With joint collaboration between Royal College of Art and the London Consortium, Metalab presents a performer/audience/re-enactment by Dan Graham. The piece was originally done at the London performance site Riverside Studios, titled performer/audience/mirror in 1979.

There were 4 stages of this performance. In stage one, Graham stands in front of the audience describing everything about his external presence and his body in the space. During stage two, he describes the audience’s external actions and behavior. In stages three and four, he turns to the mirror that reflected the whole room with the audience and repeats stages one and two.

Dan Graham in his performance

Graham was interested in the real time behavior and relationship between the performer, audience, and mirror.  When Graham turned to the mirror, ” the audience was able to instantaneously perceive itself as a public mass (as a unity), offsetting its definition by the performer(‘s discourse). First, a person in the audience sees himself “objectively” (“subjectively”) perceived by himself, next he hears himself described “objectively” (“subjectively”) in terms of the performer’s perception.” [1]

At the Metalab, the audience helped re-enact stages one and two just as Graham did. This time, however, we switched the place of the mirror with a projection of a Twitter page. Anyone was allowed to “tweet” with their phones, which would show up on the page. There was a computer at the back of the room for anyone to use. There was a person constantly refreshing the page so that all the tweets would be seen. Because Twitter claims to keep people updated on “what’s happening, right now, with the people and organizations you care about,” as stated on their Welcome to Twitter page, we experimented with how Twitter can reflect real time as the mirror did in Graham’s performance.

photos by Marsha Bradfield
At the Riverside Studio

I volunteered myself to be Graham in this re-enactment. As I stood in front of the audience and described myself externally for stage one, it was quite nerve racking. It is hard to talk about nothing and only describing the slight details of my actions, which are often unnoticed and unintentional, only details that Sherlock Holmes would catch. During stage two, I described the audience. Amongst the audience, were my friends  and my professor Dr. Mary Robert, who brought me to the performance. As I looked into the audience, I described the movements happening in the audience. Graham pointed out that there was always a slight delay between the audience’s actions and his own descriptions of what they were doing. I also experienced this.

That delay was further displayed in stages three and four when I turned towards the Twitter feed. Stage three was difficult to describe myself while looking at the Twitter page. I just had to describe where my eyes were looking and where I was physically standing. The concept was to see myself through the Tweeter feed, however, it was difficult to read myself on the page. It might have worked better if it was my own page where I try to express myself and my taste in the background color and font choices.

In the forth stage, I had to describe the audience through reading the tweets. It was very different from the mirror because I had to take time to read the tweets first, the audience had to take time to type and post the tweet, and the page had to be refreshed in order for the tweets to shows up. We also had a smaller crowed so there weren’t many tweeters.

Our discussion at the end of the re-enactment focused on the similarities and differences between the mirror and Twitter. It is interesting to realize how Twitter is far from the live truth. A mirror reflects objectively what ever faces it. A tweet reflects the writer through what the writer wants to write about. The writer can choose to omit or highlight something unlike the mirror, which shows things exactly how they are.

The other concern is the issue of “right now.” In the mirror, it reflects everything as the action is being done. When an audience member raises his hand, his hand is raised in the mirror at the same time. Then when Graham described the raising of the hand, there is a bit of a delay because Graham has to see it, register it in his brain, then talk about it.

To some degree there is some subjectivity in Graham’s monologue because he can choose what to describe and how to describe it. Twitter on the other hand, more time takes place in between when the audience tweets and when I described it. It is not “right now” as it is in the mirror. For instant, an audience tweets, “I agree with what you said.” Moments have past, and I have already changed topic. The tweet is no longer relevant, and it becomes confusing.

When you are sitting in a room, tweeting about people in the same room feels ridiculous because Twitter does not fulfill its promise to announce what is happening “now.” Twitter does change in perspective if the audience member were at different locations around the world. In that case, Twitter and technology can showcase how fast news can travel with a click of a button.

This just reminds me of that one scene in Disney/Pixar film, WALL-E (2008). In the film, a future society where technology runs the lives of people and they no longer have to make any efforts to live. Walking, talking, eating, was done on their behalf by different forms of technology. In this one particular scene, an overweight man converses with a friend through a virtual scene, like Skype, while sitting on his floating wheelchair and eating burgers as a milkshake. Then the we see the bigger picture, and the friend that he was talking to is sitting right next to him, but he is too lazy to turn his head and would much rather converse with him through the technology provided.

If we wisely utilize the technology provided today, we can reach a broader audience around the world at the same time which is incredible. However, this “headphone” generation must understand that Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and other social networking sites can never compare to the real time experience that is physically present in front of them.

[1] Dan Graham (Zippay, 1991)

For more information, check out http://metalabseries.blogspot.co.uk/