electronica performers aren’t “doing” much is imbricated these responses were not necessarily an explicit attempt Viewing the Wrong Side of the Screen in with deep-rooted ideals regarding what constitutes to amend critiques of laptop performativity, they might Experimental Electronica Performances musical skill. The use of software such as Max/MSP and nonetheless be viewed as remedies helping audiences to Sonya Hofer Ableton, which allow for increased automation and “engage” with the music, for example by offering a simulation, contributes to a misconception that laptops greater sense of bodily connection to the sound and sound make musical creation and performance “easier,” or even production; providing something to look at; and, in ABSTRACT effectively works in dialogue with and within its varied, that the music has been faked. And while Goodwin general, making a “musical process” clear. This paper, live musico-experiential contexts. acknowledges the legitimacy of programming skills, his however, does not suggest what types of laptop-centric While there is considerable attention in music -based Tim Hecker is one of those evocative choice of words insinuate the pervasive regard shows are “better” live, or seek to prove whether or not and media studies on works that jump to the screen, from musician-artist creators who is at once a DJ, electronic of computer-wielding laptop artists as technicians, i.e., DJs are really playing Pac-Man. It does not ratify or 4 MTV, to Blu-ray ballets, to the Black Swan, to musician, and sound artist. He emphasizes how much not even as musicians. repudiate the so-called “problems” of laptop videogames, in this paper I will look instead at works that more dynamic, diverse, and challenging this field of The already-numerous critiques of laptop performativity, or prescribe how audiences “should” jump behind the screen, the laptop screen. In most creative activity has become by pointing out the possible performativity, while not my direct focus, offer me a recalibrate and adapt to these performances. Instead, experimental electronica performances, the laptop limitations and entanglements of such labels. As his work spring-board for considering a different critical lens on taking a different critical tack than others’ qualitative computer is the main “live” instrument. In this mode of straddles these not-so-discrete fields, it raises issues of laptop-based experimental electronica performances. critiques of laptop performativity, I focus on how the performativity, not only are our performers situated liveness and mediation, notably the distinction between These critiques, including Ed Montano’s aptly titled laptop screen signals and plays a significant role in 8 behind a screen, a figurative “curtain”—or literally the how music is presented live and how it is present live.2 article “‘How Do You Know He’s Not Playing Pac-Man constructing contextual meaning. With the aim to enrich backside of the screen—becomes what is viewed in the Additionally, his tools play a highly affective role in how While He’s Supposed to Be DJing?’: Technology, these critical discourses that address such issues of live setting, offering a curious perspective on mediatized people conceive of “live” music. Many experimental Formats and the Digital Future of DJ Culture” give me performativity and reception, I examine them within musical contexts. electronica musicians, like Hecker, use the laptop as their license to reiterate the question and to answer that indeed “screenness” as an expressive and experiential paradigm 5 main instrument in both creation and performance. Ideas we don’t know if the DJ is playing Pac-Man. What in analyzing the performances. Copyright: © 2016 First author et al. This is an open-access article dis- about authenticity are embroiled in ideas about interests me is how Montano’s question encapsulates the The laptop is not merely an inert object. As part tributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 3.0 technology, and are in continual flux, as popular music differing ways we value “liveness” and what we demand of a generation of screen natives, for whom the growing Unported, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction and media scholar Andrew Goodwin has observed: from live performance. The very fact that it matters presence of the laptop and mobile devices are key, I in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. whether or not the laptop DJ is playing Pac-Man consider how we are conditioned to them, suggesting a Playing analogue synthesizers is now a mark of indicates how audiences require visual confirmation of kind of fundamentality to them, a screenic 9 The most pervasive critique of experimental authenticity, where it was once a sign of the artistic process. Audiences want to know that technogenesis. I build from theories of screen electronica performances stems from a perceived lack of alienation—to pop iconography, the image of something, and furthermore someone, is creating sound in subjectivity, notably Kate Mondloch who writes about 6 visual spectacle and gesture by the performer, whose musicians standing immobile behind synths real-time. Of particular interest is how these critiques put screenness in experiential art contexts, saying: main “live” instrument is the laptop computer. signified coldness … Now it is the image of a the screen at the center. The screen consumes performers Performances are sometimes read as lifeless, disengaged, technician hunched over a computer terminal to an apparent detriment. The screen, not even its front, The viewer-screen connection is a site of radical tedious, effortless, and automated. In this mode of that is problematic—but that, like the image of but its back, is an audiences focal point. Screens make the inter-implication: it includes the projection performativity, not only is the artist situated behind a the synth player, can and will change…3 source and nature of sound production (or Pac-Man screen and other material conditions of screen, so too is the audience. In a live setting, audiences playing) opaque, and direct our gaze onto something

view the backside of the screen, offering a curious The use of the laptop as a “problematic,” as Goodwin visually mundane. perspective on mediatized musical contexts. notes, has to do with how it is viewed in this relational- Artists have responded, consciously and Mars who has added a drummer on drum kit as part of The laptop is central to the conception and historical context. For example, oftentimes laptop DJs are subconsciously, in varying ways to “remedy” the issues their live set, Squarepusher who at times performs on his experience of experimental electronica, with direct and compared unfavorably to DJs who use turntables, though accompanying laptop performance, from simply moving electric bass, and also Slub who have incorporated screen clearly articulated qualitative consequences.1 For this about more, to adding a visual component like an projections of their live coding as part of performances. the turntable itself was once regarded with skepticism. As 8 reason, and the very fact that I write this paper on a an instrument, turntablists and turntablism eventually accompanying film or immersive lighting, to Others who have written on issues of laptop laptop, my project is to delve deeper into our meaningful came to be validated. Yet, where a DJ is seen hopping incorporating additional live musicians or more performativity, with differing aims include: Montano, relationships with laptops by thinking more holistically back and forth among the dynamic turntables with hands traditionally viewed instruments, to projecting discussed above; Nick Collins, who voices concern that 7 and phenomenologically about screens. I consider and body in motion, the laptop performer, in a false screenshots to the audience, among others. Even when many complexities in programming by a performer may “screenness” within the context of musical performance, analogy, is more often viewed as immobile and cold, be “lost” on audiences and seeks new modes of here examining notable live sets by acclaimed communicating such aspects in, “Generative Music and concentrating on a stationary box while one hand makes 4 experimental electronica artist Tim Hecker. Typical of miniscule mouse clicks. This sense that experimental This bifurcation between technician and musician as a Laptop Performance,” Contemporary Music Review 22, experimental electronica, Hecker’s performances take kind of critique in has many historical no. 4 (2003): 67–79; Timothy Jaeger, who offers a place in a range of contexts and, in what follows, I look at roots. See, for example, Georgina Born’s observation of pointed critique of laptop performers whom he 2 two very different sets. Closely evaluating each and I have written on this topic in greater depth, considering this in her ethnography of IRCAM. See: Georgina Born, characterizes as not provoking new paradigms for taking cues from their critical reception, I employ the work of Richard Chartier, see: “‘Atomic’ Music: Rationalizing Culture: IRCAM, Boulez and the performance, see “The (Anti-) Laptop Aesthetic,” screenness as a mode that frames our experiencing of the Navigating Experimental Electronica and Sound Art Institutionalization of the Musical Avant-Garde. Contemporary Music Review 22, no. 4 (2003): 53–57; music, impacts our assumptions and expectations about Through Microsound,” Organised Sound 19/03 (Dec Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. and Tad Turner, who cites a lack of comportmental code 5 laptop performativity, and also reveals how the music 2014): 295-303, as a kind of companion piece. Ed Montano, “‘How Do You Know He’s Not Playing due to a diversity in venue, and seeks a mediation of, and 3 Goodwin cited in: Philip Auslander, Liveness: Pac-Man While He’s Supposed to Be DJing?’: adjustment to, the various strengths and weaknesses of Performance in a Mediatized Culture. London and New Technology, Formats and the Digital Future of DJ venue types in “The Resonance of the Cubicle: Laptop 1 I emphasize here the actuality of public performances York: Routledge, 1999, 11. In addition to Goodwin’s Culture,” Popular Music 29, no. 3 (2010): 397–416. Performance in Post-digital Musics,” Contemporary and as they are mediated through YouTube. People can words here, by foregrounding “cultural and historical 6 Montano and Auslander have both addressed this topic, Music Review 22, no. 4 (2003): 81–92. experience experimental electronica in other contexts, for contingencies,” I point to Auslander’s key writings on the i.e., how a sense of authenticity created is rock music 9 Here I allude to Hayles’ foundational writings on the examples, at home, in their cars, by themselves with an condition of mediation and its impact on “liveness,” (Auslander) and electronic music (Montano) by making a fundamentality of human/technological intersections. iPod, listening to LPs in a café, which would lead into which help me to introduce and to begin framing issues in musical process visual on stage. See, notably: N. Katherine Hayles, How we think: Digital interesting continued projects, i.e., considering approaching Hecker’s music and laptop performativity 7 See for examples, Fennesz who has collaborated closely media and contemporary technogenesis. Chicago; screenness in these contexts. more generally. with various video artists as part of his live set, Mouse on London: The University of Chicago Press, 2012.

