a “world champion-ship” of globalised brands, but Sundet reminds us of the need to focus on national and cultural contexts. There’s so much great content in this book, I binged it in one sitting. And now you can too.” Matt Hills, Professor, University of Huddersfield, UK

“This excellent book engagingly explores why the television industries are chang-ing in the age of streaming and how to think of the implications from a specific national and cultural perspective as well as from an international and transna-tional point of view. The book is an important contribution to media industry and television studies (or should one now say streaming studies?).” Eva Novrup Redvall, Associate Professor, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

“This book is an innovative attempt to look at streaming from the perspective of Norway, a small country with its own distinctive culture and a huge appetite for the transnational drama that forms the backbone of contemporary streaming. It is very well researched, and offers in-depth analyses of the transnational strategies and digital production cultures that public service broadcaster NRK has developed to appeal to demanding audiences. It constitutes a great resource for scholars and professionals trying to understand transformative changes in screen cultures.” Jeanette Steemers, Professor of Culture, Media & Creative Industries, King’s College, UK

“Television Drama in the Age of Streaming is a well-timed and germane book, dealing as it does with the latest phase of globalization, media convergence, and digitalisation, and how global streaming services are offering new opportunities for producing as well as distributing and consuming drama. What is particularly impactful about the book is how it focuses on NRK, the Norwegian public service broadcaster, seemingly at the margins of the global television industry; but in how this book realigns our thinking about how television content is being commissioned and made, but also ‘published’ across multiple platforms makes for indispensable read. This book is welcome, necessary and an important addition to any bookshelf for those studying transnational TV business, production and distribution trends.” Janet McCabe, Reader in Television and Film Studies, Birkbeck, University of London, UK

The early history of the so-called ‘neighbouring rights’, as part of the history of copyright, has so far been given very little attention by scholars. This article sheds light on a European contest over the rights in sound recordings during the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. This forms an important part of the background to the Rome Convention of 1961. The article first looks separately at how musicians’ unions and the record industry were raising different demands for protective legislation, motivated by the use of new electronic media. At the beginning, no one imagined that these protections would be bundled together as ‘neighbouring rights’. While the International Labour Organization (ILO) put great efforts into creating a convention protecting only the performers, another actor turned out to be more influential in the long run, proposing a hierarchical bundling of rights in which only record companies were entitled to compensation for the use of recordings. This actor was the Fascist government of Italy. The article argues that there are some continuities from the legal philosophy of Italian Fascism to the system of ‘neighbouring rights’ established in the Rome Convention.

Telematic music: Latency, Compositional Attitude and Liveness

Abstract: This article aimed to present the computacional strategy in free software used to solve the difficulties from the latency of the network audio streaming inserted on the research project LABORATORIUM MAPA D2 of the Research Group Poetics Technological: Corpoaudiovisual - (UFBA), besides analyzing the compositional attitudes in dealing with instrumental improvisation with technological mediation and network audio streaming, as well as, philosophical and poetic reflections on the presence and liveness in the context of telematic music.

Keywords: telemátic performance, sound composition, transdisciplinarity, performance, liveness

The relationship between television and "live music" has been a weak one: the televisive dimension of music was mainly absorbed by the music video model, or by single performances in TV shows. The arrival of digital technology has profoundly affected the dynamics of the music industry: recorded music has undergone a sharp decline in sales while, at the same time, the relevance of live concerts has increased. Live music has become the pivot of musicians' careers and of the music industry as a whole-therefore the offer of tours and concerts has multiplied. In the last 20 years, the presence of pop music on television has intensified, forming itself as a genre in its own right: the talent show. This phenomenon produces a double movement of exchange and a mutual influence between television and the pop concert: the two areas of that will be the object of study of this contribution. After an introduction on the definition of "live" and "liveness" and after an overview of the relationship between music and TV and on the analysis of the current state of the music industry and its effects on music and media production, the paper will analyze some models of these new forms of transmedia narration of music and the new relationship between concerts live and TV shows. These examples will be aimed at showing both the hybridization of the productive forms and television/spectacular narration in concerts, and the presence of narrative and production forms derived from concerts in television shows. These pages will show how, in the years two thousand, "live" pop-rock concerts and visual and television entertainment converge on the re-discussion of what "live" means. The goal is to show how the relationship between these spaces has become a sort of oxymoron: the "live" concert is more and more televised, and the musical television show is more and more similar to the concert.

