the closed laptop pt. 0: a cautionary tale of performance practice

I’m taking a little detour from the bread and butter subject matters of this blog, and having a look at laptop computers in the context of live, and, in particular, improvised, performance.

Before I start, as my position is partial, and by no stretch of the imagination ‘objective’, let me sketch out a few background details. I’m a guitar player—an improviser. Nine times out of ten, that’s my identity (function, assignment, designation) on stage. On the other hand, I have worked around, from, and within, the loosely defined field that enrolls laptops for live, music performance. I’ve intersected with these practices long enough to witness various monikers and prefixes—‘plunderphonics’, ‘EAI’, ‘new media’—come onto the scene, and others—‘live’, ‘real-time’, ‘interactive’, ‘new media’—fall out of favor. I’ve performed several times with laptopiteers. I’ve even sat behind a laptop on stage a few times, although not recently (and if you think I have an axe to grind, maybe it’s in my self-conscious abandonment of that last position).
However, I feel alienated from performances with laptops on stage despite (or maybe because of) my background—my prior experience, my prior contact, with these practices.

There’s two issues I will be hovering around in my discussions (I’ve already posted a version of these, and they originally started in discussions with AF):

1. The laptop interface encourages a narcissistic attitude.
2. Significant fraction of laptop performers are interested in computer science issues at the expense of issues of culture, tradition, stage presence, or the body and the corporeal.

Okay, let me unpack these a bit….

1. That clam-shell interface was designed to create a virtual, private office space in, say, a semi-public airplane seat. That's not an inescapable or inevitable position, but very few laptopiteers are either aware of this, nor are they actively deconstructing it. Which is related to point B.
2. Okay, this is a caricature: you cannot neatly separate the technical, on the one hand, from these other issues. This dualism, however, underpins much of laptopping. And, although I'm very much interested in the technological, to simply transpose that into performance space (the concert hall, the club) leaves a lot to be desired.

Combining, A and B, I find, as an audience member or performer, the whole experience problematic. I don’t believe laptopping to be a unique case, but I think it is an example that starkly demonstrates the problems of performance practice and audience engagement. As a cautionary tale of technological music practice, it's interesting and instructive.

To be continued…