1 2 41 Proceedings Proceedingsof the International of the International Computer Computer Music ConferenceMusic Conference2016 2016 pg. 40 Proceedings Proceedingsof the International of the International Computer Computer Music ConferenceMusic Conference2016 2016 pg. 41 42 electronica performers aren’t “doing” much is imbricated these responses were not necessarily an explicit attempt Viewing the Wrong Side of the Screen in with deep-rooted ideals regarding what constitutes to amend critiques of laptop performativity, they might Experimental Electronica Performances musical skill. The use of software such as Max/MSP and nonetheless be viewed as remedies helping audiences to Sonya Hofer Ableton, which allow for increased automation and “engage” with the music, for example by offering a simulation, contributes to a misconception that laptops greater sense of bodily connection to the sound and sound make musical creation and performance “easier,” or even production; providing something to look at; and, in ABSTRACT effectively works in dialogue with and within its varied, that the music has been faked. And while Goodwin general, making a “musical process” clear. This paper, live musico-experiential contexts. acknowledges the legitimacy of programming skills, his however, does not suggest what types of laptop-centric While there is considerable attention in music Montreal-based Tim Hecker is one of those evocative choice of words insinuate the pervasive regard shows are “better” live, or seek to prove whether or not and media studies on works that jump to the screen, from musician-artist creators who is at once a DJ, electronic of computer-wielding laptop artists as technicians, i.e., DJs are really playing Pac-Man. It does not ratify or 4 MTV, to Blu-ray ballets, to the Black Swan, to musician, and sound artist. He emphasizes how much not even as musicians. repudiate the so-called “problems” of laptop videogames, in this paper I will look instead at works that more dynamic, diverse, and challenging this field of The already-numerous critiques of laptop performativity, or prescribe how audiences “should” jump behind the screen, the laptop screen. In most creative activity has become by pointing out the possible performativity, while not my direct focus, offer me a recalibrate and adapt to these performances. Instead, experimental electronica performances, the laptop limitations and entanglements of such labels. As his work spring-board for considering a different critical lens on taking a different critical tack than others’ qualitative computer is the main “live” instrument. In this mode of straddles these not-so-discrete fields, it raises issues of laptop-based experimental electronica performances. critiques of laptop performativity, I focus on how the performativity, not only are our performers situated liveness and mediation, notably the distinction between These critiques, including Ed Montano’s aptly titled laptop screen signals and plays a significant role in 8 behind a screen, a figurative “curtain”—or literally the how music is presented live and how it is present live.2 article “‘How Do You Know He’s Not Playing Pac-Man constructing contextual meaning. With the aim to enrich backside of the screen—becomes what is viewed in the Additionally, his tools play a highly affective role in how While He’s Supposed to Be DJing?’: Technology, these critical discourses that address such issues of live setting, offering a curious perspective on mediatized people conceive of “live” music. Many experimental Formats and the Digital Future of DJ Culture” give me performativity and reception, I examine them within musical contexts. electronica musicians, like Hecker, use the laptop as their license to reiterate the question and to answer that indeed “screenness” as an expressive and experiential paradigm 5 main instrument in both creation and performance. Ideas we don’t know if the DJ is playing Pac-Man. What in analyzing the performances. Copyright: © 2016 First author et al. This is an open-access article dis- about authenticity are embroiled in ideas about interests me is how Montano’s question encapsulates the The laptop is not merely an inert object. As part tributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 3.0 technology, and are in continual flux, as popular music differing ways we value “liveness” and what we demand of a generation of screen natives, for whom the growing Unported, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction and media scholar Andrew Goodwin has observed: from live performance. The very fact that it matters presence of the laptop and mobile devices are key, I in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. whether or not the laptop DJ is playing Pac-Man consider how we are conditioned to them, suggesting a Playing analogue synthesizers is now a mark of indicates how audiences require visual confirmation of kind of fundamentality to them, a screenic 9 The most pervasive critique of experimental authenticity, where it was once a sign of the artistic process. Audiences want to know that technogenesis. I build from theories of screen electronica performances stems from a perceived lack of alienation—to pop iconography, the image of something, and furthermore someone, is creating sound in subjectivity, notably Kate Mondloch who writes about 6 visual spectacle and gesture by the performer, whose musicians standing immobile behind synths real-time. Of particular interest is how these critiques put screenness in experiential art contexts, saying: main “live” instrument is the laptop computer. signified coldness … Now it is the image of a the screen at the center. The screen consumes performers Performances are sometimes read as lifeless, disengaged, technician hunched over a computer terminal to an apparent detriment. The screen, not even its front, The viewer-screen connection is a site of radical tedious, effortless, and automated. In this mode of that is problematic—but that, like the image of but its back, is an audiences focal point. Screens make the inter-implication: it includes the projection performativity, not only is the artist situated behind a the synth player, can and will change…3 source and nature of sound production (or Pac-Man screen and other material conditions of screen, so too is the audience. In a live setting, audiences playing) opaque, and direct our gaze onto something

view the backside of the screen, offering a curious The use of the laptop as a “problematic,” as Goodwin visually mundane. perspective on mediatized musical contexts. notes, has to do with how it is viewed in this relational- Artists have responded, consciously and Mars who has added a drummer on drum kit as part of The laptop is central to the conception and historical context. For example, oftentimes laptop DJs are subconsciously, in varying ways to “remedy” the issues their live set, Squarepusher who at times performs on his experience of experimental electronica, with direct and compared unfavorably to DJs who use turntables, though accompanying laptop performance, from simply moving electric bass, and also Slub who have incorporated screen clearly articulated qualitative consequences.1 For this about more, to adding a visual component like an projections of their live coding as part of performances. the turntable itself was once regarded with skepticism. As 8 reason, and the very fact that I write this paper on a an instrument, turntablists and turntablism eventually accompanying film or immersive lighting, to Others who have written on issues of laptop laptop, my project is to delve deeper into our meaningful came to be validated. Yet, where a DJ is seen hopping incorporating additional live musicians or more performativity, with differing aims include: Montano, relationships with laptops by thinking more holistically back and forth among the dynamic turntables with hands traditionally viewed instruments, to projecting discussed above; Nick Collins, who voices concern that 7 and phenomenologically about screens. I consider and body in motion, the laptop performer, in a false screenshots to the audience, among others. Even when many complexities in programming by a performer may “screenness” within the context of musical performance, analogy, is more often viewed as immobile and cold, be “lost” on audiences and seeks new modes of here examining notable live sets by acclaimed communicating such aspects in, “Generative Music and concentrating on a stationary box while one hand makes 4 experimental electronica artist Tim Hecker. Typical of miniscule mouse clicks. This sense that experimental This bifurcation between technician and musician as a Laptop Performance,” Contemporary Music Review 22, experimental electronica, Hecker’s performances take kind of critique in electronic music has many historical no. 4 (2003): 67–79; Timothy Jaeger, who offers a place in a range of contexts and, in what follows, I look at roots. See, for example, Georgina Born’s observation of pointed critique of laptop performers whom he 2 two very different sets. Closely evaluating each and I have written on this topic in greater depth, considering this in her ethnography of IRCAM. See: Georgina Born, characterizes as not provoking new paradigms for taking cues from their critical reception, I employ the work of Richard Chartier, see: “‘Atomic’ Music: Rationalizing Culture: IRCAM, Boulez and the performance, see “The (Anti-) Laptop Aesthetic,” screenness as a mode that frames our experiencing of the Navigating Experimental Electronica and Sound Art Institutionalization of the Musical Avant-Garde. Contemporary Music Review 22, no. 4 (2003): 53–57; music, impacts our assumptions and expectations about Through Microsound,” Organised Sound 19/03 (Dec Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. and Tad Turner, who cites a lack of comportmental code 5 laptop performativity, and also reveals how the music 2014): 295-303, as a kind of companion piece. Ed Montano, “‘How Do You Know He’s Not Playing due to a diversity in venue, and seeks a mediation of, and 3 Goodwin cited in: Philip Auslander, Liveness: Pac-Man While He’s Supposed to Be DJing?’: adjustment to, the various strengths and weaknesses of Performance in a Mediatized Culture. London and New Technology, Formats and the Digital Future of DJ venue types in “The Resonance of the Cubicle: Laptop 1 I emphasize here the actuality of public performances York: Routledge, 1999, 11. In addition to Goodwin’s Culture,” Popular Music 29, no. 3 (2010): 397–416. Performance in Post-digital Musics,” Contemporary and as they are mediated through YouTube. People can words here, by foregrounding “cultural and historical 6 Montano and Auslander have both addressed this topic, Music Review 22, no. 4 (2003): 81–92. experience experimental electronica in other contexts, for contingencies,” I point to Auslander’s key writings on the i.e., how a sense of authenticity created is rock music 9 Here I allude to Hayles’ foundational writings on the examples, at home, in their cars, by themselves with an condition of mediation and its impact on “liveness,” (Auslander) and electronic music (Montano) by making a fundamentality of human/technological intersections. iPod, listening to LPs in a café, which would lead into which help me to introduce and to begin framing issues in musical process visual on stage. See, notably: N. Katherine Hayles, How we think: Digital interesting continued projects, i.e., considering approaching Hecker’s music and laptop performativity 7 See for examples, Fennesz who has collaborated closely media and contemporary technogenesis. Chicago; screenness in these contexts. more generally. with various video artists as part of his live set, Mouse on London: The University of Chicago Press, 2012.

