Welcome to the Live Performance Design website! Here you can find information about the professors, our class, the schedule and resources.
What is the volume of a light? The emotion of a line? The attitude of a shape? What is the sound of color? How would you play them, and present them as a holistic, synesthetic experience that will fondly linger in the memories of the audience?
It is one thing for you to appreciate the innovations in live performance tools, yet another to make them. We will start by describing the passage of time with sound and vision in a multi-sensory world, using the essential elements of live performance and four-dimensional design. We want to give you confidence in your multi-sensory, performative voice regardless of technical experience, background, and language.
Live Performance Design is a team-taught class. You will work with Deborah to develop your aesthetic and artistic voice and vision, and you will work with Josh to create and share your tools. We will use Cycling74's Max programming environment as the primary technical teaching tool for this class, with explorations into such technologies as VDMX, Syphon, Soundflower, and Git, among others.
At the end of this class, you will have a programmed tool for the digital performance of audio and video, integrated into a final, live experience of your design, presented at a public event. Your final design may include dance, wearables, sculpture, and so on -- we encourage you to break free from the laptop and present a spellbinding, symbiotic relationship with your media.
In-progress reviews are critical. We will ask you to challenge and negotiate with your peers and us, justify your decision making, speak critically, and constructively using a series of guidelines on which to approach your work: design, concept, and above all, experience.
Deborah Johnson, aka CandyStations, is a multidisciplinary artist specializing in stage design and performance visuals. She has worked with musicians including Sufjan Stevens, Sofi Tukker, M83, St. Vincent, and Wilco, performing in such venues as The Museum of Modern Art, Radio City Music Hall, Madison Square Garden, Brooklyn Academy of Music, and The Fillmore.
She has completed residencies at Mass MoCA, The Experimental Television Center, and The Atlantic Center for the Arts where she worked with the German audio/visual composer Carsten Nicolai, aka Alva Noto.
She is a graduate of the IDM program where she completed her MS in 2012. Her thesis, entitled "Designing Visual Narratives for Musical and Cinematic Performance," is posted under RESOURCES.
She is also a Professor of Time and Movement at The Pratt School of Art and Design. She has a Siberian Husky named Xena, and for this reason, she will have white hair all over her clothes. She hopes you will find this endearing.
Joshua Goldberg has, over the last three decades, been a director, a performance artist, an actor, a lighting designer, a builder of interactive exhibits, a light artist, a programmer of video tools, a game maker, a video artist, and a projection designer, among many roles. An enthusiastic study of realtime aesthetics, he is ever striving to immanentize the Eschaton.