Initial work on the Malta music memory project : and its connections with oral history

In 2009 I wrote an article for the Journal of Music, Technology and Education outlining plans to build a collaborative multimedia database of Maltese music and associated arts. In that article, I explained that the proposed collaborative project would rely on wiki technology to get going with capturing a living archive of past, present and future works of interest in connection to music and associated arts from and in Malta. I also identified various critical issues related to intellectual property rights, preservation policies and techniques, technical infrastructure strategies, and other similar topics, which need to be tackled through specially-developed postgraduate research studentships. Now, two years later, its time to assess what has happened in the initial attempts to implement the plans in the original outline.peer-reviewe

Nudity in Digital Performance: Reappraising the Early Online Works of Annie Sprinkle and Frank Moore

The early online works of American artists Annie Sprinkle and Frank Moore, presented separately, draw heavily on their own art practice in terms of method, beyond the specific erotic content they produced, which was not too different from their offline work. Throughout the 1990s, Sprinkle and Moore blurred the boundaries between art and erotica to expand their own work to include the internet as an essential component of their performances. They elaborated on the use of concepts popularized in the art world through artist books for close to a century before the rise of digital technology

Franklin Furnace and the spirit of the avant-garde: a history of the future

Franklin Furnace is a renowned New York-based arts organization whose mission is to preserve, document, and present works of avant-garde art by emerging artists - particularly those whose works may be vulnerable due to institutional neglect or politically unpopular content. Over more than thirty years, Franklin Furnace has exhibited works by hundreds of avant-garde artists, some of whom - Laurie Anderson, Vito Acconci and the Blue Man Group, to name a few - are now established names in contemporary art. Here, for the first time, is a comprehensive history of this remarkable organization from its conception to the present. Organized around the context of the major art genres that emerged in the second half of the twentieth century, this book intersperses first-person narratives with readings by artists and scholars on issues critical to the organization's success as well as Franklin Furnace's many contributions to avant-garde art

Theatrical performance on the Internet: How far have we come since Hamnet?

This article aims to contribute reflective insight towards a clearer historical narrative for the beginning of theatrical performance on the Internet. This approach involves reassessing the significance of a specific production that is widely considered to be the first of its kind, in the broader context of related works that have appeared over a period of twenty years. The first example of this type of work is Hamnet: Shakespeare's Play Adapted for IRC (1993), an appropriation of Hamlet. This work goes beyond the act of interpreting dramatic literature through new technologies; however, some subsequent works do not seem to have built on the unique performance qualities that this work discovered in online environments, and have arguably become less innovative renditions of more conventional theatrical productions. While there is plenty of room for creativity and scope for innovation in online virtual worlds, they can also be used as a tool for simulation

A Second Life for online performance: Understanding present developments through an historical context

An understanding of the histories of performance on the Internet in text-based online environments, such as IRC, MUDs and MOOs, and 2D graphic chat networks like The Palace, is highly useful in approaching similar work in the 3D massively multi-user online role-playing virtual world called Second Life. Online performance brings about an evaluation of the relationship between the designated performers and their audience, particularly the potential for interactive experiences and alternative narratives through improvisation. Starting with the visionary writings of Randal Walser about the ‘Elements of a Cyberspace Playhouse' (1991), the potential of 3D environments for interactive performance is discussed within an historical context