1 2 40 Proceedings Proceedingsof the International of the International Computer Computer Music ConferenceMusic Conference2016 2016 pg. 40 Proceedings Proceedingsof the International of the International Computer Computer Music ConferenceMusic Conference2016 2016 pg. 41 41 screening, but also encompasses sentient bodies but faced with the screen’s backside, and compounded engrossed in his terminal? Again, a laptop performer is and psychic desires, institutional codes, and As Introna and Ilharco note, screens call us to further by the frame of the YouTube video, audiences commonly assumed to be consumed by their own screen, discursive constructs.10 attention, as what is framed in the screen is already pose the question: What should we be watching? and this is a common complaint about their contextualized as important. Media theorist Lev In staged musical performances, we are not performances. Hecker goes against our expectation of As such, I want to look at Hecker’s performances as part Manovich sharpens this point, emphasizing how the typically suspicious about what we should pay attention how a performer interacts with a screen. However, while of a screened worldview, thinking about how the screen is also antagonistic: in displaying what is included, to while absorbing the music. There may be many things he is not as singularly locked into his screen, this does not computer screen specifically activates a particular kind of infers what is excluded, i.e., to screen is also to choose.13 to watch, or maybe we choose to close our eyes and counteract that complaint of laptop performativity, rather intimate psychological and physiological relation. Its Yet a corresponding friction is not so much about the watch something else in our minds, but we are not his performance seems even further destabilized as a materiality and presence are key, not simply what it audience’s longing or necessity to see the obstructed generally pushed to question: wait, what should I be performance. Here his engagement with his screen screens, inclusive of sounds, but in the very mode of content, but about the nature of the obstruction itself. The watching? But the screen, and particularly its backside, suggests something more quotidian rather than screening itself, conjured in places and presupposed as a laptop screen here is not a frame, window, or mirror; leads audiences to consciously or unconsciously pose this performative⎯perhaps akin to the way I can take a break frame of reference. Lucas Introna and Fernando Ilharco, rather, drawing from the etymology of “screen,” the as a significant critical question, as they search for what from typing this paper to put away my coffee cup all the who offer a phenomenology of screens, foreground this laptop is a barrier that obscures Hecker to the viewers, to attend to. A focal point is pre-supposed by the screen, while still “working.” In a similar sense, this approach, writing: and simultaneously obscures the audience from Hecker.14 but the focal point is confounded. Intensifying this, the performance, and the video of it, can be mystifying for As the following YouTube commenter laments of the musical sounds are dislocated from the screen, which both the live audience and for YouTube viewers. Is he …we do not want to focus on the experience of video: further perplexes our relation to the screen and scene as a playing music or is this part of the soundcheck? Again, watching screens, nor do we want to focus on the focal point. And finally, an untethered sense of the what should I be watching here? Should I be seeing this? content of screens. We want to suggest that there I have trouble with stuff like this... I LOVE his performance, prompted by conditions surrounding How should I be seeing this? What should I be seeing is something prior to all of these, namely that record, but couldn't imagine it being an screenness, is unintentionally bolstered by our presumed while listening to this? Would I know this was part of the which conditions us to turn to it ‘as a screen’ in enjoyable experience to see him mess around subject, Hecker himself, as I will discuss shortly. “actual” set if I happened upon this scene? the first instance.11 behind a laptop...15 In further examining this performance, one These issues and questions regarding Hecker’s assumed condition of laptop performativity is an set as a performance are compounded in the YouTube In considering screenness, the following looks at two This kind of exclusion is alienating, like watching a date engagement between the performer and the laptop. video itself. With Hecker further framed through the recent performances by Hecker, uploaded to YouTube by text from their mobile phone at the dinner table—a Thinking about this condition fits neatly into ideas about screen and already contextualized as a focal entity, as audience members, thus positioning ourselves also as part comparison that perhaps gives more depth to critics’ screen subjectivity more broadly, and also, subsequent suggested by Introna and Ilharco, the sense of what we of an audience. Immediately upon viewing these concerns regarding the lack of engagement of audiences complaints concerning laptop performances. The are and should be watching is doubly unclear.20 The performances, one is alerted to three distinct intertwined and performers in laptop performativity. Yet, the presumed orientation of a viewer to a screen as they are YouTube viewer comments communicate the phenomenological relationships and perspectives, which I backside of the screen, something that we encounter habitually drawn in, from mobile devices to films, is precariousness of this performance and allude to well- will touch on throughout and focus on towards the end of perhaps just as frequently as the front-face, is drastically generally “face-to-face,” which elicits Goodwin’s worn complaints about laptop performativity: this paper: Hecker’s relation to the screen; the audience’s under-theorized. characterization of the hunched computer performer who relation to Hecker’s screen; and our relation to the I would argue that these backsides are, crucially, is engrossed with the screen rather than engaged with the I feel he needs a more interesting set, with jaw musical scene via our own screens through YouTube. part of the potentiality of screens, otherwise we would audience.18 We come to expect someone using a laptop, dropping lighting and visuals, something to help The first video depicts Hecker’s performance at not decorate mobile phone cases, or place tape over the and thus a laptop performer, to be occupied with the intensify the experience.21 the 2012 in Chicago. We see Apple logos on the backs of our laptops as Hecker does screen in this manner. Yet, is Hecker absorbed by the here his performance of the track “Virginal I,” which was here. Even if its backside is supposed to be laptop in the way we assume performers will be, or as Yeah. I agree. This seems awkward. This isn't at the time of this performance still unreleased, but later inconsequential, it does not disappear, rather it remains as screenness presupposes? daytime music.22 appeared on his seventh full-length album, the 2013, a significant visual cue of the screen. Screens, as Re-watching the Pitchfork set, in this video, Virgins. This track segues into “The Piano Drop,” from Mondloch and Anne Friedberg have theorized, construct Hecker takes a more flexible stance and is at times only This seems like the absolute worst place for an his 2011 album, Ravedeath, 1972. In some ways this “an architecture of spectatorship.”16 Laptop performances peripherally engaged with his laptop. While that is artist like Tim Hecker to play. I feel bad for him might be an expected scene. In the context of a festival are fascinating precisely because they undermine the partially explained by the fact that he has other really. He should be playing a dim lit theater, a set, Hecker is focalized, framed through a stage setup, “coercive nature of screenviewing;” we are not drawn instruments to attend to, there is still a kind of peculiarity cave, a church, an alleyway.... anything but a day which is further amplified by the meta-screen through into the laptop screens’ flashing images, content, and to this scene. Can we imagine a pianist getting up and time outdoor festival set.23 which we watch on YouTube. However, what are the fantasy, but it still crucially frames and directs our walking away from their instrument mid-performance? peculiarities of this mode of performativity as evidenced viewing.17 A screen signals that we should be watching, Or a vocalist talking to techs mid song? Although Examining screenness with regard to Hecker’s Pitchfork here? certainly in rock/pop sets there may be some dialogue set has led us to question what we are viewing as a between the musicians and stage technicians, this is 13 performance by amplifying a disjuncture between what Example 1: YouTube video of Tim Hecker at Introna and Ilharco, 68 and Lev Manovich, The usually quite discreet.19 Should Hecker be wholly one experiences aurally and what one experiences 2012 Pitchfork Music Festival: Language of New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001, visually. Similarly, the YouTube comments draw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gkpp7dn2j812 94. 14 attention to this disjuncture, but their critiques do not I allude to longstanding discourses considering “the Telegraphy to Television. Durham: Duke University simply react to a problem of the visuals—a lack of frame” from Leon Battista Alberti’s “window” to Edward Press, 2000. 10 18 visuals, the wrong visuals, or uninteresting visuals. Kate Mondloch, Screens: Viewing Media Installation T. Cone’s “musical frame.” More specifically I draw on While complicated by certain mobile device practices, Rather, I suggest these critiques reveal how certain Art. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010, Anne Friedberg’s noteworthy text considering, situating, “face-to-face” frontal orientation, as the expected 4. and (re)appraising the screen among metaphors of the orientation has been examined in depth, See: Ingrid 11 Lucas D. Introna and Fernando M. Ilharco, “On the window. Anne Friedberg The Virtual Window: From Richardson, “Faces, Interfaces, Screens: Relational the equipment. However, this does not detract from how Meaning of Screens: Towards a Phenomenological Alberti to Microsoft. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006. Ontologies of Framing, Attention and Distraction,” we (in the audience at Pitchfork and through the Account of Screenness,” Human Studies Vol. 29, No. 1 15 From “David Needham,” Transformations 18 (2010). YouTube video) might understand how Hecker is able to (Jan., 2006), 58. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gkpp7dn2j8, 2014. 19 I would note that there are, at times, pressing matters in interact with his screen. 12 Video upload from “snivelttam.” Tim Hecker – 16 Mondloch, 23, emphasizes this idea, extending ideas which the stage technicians would need to take 20 Introna and Ilharco, 66-67. Virginal I/The Piano Drop – 2012 Pitchfork Music from Friedberg. immediate and direct action on the stage. From what we 21 From “CanadianCombatWombat,” 2014. Festival, 17 Mondloch, 24 and others, see for example: Jeffrey know contextually about Hecker’s set, there was a 22 From “Christopher Robin,” 2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gkpp7dn2j8, 2012. Sconce, Haunted Media: Electric Presence from rainstorm approaching, and perhaps they were preparing 23 From, “Jestin Jund,” 2012.

