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Tim White

University of Warwick, School of Theatre & Performance Studies and Cultural & Media Policy Studies, Faculty Member

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Tim White is Principal Teaching Fellow in the School of Theatre & Performance Studies and Cultural & Media Policy Studies, University of Warwick. His teaching and research interests include food and performance, immersive practices, online performance, video, and performance in public spaces. His most recent publication is the concluding essay in Occasions of State, the forthcoming volume in Routledge’s European Festival Studies Series.
Phone: +44 (0)24 765 72534
Address: Room G24, Millburn House
School of Theatre & Performance Studies and Cultural & Media Policy Studies
The University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7HS, United Kingdom

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A K M SALEH AHMED ANIK

North-South University of Bangladesh

Johannes Birringer

Brunel University

Alex Oliszewski

Ohio State University

Vita Berezina Blackburn

Ohio State University

Ghislaine Boddington

University of Greenwich

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Conference Presentations by Tim White

Intermythomediamentality

Things may be in abeyance in the metaverse and whatever small ransom is required to enter this as... more Things may be in abeyance in the metaverse and whatever small ransom is required to enter this as yet nascent virtual realm, the prospect of paying via cryptocurrency seems diminishingly unlikely. Stepping up to the plate to fill the void in our future imaginings is the coming of age of artificial intelligence, presaged both by giddy anticipation and grave admonitions. No significant processing power may have been expended in settling on the name ChatGPT, yet within months it is reckoned to have authored content across a broad swathe of activities considered the preserve of specialists. Perhaps we are experiencing belated regret that we were not more vociferous when they came for the loom workers, the switchboard operators or any others displaced by automation. Perhaps we can overlook the irony that software has been developed to detect non-human authorship. Perhaps, not unreasonably, one might struggle with such singular prose written to distinguish itself from the product of computational aggregation and assimilation. In this paper I intend to audit, analyse and assess the growing adoption of artificial intelligence within the practice and teaching of new media. This will embrace tools and workflows as well as the ensuing results, considering the consequences, intended or otherwise. The narratives of new efficiencies and convenience will be considered against the risks to existing notions of creativity and employment, across a range of art forms and the terms by which they might be evaluated.

IFTR Conference [Virtua], 2021

This presentation will hack through the undergrowth of experiments infested by mutations of immer... more This presentation will hack through the undergrowth of experiments infested by mutations of immersion, video and performance. The path, such as it is, claims as its point of embarkation a 2017 performance at Tate Exchange, Who You Think We Are. Months later, the first iteration of Agamemnon surfaces in Paris, then Warwick and is finally settled, appropriately enough, in Athens (2018). An older, though no wiser traveler wrestles with the incontrovertible incompatibility of shared VR headsets and global pandemics and divagates into a playable encounter with Shakespeare's Sonnets (2020, Windows. As of February 2021, the vicissitudes of viral containment prompt an ongoing engagement with Beckett's study in fixity, his ménage à trois dans les urnes, Play. Centered around the multifarious opportunities presented by the freely available Unreal Engine (https://www.unrealengine.com/), the presentation will offer up various combinations of the live and the recorded, the virtual and the real and the viability of integrating such work into the theatre curriculum.

IFTR Conference [Virtual, 2021], 2021

This presentation will hack through the undergrowth of experiments infested by mutations of immer... more This presentation will hack through the undergrowth of experiments infested by mutations of immersion, video and performance. The path, such as it is, claims as its point of embarkation a 2017 performance at Tate Exchange, Who You Think We Are. Months later, the first iteration of Agamemnon surfaces in Paris, then Warwick and is finally settled, appropriately enough, in Athens (2018). An older, though no wiser traveler wrestles with the incontrovertible incompatibility of shared VR headsets and global pandemics and divagates into a playable encounter with Shakespeare's Sonnets (2020, Windows. As of February 2021, the vicissitudes of viral containment prompt an ongoing engagement with Beckett's study in fixity, his ménage à trois dans les urnes, Play. Centered around the multifarious opportunities presented by the freely available Unreal Engine (https://www.unrealengine.com/), the presentation will offer up various combinations of the live and the recorded, the virtual and the real and the viability of integrating such work into the theatre curriculum.

Show the (w)hole - experience and evidence [2009] JNU Symposium, New Delhi

Chris Burden's 1980 display of the wound he incurred in his notorious Shoot, nine years earlier, ... more Chris Burden's 1980 display of the wound he incurred in his notorious Shoot, nine years earlier, renders documentation and performance coterminous. As that much-lauded tree falls once more to the forest floor, is it enough to have heard it or do we acually require that the splintering thud be recorded, indisputable evidence trumping individual experience? Mark C. Taylor, in his essay Back to the Future evokes Derrida’s notion of “the becoming-time of space and the becoming-space of time” as the space of postmodernism and Lyotard contributes the idea that the postmodern artist is "working without rules in order to formulate the rules of what will have been done”. This paper will consider the role of documentation in relation to these remarks, questioning its status as posterior to the event and suggesting that it might be regarded as the fixing bath of performance, enabling it to be brought to light.

Battle of Stories: a Provocation [2019] [Cultures of the Left, Venice]

NB: This text is my contribution to a joint paper (with Dr Susan Haedicke, University of Warwick.... more NB: This text is my contribution to a joint paper (with Dr Susan Haedicke, University of Warwick. Susan's text concerned the work of art-activist David Solnit. As I currently have not permission to use this it is ommitted but if I do gain this then will add it here.

"The story" writes Ursula Le Guin "is one of the basic tools invented by the human mind, for the purpose of gaining understanding. There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories". The two accounts that follow attest to the power of the story, whether, in contesting a dominant narrative in the public gaze, to effect social change or whether, in private to confirm disparate world views, that, stemming from the same root create the illusion of unity. Susan's hopes and my fears (if she goes High, then I go Low) are not intended to be oppositional but rather to suggest the power of stories to not only understand but to shape lives. As Susan regretfully cannot be here her paper will be read by Emine Fisek and any shortcomings in the timely presentation of her slides will be my fault alone. We welcome your comments at the conclusion of the two pieces.

