Live Feed
View work here: http://www.asquare.org/work/livefeed/
Live Feed was a three day weekend artists residence held at Kench Hill, a beautiful 18th century Georgian house in the Kentish Weald between Tenterden and Appledore, England from the 20th to 22nd of May 2005.
Its aim was to pull together artists from various backgrounds such as liveart, performance, improvised performance, collaborative performance, performance journalism, dance, choreography, sound, qigong, behind the camera, video, net.art, new media art, digital art, filmmaking, photography, installation, coordinating performance events, lecturing, curating, criticism etc. to create a laboratory of practical collaborative experimentation with video components such as tapeless, wireless and digital cameras, radio links, remote control devices, video mixers, projectors, monitors and mobile phones. Participants were encouraged to foster an openhearted sharing approach to experimenting and working with equipment through on the spot collaborations. No video post-production equipment was used in performances or their documentation.
Above: various performances throughout the residency
Throughout the three day residency artists worked in groups to experiment with equipment and techniques around multiple themes and ideas; live feeds in performances, one to one, one to many and many to one methods of interaction and control, networks, explorations of the invisible world of transmissions, surveillance, remote control, remote links between different locations, the space between artworks, artist and audience, technology and the body, storytelling, improvisation, self-generating artworks etc. As themes and ideas were explored, groups continually changed in size and members with each participant deciding where they wanted to be and when. This continually created hubs of experimentation, which rapidly reached a critical mass and refined, evolved or diverged from the initial starting point ensuring the groups developed without detriment to individual artists concerns.
Video was employed both as integral to and a means of documenting performances, often as both simultaneously. It became something that could be truly explored and treated irreverently as cost of equipment, length of footage to record on, size, weight and invasiveness of the camera etc. were less of an issue. Instead, signal interference, range, resolution, orientation and placement of the camera etc. emerged as issues which created both new constraints and possibilities more akin to wireless networks than video. This necessitated thinking about the use of technology and bodies, media and performers as nodes in a network.
Above: proposal for a performance.
The Livefeed website is documentation of the performances which occurred during the three days. While it acknowledges that none would have occurred without the participation of everybody mentioned and the wealth of diversity they each brought to the performances, all information on the site is presented within the context of the artist Garrett Lynch’s work concerned with networks. This is not a net.art work but a work of network art exploring firstly, the usually technical interpretation of networks in new media, except here short distance, often line of sight transmission, moving image and audio in nature alongside secondly, networks created by people pulling together ideas, references and skills under common themes.
Above: work in progress on various performances
Live Feed was organised as part of DIY, an initiative of the Live Art Advisory Network – Artsadmin, the Live Art Development Agency and New Work Network DIY 3:2005 and was financially supported by the Live Art Development Agency, Artsadmin and Arts Council England, South East.