3 4 43 Proceedings Proceedingsof the International of the International Computer Computer Music ConferenceMusic Conference2016 2016 pg. 42 Proceedings Proceedingsof the International of the International Computer Computer Music ConferenceMusic Conference2016 2016 pg. 43 44 screening, but also encompasses sentient bodies but faced with the screen’s backside, and compounded engrossed in his terminal? Again, a laptop performer is and psychic desires, institutional codes, and As Introna and Ilharco note, screens call us to further by the frame of the YouTube video, audiences commonly assumed to be consumed by their own screen, discursive constructs.10 attention, as what is framed in the screen is already pose the question: What should we be watching? and this is a common complaint about their contextualized as important. Media theorist Lev In staged musical performances, we are not performances. Hecker goes against our expectation of As such, I want to look at Hecker’s performances as part Manovich sharpens this point, emphasizing how the typically suspicious about what we should pay attention how a performer interacts with a screen. However, while of a screened worldview, thinking about how the screen is also antagonistic: in displaying what is included, to while absorbing the music. There may be many things he is not as singularly locked into his screen, this does not computer screen specifically activates a particular kind of infers what is excluded, i.e., to screen is also to choose.13 to watch, or maybe we choose to close our eyes and counteract that complaint of laptop performativity, rather intimate psychological and physiological relation. Its Yet a corresponding friction is not so much about the watch something else in our minds, but we are not his performance seems even further destabilized as a materiality and presence are key, not simply what it audience’s longing or necessity to see the obstructed generally pushed to question: wait, what should I be performance. Here his engagement with his screen screens, inclusive of sounds, but in the very mode of content, but about the nature of the obstruction itself. The watching? But the screen, and particularly its backside, suggests something more quotidian rather than screening itself, conjured in places and presupposed as a laptop screen here is not a frame, window, or mirror; leads audiences to consciously or unconsciously pose this performative⎯perhaps akin to the way I can take a break frame of reference. Lucas Introna and Fernando Ilharco, rather, drawing from the etymology of “screen,” the as a significant critical question, as they search for what from typing this paper to put away my coffee cup all the who offer a phenomenology of screens, foreground this laptop is a barrier that obscures Hecker to the viewers, to attend to. A focal point is pre-supposed by the screen, while still “working.” In a similar sense, this approach, writing: and simultaneously obscures the audience from Hecker.14 but the focal point is confounded. Intensifying this, the performance, and the video of it, can be mystifying for As the following YouTube commenter laments of the musical sounds are dislocated from the screen, which both the live audience and for YouTube viewers. Is he …we do not want to focus on the experience of video: further perplexes our relation to the screen and scene as a playing music or is this part of the soundcheck? Again, watching screens, nor do we want to focus on the focal point. And finally, an untethered sense of the what should I be watching here? Should I be seeing this? content of screens. We want to suggest that there I have trouble with stuff like this... I LOVE his performance, prompted by conditions surrounding How should I be seeing this? What should I be seeing is something prior to all of these, namely that record, but couldn't imagine it being an screenness, is unintentionally bolstered by our presumed while listening to this? Would I know this was part of the which conditions us to turn to it ‘as a screen’ in enjoyable experience to see him mess around subject, Hecker himself, as I will discuss shortly. “actual” set if I happened upon this scene? the first instance.11 behind a laptop...15 In further examining this performance, one These issues and questions regarding Hecker’s assumed condition of laptop performativity is an set as a performance are compounded in the YouTube In considering screenness, the following looks at two This kind of exclusion is alienating, like watching a date engagement between the performer and the laptop. video itself. With Hecker further framed through the recent performances by Hecker, uploaded to YouTube by text from their mobile phone at the dinner table—a Thinking about this condition fits neatly into ideas about screen and already contextualized as a focal entity, as audience members, thus positioning ourselves also as part comparison that perhaps gives more depth to critics’ screen subjectivity more broadly, and also, subsequent suggested by Introna and Ilharco, the sense of what we of an audience. Immediately upon viewing these concerns regarding the lack of engagement of audiences complaints concerning laptop performances. The are and should be watching is doubly unclear.20 The performances, one is alerted to three distinct intertwined and performers in laptop performativity. Yet, the presumed orientation of a viewer to a screen as they are YouTube viewer comments communicate the phenomenological relationships and perspectives, which I backside of the screen, something that we encounter habitually drawn in, from mobile devices to films, is precariousness of this performance and allude to well- will touch on throughout and focus on towards the end of perhaps just as frequently as the front-face, is drastically generally “face-to-face,” which elicits Goodwin’s worn complaints about laptop performativity: this paper: Hecker’s relation to the screen; the audience’s under-theorized. characterization of the hunched computer performer who relation to Hecker’s screen; and our relation to the I would argue that these backsides are, crucially, is engrossed with the screen rather than engaged with the I feel he needs a more interesting set, with jaw musical scene via our own screens through YouTube. part of the potentiality of screens, otherwise we would audience.18 We come to expect someone using a laptop, dropping lighting and visuals, something to help The first video depicts Hecker’s performance at not decorate mobile phone cases, or place tape over the and thus a laptop performer, to be occupied with the intensify the experience.21 the 2012 Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago. We see Apple logos on the backs of our laptops as Hecker does screen in this manner. Yet, is Hecker absorbed by the here his performance of the track “Virginal I,” which was here. Even if its backside is supposed to be laptop in the way we assume performers will be, or as Yeah. I agree. This seems awkward. This isn't at the time of this performance still unreleased, but later inconsequential, it does not disappear, rather it remains as screenness presupposes? daytime music.22 appeared on his seventh full-length album, the 2013, a significant visual cue of the screen. Screens, as Re-watching the Pitchfork set, in this video, Virgins. This track segues into “The Piano Drop,” from Mondloch and Anne Friedberg have theorized, construct Hecker takes a more flexible stance and is at times only This seems like the absolute worst place for an his 2011 album, Ravedeath, 1972. In some ways this “an architecture of spectatorship.”16 Laptop performances peripherally engaged with his laptop. While that is artist like Tim Hecker to play. I feel bad for him might be an expected scene. In the context of a festival are fascinating precisely because they undermine the partially explained by the fact that he has other really. He should be playing a dim lit theater, a set, Hecker is focalized, framed through a stage setup, “coercive nature of screenviewing;” we are not drawn instruments to attend to, there is still a kind of peculiarity cave, a church, an alleyway.... anything but a day which is further amplified by the meta-screen through into the laptop screens’ flashing images, content, and to this scene. Can we imagine a pianist getting up and time outdoor festival set.23 which we watch on YouTube. However, what are the fantasy, but it still crucially frames and directs our walking away from their instrument mid-performance? peculiarities of this mode of performativity as evidenced viewing.17 A screen signals that we should be watching, Or a vocalist talking to techs mid song? Although Examining screenness with regard to Hecker’s Pitchfork here? certainly in rock/pop sets there may be some dialogue set has led us to question what we are viewing as a between the musicians and stage technicians, this is 13 performance by amplifying a disjuncture between what Example 1: YouTube video of Tim Hecker at Introna and Ilharco, 68 and Lev Manovich, The usually quite discreet.19 Should Hecker be wholly one experiences aurally and what one experiences 2012 Pitchfork Music Festival: Language of New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001, visually. Similarly, the YouTube comments draw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gkpp7dn2j812 94. 14 attention to this disjuncture, but their critiques do not I allude to longstanding discourses considering “the Telegraphy to Television. Durham: Duke University simply react to a problem of the visuals—a lack of frame” from Leon Battista Alberti’s “window” to Edward Press, 2000. 10 18 visuals, the wrong visuals, or uninteresting visuals. Kate Mondloch, Screens: Viewing Media Installation T. Cone’s “musical frame.” More specifically I draw on While complicated by certain mobile device practices, Rather, I suggest these critiques reveal how certain Art. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010, Anne Friedberg’s noteworthy text considering, situating, “face-to-face” frontal orientation, as the expected 4. and (re)appraising the screen among metaphors of the orientation has been examined in depth, See: Ingrid 11 Lucas D. Introna and Fernando M. Ilharco, “On the window. Anne Friedberg The Virtual Window: From Richardson, “Faces, Interfaces, Screens: Relational the equipment. However, this does not detract from how Meaning of Screens: Towards a Phenomenological Alberti to Microsoft. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006. Ontologies of Framing, Attention and Distraction,” we (in the audience at Pitchfork and through the Account of Screenness,” Human Studies Vol. 29, No. 1 15 From “David Needham,” Transformations 18 (2010). YouTube video) might understand how Hecker is able to (Jan., 2006), 58. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gkpp7dn2j8, 2014. 19 I would note that there are, at times, pressing matters in interact with his screen. 12 Video upload from “snivelttam.” Tim Hecker – 16 Mondloch, 23, emphasizes this idea, extending ideas which the stage technicians would need to take 20 Introna and Ilharco, 66-67. Virginal I/The Piano Drop – 2012 Pitchfork Music from Friedberg. immediate and direct action on the stage. From what we 21 From “CanadianCombatWombat,” 2014. Festival, 17 Mondloch, 24 and others, see for example: Jeffrey know contextually about Hecker’s set, there was a 22 From “Christopher Robin,” 2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gkpp7dn2j8, 2012. Sconce, Haunted Media: Electric Presence from rainstorm approaching, and perhaps they were preparing 23 From, “Jestin Jund,” 2012.

