Last gasp: The end of multimedia performance, New York 1950--2000
Item
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Title
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Last gasp: The end of multimedia performance, New York 1950--2000
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Identifier
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d_2009_2013:65cfa053290b:11993
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identifier
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12674
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Creator
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Luber, Stephen,
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Contributor
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David Savran
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Date
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2013
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Theater | Multimedia communications | Theater history | historiography | multimedia | performance | technology
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Abstract
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In this dissertation I examine the historical and cultural meanings of the word multimedia, coined in 1950, and how its evolution throughout the twentieth century has revealed anxieties through theory and performance. I argue that performance is always already multimedia, and thus I claim that when "multimedia" is carved out as an explicit genre, critics and theorists express a pastoral nostalgia, a belief that contemporary life can be separated from media communications and technologies. Multimedia is a genre that results from the cultural and economic production following World War II, in which production shifted from technological development for the military-industrial complex to the domestic sphere in the U.S. The effort to sell media technologies as a part of everyday experience distinguished multimedia as a commodified, exceptional sphere apart from the quotidian.;Performance, because of the critical and practical emphasis on its live experience, is a valuable frame by which to understand this complicated history. Works by Robert Whitman, Laurie Anderson, and the Blue Man Group are historical case studies that help to reveal the workings of their respective cultural moments. I read these performances alongside critical theorists such as Marshal McLuhan, Herbert Marcuse, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Fredric Jameson, Peggy Phelan, and Philip Auslander in order to connect ideas produced for the cultural imaginary. Ultimately, I argue that the term multimedia is obsolete, and that this distinction prevents a deeper and more dynamic critical engagement with contemporary performance.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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2009_2013.csv
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Theatre