Full text on https://comunicazionisociali.vitaepensiero.it/scheda-articolo_digital/gianni-sibilla/the-concert-will-be-televisedil-live-come-modello-narrativo-e-produttivo-nella-musica-pop-e-nei-media-001200_000091-370112.html

Ghislaine Boddington - This paper is going to discuss, what will be called, 'The Internet of Bodies'. Our physical and virtual worlds are blending and shifting our understanding of three key areas: (1) our identities are diversifying, as they become hyper-enhanced and multi-sensory; (2) our collaborations are co-created, immersive and connected; (3) our innovations are diverse and inclusive. It is proposed that our bodies have finally become the interface.

The COVID-19 emergency has had a profound impact on the artistic and cultural sectors, and on performing arts in particular. The lockdown required the suspension of all live performances and rehearsals, including the cancellation of seasons and festivals. Because physical proximity is an essential component of live shows, this sector will be on pause longer than the others. Since the early stages of the lockdown, Italian theatre has developed several online initiatives to counterbalance the suspension of its activities. These efforts have aimed at maintaining contact with the remote theatre audiences, by extending the presence of artists, theatres and performances in the online context. However, they have also provided an opportunity to reflect at large on the digital transformations of performing arts. The following contribution reflects on how we are researching the online response of the theatrical sector from the perspective of sociology and media studies. The paper aims to contextualise the phenomenon within the processes of theatre mediatisation and digital transformation of liveness, and to present what we think are the most urgent research questions in this direction. The first part of the article introduces the theoretical premises of the investigation. We present the frame of theatre mediatisation by analysing three interrelated processes: the mediatisation of dramaturgy through the concept of transmedia; the mediatisation of theatrical presence, with the debate on digital liveness, and the mediatisation of the theatrical relationship through social media. The second part will analyse some of the main online initiatives of the theatre sector, observing how they fit into the previously introduced mediatisation processes. The third part will observe how users have responded to the initiatives presented on social media by some of the main Italian theatres. In the conclusions, we will discuss which research questions we consider crucial to connect the analysis of this critical moment to the main themes of sociological and media studies research on performing arts.

In recent years, the expansion and use of mobile Internet and social media have changed live music engagement and fandom quite considerably. It has not only allowed fans to find and connect with each other at shows, but also to tweet and text concert set-lists and other information as they happen, thereby allowing non-attendees around the world to feel part of the event. This study examines the responses of fans engaged in this activity, identifying the key themes and patterns apparent within this behaviour, arguing that fans are using social media and mobile technology in an effort to contest and reshape the boundaries of live music concerts. It demonstrates how these online tools are involving fans that are not physically present at the show, seemingly incorporating them into the real-time “live” experience. This article explores how fans of prolific touring artists U2 and Tori Amos undertake this, with assigned concert attendees tweeting the set-list to online fans, where they gather to enjoy the show together, from the comfort of their computers.

The better quality pdf is downloadible from here: "http://www.leoalmanac.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/LEAVol19No3-Mailman.pdf
Through recent artistic practices and technology of interactive systems for music, composition and improvisation have more and more blended and interconnected with each other – a sui generis situation now called comprovisation. The concept of comprovisation applies equally well to the spontaneous generation and manipulation of computer graphics, especially as such graphics are systematically coordinated audio-visually, while being subject to spontaneous manipulation by a performer.
This is explained in terms of the Fluxations and FluxNoisations Human Body Interfaces, interactive dance systems that generate music and graphics spontaneously in response to hand and body movement. They enable spontaneous expressive shaping of coherent complexity and variety. Thus a multi-layered multimodal experience arises. The aesthetic experience of this multimedia spectacle relates to experiences of various prior music and visual art of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, as well as to hypothetical physical realities. Thus a kind of cybernetic phenomenology of art is pursued and enacted through an embodied cybersynthesis of art with simulated alternate reality. Call it a pragmatic speculative realism, an adventurous technoetic ‘what if.’ As compared to more traditional forms of improvisation, the opportunities for risk-taking and aesthetic exploration rise to a new level of uncertainty, as the reactions of the improviser simultaneously draw from and target both visual and aural modalities, such that the intentions toward each fuse together."