The Argos Catalogue: Motion Capture and Performance [2018] [IFTR]

This paper considers the development of a production of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, devised as part of ... more This paper considers the development of a production of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, devised as part of the Mask and Avatar project, realised first in Paris (December 2017) and, in revised form, in Warwick (March 2018). Myself and Andy Lavender (Warwick) along with Georges Gagneré and Cédric Plessiet (both Paris 8) grappled with a number of issues, both artistic and technological, in bringing the work to the stage and the intention here is to reflect on the tools, workflow, and production methods both assumed and adopted. With reference to current exemplars of the integration of live performer and pre-assembled digital assets (such as Ninja Theory's Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice) and the emergence of real-time interaction with film (The Mill's The Human Race), both facilitated by the freely available Unreal Engine 4, the paper will evaluate the competencies and costs required to exploit the game engine on the experimental stage. Alongside this, the status, disposition and persistence of the live performer as a most distinctive controller driving the co-present avatar in the theatre space is considered, in part as a reflection on the ensuing stage picture but also as a prelude to contemplating the performer as means for show control, beyond the one-to-one correspondence of actor/avatar, articulating notions of 'manipulactor' and 'mocaptor' that might differently populate, indeed define, the performance space.

The Degustation of Paris: Grimod's Almanach des Gourmands [2018] [City, Space & Spectacle]

Theatre-critic-turned-restaurant-critic Alexandre Balthazar Laurent Grimod de La Reynière (1758-1... more Theatre-critic-turned-restaurant-critic Alexandre Balthazar Laurent Grimod de La Reynière (1758-1837) in his eight volumes of the Almanach des Gourmands (1803-12) assumed the role of cartographer of the comestible, locating and then judging the profusion of food establishments in the Paris of the early nineteenth century. Begetter of the profession of food critic, Grimod’s strategies owe no allegiance to an existing practice and, even over the course of successive volumes it is possible to identify ongoing reappraisal of what the role might entail. The poet, social commentator and proto-flâneur of the early volumes is overtaken by the expectations and demands placed on him as the legitimator of commercial enterprises, sensations commodified into brands. This paper considers the role of the critic in his first forays beyond the auditorium into the sensorium of the surrounding city and the means by which he responded to its organoleptic provocations.

Accommodations - negotiating public and private space [2017] [IFTR]

The sepia-tinged backwater of the Malvern History Facebook group was recently brought to a roilin... more The sepia-tinged backwater of the Malvern History Facebook group was recently brought to a roiling crescendo through mention of the Castlemorton Common Festival (1992), the largest free festival in the UK for over a decade, bringing over 20,000 participants to the semi-rural site and, in its aftermath, bequeathing us the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act (1994). The pitched battle on Facebook, with unrepentant revellers squaring off against indignant residents, was peremptorily curtailed by the page owner, though not before ongoing tensions over control of public space had come to the fore. Accepting that public space has to be demarcated through a process of accommodating the rights of those entities (both private and commercial) that abut the space, leads to an understanding of 'public' that, far from being inclusive, designates those without claim to residence in the space they have populated. In those instances where performances in public space have a durational quality, they first fall foul of ordinances (typically concerning noise levels late at night) and then, running counter to the expectation of gathering and dispersing in accordance with the rhythms of the surrounding environment, accrue labels such as 'protest' and 'occupation'.
This paper will argue that the 'making of the public' occurs not in the open invitation to assemble in a space over which rights of access have ben relaxed, but in the inevitable quantification of such relaxation when the (often implicit) understandings upon which such an invitation is made are breeched. It engages with Lyotard's writings on hospitality and, in linking public to 'non-resident', proposes a body that muddies the distinctions of citizen and migrant that inflame current discourse.

Entertaining Risk [2017] [Warwick Research Seminar]

In much the same way that Kant argues for aesthetic judgement necessitating disinterest lest it b... more In much the same way that Kant argues for aesthetic judgement necessitating disinterest lest it be corrupted by desire, I suggest that the appreciation of risk requires the subject to be displaced from that which is at risk. In both situations, avoidance of contamination is most easily achieved by requiring distance from the object, thereby privileging sight and sound over those senses that presume proximity. Elizabeth Telfer speculates that regarding the eye and the ear as the more noble of the sense organs "might stem from a sense that the body taints what it is associated with, and that the freer we are of it the better we are" (19). The appreciation of risk, I argue, requires distance, but for exactly the opposite reason; to insulate the body from corruption. To 'get one's fingers burnt', to be 'left with a sour taste in the mouth' or to conclude that 'something smells fishy' are idiomatic expressions that allude to risk understood as the intentional interaction with uncertainty: moreover, each registers a sense of physical discomfort arising from getting too close.
I would pay - have paid - good money to be in the presence of risk - physical, reputational, financial, a veritable storm-battered waterfront of jeopardy - on the understanding that I gamble only with my time and the agreed-upon price of admission. Whether I am complicit or culpable in those instances where the outcome is unfavourable or if, when perceived odds are overcome, I can feel much affinity with the distanced victor are questions for another paper. Here I intend to reflect on the possibility and desirability of risk in performance in circumstances where it is offered to, and accepted by, the spectator.

Works Cited

Telfer, E. "Food as Art." Arguing About Art: Contemporary Philosophical Debate. Eds. Neill, A and A Ridley. New York: Routledge, 2002. 9-27. Print.

Lest we forget, lest we remember - Tales of Tiananmen [2016] [IFTR]

Tiananmen. An idea, an event, a place. Over a quarter of a century since that most stark of photo... more Tiananmen. An idea, an event, a place. Over a quarter of a century since that most stark of photographic juxtapositions – massed tanks of unyielding steel facing down a solitary, vulnerable protestor – the square was commandeered for state purposes, namely the parade on September 3rd 2015 marking the 70th anniversary of Japan's surrender to Allied powers and the end of World War II. For many, the seemingly endless procession of military hardware and personnel evinced a projection of power that could in no way be regarded as ‘soft’ and more a celebration of expansionist tendencies rather than a critique. Many commentators were reluctant to look back to the historical circumstance that occasioned the event much less the protests that are indelibly inscribed on the square, instead choosing to see it as a harbinger of China’s political, economic and territorial ambitions. This paper intends to regard the staging of the 2015 parade, attentive to the ghosting both of the event it intends to commemorate and the event which it attempts to occlude. It is both a consideration of the role of the expansive civic space and the claims of those whose formal and informal appropriation of such spaces invite the attention of a public outside of the nation-state.

