A Proposition and Three Scenarios
Proposition: A new form of public performance and event is available when we consider the combination of media-rich content created in an asynchronous, remote virtual manner – now a natural part of, so called Web 2.0 technologies (skype, facebook, youtube etc) – with the display of media content on large urban screens that are fixed in a specific location in public space and used in combination for the purposes of a specific event in public space.
To think this concept out more fully the following scenarios may be useful prompts.
Three Scenarios
Scenario 1: Senior’s Day
It’s Sunday afternoon during the Urban Screens Conference in Melbourne and it’s Senior’s Day. As part of the public celebrations in Fed Square a live event is set up called “Town Square Meeting”. Four simultaneous “skype-enabled” video feeds of people inhabiting distant locations across Australia are projected onto the big screen. In the Square is a person who is both moderating the conversation between the individuals on the screen and is mediating between the audience in the square and those on-screen.
Scenario 2: Facebook (local)
Liverpool A-Z (a “tenantspin” commissioned project), by Kelly Mark, is an excellent example of how a combination of Web 2.0 technologies, such as facebook can be used for generating personal narratives about place and location and used in combination with the Big Screen in Liverpool to project video footage, that’s also used as a way of presenting personal narratives of locality and stories about the places people live in. The interesting thing about this is that there are two very different forms of public space – facebook is a form of ‘virtual’ public space and the screens are fixed in major city locations – are here being used as a way of fixing stories into the locality.
Scenario 3: Live Events meets Web 2.0
Take both of the above and begin to see the potential of, on the one hand, virtual/asynchronous/remote collaboration using the kind of co-production networking that can facilitated by Web 2.0 technologies, and on the other hand, the fixing of these virtual interactions and collaboration into fixed locations in real public space via a large urban screen. The screen here is a mediator between the virtual and asynchronous afforded by Web 2.0 working practices; and, the real and live event-based aspects of the urban screens used as a display medium in real-time.
Add to this scenario a human moderator who, for the sake of argument, is positioned on a stage in front of the big screen. They moderate the performance coming in to the screen, whilst simultaneously moderating/conducting the performers/public in real public space.
Initially, it’s worth conceptualizing this as a musical performance, with the moderator acting much like the conductor in a real musical performance who is managing the composition. But they are also acting as a go-between – between the networked performance and the live performance in real public space. However, this is not exclusive to music. There are other forms of performance that are equally as viable in this context. Dance is another artform that springs to mind and adds a further opportunity with the possibility of using data captured from the movement of individuals in real space that’s fed back to the screen. Further possibilities – ones that might simplify the technical constraints of this kind of performance is with storytelling and narrative that largely focuses on text or audio output.