The case of the disappearing 'liveness'

Is 'liveness' losing its meaning?

In 2008 the ICA announced the closure of their 'Live and Media Arts Department' with the director's statement that, 'the art form lacks depth and cultural urgency.' Never, in my opinion, has it been more urgent to locate the points of differentiation between 'liveness' and mediated, pseudo-reality. Did you hear about the man who spent so long playing computer games that when he steps outside, empowered by the projection of himself onto his super-hero character, he instantaneously got hit by a car and died? More broadly, think of the numerous studies on children proving that the long term effects of violent video games produce a two way effect of imitation violence and desentivity to violence within their audience. "When you're exposed to violence day in and day out, it loses its emotional impact on you. Once you're emotionally numb to violence, it's much easier to engage in violence."

Dr. L. Rowell Huesmann, director of the Research Center for Group Dynamics at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research

'In 1932 Bertolt Brecht imagined a future in which radio would cease to be merely a one-way 'apparatus for distribution' and become 'the finest possible communication apparatus in public life, a vast network of pipes.' In writing this he anticipated what we know now as internet culture and the possibilities of interactive media in 'theatre'. Almost concurrently, in 1936, Walter Benjamin, wrote 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.' According to [Philip] Auslander in his contribution to Interfaces, 'Benjamin's concept of reactivation provides a starting point for thinking about the relationship between mediated performances and their audiences'. Mediated is a useful term here as Auslander has proposed that we live in a world where the concept of 'liveness' is losing its meaning.'

Interfaces in Performance edited by Maria Chatzichristodoulou, Janis Jefferies and Rachel Zerihan, Ashgate Publishing Ltd 2009

Digital multi-media performances have the ability to 'reactivate' (in the words of Benjamin) 'liveness' or at the very least create awareness of its slow decline. Activity, however, requires support (but obviously not from the ICA).

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/family/11/03/healthmag.violent.video.kids/