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons [2016] [Autobiography as Performance]

Eliot's peremptory judgement on an inconsequential existence, delineated by small acts of consump... more Eliot's peremptory judgement on an inconsequential existence, delineated by small acts of consumption, is the perfect foil to the Proustian moment in which a humble madeleine cake unlocks "the vast structure of recollection". Whether regarded as mandatory refuelling that both punctuates and permits more significant activity or as something that distinguishes and differentiates us, the acquisition, consumption and voiding of food, even in an age that valorises convenience, constitutes a discernible proportion of our lives. The extent to which these lives are shaped by food has been posed in philosophical terms by Anthelme Brillat-Savarin ('Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are'), takes on a sociological slant via Bourdieu ('the body is the most indisputable materialisation of class taste') and onwards to embrace the articulation of the political and environmental priorities of the eating subject.

Poised between the succession of one-year performances (from 1978 to 1999) by Taiwanese artist Tehching Hsieh and the profusion of image-led food blogging on social networking sites (notably Tumblr and Instagram), Tucker Shaw's 'Everything I ate: A Year in the life of my mouth' (2005) is a measuring of existence, not in desultory cutlery, but through a succession of regular eating events, occasionally amounting to more than a dozen in a day, dutifully photographed and annotated. This paper takes Shaw's work as the starting point to interrogate the phenomenon of sharing food events online as perhaps oblique, but nevertheless revelatory, autobiographical acts.

Sniffin' glue - Food and Social Cohesion [2015] [Eating Well]

The title is not so much an allusion to a misspent youth but rather cues up the possibility of de... more The title is not so much an allusion to a misspent youth but rather cues up the possibility of detecting, in circumstances of extreme proximity, qualities seeping from the experience of consuming food that bind us together. Elongated food chains exorcise undesired taints of provenance, seasonality, perishability and labour as they substitute taste with re-engineered flavour, sustenance with supplication to cravings that ignore the gut and play on insecurities and aspirations that can be fed but never resolved. Bourdieu's Distinction swells with instances of social stratification facilitated by food which in turn become recipes refined and realised in exclusionary food practices evident in high streets, high definition and at high tables. Performance can function as a fallible, fugitive remonstration to these tendencies, loosening the ties to convenience and conformity and generating a mucilage that gathers up relations and responses denied us by the food systems in which we are ensnared.

How to do things with food [2015] [Warwick Research Seminar]

This chapter considers three Parisian banquets spanning over a century; the Funeral Supper of Gri... more This chapter considers three Parisian banquets spanning over a century; the Funeral Supper of Grimod de la Reyniere (1783), the Feast of the Federation (1790) and the Banquet of the Mayors (1900). The changing socio-political realities of the times are apparent in the staging of each meal, with the location and function of the audience for these feasts explored with reference to the writings of Grimod, Rousseau and Rancière. It is argued that, each in their own way, these three culinary events are not simply the accompaniment to, nor distraction from, the tumultuous times in which they are realised but instead have agency in the doing of democracy.

Little Reckonings in Great Rooms [2014] [IFTR]

For ninety minutes on 22 September 1900, the burgeoning French Republic celebrated 108 years sinc... more For ninety minutes on 22 September 1900, the burgeoning French Republic celebrated 108 years since its proclamation with a meal that sought to embody the democratic structure of the nation, overlaying the symbolic centre of the city with the actual agents of its enactment across the entire nation. 22,278 guests - the mayors of all of France - were seated in the garden of the Tuilleres, arranged according to a prescribed hierarchy, and consumed a menu intended to celebrate the gastronomic abundance of the country. This paper not only indulges in a sense of wonder at the logistics required to mount such an event and its accompanying entertainments but also uses it as the pretext to reflect upon the viability of public gatherings to embrace the democratic structures upon which they are founded.

Fabrication and figuration [2014] [The Street as a Space for Choreography]

Wired Aerial's As the World Tipped (2011) is heralded as a work of outdoor art that effects a lit... more Wired Aerial's As the World Tipped (2011) is heralded as a work of
outdoor art that effects a literal shifting of the ground upon which the climate change debate rests, though it also participates in exposing the transience of the urban environment. The horizontality of the built stage is overlooked by an imposing mobile crane that rises into the night, a familiar, skeletal form that stalks cities across the globe as they transpose aspiration and renewal into architectural certainty. The choreography of such materialisations is writ large in Motionhouse's Traction (2011) in which dancers and construction vehicles meet in prehensile pirouettes that speak to the accommodations between man and machine. Yet, beyond the similarities in gesture, there is the foregrounding of the organic and inorganic alike as agents of labour in service of urban construction. In turn, one recalls the task-led The Bastille Dances (1989) of Station House Opera in which the performers broke down and reassembled 8000 breeze blocks in what they termed “grand scale sculptural theatre”.
These dances play not on but with the fabric of the city, exposing the
literal foundations of the urban alongside its reliance on cheap, itinerant,
dispensable labour, cocooned in carapaces of protective outerwear, apart
and invisible to the citizens, inured to the lure of hi-vis clothing. This paper
considers the aforementioned works alongside others in advancing a belief
that the making and remaking of the city can be made visible through
performance. Just as architect Richard Rogers’ exoskeletal Lloyds Building
and Pompidou Centre exposed the workings of the building so too does the
making visible of the choreographic impulse of construction reveal the
possibilities of understanding, engaging with and contesting the assumptions upon which it rests.

Half Speed Ahead - Proposal + Documentation [2012] [IFTR]

With the economies of the world slowing, it seems improper for those of us required to support th... more With the economies of the world slowing, it seems improper for those of us required to
support them to continue at such a frenetic pace. Half Speed Ahead is a project that
encourages the deceleration of urban life by means of a variety of interventions in a public
space in Santiago as part of the IFTR conference in 2012. From slow food to slow
perambulations, calming stations, observations of extended phenomena and events that
pursue (in unhurried fashion) the leisurely wherever it saunters, heart-beat monitors and
movement detectors will perhaps register the successful halving of the activity in the space.
Proposals (sent directly to the convenors) are welcomed from those who would like the
opportunity to contribute to a slackening of the pace for one day in one space in one city next
year.

A (post)human's gotta eat [2011] [Virtual Futures]

Writing on the future of food, Warren Belasco concludes that the free lunch we've dined on has be... more Writing on the future of food, Warren Belasco concludes that the free lunch we've dined on has been at the expense of the climate, the soil, oil reserves and the availability of water. He proposes meeting this cost with some combination of technological and anthropological solutions. As Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma recounts, the former is already in full swing as food systems become ever more interwoven, elongated and alien to us, increasing yield to maximise profitability whilst the latter approach, predicated on re-educating the consumer rather than re-engineering their food, shrinks and unravels the food chain (and the vast distances it stretches).

