Léon McCarthy - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Léon McCarthy
Routledge eBooks, Jun 9, 2022
Routledge eBooks, Jun 9, 2022
Interactions, Aug 22, 2018
Journal of Professional Communication, Jun 4, 2014
Live Visuals, Jun 9, 2022
Live Visuals, Jun 9, 2022
The aim of this research was to establish a new style of AV performance that facilitated me in kn... more The aim of this research was to establish a new style of AV performance that facilitated me in knowingly steering audience engagement. My interest in steering engagement stems from the intent I have with my performances; an intent to encourage audiences into considered thought about the topics I bring to my shows. As practice-based research, a series of performances formed its basis, with each adapted toward establishing a new style. I introduced audience conversations to my performances, doing so in real-time by harnessing the audience's second-screens. In this way, their smartphones facilitated spontaneous collaboration between the audience and I; in turn this gave me a way to steer them toward thinking about the themes behind my performances. By then bringing this style of performance to the context of live debate, a new paradigm emerged; one that challenges the audience to participate in shaping the emergent audio-visual event. I had to develop the capacity to monitor audience engagement, first online with the `video-cued commentary' and then in real-time via two different `audience-commentary systems'. This may be of interest to anyone engaging in forms of audience analysis or viewer studies. How I developed second-screen systems may be of interest to designers of phone-network-based social-media commentary platforms. My effort toward simplifying how I generated audio-visual content and how I controlled it on-stage may make this research of interest to other digital-media performers and installation-designers.
Proceedings of the Twelfth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction, 2018
"Let's Fake News" is an interactive media art installation that forces participants... more "Let's Fake News" is an interactive media art installation that forces participants to realize that anyone can create fake news and may even find joy in doing so. The artwork addresses the conference themes as an interactive installation that challenges ideas around "post-truth", creating an experience that engages with digital representations of the discursive interactions.
Journal of Professional Communication, 2014
Leonardo electronic almanac, 2013
This paper will report on the use of video-cued commentary as a method of gathering insightful au... more This paper will report on the use of video-cued commentary as a method of gathering insightful audience feedback on an audiovisual performance. Through my current audiovisual performances, I seek to present perspectives on social themes. Hence, I hope to communicate with audiences on an intellectual level, yet in the past, I have been unable to tell whether audiences were engaging sensually, intellectually or otherwise. My research seeks to glean in what manner audiences engage with a performance, ascertaining what elements of my performance may have triggered them to engage. I expect that in seeking answers to these questions, I will understand more about how audiovisual content, gesture and stage-setup can lead audiences to engage intellectually. I have used post-performance audience surveys to gather subjective feedback. The analysis of these surveys revealed useful general impressions, yet feedback rarely revealed the impact of specific audiovisual events or moments. Seeking fee...
Performance is a medium through which alternate perspectives can occupy alternate spaces. Where t... more Performance is a medium through which alternate perspectives can occupy alternate spaces. Where the rendered media of advertisements, reportage and documentary appeal primarily to the intellect of the viewer, the ephemeral nature of performance tends to first engage the emotions and senses of an audience. By practicing across film, graphic design and data-visualisation, audio-visual performers can document themes of social relevance and it could be said that through such trans-disciplinary practice, a form of ‘documentary performance’ emerges. This premise has led me to harness audio-visuals toward championing social topics. Thematically, my current performances question whether industrial fishing methods are sustainable. Performing to varied audiences in varied contexts has given me insight into the impact that a documentary style of performance can have. This paper documents my process toward realising such a performance paradigm - a trans-disciplinary practice fusing film, science, technology and art.
This paper will report on the use of video-cued commentary as a method of gath¬ering insightful a... more This paper will report on the use of video-cued commentary as a method of gath¬ering insightful audience feedback on an audiovisual performance.
Through my current audiovisual performances, I seek to present perspectives on social themes. Hence, I hope to communicate with audiences on an intellectual level, yet in the past, I have been unable to tell whether audiences were engaging sensually, intellectually or otherwise.
My research seeks to glean in what manner audiences engage with a perfor¬mance, ascertaining what elements of my performance may have triggered them to engage. I expect that in seeking answers to these questions, I will understand more about how audiovisual content, gesture and stage-setup can lead audi¬ences to engage intellectually.
I have used post-performance audience surveys to gather subjective feed¬back. The analysis of these surveys revealed useful general impressions, yet feed¬back rarely revealed the impact of specific audiovisual events or moments. Seek¬ing feedback on specific events could isolate the impact I had on the audience making it impossible to replicate the same impact in future performances.
In seeking to gather specific feedback, I came across the use of video-cued commentary, a method used to assess user-experience within interactive instal¬lations. I adapted this approach to the field of live audiovisuals, inspired by the writings of Sergei Eisenstein and adopting the listening modes suggested by Michel Chion.
The design, implementation and analysis of a video-cued commentary will be part of this analysis together with alternative uses of the video-cued commentary for researchers and practitioners in other fields.
This thesis was a study in prototyping a binaural surround-sound processor, solely within the MAX... more This thesis was a study in prototyping a binaural surround-sound processor, solely within the MAX/MSP/Jitter software domain. The processor synthesises sonic-environments for a single user, such that sound-objects remain at specific points in space, independent of the user’s movements. This is achieved by monitoring the user’s position and head-orientation with a camera. The camera is connected to a laptop, where all processing takes place. The user’s head-data, along with the sounds position on a 2-D panner, control the spatial processor. Localization cues are then generated in a manner similar to how the human auditory system operates.