3 4 42 Proceedings Proceedingsof the International of the International Computer Computer Music ConferenceMusic Conference2016 2016 pg. 42 Proceedings Proceedingsof the International of the International Computer Computer Music ConferenceMusic Conference2016 2016 pg. 43 43 conditions of screenness in this festival context direct centrality of experience and sense of place conjured quite which is in part a vessel for this sound, but crucially also …having only sound at my disposal has observers to parse unnaturally between the sonic and the differently in this context. an important signifier for how we experience the music in stimulated me to create rich sensations that are visual, rather than appreciate the set as more holistically As Mondloch illuminates in her analyses of place.28 no longer just sound sensations but also tactile “experiential.” Moreover, and significantly here, the screen-reliant art installations, a screen calls attention to Evoking the platial, the experiential, I am led to and trans-sensory. I have often observed that critiques also point to how laptop performativity and the “‘real’ space of the projective situation,” that is, its consider the multi-dimensionality of sensory experience, when there is nothing but sound, the sound screenness are deeply conditioned by and enmeshed in actual surroundings, rather than being simply illusory and to extend the many critical debates in screen and becomes all the sensations and ceases to be place and context. In the following, I take up the last (i.e., what is projected).25 Within the church, one is not media studies that question hierarchies between the sonic “just” sound.32 comment as a call to question and consider one of uncomfortably standing in a bruised field, waiting for and the visual. Indeed in such experimental electronica Hecker’s performances that does take place in an actual imminent rain amongst a clutter of simultaneous musical performances, as with Hecker’s in the Chiesa di Santa A screen works reciprocally with places informing our church. performances, seeing a haphazard stage attended to by Cristina, neither the sonic nor the visual may be a priori.29 perception of experience, and while all performances are While I have ruminated on Hecker’s technicians, and ultimately presented with the “wrong” This is not to deemphasize how one sense can be multisensory by nature (as all existence is), there is performance as a parsing of the sonic and visual, as is side of the main instrument engaged nonchalantly by the foregrounded or stimulated, but rather, to draw attention something different between the Pitchfork and Chiesa also implicit in the viewer commentary, my aim here is musician. In the church performance, rather than to how the senses merge, moving toward what Kay performances. In the case and context of the former, the not to separate the senses. As we will see in the following prompting viewers to scan for what to watch or to Dickinson has theorized as synaesthesia.30 Hecker’s laptop seems to splinter and bar, while in the latter it performance, thinking about screenness may have question what one sees, the screen potentially incites a performances seem to break out of a simply audiovisual invites coalescence and aesthetic sensoriality. Different different affective ramifications in this context, moving different impulse and response. The YouTube comments frame. The sense of immersion afforded by a heightened places and contexts spurn different aesthetic experiences beyond the visual vs. sonic, toward a more holistic sense accompanying the Chiesa di Santa Cristina video serve as multi-sensory experience allows the audience to in which screenness plays a dynamic role. of experientiality. This video documents a 2012 evidence: there are no complaints regarding the concert, participate with and as the work.31 Making this point To take a final turn, I consider how we are now, performance that took place in the Chiesa di Santa the performance, or the experience. more obvious is Hecker’s 2010 performance at the Big this moment, outside of the actual performative places. Cristina in Parma, Italy, a beautiful baroque church that is In this context, the screen makes people Ears festival, in Knoxville’s Tennessee Theater, where he While it alters the meaning of how the screen and unassuming from the outside, yet resplendent inside. conscious of the place of the event in a way that is very performed in total darkness. This is not to say that visual Hecker’s music emphasize the platial, it is critical to Hecker here performs tracks mainly from his 2011 different from the Pitchfork Festival. Much like a blackness was, or is ever, blank, or to imply a continued focus more acutely on how these performances are Ravedeath, 1972 album, itself primarily recorded in the television set situated on the wooden floor of a white- conflict between vision and sound by eliminating former, mediated and remediated as YouTube videos. Moreover, Fríkirjan Church in Reykjavík, Iceland, where he used its walled gallery projecting a work of video art, Hecker’s but to suggest how smell, touch, vibration, and this distinction in observing the performance through pipe organ as central source material. laptop screen amplifies a sense of place. While the screen imagination, are ever-present and elemental to musical YouTube may also serve as a kind of extension to Philip may prompt the work, the screen, performance, Hecker, experience. Similarly, Michel Chion, prolific theorist on Auslander’s seminal writings, i.e., how mediatization Example 2: YouTube video of Tim Hecker in the and the work are a part of a greater totality in which the the sensoriality of film, observes that experiential indeed draws attention to a sense of liveness. These Santa Cristina Church, 2012: audience is also entangled. The screen’s materiality contexts that deemphasize the visual allow for an videos certainly shape my impressions in reception; they https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UcW4aSLQ matters: its form, its design, its look, its front, its back, et interesting kind of paradox: offer the screen via the screen. As I mentioned BQ24 cetera. Our imagination of a screen matters, our mental previously, the Pitchfork video redoubled the effect of the and physical relation to it matters, its contextualization stage, seeming to reinforce and reiterate how Hecker and Viewing this video of Hecker’s concert, I ask, what is matters.26 In experimental electronica performances, such his laptop were assumed to be central to a frame of striking about it? Immediately, what strikes me is that as Hecker’s, this potentiality of the laptop as a totality presentation. And while we do not view Hecker and the 28 someone would record and then upload a 49 minute works in dialogue with the music. Synchronously, his My inquiry into screenness and musical performance is laptop in the Chiesa di Santa Cristina video, the video’s visually static video of a live performance—a musical works are in dialogue with place.27 Hecker’s in many ways in line with one of audiovisual studies’ screenness and corresponding construction of place performance in which Hecker, the headliner, is music both conjures and creates places that might be most significant questions concerning how media seems doubly manifest in Hecker’s absence. The video’s completely omitted. experienced through the act of listening. Hecker’s music contexts dialogue with platial surroundings. See perspective in the Chiesa set implies the presence of the In watching this video, I would then ask, what dimensionalizes sound, constructing and idealizing Richardson and Gorbman “Introduction,” The Oxford performer by so consciously directing away from him, might it say about the position of the performer in the live ambiances, and works in consolidation with the laptop, Handbook of New Audiovisual Aesthetics. Eds. simultaneously highlighting how viewers participate in setting? Perhaps the response is blunt: since there is “not Richardson, Gorbman, Vernallis. Oxford: Oxford the piece and meaning-making. The audience member- much” to watch, arguably there is no need to focus the University Press, 2013, page 25. videographer directs away from Hecker and the laptop, 25 29 camera on Hecker. One might then wonder why a video Mondloch writes extensively on this topic in her book, The divergent standpoints of E. Ann Kaplan and imparting meaning into the video. Perhaps, as I infer as a would be taken at all if the scene is static i.e., why not citing the writings of art critics Cornwell, Krauss, and Andrew Goodwin, with the latter critiquing the former as fellow spectator, the videographer means to echo and to just record the performance as sound? Or why not include Michelson and artworks by Michael Snow and VALIE diminishing the sonic, are suggested here. See: Kaplan. invoke the phenomenological sense of place for us; some better-quality image (for example, there are many EXPORT. Mondloch, 61. Rocking Around the Clock: Music Television, Post perhaps the videographer’s perspective implies how they 26 audio uploads on YouTube of sound recordings with I echo Mondloch’s writings clearly here on this topic. Modernism and Consumer Culture. New York: view Hecker and his corresponding mode of laptop subsequently added higher resolution visuals)? Another, Mondloch’s writings on the materiality of screens are key Routledge Press, 1987; and Goodwin. Dancing in the performativity, i.e., not assumedly as central, necessary, perhaps more reflective response, considers the here, as she emphasizes how “interface matters” when Distraction Factory. Minneapolis: University of or interesting to the frame, and thus directs elsewhere. possibility that the video communicates the experience of considering screen-reliant art installations and Minnesota Press, 1992. The screenic perspective opens up a fascinating critical 30 how the music interacts with the space. Hecker does not extrapolations of meaning. Her writings along with See Kay Dickinson “Music Video and Synaesthetic power in spectatorship.33 Furthermore, in contrast to the appear in the video, but it is by no means devoid of rich Introna and Ilharco, discussed throughout, are central in Possibility,” in Medium Cool: Music Videos from numerous biting comments regarding his Pitchfork set, ⎯ considering screens and “screenness” in this manner. Soundies to Cellphones. Durham: Duke University Press, viewers who commented on the Chiesa video praise the and affective imagery imagery that evokes and 27 His works feature performance places and exploit the 2007. live performance, saying: “This is brilliant, thanks for emphasizes the importance of the specific place and time 31 of the performance. In this way the video communicates a nature of specific rooms and halls. Accordingly, many are See Richardson and Gorbman, pg. 7, who have keenly treated and exhibited as sound installations. There is an observed a mode of sensorialty in cinema and aptly cite audible physicality to his music: allusions to sound as Michel Chion, who wrote foundational texts on the dynamic “masses” and their cultivation over time; having sensual audiovisuality in film (See: Audio-Vision: Sound 32 Michel Chion, “Sensory Aspects of Contemporary 24 Video upload from “brokenbywhispers.” Tim Hecker sound “objects” appear and disappear; differences of and on Screen, and Film, a Sound Art). Alluding an Cinema,” in The Oxford Handbook of New Audiovisual live Santa Cristina Church, Parma, 02-11-2012, play with contrasting sonic textures such as thick/thin, aforementioned “frame” above, I consider Monica E. Aesthetics. Eds. Richardson, Gorbman, Vernallis. Oxford: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UcW4aSLQBQ, foreground/background; evocations of color; sonic effects McTighe’s relevant book, Framed Spaces: Photography Oxford University Press, 2013, 325. 2012. that recall objects, their surfaces, their boundaries; all in and Memory in Contemporary Installation Art. Hanover: 33 Citing Anne Friedberg, Mondloch underscores the essence, quite visceral qualities. Dartmouth College Press, 2012. critical power of media viewing, Mondloch, 56-58.