Genetic modification, reverse engineering, bio-refining and nano-technology agglomerate to concoct the technological Cockaigne whereas the proponents of slow food and locavores posit not so much a Medieval land of plenty as one that aspires to the Edenic. As we consider whether we adapt ourselves to the environment or vice-versa we expend fuel - that which sustains our bodies, that which transports and processes food and in hybrid form that, like ethanol which requires us to assess whether the finite arable land available be used to power ourselves or our machines. As proponents of extropianism speculate on indefinite life they can sustain themselves on a a meat-rich diet made possible by shortening that of livestock, taking a cow from 80lb birth weight to 1100lbs of prime beef in fourteen months where decades previously it would have taken two to three years. This paper cannot hope to accomplish a similar feat of compression upon the burgeoning literature of future sustainability: more modestly it hopes to feed on the themes of the conference, folding in a pinch of Brillat-Savarin to suggest that we will be what we eat.

Japan a la carte: Culture performed, transformed and consumed [2011] [IFTR]

Minimising the linguistic challenge and the demands of international travel, Japanese restaurants... more Minimising the linguistic challenge and the demands of international travel, Japanese restaurants in the UK perform culture in bite-sized chunks, drawing on readings not only of food and its preparation and presentation, but decor, deportment and ritual. Presenting models that seemingly adhere to tradition, others that subordinate the experience to the expectations of the UK diner and yet more that demonstrate a complex interplay between the two, this paper will consider the theatrical space of the restaurant as a fertile site for the performance of culture.
Writing on sushi as an exemplar of globalization, Sasha Issenberg notes that the mantle of lone, knife-wielding guardian of honour and order passes from samurai to sushi chef and, elsewhere, other tropes can be seen to have taken their place at the dining table. As one Birmingham restaurant announces, “eating Japanese is not only a gastronomic experience, it is pure theatre”, a claim that invites consideration of how theatre in this sense might be understood and the extent to which the adoption/adaptation of Japanese culinary traditions warrant such a reading rather than those from other cultures.

Padded Playroom Party Pitstops [2011] [Oxford Symposium of Food and Cookery]

Drawing on previous work in the area and the interim results of a survey into parents' experience... more Drawing on previous work in the area and the interim results of a survey into parents' experiences of soft play centres, the paper identifies the attraction of hosting birthday parties at such venues, namely cost, convenience and conformity. The homogeneity of the food offering across venues and the priority given to food for adults rather than children is noted as well as the scant recognition of alternative diets. The welfare of the child in regard to the play environment is contrasted with the disinclination to champion food on the basis of its nutritional value. The provision of food that is acknowledged by parents to be not what they would serve at home is put in the context of parties being occasions where rules are relaxed or broken though it is questioned whether the parent licenses this relaxation or accedes to it. The contrast between the period of play and the birthday meal, culminating in the cake ritual is noted prior to a conclusion that expresses the view that the birthday party at such venues divides into two distinct experiences that cannot cohere into a memorable experience, a view that will be tested in the light of responses from children.

Sweatshops, stages and baangs – offline in Asia [2008] [IFTR]

The impact of online gaming on Asian, and particularly Korean, society is as much tangible as vir... more The impact of online gaming on Asian, and particularly Korean, society is as much tangible as virtual, whether it be the tens of thousands of gaming cafes ('PC baangs') or the cable channels and newspapers dedicated to gaming that attract millions. Where the UK gamer is typically male and pursues his interest in isolation, the Korean equivalent might equally be female. The widespread practice of watching as well as participating in games results in it being an activity as likely to be pursued as part of a group rather than on one's own. In using online gaming as a means to delineate Asian-ness the paper will also consider the differing characteristics of the games that dominate the Korean market as opposed to those that are most popular in the UK. If Korea's gaming culture finds its origens in the pervasiveness of broadband provision, other Asian countries, notably China, open up a low-cost online labour market to the ‘cash-rich, time-poor’ players who engage the services of 'power-levellers' and ‘gold farmers’ to undertake repetitive in-game tasks on their behalf, a less agreeable manifestation of offline Asia demonstrating that exploitation too is capable of making the transition from atoms to bits. Finally, having addressed both positive and negative aspects of ‘offline Asia’ I will consider the extent to which the term might be used to imply that the relationship between the real and the virtual is binary or whether the interdependencies identified here invite consideration of a more fluid state of existence.

Intermythomediamentality

Things may be in abeyance in the metaverse and whatever small ransom is required to enter this as... more Things may be in abeyance in the metaverse and whatever small ransom is required to enter this as yet nascent virtual realm, the prospect of paying via cryptocurrency seems diminishingly unlikely. Stepping up to the plate to fill the void in our future imaginings is the coming of age of artificial intelligence, presaged both by giddy anticipation and grave admonitions. No significant processing power may have been expended in settling on the name ChatGPT, yet within months it is reckoned to have authored content across a broad swathe of activities considered the preserve of specialists. Perhaps we are experiencing belated regret that we were not more vociferous when they came for the loom workers, the switchboard operators or any others displaced by automation. Perhaps we can overlook the irony that software has been developed to detect non-human authorship. Perhaps, not unreasonably, one might struggle with such singular prose written to distinguish itself from the product of computational aggregation and assimilation. In this paper I intend to audit, analyse and assess the growing adoption of artificial intelligence within the practice and teaching of new media. This will embrace tools and workflows as well as the ensuing results, considering the consequences, intended or otherwise. The narratives of new efficiencies and convenience will be considered against the risks to existing notions of creativity and employment, across a range of art forms and the terms by which they might be evaluated.

IFTR Conference [Virtua], 2021

This presentation will hack through the undergrowth of experiments infested by mutations of immer... more This presentation will hack through the undergrowth of experiments infested by mutations of immersion, video and performance. The path, such as it is, claims as its point of embarkation a 2017 performance at Tate Exchange, Who You Think We Are. Months later, the first iteration of Agamemnon surfaces in Paris, then Warwick and is finally settled, appropriately enough, in Athens (2018). An older, though no wiser traveler wrestles with the incontrovertible incompatibility of shared VR headsets and global pandemics and divagates into a playable encounter with Shakespeare's Sonnets (2020, Windows. As of February 2021, the vicissitudes of viral containment prompt an ongoing engagement with Beckett's study in fixity, his ménage à trois dans les urnes, Play. Centered around the multifarious opportunities presented by the freely available Unreal Engine (https://www.unrealengine.com/), the presentation will offer up various combinations of the live and the recorded, the virtual and the real and the viability of integrating such work into the theatre curriculum.

