Nouvelle Publication : Entangled de Chris Salter

This ambi­tious and com­pre­hen­sive book explo­res tech­no­logy’s influence on artis­tic per­for­mance prac­ti­ces in the twen­tieth and twenty-first cen­tu­ries. In Entangled, Chris Salter shows that tech­no­lo­gies, from the mecha­ni­cal to the com­pu­ta­tio­nal—­from a "bal­let of objects and lights" sta­ged by Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in 1917 to contem­po­rary tech­no­lo­gi­cally ena­bled "res­pon­sive envi­ron­ments"—have been entan­gled with per­for­mance across a wide range of dis­ci­pli­nes. Salter exa­mi­nes the rich and exten­sive his­tory of per­for­mance expe­ri­men­ta­tion in thea­ter, music, dance, the visual and media arts, archi­tec­ture, and other fields ; explo­res the poli­ti­cal, social, and eco­no­mic context for the adop­tion of tech­no­lo­gi­cal prac­ti­ces in art ; and shows that these prac­ti­ces have a set of com­mon his­to­ries des­pite their dis­ci­pli­nary bor­ders.

Chris Salter, Entangled. Technology and the Transformation of Performance, pré­face par Peter Sellars, London, The MIT Press, 2010, 460 pages.

Christopher Salter is Graduate Certificate Program Director and Associate Professor at the depart­ment of Design and Computation Arts at Concordia University. He recei­ved his PhD in the areas of thea­ter and com­pu­ter-gene­ra­ted sound at Stanford University. His research and artis­tic prac­tice inves­ti­ga­tes the role of real time sound, image and tech­no­lo­gies of inte­rac­tion within the context of res­pon­sive envi­ron­ments and per­for­mance. He was awar­ded the Fulbright and Alexander von Humboldt Chancellor grants for research/work in Germany bet­ween 1993 - 1995. After col­la­bo­ra­ting with Peter Sellars and William Forsythe/Ballett Frankfurt, he co-foun­ded the art and research orga­ni­za­tion Sponge. His work has been shown inter­na­tio­nally at venues such as Ars Electronica, Transmediale, Villette Numerique, V2, DTW/New York and SIGGRAPH, among others. He has been visi­ting pro­fes­sor in music, grad stu­dies and digi­tal media at Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD).