“Ideology of Liveness and falsification of the ontological “Live”” presented by Ge
Symposium:
Session Title:
- Games: Playing Live(?) - Livestreaming in theory and practice: Four provocations on labour, liveness and participatory culture in games livestreaming
Presentation Title:
- Ideology of Liveness and falsification of the ontological “Live”
Presenter(s):
Venue(s):
Abstract:
This paper aims at deconstructing the core concept of liveness, as emphasized in internet based livestreaming media today, via an investigation of historical production of meaning of liveness in theatre and television. Liveness is not, perhaps never, immune from contamination of mediation as the ideal of a “purity of absence of mediation” might be an ideological product of our highly mediatized present society rather than a loss of the pre-digital state of “retained authenticity”. The rise of livestreaming dotcom TVs such as Twitch.tv and Douyu.tv, as opposed to television, is not necessarily a sign of the return of the Immediacy or the arrival of Immediacy via the internet but an allusion to the underlying argument that the televisual is “organic part of the social fabric” in our society. The overarching dichotomy of the Live / thus Real and Representations / thus mediatised is thus replaced by analysis of liveness in each particular case, namely historical television and contemporary livestreaming / digitalised television.