With today’s prevalence of technology, enormous quantities of data are generated and disseminated in real time through a highly networked, programmable and distributed environment. Networks of machines and the circulation of data mediate our sense of time. The sensation of “liveness” is deeply reconfigured by complex technological infrastructures behind ubiquitous screens and interfaces. This thesis explores how real-time computation reconfigures the immanent sense of liveness, examining the complexity of our current computational environment as evident in the increasing use of data queries, the instantaneous transmission of data streams and the seamless running of automated agents.

A materialist framework for liveness is presented with the use of three main vectors, namely: unpredictability, micro-temporality and automation. By drawing together the methods of reflexive practice, close reading, iterative trials and cold gazing in the fields of artistic research, critical code studies, software studies and media archaeology respectively, this thesis presents three artistic and experimental projects along with the written manuscript. Together they examine barely visible code operations and consider the cultural implications of the reading, writing, running and execution of code, which the author refers to as “reflexive coding practice.” This methodology provides an applied approach to computational processes, invisible architectures and a means to reflect on cultural issues through experimentation and practice. The analysis and discussion contributes to a widening of critical attention to software (art) studies and includes a nuanced examination of liveness beyond immediate human reception.

ISBN 978-989-98796-1-4
Nesta investigação tentamos contribuir para um enquadramento teórico da ciberformance, a performance que acontece em plataformas, ambientes e mundos virtuais e que se caracteriza por ser ao vivo, mediada, intermedial, multimodal, híbrida, liminar, colaborativa e interventiva estética e socialmente, sendo low cost e usando tecnologia livre e acessível.
Há duas décadas que acções performáticas se desenvolvem através da Internet, ligando utilizadores e públicos distribuídos geograficamente. Fóruns e ambientes textuais de jogo foram os primeiros espaços usados por ciberformers tendo estes, mais tarde, apropriado ambientes gráficos e mundos virtuais online.
Na primeira parte deste estudo investigamos o lugar da ciberformance e os aspectos do habitar o virtual que se afiguram importantes para entender o processo criativo deste género artístico. O carácter aberto livre e comunitário de plataformas e mundos virtuais cria lugares que estão para lá da simulação, proporcionando uma ampliação do virtualmente humano que favorece a prática da ciberformance. Esta implica uma actividade que se desenvolve através de interfaces visíveis e que possibilita a compreensão desses espaços não como imersivos mas sim como ampliações hipermediadas.
Uma passagem pela relação histórica entre a performance e a tecnologia permite-nos sediar a genealogia da ciberformance nos movimentos vanguardistas do século XX.
Com base na nossa própria prática artística nos contextos referidos e em recente produção académica sobre a performance digital criámos um enquadramento que visa possibilitar uma melhor definição e compreensão deste emergente género artístico. A análise da forma, conteúdo e processo criativo de algumas performances específicas, conduziu-nos a uma tipologia operativa que apenas existe na intersecção dos seus tipos. Estes são definidos pelo seu desenvolvimento através da palavra, através da construção de código e através do corpo em interface com a tecnologia.
Procuramos aqui abrir caminho para a análise do contributo deste género para o panorama mais vasto da relação entre a comunicação à distância, a interacção humano computador e a arte contemporânea.

In this paper, we use two audio/visual performance projects based on differing design approaches to consider the relationship between designer and user. Using the examples of OverWatch and Waves, we examine similarities between classical designer-user development processes and practice-based scenarios where designers draw upon native knowledge of the design space.

This essay is a study of performance and performativity in visual art in contemporary Cambodia. I argue that, while stage performances often draw on existing traditions of performance, and rapidly codify new conventions, performance in visual art is largely uninterested in existing traditions of performance, and instead relies on systems of codification from visual art, especially photography. In close readings of performance works by Khvay Samnang, Lim Sokchanlina, Amy Lee Sanford, and Anida Yoeu Ali, I argue that documentation is central to the performance practices of visual artists, and that live and mediatized performances are mutually dependent and inter-animating. I suggest four key, overlapping reasons for the centrality of documentation to performances by visual artists. These are: firstly, that artists in Cambodia are chiefly exposed to international performances through documentation rather than in live form; secondly, that
documentation renders performance legible as visual art in the contemporary Cambodian context; thirdly, that photo- and video-documenting is an automatic and everyday activity in urban Cambodia for those with access to the technology; and finally, that the format of some performances is actually shaped by the apparatuses used to record their documentation. I conclude by proposing that any meaningful understanding of contemporaneity in the Cambodian context must encompass performance in all its forms.