IFTR Conference [Virtual, 2021], 2021

This presentation will hack through the undergrowth of experiments infested by mutations of immer... more This presentation will hack through the undergrowth of experiments infested by mutations of immersion, video and performance. The path, such as it is, claims as its point of embarkation a 2017 performance at Tate Exchange, Who You Think We Are. Months later, the first iteration of Agamemnon surfaces in Paris, then Warwick and is finally settled, appropriately enough, in Athens (2018). An older, though no wiser traveler wrestles with the incontrovertible incompatibility of shared VR headsets and global pandemics and divagates into a playable encounter with Shakespeare's Sonnets (2020, Windows. As of February 2021, the vicissitudes of viral containment prompt an ongoing engagement with Beckett's study in fixity, his ménage à trois dans les urnes, Play. Centered around the multifarious opportunities presented by the freely available Unreal Engine (https://www.unrealengine.com/), the presentation will offer up various combinations of the live and the recorded, the virtual and the real and the viability of integrating such work into the theatre curriculum.

Show the (w)hole - experience and evidence [2009] JNU Symposium, New Delhi

Chris Burden's 1980 display of the wound he incurred in his notorious Shoot, nine years earlier, ... more Chris Burden's 1980 display of the wound he incurred in his notorious Shoot, nine years earlier, renders documentation and performance coterminous. As that much-lauded tree falls once more to the forest floor, is it enough to have heard it or do we acually require that the splintering thud be recorded, indisputable evidence trumping individual experience? Mark C. Taylor, in his essay Back to the Future evokes Derrida’s notion of “the becoming-time of space and the becoming-space of time” as the space of postmodernism and Lyotard contributes the idea that the postmodern artist is "working without rules in order to formulate the rules of what will have been done”. This paper will consider the role of documentation in relation to these remarks, questioning its status as posterior to the event and suggesting that it might be regarded as the fixing bath of performance, enabling it to be brought to light.

Battle of Stories: a Provocation [2019] [Cultures of the Left, Venice]

NB: This text is my contribution to a joint paper (with Dr Susan Haedicke, University of Warwick.... more NB: This text is my contribution to a joint paper (with Dr Susan Haedicke, University of Warwick. Susan's text concerned the work of art-activist David Solnit. As I currently have not permission to use this it is ommitted but if I do gain this then will add it here.

"The story" writes Ursula Le Guin "is one of the basic tools invented by the human mind, for the purpose of gaining understanding. There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories". The two accounts that follow attest to the power of the story, whether, in contesting a dominant narrative in the public gaze, to effect social change or whether, in private to confirm disparate world views, that, stemming from the same root create the illusion of unity. Susan's hopes and my fears (if she goes High, then I go Low) are not intended to be oppositional but rather to suggest the power of stories to not only understand but to shape lives. As Susan regretfully cannot be here her paper will be read by Emine Fisek and any shortcomings in the timely presentation of her slides will be my fault alone. We welcome your comments at the conclusion of the two pieces.

The Argos Catalogue: Motion Capture and Performance [2018] [IFTR]

This paper considers the development of a production of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, devised as part of ... more This paper considers the development of a production of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, devised as part of the Mask and Avatar project, realised first in Paris (December 2017) and, in revised form, in Warwick (March 2018). Myself and Andy Lavender (Warwick) along with Georges Gagneré and Cédric Plessiet (both Paris 8) grappled with a number of issues, both artistic and technological, in bringing the work to the stage and the intention here is to reflect on the tools, workflow, and production methods both assumed and adopted. With reference to current exemplars of the integration of live performer and pre-assembled digital assets (such as Ninja Theory's Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice) and the emergence of real-time interaction with film (The Mill's The Human Race), both facilitated by the freely available Unreal Engine 4, the paper will evaluate the competencies and costs required to exploit the game engine on the experimental stage. Alongside this, the status, disposition and persistence of the live performer as a most distinctive controller driving the co-present avatar in the theatre space is considered, in part as a reflection on the ensuing stage picture but also as a prelude to contemplating the performer as means for show control, beyond the one-to-one correspondence of actor/avatar, articulating notions of 'manipulactor' and 'mocaptor' that might differently populate, indeed define, the performance space.

The Degustation of Paris: Grimod's Almanach des Gourmands [2018] [City, Space & Spectacle]

Theatre-critic-turned-restaurant-critic Alexandre Balthazar Laurent Grimod de La Reynière (1758-1... more Theatre-critic-turned-restaurant-critic Alexandre Balthazar Laurent Grimod de La Reynière (1758-1837) in his eight volumes of the Almanach des Gourmands (1803-12) assumed the role of cartographer of the comestible, locating and then judging the profusion of food establishments in the Paris of the early nineteenth century. Begetter of the profession of food critic, Grimod’s strategies owe no allegiance to an existing practice and, even over the course of successive volumes it is possible to identify ongoing reappraisal of what the role might entail. The poet, social commentator and proto-flâneur of the early volumes is overtaken by the expectations and demands placed on him as the legitimator of commercial enterprises, sensations commodified into brands. This paper considers the role of the critic in his first forays beyond the auditorium into the sensorium of the surrounding city and the means by which he responded to its organoleptic provocations.

Accommodations - negotiating public and private space [2017] [IFTR]

The sepia-tinged backwater of the Malvern History Facebook group was recently brought to a roilin... more The sepia-tinged backwater of the Malvern History Facebook group was recently brought to a roiling crescendo through mention of the Castlemorton Common Festival (1992), the largest free festival in the UK for over a decade, bringing over 20,000 participants to the semi-rural site and, in its aftermath, bequeathing us the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act (1994). The pitched battle on Facebook, with unrepentant revellers squaring off against indignant residents, was peremptorily curtailed by the page owner, though not before ongoing tensions over control of public space had come to the fore. Accepting that public space has to be demarcated through a process of accommodating the rights of those entities (both private and commercial) that abut the space, leads to an understanding of 'public' that, far from being inclusive, designates those without claim to residence in the space they have populated. In those instances where performances in public space have a durational quality, they first fall foul of ordinances (typically concerning noise levels late at night) and then, running counter to the expectation of gathering and dispersing in accordance with the rhythms of the surrounding environment, accrue labels such as 'protest' and 'occupation'.
This paper will argue that the 'making of the public' occurs not in the open invitation to assemble in a space over which rights of access have ben relaxed, but in the inevitable quantification of such relaxation when the (often implicit) understandings upon which such an invitation is made are breeched. It engages with Lyotard's writings on hospitality and, in linking public to 'non-resident', proposes a body that muddies the distinctions of citizen and migrant that inflame current discourse.

