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‘Push the Boat Out’: Site-Specific and Cyberspatial in Live Art

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2009

Abstract

As a mutually-illuminating contrast to the academic exploration in the previous article of the potential of CD-ROM as a means both of teaching a ‘classical’ playtext and of analyzing the multiple choices involved in its performance, the two following pieces explore the potential of the new technologies in the creation and documentation of live art. Focusing upon her performance Push the Boat Out, given as part of the Jezebel Season at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in 1995, Leslie Hill first outlines the thinking behind her use of the Internet and the Web – as yet more economic than CD-ROM – both for creating ‘live art’ and for rendering its conventionally ‘unprintable’ form as a ‘text’ with its own integrity. The scripted element of her performance follows. Leslie Hill is a writer and performer, currently a resident artist fellow at the Institute for Studies in the Arts, and a senior lecturer in the Theatre Department at Arizona State University. Along with Helen Paris, she is co-artistic director of the ‘curious.com’ multimedia performance company.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1998

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References

Notes

1. I felt it was important to mention that the performance and installation stemmed from a real-life event not because I am interested (here) in tracing the evolution of personal experience to public art, but rather from a philosophical interest in notions of place and placelessness. I note the ‘real’ boat in Oklahoma, then, in so much as it was the site of a ‘site-specific’ experience.

2. Laurie Anderson's Puppet Motel (1994) is, as yet, by far and away the best performance work I've seen on CD-ROM and I recomend anyone who hasn't had the pleasure of exploring it to buy or borrow a copy in the next twenty-four hours.