RÉSUMÉ
“La performance est contemporaine:” la performance et sa documentation chez les plasticiens cambodgiens
Roger Nelson
Il s’agit d’une étude de la performance et de la performativité chez les plasticiens du Cambodge. Si les arts de la scène au Cambodge de nos jours puisent ses ressources dans les traditions théâtrales khmères, il n’en est pas de même de la pratique de la performance chez les plasticiens, lesquels font
peu de cas des dites traditions, se référant plutôt aux codes des arts visuels, surtout à ceux de la photographie. L’analyse des oeuvres de Khvay Samnang, Lim Sokchanlina, Amy Lee Sanford et Anida Yoeu Ali, démontre que la documentation se trouve au coeur de l’art tel qu’il est pratiqué au Cambodge, où les formats en direct et médiatisés sont interactifs et interdépendants. J’identifie quatre raisons sous-jacentes au rôle central que joue la documentation dans ces pratiques. Tout d’abord il faut dire que la première rencontre que peut avoir les artistes cambodgiens avec la performance sur la scène internationale se fait le plus souvent à travers des enregistrements et non en direct ; ensuite, la documentation rend la performance lisible en tant qu’oeuvre plastique pour
un public cambodgien ; troisièmement l’enregistrement photographique et vidéo rentre dans les moeurs quotidiens des citadins ayant accès aux technologies; enfin, la forme même d’une performance peut se définir en fonction du travail d’enregistrement. L’article conclut que toute caractérisation de
la contemporanéité au Cambodge doit prendre en considération l’éventail des arts du spectacle au Cambodge, des arts de la scène proprement dits à la performance chez les plasticiens.

សង្ខេប
“Performance គឺបច្ចុប្បន្ន” ៖ ការសម្តែងនិងការរៀបចំឯកសារទស្សន៍សិល្បៈ
នៅកម្ពុជា
Roger Nelson
សំណេរនេះជាការសិក្សាទៅលើការសមែង្ត និងលទ្ធភាពសម្តែងកុ្នងទស្សន៍សិល្បៈនៅកមុ្ពជា។ ខុំ្ញហ៊ាននិយាយថា ការសមែ្តងលើឆាកច្រើនតែផ្អែកទៅលើប្រពៃណីសម្តែងដែលធ្លាប់មានមក ហើយមិនយូរមិនឆាប់តងែ តបែ ងតើ្ក ជាទមប្លា ម់ យួ ដលែ អណំ ើះតទៅគនេ ងឹ ធតាើ្វ មគ ្នារឯី ការសមងែ្ត (Performance) នៅកងុ្ន ទសស្ ន៍ សិល្បៈវិញ មិនសូវយកចិត្តទុកដាក់ទៅប្រពៃណី ឬទម្លាប់នៃការសម្តែងឡើយ គឺតែងតែផ្អែកទៅលើក្បួនច្បាប់នៃ ទស្សន៍សិល្បៈនោះតែម្តង ជាពិសេសបើនិយាយពីរូបថត។ ក្រោយពីការពិនិត្យល្អិតល្អន់ទៅលើការសម្តែង
នៃខ្វៃ សំណាង, លឹម សុខចាន់លីណា, Amy Lee Sanford និង អានីដា យើុ អាលី មក ខ្ញុំឃើញថាឯកសារមាន សារសំខាន់លើសលុបទៅលើការសម្តែងនៃ សិល្បករក្នុងវិស័យនេះ ហើយម៉្យាងទៀតការសម្តែងឲ្យ ទស្សនា ផ្ទាល់ឬដោយមានការផ្សាយផ្ទាល់ផង ក៏ទទួលនិងជះឥទ្ធិពលទៅវិញទៅមកដែរជាមួយឯកសារ។ ខ្ញុំឃើញថាមានគន្លឹះឬចំណុច៤សំខាន់។ ទី១គឺសិល្បករខ្មែរច្រើនតែឃើញការសម្តែងនានានៃបរទេសតាមរយៈឯកសារពោលគឺពុំមែនតាមការទស្សនាផ្ទាល់ប៉ុន្មានទេ។ ទី២ ឯកសារទាំងនោះជួយជម្រុញឲ្យអ្នកទស្សនាងាយយល់ការសម្តែងក្នុងក្រប ខណ្ឌនៃទស្សន៍សិល្បៈនាបច្ចុប្បន្ននេះ។ ទី៣ ការរៀបចំឯកសាររូបថត, ខ្សែវីដេអូ ជាការ
ដែលគេនិយមបំផុតនៅកម្ពុជា។ ទី៤ គឺរបៀបរបប, លំដាប់, ខ្នាតនៃការសម្តែងខ្លះកើតឡើង ដោយបត់បែនទៅតាមប្រព័ន្ធនិងបរិក្ខារប្រើប្រាស់ក្នុងការរៀបចំឯកសារ។ ខ្ញុំសន្និដ្នានដោយស្នើថា ដើម្បីយល់ពីបច្ចុប្បន្នភាពនៃសិល្បៈនៅប្រទេសម្ពុជាឲ្យបានពេញលេញ គេត្រូវតែយកការសម្តែងគ្រប់បែបយ៉ាងដែលមានមកជាគំនិត
ពិចារណា។

