Multimedia performance: analysis of examples and conceptual implications

Abstract

The paper proposes an analysis of multimedia performances presented between the 1970s and the 1990s, which explore elements of the opera structure and explore the possibilities of spatial montage allowed by the stage environment. The text starts with a contextualization on the challenges that are presented to the critical analysis of experimental audiovisual — specially events — as a consequence of the constant terminological change with the appearance of new technologies impacting the conceptual field and its poetics. Then, it seeks to organize the critical repertoire constituted around the dialogues between opera and multimedia performance, examining how the most recent thoughts on intermedia articulations of language are part of the fruitful and plural tradition of opera. Finally, the text focus on the analysis of significant works from this universe, with a closer look at the production of artists such as José Roberto Aguilar, Arrigo Barnabé and Décio Pignatari in partnership with Lívio Tragtenberg and Wilson Sukorski.

Keywords intermedia; spatial montage; audiovisual multimedia performance