Documenting Digital Performance Artworks

Abstract

In this chapter, we examine the consequences for the concepts of archiving and documentation brought forth by digital networked art works that use realtime digital data as a constitutive or major part of their construction and execution. We use case studies of the three works that made up the exhibition Everything Is Data in Singapore in 2015: 'The Mood of the Planet' by Vibeke Sorensen, which mines global Twitter data in realtime to drive multiple LED lights within monumental stacks of crushed glass; 'Man A' by Gibson/Martelli, which uses 'augmented reality' to drive motion captured dance sequences in interaction with a large physical object; and 'Out Of Space' by Adam Nash and Stefan Greuter, which uses realtime motion capture combined with an immersive virtual reality headset to build an immersive abstract audiovisual environment. We interrogate the role and concept of archiving in the light of these works that radically blur the distinction between artwork, archive and documentation. Because such works use realtime data sources to build themselves, they can be seen as a kind of 'realtime archive' or documentation themselves. Boris Groys (2008) considers such works as primarily performances since they are based on algorithms that must be enacted in realtime at the time they are encountered, and can never be said to exist as a single work. Rather, the works can be enacted, or instanced, in widely varied circumstances on different platforms. Using theories from performance and practice theory (Vaughan 2015; Auslander 2008; Schatzki 2002; Schechner 2003) and digital game archiving (Swalwell, 2013; deVries et al, 2013; Stuckey et al, 2014; Harvey, 2011) , we work through the implications of attempts to both document and archive such realtime, data-based artworks. In conclusion, we find that a new understanding of documentation and archive is required for the future, and present examples of such approaches.