Περίληψη Τις τελευταίες δεκαετίες η εισαγωγή των ψηφιακών τεχνολογιών στις επιτελεστικές τέχνες-στις οποίες ανήκει και η μουσική-έχει πυροδοτήσει έντονους προβληματισμούς και αντιπαραθέσεις στο πεδίο των επιτελεστικών τεχνών (και άλλων συναφών αντικειμένων), γύρω από το ζήτημα της ζωντανότητας. Αυτές οι αντιπαραθέσεις αναπτύσσονται κυρίως γύρω από το ερώτημα, εάν η ζωντανότητα αποτελεί ένα οντολογικό χαρακτηριστικό της επιτέλεσης ή ένα στοιχείο της, το οποίο κατασκευάζεται ιστορικά και πολιτισμικά. Παρά τις σημαντικές διαφορές τους, τόσο οι οντολογικές όσο και οι φαινομενολογικές προσεγγίσεις της επιτέλεσης, αναγνωρίζουν ότι ο «πραγματικός χρόνος» είναι ένα αδιαμφισβήτητο χαρακτηριστικό κάθε ζωντανής (ψηφιακής και μη) επιτέλεσης. Αυτός ο τρόπος κατανόησης του χρόνου, ωστόσο, οδηγεί σε αντιφάσεις, οι οποίες θα μπορούσαν να ξεπεραστούν εάν στραφούμε στη διερεύνηση των τρόπων με τους οποίους η χρονικότητα των ψηφιακών τοπίων συγκροτείται μέσα από τις πραγματικές δράσεις των συμμετεχουσών σε συγκεκριμένες ψηφιακές (μουσικές) επιτελέσεις.

Λέξεις κλειδιά: «πραγματικός χρόνος», ζωντανότητα, ψηφιακές τεχνολογίες, επιτελεστικές τέχνες, ανθρωπολογία.

This article proposes a theory of mediated presence, defined as the sense of presence-despite physical absence-made possible by technology. Pushing the boundaries of media, the theory integrates various notions of presence at a distance: telepresence in telecommunications and computer-mediated communication, liveness in broadcasting and on the Internet, and the epistolary presence of antiquity. Theoretically, it adopts a social construc-tivist approach to long-term communication history, with an emphasis on technological breakdowns. The core discussion addresses three criteria for a historical, comparative analysis of mediated presence: dissemination versus dialogue, transmission-reception time lags, and levels of disembodiment. Refuting axiological and technology-centered views of history, the article concludes that increased technological options for presence at a distance have remained essentially ambivalent for users who vacillate between the need for distance and the search for connection. This article proposes a theory of mediated presence, defined as a sense of the presence of one or more persons, despite their physical absence, through technological mediation. Covering human history since the advent of correspondence, the theory subsumes different notions of presence at a distance, originating in several research traditions: computer-mediated communications, telecommunications, and liveness in broadcasting and on the Internet, as well as the epistolary. Suggesting new dialogues between compartmented fields, it broadens the definition of media in long-term history through systematic comparisons and qualifies our contemporary sense of a radical change, born of recent technology affordances. I begin with a multidisciplinary review of theories of presence at a distance, then explain the use of the expression-mediated presence, which both broadens and specifies the notion of presence at a distance across technologies and historical contexts.

