PARIP 2003

NATIONAL CONFERENCE: 11-14 September

CONTRIBUTORS

GARDNER: TONY
school of performance and cultural industries (from July 2003)
university of leeds
landlines: creating interactive performance environments with communications technology

This contribution combines a 15-minute paper with the durational, installation-based performance work Caller ID, created for a public site close to the conference that may be visited by delegates during the specified hours (Boston Tea Party, Park Street). The paper will outline my recent attempts to develop a ‘multi-layered’ PaR model that is able to connect different modes of academic and professional practice — each requiring different levels of resourcing and generating their own knowledges and applications in practice — within single project proposals or definitions. A central assumption of this approach, to be argued in the paper, is that the research questions that inform such projects must be rigorously practice-driven; that is, they must resonate with the existing research culture of the artistic discipline just as much as with scholarly and academic concerns. In the case of the Landlines project, these questions focus on:

• the efficacy of installation-based and durational performance forms in engaging audience responses based on interaction and participation;
• the use of communications technologies in the creation of interactive performance environments;
• the capacity for performance work to stimulate audience engagement with questions of time, memory and nostalgia in relation to contemporary cultural experience.

I initially conceived the project as working in distinct stages or phases, each designed to capitalize on different spheres of activity and resources: beginning with a teaching-led phase (the results of which will be outlined in the paper) supported by institutional teaching and research budgets, to be developed progressively through a largely AHRB-funded grant for an independent project grown from the first phase (Landlines, installation-based performance for touring 2003/2004), followed by a period of institution-based ‘scholarly’ research leading to publication.

The project has taken a new direction in recent months, for reasons to be explained in the paper. Unexpected obstacles have proven to be disguised opportunities, with the result that the conference will feature the first showing of the new work Caller ID, which has been created with seven artist-performers as an exploration of the interface between public art, interactive art and performance.

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