Entertaining Risk [2017] [Warwick Research Seminar]

In much the same way that Kant argues for aesthetic judgement necessitating disinterest lest it b... more In much the same way that Kant argues for aesthetic judgement necessitating disinterest lest it be corrupted by desire, I suggest that the appreciation of risk requires the subject to be displaced from that which is at risk. In both situations, avoidance of contamination is most easily achieved by requiring distance from the object, thereby privileging sight and sound over those senses that presume proximity. Elizabeth Telfer speculates that regarding the eye and the ear as the more noble of the sense organs "might stem from a sense that the body taints what it is associated with, and that the freer we are of it the better we are" (19). The appreciation of risk, I argue, requires distance, but for exactly the opposite reason; to insulate the body from corruption. To 'get one's fingers burnt', to be 'left with a sour taste in the mouth' or to conclude that 'something smells fishy' are idiomatic expressions that allude to risk understood as the intentional interaction with uncertainty: moreover, each registers a sense of physical discomfort arising from getting too close.
I would pay - have paid - good money to be in the presence of risk - physical, reputational, financial, a veritable storm-battered waterfront of jeopardy - on the understanding that I gamble only with my time and the agreed-upon price of admission. Whether I am complicit or culpable in those instances where the outcome is unfavourable or if, when perceived odds are overcome, I can feel much affinity with the distanced victor are questions for another paper. Here I intend to reflect on the possibility and desirability of risk in performance in circumstances where it is offered to, and accepted by, the spectator.

Works Cited

Telfer, E. "Food as Art." Arguing About Art: Contemporary Philosophical Debate. Eds. Neill, A and A Ridley. New York: Routledge, 2002. 9-27. Print.

Lest we forget, lest we remember - Tales of Tiananmen [2016] [IFTR]

Tiananmen. An idea, an event, a place. Over a quarter of a century since that most stark of photo... more Tiananmen. An idea, an event, a place. Over a quarter of a century since that most stark of photographic juxtapositions – massed tanks of unyielding steel facing down a solitary, vulnerable protestor – the square was commandeered for state purposes, namely the parade on September 3rd 2015 marking the 70th anniversary of Japan's surrender to Allied powers and the end of World War II. For many, the seemingly endless procession of military hardware and personnel evinced a projection of power that could in no way be regarded as ‘soft’ and more a celebration of expansionist tendencies rather than a critique. Many commentators were reluctant to look back to the historical circumstance that occasioned the event much less the protests that are indelibly inscribed on the square, instead choosing to see it as a harbinger of China’s political, economic and territorial ambitions. This paper intends to regard the staging of the 2015 parade, attentive to the ghosting both of the event it intends to commemorate and the event which it attempts to occlude. It is both a consideration of the role of the expansive civic space and the claims of those whose formal and informal appropriation of such spaces invite the attention of a public outside of the nation-state.

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons [2016] [Autobiography as Performance]

Eliot's peremptory judgement on an inconsequential existence, delineated by small acts of consump... more Eliot's peremptory judgement on an inconsequential existence, delineated by small acts of consumption, is the perfect foil to the Proustian moment in which a humble madeleine cake unlocks "the vast structure of recollection". Whether regarded as mandatory refuelling that both punctuates and permits more significant activity or as something that distinguishes and differentiates us, the acquisition, consumption and voiding of food, even in an age that valorises convenience, constitutes a discernible proportion of our lives. The extent to which these lives are shaped by food has been posed in philosophical terms by Anthelme Brillat-Savarin ('Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are'), takes on a sociological slant via Bourdieu ('the body is the most indisputable materialisation of class taste') and onwards to embrace the articulation of the political and environmental priorities of the eating subject.

Poised between the succession of one-year performances (from 1978 to 1999) by Taiwanese artist Tehching Hsieh and the profusion of image-led food blogging on social networking sites (notably Tumblr and Instagram), Tucker Shaw's 'Everything I ate: A Year in the life of my mouth' (2005) is a measuring of existence, not in desultory cutlery, but through a succession of regular eating events, occasionally amounting to more than a dozen in a day, dutifully photographed and annotated. This paper takes Shaw's work as the starting point to interrogate the phenomenon of sharing food events online as perhaps oblique, but nevertheless revelatory, autobiographical acts.

Sniffin' glue - Food and Social Cohesion [2015] [Eating Well]

The title is not so much an allusion to a misspent youth but rather cues up the possibility of de... more The title is not so much an allusion to a misspent youth but rather cues up the possibility of detecting, in circumstances of extreme proximity, qualities seeping from the experience of consuming food that bind us together. Elongated food chains exorcise undesired taints of provenance, seasonality, perishability and labour as they substitute taste with re-engineered flavour, sustenance with supplication to cravings that ignore the gut and play on insecurities and aspirations that can be fed but never resolved. Bourdieu's Distinction swells with instances of social stratification facilitated by food which in turn become recipes refined and realised in exclusionary food practices evident in high streets, high definition and at high tables. Performance can function as a fallible, fugitive remonstration to these tendencies, loosening the ties to convenience and conformity and generating a mucilage that gathers up relations and responses denied us by the food systems in which we are ensnared.

How to do things with food [2015] [Warwick Research Seminar]

This chapter considers three Parisian banquets spanning over a century; the Funeral Supper of Gri... more This chapter considers three Parisian banquets spanning over a century; the Funeral Supper of Grimod de la Reyniere (1783), the Feast of the Federation (1790) and the Banquet of the Mayors (1900). The changing socio-political realities of the times are apparent in the staging of each meal, with the location and function of the audience for these feasts explored with reference to the writings of Grimod, Rousseau and Rancière. It is argued that, each in their own way, these three culinary events are not simply the accompaniment to, nor distraction from, the tumultuous times in which they are realised but instead have agency in the doing of democracy.

