Walks of Experience: Site-Specific Performance Walks, Active Listening and Uncomfortable Witnessing

2020 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
EMILIE PINE ◽  
MAEVE CASSERLY ◽  
TOM LANE

Digital-audio performance walks can be powerful performances, responding to troubling pasts, giving voice to testimony, and creating an affective geography that satisfies a participant's desire to connect with the city rather than just walk through it. Yet digital-audio performance walks also raise questions about performance and voyeurism, and the disconnection of private headphone experience, alongside issues of agency, detachment and appropriation. This article addresses key issues associated with digital-audio performance walks, using two case studies of performance walks (from Israel and Ireland), that aim to communicate politically charged and painful histories, which are at once ‘now’ and ‘then’, ‘here’ and ‘there’. The article considers some of the risks in digital-audio performance walks: dark tourism, privatization and empathic quietism. Finally, the article assesses what creative strategies are available to creators – and audiences – to make collaborative performance walks that galvanize spectators to become active witnesses.

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (46) ◽  
pp. 45-70
Author(s):  
María Konomi ◽  

This essay will investigate a series of performances in Greece that showcase the theme of crisis discussed through the particular frame of their expanded scenographic strategies as dramaturgies of crisis. This expanded scenography is not restricted to politics and aesthetics of scenographic representation extending well beyond traditional staging paradigms to aspects that reinstate the emergence of social realities and a fundamentally social conception of space. Indicatively, this includes strategies like introducing various charged elements from lived experi-ence and contemporary visual culture, as well as conflictual aesthetics of the crisis and visual and spatial dramaturgies of the precarious. Sce-nographic dramaturgies of crisis seem to thrive on new spatial perfor-mance forms that directly interact with social realities and real spaces (like site-specific performance), while they mobilize a renewed address to found, shared public space putting to use strategies of participation. In this context of the crisis, the widespread multimedia idioms and the proliferation of video and cinematic idioms are also notable. Perfor-mances that thematize aspects of the crisis, such as Revolt Athens (2016), and the twin site-specific performances built with a core topographical address, Tea Time Europe (2014-15) and Eat Time Europe (2016) will be an-alyzed as key case studies to exemplify and further contextualize their scenographic approaches as content and context-oriented formulations, as visual and spatial dramaturgies that provide us with an entryway into performing crisis.


2005 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 96-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Branislav Jakovljevic

The performances in these Critical Acts de-privilege the visual aspect of the performer-audience relationship, instead focusing on the materiality of the encounter. In The City Itself, the performance group Skewed Visions departs from site-specific performance to engage in an examination of the physical and metaphysical properties of various locales; and in The Courtesan Tales, Nicole Blackman tells erotic tales to a bound audience-of-one, challenging


Author(s):  
Fiona Mc Laughlin

This chapter considers how Wolof, an Atlantic language spoken in Senegal, has become an important lingua franca, and how French has contributed to the ascent of Wolof. The nature of social relations between Africans and French in cities along the Atlantic coast in the 18th and 19th centuries were such that a prestigious urban way of speaking Wolof that made liberal use of French borrowings became the language of the city. As an index of urban belonging, opportunity, and modernity, Wolof was viewed as a useful language, a trend that has continued up to the present. Four case studies illustrate how the use of Wolof facilitates mobility for speakers of other languages in Senegal. By drawing a distinction between the formal and informal language sectors, this chapter offers a more realistic view of everyday language practices in Senegal, where Wolof is the dominant language.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 593
Author(s):  
Lorenzo Lastilla ◽  
Valeria Belloni ◽  
Roberta Ravanelli ◽  
Mattia Crespi

DSM generation from satellite imagery is a long-lasting issue and it has been addressed in several ways over the years; however, expert and users are continuously searching for simpler but accurate and reliable software solutions. One of the latest ones is provided by the commercial software Agisoft Metashape (since version 1.6), previously known as Photoscan, which joins other already available open-source and commercial software tools. The present work aims to quantify the potential of the new Agisoft Metashape satellite processing module, considering that to the best knowledge of the authors, only two papers have been published, but none considering cross-sensor imagery. Here we investigated two different case studies to evaluate the accuracy of the generated DSMs. The first dataset consists of a triplet of Pléiades images acquired over the area of Trento and the Adige valley (Northern Italy), which is characterized by a great variety in terms of geomorphology, land uses and land covers. The second consists of a triplet composed of a WorldView-3 stereo pair and a GeoEye-1 image, acquired over the city of Matera (Southern Italy), one of the oldest settlements in the world, with the worldwide famous area of Sassi and a very rugged morphology in the surroundings. First, we carried out the accuracy assessment using the RPCs supplied by the satellite companies as part of the image metadata. Then, we refined the RPCs with an original independent terrain technique able to supply a new set of RPCs, using a set of GCPs adequately distributed across the regions of interest. The DSMs were generated both in a stereo and multi-view (triplet) configuration. We assessed the accuracy and completeness of these DSMs through a comparison with proper references, i.e., DSMs obtained through LiDAR technology. The impact of the RPC refinement on the DSM accuracy is high, ranging from 20 to 40% in terms of LE90. After the RPC refinement, we achieved an average overall LE90 <5.0 m (Trento) and <4.0 m (Matera) for the stereo configuration, and <5.5 m (Trento) and <4.5 m (Matera) for the multi-view (triplet) configuration, with an increase of completeness in the range 5–15% with respect to stereo pairs. Finally, we analyzed the impact of land cover on the accuracy of the generated DSMs; results for three classes (urban, agricultural, forest and semi-natural areas) are also supplied.


