Developing a critical technical audiovisual performance practice engaging with 'the web' as both medium and subject matter.

Overview

The work presented here consists of a portfolio of six projects, each either fully or partially comprising a website I’ve created to use as a tool in an audiovisual performance, musical composition, or improvisation, plus commentary. Three of the projects, Clock, Scroll, and TAB are presented also with a recording of work created and performed with that tool. In those cases the combination of the website tool and the performance piece should be considered the project. Two other projects, Improv Tool and Sandbox Tool are ‘pure tools’ with more general purposes and applications, described in their accompanying commentary. The remaining project, Text Score Glitcher, was developed for and is presented with a performance project, but this differs from the main three in that it was part of a group performance and does not have a visual component.

The goal of my research has been to develop a practice using the tools, techniques, and aesthetics of website making to build personal bespoke tools for performance art, and to critically engage with, and comment on ‘the web’ as subject matter through that performance art.

Context

My Background

To give a sense of what my practice looked like prior to this MA research I have included Context: My Background, providing examples of projects I made as part of an emerging digital art practice. These projects show the beginnings of ideas around web based art, tool making, and technology as subject matter, that I have sought to focus and refine through this research project.

Critical Technical Practice

Working with an understanding of ‘Critical Technical Practice’ as put forth by Agre (Agre, 1997), and applied to creative practice in Live Coding: A User’s Manual (Blackwell et al., 2022), has been a key aspect to the development of my practice during this research. I have worked to develop approaches to creating works that would, themselves, constitute a ‘critical technical practice’. See Context: Critical Technical Practice for a full commentary on the meaning of this term and the way I situate my work in relation to it.

Live Coding

When starting the research, and continually throughout its development, I have been inspired and influenced by the practice of live coding, and the cultures and scenes that have developed around it. I am inspired by an approach to computing and digital technology that is playful, creative, and rebellious: an approach that encourages a deeper understanding of tools one uses through the nature of that use; seeking to understand how things work, pulling them apart and remixing and rebuilding them.

Particularly, when it comes to live coding, I am interested in the idea of the artist showing their thinking and processes during a performance, something that is entirely optional in computer music but has conceptual connotations around inclusion, accessibility, musical hierarchy, and DIY culture (Blackwell et al., 2022, pp.4, 19, 51, 61) that I find very compelling. See Context: Live Coding for a full discussion on this and its relation to my work.

The Web

Regarding the ‘critical’ element of this critical technical practice I have provided an overview of some of the issues my work engages with in Context: The Web. The role of the modern web in our lives and its influence on our cultures and politics is much discussed in contemporary discourse (Doctorow, 2023; McNeil, 2020; Muldoon, 2022; Tarnoff, 2022) and this section highlights some of the key texts and arguments that have influenced my thinking about the web as an artist and developer. I also discuss how my own personal experiences and recollections of using the web have influenced both the issues I’ve chosen to engage with and my view on them.

Net Art

As stated above, ‘website making’ is the process and medium I use to build my projects. This is, of course, a large discipline, incorporating both design and engineering practices. There are many eras of web development, comprising varied approaches to design and styling in addition to many technological stacks and approaches to development to choose from. In terms of my visual approach, and to a lesser extent my technological approach, I have looked to the ‘net art’ movement of the 1990s and early 2000s for inspiration. Artists like Olia Lialina ↗ (Lialina, n.d.), JODI ↗(Joid.org, 2026), and Eva & Franco Mattes ↗ (0100101110101101.org, n.d.), and their playful and exploratory use of early web technologies (Berry, 2003).

See Context: Net Art for a discussion of how I situate my practice in relation to net art.

Improvisation

The practice of ‘non-idiomatic’ or ‘free’ improv is a technique that I’ve employed to different degrees across my two latter performance pieces (Scroll and TAB), as well as Text Score Glitcher. It is also the kind of musicking that the tool Improv Tool is intended to serve. My introduction to this practice came part way through the research when I attended a workshop by Sejiro Murayama and Jean-Luc Guinnet, and has been a factor in the development of the musical aspect of my practice. My experience with this workshop and its influence on my practice is discussed in full in Context: Improvisation.

Research Aims

With the goal of the development of a critical technical practice about the web in mind, the aims I have worked towards in this research project have been:

• Building a series of websites/web apps that serve as sound-making tools for performance and composition.
• Building a series of sound-making websites/web apps with novel interfaces that serve as visual artistic elements in audiovisual performance.
• Composing or creating a series of performance works that engage critically and comment on ‘the web’ in a cultural or political sense.

Methodology

I have achieved the stated aims through an iterative process of project building.

In the case of the four performance pieces: Clock, Scroll, TAB, and Text Score Glitcher, I have worked from a concept first, ideated through reading and thinking around critical technical issues relating to the web, as well as personal reflections on my experiences as a user of the web. From here I have moved to sketching phases, working through possible interfaces designs and ideas on functionality before lastly building the tools and designing the performances.

In the case of the two ‘pure tools’ (Improv Tool and Sandbox Tool) I have reflected on my use of the performance tools to create more general purpose interfaces. I utilise these for group improvisation, and musical composition, respectively, incorporating functionality I found useful and compelling in the project tools.

Clarification on language

There are a number of interchangeable terms used to refer to the network of public websites and apps that are accessible via the internet: ‘the world wide web’, ‘the web’, ‘the net’, ‘online’, ‘the internet’ etc. For the sake of clarity and consistency I will use ‘the web’ throughout this commentary. In doing so my intention is to refer to the aforementioned network of public websites as the technical application it is, but also as the cultural phenomena and metaphorical ‘space’ it could be conceived of as (Ochs, 2020; Barlow, 1996).

In discussing my presented portfolio I will, at times, be either discussing the actual website/application/tool or the performance piece created with it or the combination of both things. The website/application/tool will be referred to as ‘the tool’ or ‘pure tool’, any performance or composition will be ‘the piece’, and the combination of both (where applicable) will be ‘the project’.