Networked laptop performances prompt the articulation of new spatial poetics incorporating distributed modes of production, collaboration and reception. This article first tracks production in terms of Internet sampling, direct file download and manipulation, networked curation and automated web-trawling programs. The article subsequently explores collaborative possibilities in interactive streams and multi-directional remixes. The performers of these works filter the concept of spatial poetics through traditions of broadcast technologies and telephony. Finally, the article raises the political implications of blurred production, performance and distribution boundaries in terms of networked laptops and mobile PA-systems, concentrating on the OpenAir Radiotopia project (Ars Electronica 2002) as a site of liberatory improvisational transmission.
Laptopia: The Spatial Poetics of Networked Laptop Performance
Reddell, Trace
2003
Contemporary Music Review 22(4): 11-22.
Language: English