Martin Parker’s gruntCount is a multi-version, configurable composition for improvising musician (or musicians) and computer. Performers embark on a journey through sound processing modules that are specifically customised to individual playing styles. It exists in no fixed state, yet allows for a growing set of rehearsable, replicable and configurable pieces, in which all musical material, timing, overall duration and levels of effort are managed by the live musician. In order to optimise elements of flow and of liveness in each performance, gruntCount challenges traditional definitions of 'piece', ‘system’ and ‘instrument’, instead establishing an environment for human-machine improvisation that serves the musical result and not the system itself. This paper refers to a selection of sound examples from the bass clarinet version (2012-14) and examines formal time-shaping possibilities within a structured performance, while exploring the environment’s qualities of coaction and configurability in an era of new score types.

The problem of documenting performance is discussed via viewer testimonies of Jerzy Grotowski’s practices. On the one hand, Erika Fischer-Lichte’s notion of performance involves the viewer’s experience in the aesthetic work. On the other hand, this conception situates documenting the experience beyon­d the realm of performance. In light of the limitations Grotowski placed on documenting and disseminating his own work, it is especially interesting to analyze viewer testimonies. The author examines several texts by professional viewers, analyzing the ways they reconstruct the performances they saw and the elements on which their reconstructions are based (literary texts, personal texts, and texts by other views). A key element in these descriptions is the appeal their authors make to an experience that cannot be expressed. The appeal to this experience shapes a specific temporality, combining the time of viewing and the time of writing, and activating not only the possibility of analysis but also the experience of the various senses.

What is so eventful about an event movie's arrival to the multiplex, and how does this eventfulness function as both an industry strategy and audience experience? Synthesizing an analysis of trade discourses, promotional campaigns, and manually-curated box office data, this article considers how the concept of eventfulness emerged as a discursive construction and spatiotemporal formation used by the industry to promote moviegoing as more meaningful than other forms of media experience in today's "anywhere-anytime" and "on-demand" culture. Eventfulness situates the movie theater at the center of a specific, layered structure of time-a stretched sense of promotional anticipation and cultural nostalgia which climaxes during an ephemeral moment-and space-a discursive space of cultural buzz leading up to the event, a local experience community marked by fan participation, and an imagined global audience which takes shape through the synchronization of the event as it simulates "live" broadcasting and connects audiences in time.

A dearth of research exists that examines live stand-up comedy from the audiences' perspective. This empirical article redresses this neglect by examining the appeal of live stand-up comedy to audiences and revealing their motivations for going to see live stand-up comedy. These interests are explored through an online survey and a series of semi-structured interviews with live stand-up comedy goers. The online survey uncovers the frequency of attending live stand-up comedy, the types of venues that stand-up comedy is seen in, the types of venues that audiences prefer to experience live stand-up comedy in, and the extent to which individuals attend live stand-up comedy alone or accompanied by others, and if so, who they attend with. The one-to-one semi-structured interviews extend the investigation by analysing the specific reasons why audiences attend live stand-up comedy. Five main themes emerge from the semi-structured interview data: respecting the stand-up comedian; expecti...