5 6 45 Proceedings Proceedingsof the International of the International Computer Computer Music ConferenceMusic Conference2016 2016 pg. 44 Proceedings Proceedingsof the International of the International Computer Computer Music ConferenceMusic Conference2016 2016 pg. 45 46 conditions of screenness in this festival context direct centrality of experience and sense of place conjured quite which is in part a vessel for this sound, but crucially also …having only sound at my disposal has observers to parse unnaturally between the sonic and the differently in this context. an important signifier for how we experience the music in stimulated me to create rich sensations that are visual, rather than appreciate the set as more holistically As Mondloch illuminates in her analyses of place.28 no longer just sound sensations but also tactile “experiential.” Moreover, and significantly here, the screen-reliant art installations, a screen calls attention to Evoking the platial, the experiential, I am led to and trans-sensory. I have often observed that critiques also point to how laptop performativity and the “‘real’ space of the projective situation,” that is, its consider the multi-dimensionality of sensory experience, when there is nothing but sound, the sound screenness are deeply conditioned by and enmeshed in actual surroundings, rather than being simply illusory and to extend the many critical debates in screen and becomes all the sensations and ceases to be place and context. In the following, I take up the last (i.e., what is projected).25 Within the church, one is not media studies that question hierarchies between the sonic “just” sound.32 comment as a call to question and consider one of uncomfortably standing in a bruised field, waiting for and the visual. Indeed in such experimental electronica Hecker’s performances that does take place in an actual imminent rain amongst a clutter of simultaneous musical performances, as with Hecker’s in the Chiesa di Santa A screen works reciprocally with places informing our church. performances, seeing a haphazard stage attended to by Cristina, neither the sonic nor the visual may be a priori.29 perception of experience, and while all performances are While I have ruminated on Hecker’s technicians, and ultimately presented with the “wrong” This is not to deemphasize how one sense can be multisensory by nature (as all existence is), there is performance as a parsing of the sonic and visual, as is side of the main instrument engaged nonchalantly by the foregrounded or stimulated, but rather, to draw attention something different between the Pitchfork and Chiesa also implicit in the viewer commentary, my aim here is musician. In the church performance, rather than to how the senses merge, moving toward what Kay performances. In the case and context of the former, the not to separate the senses. As we will see in the following prompting viewers to scan for what to watch or to Dickinson has theorized as synaesthesia.30 Hecker’s laptop seems to splinter and bar, while in the latter it performance, thinking about screenness may have question what one sees, the screen potentially incites a performances seem to break out of a simply audiovisual invites coalescence and aesthetic sensoriality. Different different affective ramifications in this context, moving different impulse and response. The YouTube comments frame. The sense of immersion afforded by a heightened places and contexts spurn different aesthetic experiences beyond the visual vs. sonic, toward a more holistic sense accompanying the Chiesa di Santa Cristina video serve as multi-sensory experience allows the audience to in which screenness plays a dynamic role. of experientiality. This video documents a 2012 evidence: there are no complaints regarding the concert, participate with and as the work.31 Making this point To take a final turn, I consider how we are now, performance that took place in the Chiesa di Santa the performance, or the experience. more obvious is Hecker’s 2010 performance at the Big this moment, outside of the actual performative places. Cristina in Parma, Italy, a beautiful baroque church that is In this context, the screen makes people Ears festival, in Knoxville’s Tennessee Theater, where he While it alters the meaning of how the screen and unassuming from the outside, yet resplendent inside. conscious of the place of the event in a way that is very performed in total darkness. This is not to say that visual Hecker’s music emphasize the platial, it is critical to Hecker here performs tracks mainly from his 2011 different from the Pitchfork Festival. Much like a blackness was, or is ever, blank, or to imply a continued focus more acutely on how these performances are Ravedeath, 1972 album, itself primarily recorded in the television set situated on the wooden floor of a white- conflict between vision and sound by eliminating former, mediated and remediated as YouTube videos. Moreover, Fríkirjan Church in Reykjavík, Iceland, where he used its walled gallery projecting a work of video art, Hecker’s but to suggest how smell, touch, vibration, and this distinction in observing the performance through pipe organ as central source material. laptop screen amplifies a sense of place. While the screen imagination, are ever-present and elemental to musical YouTube may also serve as a kind of extension to Philip may prompt the work, the screen, performance, Hecker, experience. Similarly, Michel Chion, prolific theorist on Auslander’s seminal writings, i.e., how mediatization Example 2: YouTube video of Tim Hecker in the and the work are a part of a greater totality in which the the sensoriality of film, observes that experiential indeed draws attention to a sense of liveness. These Santa Cristina Church, 2012: audience is also entangled. The screen’s materiality contexts that deemphasize the visual allow for an videos certainly shape my impressions in reception; they https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UcW4aSLQ matters: its form, its design, its look, its front, its back, et interesting kind of paradox: offer the screen via the screen. As I mentioned BQ24 cetera. Our imagination of a screen matters, our mental previously, the Pitchfork video redoubled the effect of the and physical relation to it matters, its contextualization stage, seeming to reinforce and reiterate how Hecker and Viewing this video of Hecker’s concert, I ask, what is matters.26 In experimental electronica performances, such his laptop were assumed to be central to a frame of striking about it? Immediately, what strikes me is that as Hecker’s, this potentiality of the laptop as a totality presentation. And while we do not view Hecker and the 28 someone would record and then upload a 49 minute works in dialogue with the music. Synchronously, his My inquiry into screenness and musical performance is laptop in the Chiesa di Santa Cristina video, the video’s visually static video of a live performance—a musical works are in dialogue with place.27 Hecker’s in many ways in line with one of audiovisual studies’ screenness and corresponding construction of place performance in which Hecker, the headliner, is music both conjures and creates places that might be most significant questions concerning how media seems doubly manifest in Hecker’s absence. The video’s completely omitted. experienced through the act of listening. Hecker’s music contexts dialogue with platial surroundings. See perspective in the Chiesa set implies the presence of the In watching this video, I would then ask, what dimensionalizes sound, constructing and idealizing Richardson and Gorbman “Introduction,” The Oxford performer by so consciously directing away from him, might it say about the position of the performer in the live ambiances, and works in consolidation with the laptop, Handbook of New Audiovisual Aesthetics. Eds. simultaneously highlighting how viewers participate in setting? Perhaps the response is blunt: since there is “not Richardson, Gorbman, Vernallis. Oxford: Oxford the piece and meaning-making. The audience member- much” to watch, arguably there is no need to focus the University Press, 2013, page 25. videographer directs away from Hecker and the laptop, 25 29 camera on Hecker. One might then wonder why a video Mondloch writes extensively on this topic in her book, The divergent standpoints of E. Ann Kaplan and imparting meaning into the video. Perhaps, as I infer as a would be taken at all if the scene is static i.e., why not citing the writings of art critics Cornwell, Krauss, and Andrew Goodwin, with the latter critiquing the former as fellow spectator, the videographer means to echo and to just record the performance as sound? Or why not include Michelson and artworks by Michael Snow and VALIE diminishing the sonic, are suggested here. See: Kaplan. invoke the phenomenological sense of place for us; some better-quality image (for example, there are many EXPORT. Mondloch, 61. Rocking Around the Clock: Music Television, Post perhaps the videographer’s perspective implies how they 26 audio uploads on YouTube of sound recordings with I echo Mondloch’s writings clearly here on this topic. Modernism and Consumer Culture. New York: view Hecker and his corresponding mode of laptop subsequently added higher resolution visuals)? Another, Mondloch’s writings on the materiality of screens are key Routledge Press, 1987; and Goodwin. Dancing in the performativity, i.e., not assumedly as central, necessary, perhaps more reflective response, considers the here, as she emphasizes how “interface matters” when Distraction Factory. Minneapolis: University of or interesting to the frame, and thus directs elsewhere. possibility that the video communicates the experience of considering screen-reliant art installations and Minnesota Press, 1992. The screenic perspective opens up a fascinating critical 30 how the music interacts with the space. Hecker does not extrapolations of meaning. Her writings along with See Kay Dickinson “Music Video and Synaesthetic power in spectatorship.33 Furthermore, in contrast to the appear in the video, but it is by no means devoid of rich Introna and Ilharco, discussed throughout, are central in Possibility,” in Medium Cool: Music Videos from numerous biting comments regarding his Pitchfork set, ⎯ considering screens and “screenness” in this manner. Soundies to Cellphones. Durham: Duke University Press, viewers who commented on the Chiesa video praise the and affective imagery imagery that evokes and 27 His works feature performance places and exploit the 2007. live performance, saying: “This is brilliant, thanks for emphasizes the importance of the specific place and time 31 of the performance. In this way the video communicates a nature of specific rooms and halls. Accordingly, many are See Richardson and Gorbman, pg. 7, who have keenly treated and exhibited as sound installations. There is an observed a mode of sensorialty in cinema and aptly cite audible physicality to his music: allusions to sound as Michel Chion, who wrote foundational texts on the dynamic “masses” and their cultivation over time; having sensual audiovisuality in film (See: Audio-Vision: Sound 32 Michel Chion, “Sensory Aspects of Contemporary 24 Video upload from “brokenbywhispers.” Tim Hecker sound “objects” appear and disappear; differences of and on Screen, and Film, a Sound Art). Alluding an Cinema,” in The Oxford Handbook of New Audiovisual live Santa Cristina Church, Parma, 02-11-2012, play with contrasting sonic textures such as thick/thin, aforementioned “frame” above, I consider Monica E. Aesthetics. Eds. Richardson, Gorbman, Vernallis. Oxford: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UcW4aSLQBQ, foreground/background; evocations of color; sonic effects McTighe’s relevant book, Framed Spaces: Photography Oxford University Press, 2013, 325. 2012. that recall objects, their surfaces, their boundaries; all in and Memory in Contemporary Installation Art. Hanover: 33 Citing Anne Friedberg, Mondloch underscores the essence, quite visceral qualities. Dartmouth College Press, 2012. critical power of media viewing, Mondloch, 56-58.

