Difference between revisions of "Liveness"

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(Death of the Live)
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==Death of the Live==
 
==Death of the Live==
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Liveness is experiencing a long and slow death that began with the written word and has continued into broadcast technologies and internet communications. In fact, the very acknowledgement of liveness as a mode of mediation is suggestive of its dying nature. Until there was an alternative to liveness there was no concept of live. It was just a speech or a concert. Live is now often used as a retronym made necessary to distinguish it from the alternatives that have developed throughout time. The problem here is not so much arguing the deadness of liveness, it is rather to justify liveness as a mode of mediation as in many respects it is the lack of mediation that is being displaced by new and creative ways to mediate all forms of communication.
  
 
==Television: A Case Study in the Death of Liveness==
 
==Television: A Case Study in the Death of Liveness==

Revision as of 21:00, 25 April 2010

The quality or condition (of an event, performance, etc.) of being heard, watched, or broadcast at the time of occurrence.

There are two aspects of liveness: temporal and spatial, i.e. experiencing while it happens vs. being where it happens. Liveness can thus apply to the concept of being seated in the same theater as a production of a play, or watching a sporting event taking place on the other side of the country. The definition above, offered by the Oxford English Dictionary, focuses more on the temporal, however the two are in many ways intertwined. The idea of being in the same place at the same time as the production of a communication message is growing increasingly antiquated. While it could be argued that day-to-day interactions are also losing their liveness (consider self check-out lines and the ease of ordering things on the internet), it is constructed, performance-oriented activities that are most affected.

Attributes & Characteristics

Types of Liveness and Examples
Spatially Live Spatially Live
Temporally Live Attending a concert, sporting event, theater Watching sporting events on TV
Temporally Live Pilgrimages to Holy Site A recorded television episode

Liveness dates back to the beginning of humanity, or at the very least, in the case of sports and other aspects of performance, since ancient Egypt. It includes everything from interaction between two people to 50,000 spectators watching gladiatorial battles at the Colosseum. Despite its prevalence throughout history, however, it is difficult to discuss liveness without looking at what it is not.

Liveness is the absence of writing. It is the encoding and decoding happening at the same moment. Another attribute of liveness is difference. One could see the same play with the same cast three nights in a row and see a different show each time. Unlike recorded or written work which is the same words or images each time one looks at it, liveness offers a unique presentation each time. This version of pops and hisses gives liveness a certain ethereal, magical quality. When viewing something, the spectator becomes a part of the experience in a way unlike viewers of recorded, more static content. Of course, liveness also brings with it a risk. If things are different enough in a live performance it can change the message or cause other problems.

Compared to other modes of mediation, liveness is less manageable. A performance one night may be longer than the next; a performer can make a mistake or intentionally cause problems; and technological failure or other forces outside the performers can interfere with the intent of the representation. There is an uncertainty to liveness that disappears when one begins recording events and making them more easily manipulable and controllable.

Death of the Live

Liveness is experiencing a long and slow death that began with the written word and has continued into broadcast technologies and internet communications. In fact, the very acknowledgement of liveness as a mode of mediation is suggestive of its dying nature. Until there was an alternative to liveness there was no concept of live. It was just a speech or a concert. Live is now often used as a retronym made necessary to distinguish it from the alternatives that have developed throughout time. The problem here is not so much arguing the deadness of liveness, it is rather to justify liveness as a mode of mediation as in many respects it is the lack of mediation that is being displaced by new and creative ways to mediate all forms of communication.

Television: A Case Study in the Death of Liveness

Reappropriating Liveness