The article explores the affective consequences of the new mode of instant access to enormous levels of musical recordings in digital format. It is suggested that this " musical superabundance" might weaken the individual's ability to be affected by music in everyday life, while at the same time leading to a renewed interest in collective experience, in ways which are not limited to established notions of musical " liveness ". According to a theory of affect influenced by Spinoza, what is at stake is the capacity of the body to be affected by music. The article proposes that a renegotiated relationship between collective and individual modes of experiencing music can be conceptualized with help of Spinoza's distinction between two kinds of affections: actions and passions. After scrutinizing the interface of hardware like Apple's Ipod and online services like Spotify, the article proceeds by discussing three musical practices which can all be understood as responses to the superabundance of musical recordings: (1) the ascetic practice of " No Music Day " ; (2) the revival of cassette culture; (3) the " bass materialism " associated with the music known as dubstep. While none of these approaches provide any solution to the problem of abundance, they can still be understood as attempts to cultivate a " postdigital sensibility ". The article tries to conceptualize the postdigital in a way that transcends the narrower notion of "post-digital aesthetics " that has recently been gaining popularity. Finally, it is argued that such a sensibility has a political significance in its potential to subvert the contemporary processes of commodification.

The last two decades in India have seen an enormous growth of satellite television. News has established itself in the meanwhile not merely as a source of information but also of entertainment. Available in all regional languages through several competing channels, and presented elaborately, television news has come to establish a mode of address, which defines one’s sense of time and space, and configures one’s sense of the dramatic situated in others’ stories. This article engages with the implications of “liveness”—as material and as affect—toward convergence of news narratives. Discussing two of the most widely covered recent stories—Aarushi Talwar’s murder and Baby Falak—the article foregrounds the class antagonism and scandalous anxieties of Indian televisual publics, and argues that news television invites us to trade liveness for news. Thus, news media not only liberates itself of the rigor of news production but also entertains us by reaffirming our deepest anxieties and competing with other modes of intertextual entertainment available on rival channels.

Come cambia l'idea del "live", con le piattaforme, e dopo il distanziamento sociale imposto dalla pandemia?
La parola live sembra diventata un ossimoro: concerti annullati o rimandati, mentre sui social media abbondano  performance musicali presentate come "dal vivo".
Il concerto live è un modello narrativo e produttivo, replicato dai media fuori dallo spazio della compresenza fisica e del qui ed ora,  la cui  trasformazione ad opera delle piattaforme digitali è un processo in atto da tempo.
L'articolo, a partire da alcuni esempi come la performance di Travis Scott su Fortnite, ragiona su come sta cambiando l'idea di performance nello spettacolo e nei media digitali

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The proliferation of two screen or connected viewing on multiple devices (smartphones/iphones, laptops, tablets/ipads) simultaneously are reshaping the ways that TV broadcasters programme, schedule, and deliver programmes and content. This article examines how the notions of liveness and live TV are being reshaped within this context. Focusing on the BBC and Channel 4 the article explores how and why these two British PSBs are reinventing and promoting liveness and in particular live media events across platforms and devices. With the BBC’s ‘BBC Live’ content delivery system as case study, the article argues that rather than seeing liveness as a thing of the past, BBC regards live TV as core to its multi-platform strategy. Today, the BBC uses two of television’s traditional traits – liveness and reach – to crowd out and gain a competitive edge on streamed content and VoD providers like YouTube, Netflix and AmazonPrime across platforms and devices.

In some musical genres, professional performers play live shows many times a week. Arduous touring schedules bring encounters with wildly diverse audiences across many different performance ecologies. We investigate the kinds of creativity involved in such repeated live performance, kinds of creativity that are quite unlike songwriting and recording, and examine the central factors that influence musicians’ wellbeing over the course of a tour. The perspective of the professional musician has been underrepresented in research on relations between music and wellbeing, with little attention given to the experience of touring. In this case study, we investigate influences on positive and negative performance experiences for the four professional musicians of Australian pop/rock band Cloud Control. Geeves conducted intensive cognitive ethnographic fieldwork with Cloud Control members over a two-week national Australian tour for their second album, Dream Cave (2013). Adapting a Grounded T...

Die 1974 zuerst ausgestrahlte Talkshow "III nach 9" wird fernsehhistorisch kontextualisiert als Versuch den Live-Aspekt des Fernsehens zu erneuern und das Medium wieder an seine Wurzeln zurückzuführen, indem das Unerwartbare ins Zentrum der Sendung gestellt wird. Gefasst wird dieses Phänomen mit dem gegenwärtig populären Begriff des "komplexen Fernsehens", der die Steigerung des Möglichkeitshorizonts der Kommunikation bezeichnet.