5 6 44 Proceedings Proceedingsof the International of the International Computer Computer Music ConferenceMusic Conference2016 2016 pg. 44 Proceedings Proceedingsof the International of the International Computer Computer Music ConferenceMusic Conference2016 2016 pg. 45 45 sharing⎯must have been an amazing experience.”34 They [3] Georgina Born. Rationalizing Culture: IRCAM, [18] E. Ann Kaplan. Rocking Around the Clock: Music do not express any sense of “loss” regarding Hecker’s Boulez and the Institutionalization of the Musical Avant- Television, Post Modernism and Consumer Culture. New absence from the video, nor does it fall short of what Garde. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. York: Routledge Press, 1987. constitutes satisfactory performativity. Perhaps the YouTube viewer experiences the performance, not [4] Video upload from “brokenbywhispers.” Tim Hecker [19] Lev Manovich. The Language of New Media. simply as mediated through the video, but also as live Santa Cristina Church, Parma, 02-11-2012, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001. remediated, that is, fundamentally already existing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UcW4aSLQBQ, through a lens of screenness.35 Enacting screenness, I 2012. [20] Kate Mondloch. Screens: Viewing Media Art would argue that the construct of the video as a static shot Installation. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, then indeed makes sense, as it already implies a screenic [5] Comment from “CanadianCombatWombat.” 2010. perspective whereby an orientation toward Hecker’s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gkpp7dn2j8, 2014. screen as a presumed focality was confounded and then [21] Monica E. McTighe. Framed Spaces: Photography averted. But, this diverting does not speak detrimentally [6] Michel Chion. Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen, Ed. and Memory in Contemporary Installation Art. Hanover: to the performance, rather quite conversely, it speaks and Trans. by Claudia Gorbman. New York: Columbia Dartmouth College Press, 2012. directly to it being a platial, multi-sensory, holistic University Press, 1994. experience. [22] Ed Montano. “‘How Do You Know He’s Not Sparked by the deeply contested viewpoints [7]------Film, a Sound Art. Trans. by Claudia Playing Pac-Man While He’s Supposed to Be DJing?’: regarding performativity in experimental electronica, I Gorbman and C. Jon Delogu. New York: Columbia Technology, Formats and the Digital Future of DJ offer a different framework for engaging with the music. University Press, 2009. Culture,” Popular Music 29, no. 3 (2010): 397–416. This paper offers one way of viewing these performances, using the screen as a central hub for [8] Nick Collins. “Generative Music and Laptop [23] Comment from “David Needham.” extrapolating meaning, as the presence of the screen has Performance,” Contemporary Music Review 22, no. 4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gkpp7dn2j8, 2014. an effect on how people experience music in place and (2003): 67–79. vice versa. It might be argued, that I place too much [24] Ingrid Richardson. “Faces, Interfaces, Screens: focus on this one element. I would point out, however, [9] Kay Dickinson. “Music Video and Synaesthetic Relational Ontologies of Framing, Attention and that re-focusing on many of the other experiential Possibility,” in Medium Cool: Music Videos from Distraction,” Transformations 18 (2010). parameters—for example, on gestures, timbre, or lighting Soundies to Cellphones. Durham: Duke University Press, would still draw us back into discussing the role of the 2007. [25] Michel Chion, “Sensory Aspects of Contemporary laptop. This approach continues in the direction of Cinema,” in The Oxford Handbook of New Audiovisual theorists who have written extensively on the inescapably [10] Comment from “faultelectronica.” Aesthetics. Eds. Richardson, Gorbman, Vernallis. Oxford: mediated nature of performance, taking into https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UcW4aSLQBQ, Oxford University Press, 2013: 325-330. consideration the laptop, its screen, and screenness as one 2013 rich avenue for examining laptop performances among [26] Comment from “Christopher Robin.” [11] Anne Friedberg. The Virtual Window: From Alberti https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gkpp7dn2j8, 2013. their very diverse musico-experiential contexts. In doing to Microsoft. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006. so, I hope to contribute more nuanced and dynamic [27] Jeffrey Sconce. Haunted Media: Electric Presence understandings in modes of performativity and [12] Andrew Goodwin. Dancing in the Distraction from Telegraphy to Television. Durham: Duke University spectatorship with regard to new media, and specifically Factory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, Press, 2000 here, of experimental electronica performances, which 1992. have been so widely and unevenly critiqued. [28] Video upload from “snivelttam.” Tim Hecker –

