My performance

Introduction

Main theme of this paper is about Performance and interactive media arts. Also, relates to my own experience. Two years ago, I had started as the advanced certificate student of Performance and Interactive Media Arts. For the first time, I had met other students and it was surprising that how diverse their background were, which included the students coming from theatre, computer programming, sculpture, music and writings. The students came from all over the nation besides Venezuela, Japan and Sierra Leone. By quickly collaborating with all the students in the first semester, I had learned from each student the kind of world they were from and it was a memorable experience. As the time passed by, I gradually realized that the artistic potential in this class was enormous and thrilled by the experiment. In the multidisciplinary and multicultural environment, we, students, exchanged our skills and learned how to articulate them in the artistic medium.

As I began the thesis, I did not have any plans that who would be my collaborator. In the first class, everyone seemed to have already determined their partners. At the moment, Phillip and I were sitting face to face, and looked at each other. Then, naturally, we became the collaborators for the subjects of theatre and music background. Our attempt to establish interdisciplinary expression, somehow, started with two stories during World War II, the worst tragedy in the human history caused by the global military insanity. On the other hand, our performance was titled “Acquainted: to understand is not to know,” the reflection of the expectations regarding what the audience would experience.

Historical perspective

In the performing arts, music and sound have played an important role to make the atmosphere more dramatic and emotional on stage and screen. Also, the audio techniques such as sound effects, voice over, and sound design are effectively used in today's films. Because the audience is more focused on the visual element and do not give much attention on the sound/musical element. However, the sound can be an image or strongly associated with the reality of the image. Toru Takemitsu, one of the preeminent Japanese composers, made a lot of effort on how music and sound work with images by writing numerous scores for films. He challenged what the sound could make the reality in the moving images. I was strongly inspired from his notions about films although, I lived in the different time.

While shooting the scene one of his ideas of “seeing” was the best. Takemitsu pointed out a lot of filmmakers who had no awareness of seeing when they shot a scene. He said, “There seem to be two ways to approach 'filming': one can either see objects as parts of himself, or he can see them as being outside himself” (Takemitsu, pp.42). This is because the films were a medium to see, and he had thought that it was significant to be aware of seeing. This inspired him to use cameras in front of the audience to juxtapose two realities ...