This paper investigates representations of performance and the role of the archive. Notions of record and archive are critically investigated, raising questions about applying traditional archival definitions to the performing arts. Defining the nature of performances is at the root of all difficulties regarding their representation. Performances are live events, so for many people the idea of recording them for posterity is inappropriate. The challenge of creating and curating representations of an ephemeral art form are explored and performance-specific concepts of record and archive are posited. An open model of archives, encouraging multiple representations and allowing for creative reuse and reinterpretation to keep the spirit of the performance alive, is envisaged as the future of the performing arts archive.

The COVID-19 emergency had a profound impact on the artistic and cultural sectors, and on performing arts in particular. The lockdown required the suspension of all live performances and rehearsals, including the cancellation of seasons and festivals. Because physical proximity is an essential component of the live shows, this sector will be on pause longer than the others. Since the early stages of the lockdown, the Italian theatre field developed several online initiatives to counterbalance the suspension of its activities. These efforts aimed at keeping the relationship with the remote theatre audiences, by extending the presence of artists, theatres and performances in the online context. However, they also provided an opportunity to reflect at large on the digital transformations of performing arts. The following contribution reflects on how we are researching the online response of the theatrical sector from the perspective of sociology and media studies. The paper aims to contextualise the phenomenon within the processes of theatre mediatisation and digital transformation of liveness, and to the present what we think are the most urgent research questions in this direction. The first part of the article introduces the theoretical premises of the investigation. We present the frame of theatre mediatisation by analysing three interrelated processes: the mediatisation of dramaturgy through the concept of transmedia; the mediatisation of theatrical presence, with the debate on digital liveness, and the mediatisation of the theatrical relationship through social media. The second part will analyse some of the main online initiatives of the theatrical sector, observing how they fit into the previously introduced mediatisation processes. The third part will observe how users have responded to the initiatives presented on social media by some of the main Italian theatres. In the conclusions, we will discuss which research questions we consider crucial to connect the analysis of this critical moment to the main themes of sociological and media studies research on performing arts. 1 L'articolo è il risultato del lavoro congiunto degli autori. In particolare Laura Gemini si è occupata dell'Introduzione e dei parr. 1 Teatro e mediatizzazione. Il background teorico della ricerca; 2. Teatro e transmedialità: la mediatizzazione della narrazione teatrale; 3. Teatro e liveness digitale: la mediatizzazione della presenza teatrale; Stefano Brilli dei parr. 4 Teatro e social media: la mediatizzazione della relazione teatrale; 6 La risposta dei pubblici: Spettatori teatrali online e del teatro online; Francesca Giuliani del par. 5 La resilienza del settore teatrale attraverso lo sguardo della mediatizzazione. Le conclusioni sono in comune

This paper provides a formal specification and proof of correctness of a basic Generalized Snapshot Isolation certification-based data replication protocol for database middleware architectures. It has been modeled using a state transition system, as well as the main system components, allowing a perfect match with the usual deployment in a middleware system. The proof encompasses both safety and liveness properties, as it is commonly done for a distributed algorithm. Furthermore, a crash failure model has been assumed for the correctness proof, although recovery analysis is not the aim of this paper. This allows an easy extension toward a crash-recovery model support in future works. The liveness proof focuses in the uniform commit: if a site has committed a transaction, the rest of sites will either commit it or it would have crashed.

Input devices like touch-sensitive dance mats, plastic guitars or the Wii-Controller (or nowadays Microsofts Kinect as well) add a special quality to “playing” music in a double sense: Music games like for instance Guitar Hero, Rock Band and the Dance Dance Revolution back from 1998, or the slightly different Wii Music, visualize the musical movements and ask the player to perform himself, thus shifting the aspect of “playing” to the position in front of the screen. With this music, which is usually listened to in a domestic context or in a public place such as a pub, is combined with processes that can be seen, heard and felt on and in front of the screen and a completely new situation is created.
By presenting some examples this article examines the relation and interaction of musical, visual and physical movement while playing those video games by focusing on the English term “performance” in its double sense: On the one hand in the sense of an activity, on the other in the sense of a single performance which is exclusively constituted by its execution on as well as in front of the screen as dynamic, artistic activity. The article is based on a talk given in 2009.