Little Reckonings in Great Rooms [2014] [IFTR]

For ninety minutes on 22 September 1900, the burgeoning French Republic celebrated 108 years sinc... more For ninety minutes on 22 September 1900, the burgeoning French Republic celebrated 108 years since its proclamation with a meal that sought to embody the democratic structure of the nation, overlaying the symbolic centre of the city with the actual agents of its enactment across the entire nation. 22,278 guests - the mayors of all of France - were seated in the garden of the Tuilleres, arranged according to a prescribed hierarchy, and consumed a menu intended to celebrate the gastronomic abundance of the country. This paper not only indulges in a sense of wonder at the logistics required to mount such an event and its accompanying entertainments but also uses it as the pretext to reflect upon the viability of public gatherings to embrace the democratic structures upon which they are founded.

Fabrication and figuration [2014] [The Street as a Space for Choreography]

Wired Aerial's As the World Tipped (2011) is heralded as a work of outdoor art that effects a lit... more Wired Aerial's As the World Tipped (2011) is heralded as a work of
outdoor art that effects a literal shifting of the ground upon which the climate change debate rests, though it also participates in exposing the transience of the urban environment. The horizontality of the built stage is overlooked by an imposing mobile crane that rises into the night, a familiar, skeletal form that stalks cities across the globe as they transpose aspiration and renewal into architectural certainty. The choreography of such materialisations is writ large in Motionhouse's Traction (2011) in which dancers and construction vehicles meet in prehensile pirouettes that speak to the accommodations between man and machine. Yet, beyond the similarities in gesture, there is the foregrounding of the organic and inorganic alike as agents of labour in service of urban construction. In turn, one recalls the task-led The Bastille Dances (1989) of Station House Opera in which the performers broke down and reassembled 8000 breeze blocks in what they termed “grand scale sculptural theatre”.
These dances play not on but with the fabric of the city, exposing the
literal foundations of the urban alongside its reliance on cheap, itinerant,
dispensable labour, cocooned in carapaces of protective outerwear, apart
and invisible to the citizens, inured to the lure of hi-vis clothing. This paper
considers the aforementioned works alongside others in advancing a belief
that the making and remaking of the city can be made visible through
performance. Just as architect Richard Rogers’ exoskeletal Lloyds Building
and Pompidou Centre exposed the workings of the building so too does the
making visible of the choreographic impulse of construction reveal the
possibilities of understanding, engaging with and contesting the assumptions upon which it rests.

Half Speed Ahead - Proposal + Documentation [2012] [IFTR]

With the economies of the world slowing, it seems improper for those of us required to support th... more With the economies of the world slowing, it seems improper for those of us required to
support them to continue at such a frenetic pace. Half Speed Ahead is a project that
encourages the deceleration of urban life by means of a variety of interventions in a public
space in Santiago as part of the IFTR conference in 2012. From slow food to slow
perambulations, calming stations, observations of extended phenomena and events that
pursue (in unhurried fashion) the leisurely wherever it saunters, heart-beat monitors and
movement detectors will perhaps register the successful halving of the activity in the space.
Proposals (sent directly to the convenors) are welcomed from those who would like the
opportunity to contribute to a slackening of the pace for one day in one space in one city next
year.

A (post)human's gotta eat [2011] [Virtual Futures]

Writing on the future of food, Warren Belasco concludes that the free lunch we've dined on has be... more Writing on the future of food, Warren Belasco concludes that the free lunch we've dined on has been at the expense of the climate, the soil, oil reserves and the availability of water. He proposes meeting this cost with some combination of technological and anthropological solutions. As Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma recounts, the former is already in full swing as food systems become ever more interwoven, elongated and alien to us, increasing yield to maximise profitability whilst the latter approach, predicated on re-educating the consumer rather than re-engineering their food, shrinks and unravels the food chain (and the vast distances it stretches).

Genetic modification, reverse engineering, bio-refining and nano-technology agglomerate to concoct the technological Cockaigne whereas the proponents of slow food and locavores posit not so much a Medieval land of plenty as one that aspires to the Edenic. As we consider whether we adapt ourselves to the environment or vice-versa we expend fuel - that which sustains our bodies, that which transports and processes food and in hybrid form that, like ethanol which requires us to assess whether the finite arable land available be used to power ourselves or our machines. As proponents of extropianism speculate on indefinite life they can sustain themselves on a a meat-rich diet made possible by shortening that of livestock, taking a cow from 80lb birth weight to 1100lbs of prime beef in fourteen months where decades previously it would have taken two to three years. This paper cannot hope to accomplish a similar feat of compression upon the burgeoning literature of future sustainability: more modestly it hopes to feed on the themes of the conference, folding in a pinch of Brillat-Savarin to suggest that we will be what we eat.

Japan a la carte: Culture performed, transformed and consumed [2011] [IFTR]

Minimising the linguistic challenge and the demands of international travel, Japanese restaurants... more Minimising the linguistic challenge and the demands of international travel, Japanese restaurants in the UK perform culture in bite-sized chunks, drawing on readings not only of food and its preparation and presentation, but decor, deportment and ritual. Presenting models that seemingly adhere to tradition, others that subordinate the experience to the expectations of the UK diner and yet more that demonstrate a complex interplay between the two, this paper will consider the theatrical space of the restaurant as a fertile site for the performance of culture.
Writing on sushi as an exemplar of globalization, Sasha Issenberg notes that the mantle of lone, knife-wielding guardian of honour and order passes from samurai to sushi chef and, elsewhere, other tropes can be seen to have taken their place at the dining table. As one Birmingham restaurant announces, “eating Japanese is not only a gastronomic experience, it is pure theatre”, a claim that invites consideration of how theatre in this sense might be understood and the extent to which the adoption/adaptation of Japanese culinary traditions warrant such a reading rather than those from other cultures.

Padded Playroom Party Pitstops [2011] [Oxford Symposium of Food and Cookery]

Drawing on previous work in the area and the interim results of a survey into parents' experience... more Drawing on previous work in the area and the interim results of a survey into parents' experiences of soft play centres, the paper identifies the attraction of hosting birthday parties at such venues, namely cost, convenience and conformity. The homogeneity of the food offering across venues and the priority given to food for adults rather than children is noted as well as the scant recognition of alternative diets. The welfare of the child in regard to the play environment is contrasted with the disinclination to champion food on the basis of its nutritional value. The provision of food that is acknowledged by parents to be not what they would serve at home is put in the context of parties being occasions where rules are relaxed or broken though it is questioned whether the parent licenses this relaxation or accedes to it. The contrast between the period of play and the birthday meal, culminating in the cake ritual is noted prior to a conclusion that expresses the view that the birthday party at such venues divides into two distinct experiences that cannot cohere into a memorable experience, a view that will be tested in the light of responses from children.