[13] N. Katherine Hayles. How we think: Digital media Virginal I/The Piano Drop – 2012 Pitchfork Music

and contemporary technogenesis. Chicago; London: The Festival, REFERENCES University of Chicago Press, 2012. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gkpp7dn2j8, 2012.

[1] Philip Auslander. Liveness: Performance in a [14] Sonya Hofer. “Atomic Music: Navigating [29] Tad Turner. “The Resonance of the Cubicle: Laptop Mediatized Culture. London and New York: Routledge, Experimental Electronica and Sound Art through Performance in Post-digital Musics,” Contemporary 1999. Microsound,” in Organised Sound Vol. 19/3 (December Music Review 22, no. 4 (2003): 81–92. 2014): 295-303. [2] Jay David Bolten and Richard Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press, [15] Lucas D. Introna and Fernando M. Ilharco, “On the 1998. Meaning of Screens: Towards a Phenomenological Account of Screenness,” Human Studies Vol. 29, No. 1 (Jan., 2006).

34 From “faultelectronica,” [16] Timothy Jaeger. “The (Anti-) Laptop Aesthetic,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UcW4aSLQBQ, Contemporary Music Review 22, no. 4 (2003): 53–57. 2013. 35 I cite ideas of remediation, the evocation and [17] Comment from, “Jestin Jund.” representation of one medium in another, as theorized by https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gkpp7dn2j8, 2012. Bolten and Grusin in their key text Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998.

7 8 47 Proceedings Proceedingsof the International of the International Computer Computer Music ConferenceMusic Conference2016 2016 pg. 46 Proceedings Proceedingsof the International of the International Computer Computer Music ConferenceMusic Conference2016 2016 pg. 47 48 sharing⎯must have been an amazing experience.”34 They [3] Georgina Born. Rationalizing Culture: IRCAM, [18] E. Ann Kaplan. Rocking Around the Clock: Music do not express any sense of “loss” regarding Hecker’s Boulez and the Institutionalization of the Musical Avant- Television, Post Modernism and Consumer Culture. New absence from the video, nor does it fall short of what Garde. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. York: Routledge Press, 1987. constitutes satisfactory performativity. Perhaps the YouTube viewer experiences the performance, not [4] Video upload from “brokenbywhispers.” Tim Hecker [19] Lev Manovich. The Language of New Media. simply as mediated through the video, but also as live Santa Cristina Church, Parma, 02-11-2012, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001. remediated, that is, fundamentally already existing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UcW4aSLQBQ, through a lens of screenness.35 Enacting screenness, I 2012. [20] Kate Mondloch. Screens: Viewing Media Art would argue that the construct of the video as a static shot Installation. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, then indeed makes sense, as it already implies a screenic [5] Comment from “CanadianCombatWombat.” 2010. perspective whereby an orientation toward Hecker’s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gkpp7dn2j8, 2014. screen as a presumed focality was confounded and then [21] Monica E. McTighe. Framed Spaces: Photography averted. But, this diverting does not speak detrimentally [6] Michel Chion. Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen, Ed. and Memory in Contemporary Installation Art. Hanover: to the performance, rather quite conversely, it speaks and Trans. by Claudia Gorbman. New York: Columbia Dartmouth College Press, 2012. directly to it being a platial, multi-sensory, holistic University Press, 1994. experience. [22] Ed Montano. “‘How Do You Know He’s Not Sparked by the deeply contested viewpoints [7]------Film, a Sound Art. Trans. by Claudia Playing Pac-Man While He’s Supposed to Be DJing?’: regarding performativity in experimental electronica, I Gorbman and C. Jon Delogu. New York: Columbia Technology, Formats and the Digital Future of DJ offer a different framework for engaging with the music. University Press, 2009. Culture,” Popular Music 29, no. 3 (2010): 397–416. This paper offers one way of viewing these performances, using the screen as a central hub for [8] Nick Collins. “Generative Music and Laptop [23] Comment from “David Needham.” extrapolating meaning, as the presence of the screen has Performance,” Contemporary Music Review 22, no. 4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gkpp7dn2j8, 2014. an effect on how people experience music in place and (2003): 67–79. vice versa. It might be argued, that I place too much [24] Ingrid Richardson. “Faces, Interfaces, Screens: focus on this one element. I would point out, however, [9] Kay Dickinson. “Music Video and Synaesthetic Relational Ontologies of Framing, Attention and that re-focusing on many of the other experiential Possibility,” in Medium Cool: Music Videos from Distraction,” Transformations 18 (2010). parameters—for example, on gestures, timbre, or lighting Soundies to Cellphones. Durham: Duke University Press, would still draw us back into discussing the role of the 2007. [25] Michel Chion, “Sensory Aspects of Contemporary laptop. This approach continues in the direction of Cinema,” in The Oxford Handbook of New Audiovisual theorists who have written extensively on the inescapably [10] Comment from “faultelectronica.” Aesthetics. Eds. Richardson, Gorbman, Vernallis. Oxford: mediated nature of performance, taking into https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UcW4aSLQBQ, Oxford University Press, 2013: 325-330. consideration the laptop, its screen, and screenness as one 2013 rich avenue for examining laptop performances among [26] Comment from “Christopher Robin.” [11] Anne Friedberg. The Virtual Window: From Alberti https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gkpp7dn2j8, 2013. their very diverse musico-experiential contexts. In doing to Microsoft. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006. so, I hope to contribute more nuanced and dynamic [27] Jeffrey Sconce. Haunted Media: Electric Presence understandings in modes of performativity and [12] Andrew Goodwin. Dancing in the Distraction from Telegraphy to Television. Durham: Duke University spectatorship with regard to new media, and specifically Factory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, Press, 2000 here, of experimental electronica performances, which 1992. have been so widely and unevenly critiqued. [28] Video upload from “snivelttam.” Tim Hecker –

[13] N. Katherine Hayles. How we think: Digital media Virginal I/The Piano Drop – 2012 Pitchfork Music

and contemporary technogenesis. Chicago; London: The Festival, REFERENCES University of Chicago Press, 2012. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gkpp7dn2j8, 2012.

[1] Philip Auslander. Liveness: Performance in a [14] Sonya Hofer. “Atomic Music: Navigating [29] Tad Turner. “The Resonance of the Cubicle: Laptop Mediatized Culture. London and New York: Routledge, Experimental Electronica and Sound Art through Performance in Post-digital Musics,” Contemporary 1999. Microsound,” in Organised Sound Vol. 19/3 (December Music Review 22, no. 4 (2003): 81–92. 2014): 295-303. [2] Jay David Bolten and Richard Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press, [15] Lucas D. Introna and Fernando M. Ilharco, “On the 1998. Meaning of Screens: Towards a Phenomenological Account of Screenness,” Human Studies Vol. 29, No. 1 (Jan., 2006).

34 From “faultelectronica,” [16] Timothy Jaeger. “The (Anti-) Laptop Aesthetic,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UcW4aSLQBQ, Contemporary Music Review 22, no. 4 (2003): 53–57. 2013. 35 I cite ideas of remediation, the evocation and [17] Comment from, “Jestin Jund.” representation of one medium in another, as theorized by https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gkpp7dn2j8, 2012. Bolten and Grusin in their key text Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998.

7 8 46 Proceedings Proceedingsof the International of the International Computer Computer Music ConferenceMusic Conference2016 2016 pg. 46 Proceedings Proceedingsof the International of the International Computer Computer Music ConferenceMusic Conference2016 2016 pg. 47 47