2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 355-368
Author(s):  
Victoria Bianchi

This article explores how performance and character can be used to represent the lives of real women in spaces of heritage. It focuses on two different site-specific performances created by the author in the South Ayrshire region of Scotland: CauseWay: The Story of the Alloway Suffragettes and In Hidden Spaces: The Untold Stories of the Women of Rozelle House. These were created with a practice-as-research methodology and aim to offer new models for the use of character in site-specific performance practice. The article explores the variety of methods and techniques used, including verbatim writing, spatial exploration, and Herstorical research, in order to demonstrate the ways in which women’s narratives were represented in a theoretically informed, site-specific manner. Drawing on Phil Smith’s mythogeography, and responding to Laurajane Smith’s work on gender and heritage, the conflicting tensions of identity, performance, and authenticity are drawn together to offer flexible characterization as a new model for the creation of feminist heritage performance. Victoria Bianchi is a theatre-maker and academic in the School of Education at the University of Glasgow. Her work explores the relationship between space, feminism, and identity. She has written and performed work for the National Trust for Scotland, Camden People’s Theatre, and Assembly at Edinburgh, among other institutions.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 1813 ◽  
Author(s):  
António Cavaleiro de Ferreira ◽  
Francesco Fuso-Nerini

Circular economy (CE) is an emerging concept that contrasts the linear economic system. This concept is particularly relevant for cities, currently hosting approximately 50% of the world’s population. Research gaps in the analysis and implementation of circular economy in cities are a significant barrier to its implementation. This paper presents a multi-sectorial and macro-meso level framework to monitor (and set goals for) circular economy implementation in cities. Based on literature and case studies, it encompasses CE key concepts, such as flexibility, modularity, and transparency. It is structured to include all sectors in which circular economy could be adopted in a city. The framework is then tested in Porto, Portugal, monitoring the circularity of the city and considering its different sectors.


Author(s):  
Angharad Closs Stephens ◽  
Martin Coward ◽  
Samuel Merrill ◽  
Shanti Sumartojo

Abstract This article examines affective responses to terror and the emergence of communities of sense in the commemoration of such attacks. We challenge the predominant framing of responses to terror which emphasize security and identity. We focus on the singular response by the city of Manchester in the aftermath of the 2017 Arena bombing, drawing on fieldwork conducted at the 1-year anniversary commemorative events. Our discussion focuses on the ways improvised, transient communities crystallized around the cultural significance of music during these events. The article explores these communities of sense through two case studies: those drawn together around the figure of Ariane Grande; and those assembled through a mass sing-along. In contrast to national or municipal responses to terror which orchestrate affect to establish narratives about security, borders and identity, we argue for the importance of paying attention to the improvised, affective ways in which people respond to terror. These plural, affective responses suggest another form of collective subjectivity. They also demonstrate the transient, plural, and everyday ways in which politics is practiced, assembled, and negotiated by different publics in response to terror.


2005 ◽  
Vol 81 (1-4) ◽  
pp. 148-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Lynn Wood ◽  
Carl G. Enfield ◽  
Felipe P. Espinoza ◽  
Michael Annable ◽  
Michael C. Brooks ◽  
...  

2008 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 819-834 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy M. Barzyk ◽  
John E. Frederick

Abstract Individual structures within the same local-scale (102–104 m) environment may experience different microscale (&lt;103 m) climates. Urban microclimate variations are often a result of site-specific features, including spatial and material characteristics of surfaces and surrounding structures. A semiempirical surface energy balance model is presented that incorporates radiative and meteorological measurements to statistically parameterize energy fluxes that are not measured directly, including sensible heat transport, storage heat flux through conduction, and evaporation (assumed to be negligible under dry conditions). Two Chicago rooftops were chosen for detailed study. The City Hall site was located in an intensely developed urban area characterized by close-set high-rise buildings. The University rooftop was in a highly developed area characterized by three- to seven-story buildings of stone, concrete, and brick construction. Two identical sets of instruments recorded measurements contemporaneously from these rooftops during summer 2005, and results from the week of 29 July to 5 August are presented here. The model explains 83.7% and 96% of the variance for the City Hall and University sites, respectively. Results apply to a surface area of approximately 1260 m2, at length scales similar to the dimensions of built structures and other urban elements. A site intercomparison revealed variations in surface energy balance components caused by site-specific features and demonstrated the relevance of the model to urban applications.


2013 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 47-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gascia Ouzounian

This article introduces examples of recent sound art in Belfast, a city that has undergone radical transformation over the past decade and is home to a burgeoning community of sound artists. The text investigates the ways in which sonic art can redraw boundaries in a city historically marked by myriad political, socioeconomic, religious and sectarian divisions. The article focuses on sound works that reimagine a “post-conflict” Belfast. These include site-specific sound installations in urban and public spaces, soundwalks, sculptures, locative and online works, and experimental sonic performances that draw upon traditional Irish song and music.


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