Notes on Liveness

'Ambient music is more a way of listening... as a semi-anonymous bricoleur, a cut-up artisan, the DJ could montage any form of music to create a mood, an environment... a reiteration of music's status as a shifting conglomerate of manipulable bits, rather than a finished entity.'
(David Toop, Scanning: Aether Talk p170-171)

'Before Eno's theoretical dismantling of this relationship, early disco DJs had eroded fixed definitions of performance, performer and audience.'
(David Toop, Scanning: Aether Talk p166)

'By definition, a computer driven, preprogrammed performance is predetermined... the only error, or danger, is that the machine may crash.'
(David Toop, Scanning: Aether Talk p167)

'Significant here is the young audience members’awareness that the actors are performing 'in front of you' and 'as you watch'. Noises from the audience would distract the actors, perhaps causing them to make a mistake in their performance.

This possibility of mistakes was something that intrigued many of the young people. While not actively wishing for their occurrence, mistakes -including dropped props and forgotten lines -were something that were joyfully noted as proof of the fact that the performance was happening live in front of them. This potential for mistakes, the requirement for the actors to be perfect every night and the possible need for improvisation were seen as markers of the skill of the actors, respected and admired by almost all the participants.

The young audience members were very well aware that any mistake by the actors would be irretrievable -they could not be corrected or erased. Similarly, they were aware that their own relationship with the performance was a one-off experience. If they missed something, if their concentration wavered, they would not be able to rewind and replay that moment.  This awareness of a kind of danger in a live performance
existed whether or not mistakes actually happened. Indeed, two participants talked separately about how
being part of the audience made them feel 'responsible' for the actors, powerfully uniting their presence to the
performance of the actors.'

(Young Audiences & Live Theatre: an investigation into perceptions of live performance, p8)