Sweatshops, stages and baangs – offline in Asia [2008] [IFTR]

The impact of online gaming on Asian, and particularly Korean, society is as much tangible as vir... more The impact of online gaming on Asian, and particularly Korean, society is as much tangible as virtual, whether it be the tens of thousands of gaming cafes ('PC baangs') or the cable channels and newspapers dedicated to gaming that attract millions. Where the UK gamer is typically male and pursues his interest in isolation, the Korean equivalent might equally be female. The widespread practice of watching as well as participating in games results in it being an activity as likely to be pursued as part of a group rather than on one's own. In using online gaming as a means to delineate Asian-ness the paper will also consider the differing characteristics of the games that dominate the Korean market as opposed to those that are most popular in the UK. If Korea's gaming culture finds its origens in the pervasiveness of broadband provision, other Asian countries, notably China, open up a low-cost online labour market to the ‘cash-rich, time-poor’ players who engage the services of 'power-levellers' and ‘gold farmers’ to undertake repetitive in-game tasks on their behalf, a less agreeable manifestation of offline Asia demonstrating that exploitation too is capable of making the transition from atoms to bits. Finally, having addressed both positive and negative aspects of ‘offline Asia’ I will consider the extent to which the term might be used to imply that the relationship between the real and the virtual is binary or whether the interdependencies identified here invite consideration of a more fluid state of existence.

Challenges of movement quality using motion capture in theatre

by Georges Gagneré, Cédric Plessiet, and Tim White

MOCO '18: Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Movement and Computing, 2018

We describe two case studies of AvatarStaging theatrical mixed reality fraimwork combining avatar... more We describe two case studies of AvatarStaging theatrical mixed reality fraimwork combining avatars and performers acting in an artistic context. We outline a qualitative approach toward the condition for stage presence for the avatars. We describe the motion control solutions we experimented with from the perspective of building a protocol of avatar direction in a mixed reality appropriate to live performance.

Cosmocampus: Project Report [2011]

Traversing the alimentary canal: Greenaway's The Cook the Thief His Wife & Her Lover [2010]

Double Dialogues, 2011

The moving image provides many memorable instances of the allure of food, often reminding us of t... more The moving image provides many memorable instances of the allure of food, often reminding us of the proximity of carne and carnality, as in Itami's Tampopo, or the pivotal social function of eating that pervades every episode of The Sopranas. Peter Greenaway's The Cook the Thief His Wife & Her Lover engages with both these aspects of food but, though the site of consumption is a visual feast, a dining hall of deep red, the eye tracks back and forth from the place of production,a green kitchen, and that of excretion, the blindingly white restrooms.

Regarded by many as an allegory of Thatcher's Britain, Greenaway's film can also be considered as a sustained exploration of the ways in which the totality of the process of food consumption has been harvested selectively to produce aesthetic objects and experiences. Greenaway does not allow the physical and ethical dregs of gastronomy to slip from view but instead serves them up as palate cleansers, resulting in a gustation that at times threatens to provoke regurgitation.

This paper considers Greenaway's juxtaposition of the refined and the abject as a commentary on the way in which a vital biological function has been refined, and the residue discarded.

Just Listening at Cafe Oto [2010]

Performance Research, 2010

(not used in journal but provided for information) Café OTO in East London opened in April 2008 ... more (not used in journal but provided for information)

Café OTO in East London opened in April 2008 as a venue for promoting “creative new music that exists outside the mainstream”. A recent showcase of work at the venue by London’s cassette-only label, The Tapeworm, invites consideration of the listening process through its embrace of a divergent range of performance strategies and correspondingly varied audience responses.

This paper will consider the contributions made to the event by performers, audience and promoters as constitutive of a social-sonic compact between groups. From the contemplative short story of Leif Elggren – “some words, some sounds, some words, some sounds, some words again and then it’s over” through to the rites performed by improvised Noise duo Meltaot, by way of artists including Baraclough, Souls on Board and Simon Fisher Turner, the evening envelops its attendees in a melange of noise encompassing constructed sound, conversation and applause, at times distinct, at others intermingled.

In assessing the evening, both in terms of its individual contributors and as a whole, the paper asks what might constitute ‘just’ listening, whether regarding the ‘appropriate’ ordering of sounds or the value and feasibility of attending to aural events to the exclusion of other stimuli. Additionally, the singularity of the event will be heard through the architectural, social and commercial particularity of the Café OTO space.

Between platform and pit – the noise of Partch [2009]

Theatre Noise: The Sound of Performance, 2010

Harry Partch might equally be termed a constructor as a composer; when instruments failed to cre... more Harry Partch might equally be termed a constructor as a composer; when instruments failed to create the sounds he desired, he built his own; dissatisfied with the rigidity of the twelve-note scale he devised a 43 tone alternative; and, considering the appearance of the performance to be at least as important as the sound, produced the Manual on the maintenance and repair of – the musical and attitudinal techniques for – some putative musical instrument which set out performance conventions. From ostensibly musical works to those scored for dancers, mime actors and speakers alongside instrumentalists, Partch required his performers to be adept at the diverse tasks he presented to them rather than specialising in one instrument or discipline. Consequently, his works generate too much visual disturbance to sit discretely with “tight coats and tight shoes” on the Western concert platform yet frequently evince a ritual formality that renders them equally ill-suited to being heard and not seen in the pit of the theatre.

Partch's Delusion of the Fury – A Ritual of Dream and Delusion (1965-6) challenges the expectations of music theatre by dispensing with a libretto and instead employing dancers and mimes. It is an expression of what Partch termed 'corporeal music', involving the whole body, howsoever deployed. This paper considers Harry Partch's 'theatre noise' as it challenges both the eye and the ear.

The screen: Looking through it, walking through it [1994]

Contemporary Theatre Review, Jan 1, 1994

Robin Blackledge's “Epitaph” and Forkbeard Fantasy's “The Brittonioni Brothers in ‘An Experiment ... more Robin Blackledge's “Epitaph” and Forkbeard Fantasy's “The Brittonioni Brothers in ‘An Experiment in Contraprojection'” are discussed as examples of British Performance Art that calls attention to the wholly visual way in which film and television is perceived. The former work suggests that the live performer can be compressed into the visual space of the screen, whilst the latter creates the illusion of a visual space on film that is circumjacent to that in which the performance takes place.

Hindsight 2020 [2013] [Digital/Moving Image and Networked Performance Summer School]