Thesis Chapters by Léon McCarthy
The aim of this research was to establish a new style of AV performance that facilitated me in kn... more The aim of this research was to establish a new style of AV performance that facilitated me in knowingly steering audience engagement. My interest in steering engagement stems from the intent I have with my performances; an intent to encourage audiences into considered thought about the topics I bring to my shows. As practice-based research, a series of performances formed its basis, with each adapted toward establishing a new style.
I introduced audience conversations to my performances, doing so in real-time by harnessing the audience's second-screens. In this way, their smartphones facilitated spontaneous collaboration between the audience and I; in turn this gave me a way to steer them toward thinking about the themes behind my performances. By then bringing this style of performance to the context of live debate, a new paradigm emerged; one that challenges the audience to participate in shaping the emergent audio-visual event.
I had to develop the capacity to monitor audience engagement, first offline with the `video-cued commentary' and then in real-time via two different `audience-commentary systems'. This may be of interest to anyone engaging in forms of audience analysis or viewer studies. How I developed second-screen systems may be of interest to designers of phone-network-based social-media commentary platforms. My effort toward simplifying how I generated audio-visual content and how
I controlled it on-stage may make this research of interest to other digital-media performers and installation-designers.
Conference Presentations by Léon McCarthy
'Let's Fake News' is an interactive media art installation that forces participants to realize th... more 'Let's Fake News' is an interactive media art installation that forces participants to realize that anyone can create fake news and may even find joy in doing so. The artwork addresses the conference themes as an interactive installation that challenges ideas around 'post-truth', creating an experience that engages with digital representations of the discursive interactions.
Reader-response theories suggest that to learn, we interact with our surroundings. Conversing can... more Reader-response theories suggest that to learn, we interact with our surroundings. Conversing can be a form of engaged learning and can take place during live events in informal venues such as nightclubs. As a VJ, having moved away from the nightclub to the cinema-type environment, I may have lost the socially engaged learning that conversation facilitates. What would happen were I to introduce virtual conversations? What would the audience talk about and would the experience, both for the audience and I, be any the richer for it?
Books by Léon McCarthy
Live Visuals: History, Theory, Practice, 2022
Live Visual performers rely on technologically enabled workflows to realise their art to such a d... more Live Visual performers rely on technologically enabled workflows to realise their art to such a degree that technology is as much their medium as light. This is evident throughout Live Visuals practice: from the pre-production of motion graphics to the design of control interfaces through to the selection of media-diffusion systems. As Part I of this book has already shown, trends in aesthetics tend to change from decade to decade: what this chapter will argue is that aesthetics tend to converge into trends when a critical mass of artists appropriate technologies in similar ways. As a result, within Live Visual performance practice, aesthetics are profoundly coupled to technological processes and inventions.
The term ‘live’ in Live Visual performance emphasises that it is art created for and in the presence of an audience: the rendering of the artwork happens in real time as an ephemeral experience shared between performer and audience. The level of spontaneity that a performer strives for will vary, but in all cases the presence of the audience impacts on the performance that is realised. This chapter will discuss how the aesthetics of Live Visuals are the function of three components: artist, technology and audience.
Live Visuals: History, Theory, Practice, 2022
During the 1980s and 1990s the aesthetics and practice of Live Visuals entered the mainstream, le... more During the 1980s and 1990s the aesthetics and practice of Live Visuals entered the mainstream, leading to better acknowledgement of the ‘Live Visuals performer’ as an important creative role. The rise of rave culture also created changes in audience experience – being in a large, disinhibited dance-focused crowd now demanded an alternative form of visual spectacle to replace the previous tradition of the stage as the place of visual focus. Simultaneously the growth in stadium-scale gigs also instigated the need to create more ambitious visuals, allowing Live Visual performers to work on larger-scale and visually more innovative productions.
These new contexts also provided live visualists new opportunities to present contemporary socio-political subject matter to their audiences; themes such as Thatcherism, Reaganomics, mass consumption and environmental degradation were commonly addressed within the audio-visual content of this period. Interestingly, while mass media was a site for their criticism, for some artists, it also became a channel through which they found a more mainstream voice – the prime example being through the creation of music videos that were then seen on MTV (as outlined in Chapter 3).
Developments in technology played an important role in driving these changes. The emergent media technologies of the VHS video, the Panasonic MX10 Digital Video Mixer and rudimentary computer-based video editing greatly facilitated new forms of creation and production. As is argued in Chapter 8, such experimental use of technology helped shape the visual aesthetic that emerged during this era. By reappropriating broadcast content on VHS tapes, irony and juxtaposition came to underpin the aesthetic; these approaches are also reminiscent of the ‘montage’ technique used by Sergei Eisenstein (as discussed in Chapter 2). By combining broadcast content with computer-generated graphics and text, visual artists could elect to be more narratively ambitious. Later hardware developments afforded better real-time computer processing, which when harnessed, allowed for the generation of ‘audio-responsive’ visuals. For Live Visual performers, the development of better interactive interfaces made it possible to utilise all the new advantages of desktop computers and software into their stage productions.
Parallel to these developments, the acid house movement began in Chicago in the mid-1980s and moved quickly to the UK, culminating with the “Second Summer of Love” in 1987.1 Acid house was a simple form of dance music, with a pulse that was driven by the iconic Roland TB-303 synth. Acid house fed directly into the establishment of rave culture, which was christened by former Throbbing Gristle/Psychic TV singer Genesis P-Orridge in 1989.2 Rave usually consisted of illegal events in huge venues, where drugs were consumed and hedonistic dancing took place to electronic music. Though initially driven by acid house, other forms of electronic music such as drum and bass and techno became common at raves in the 1990s. The rave, while not always employing Live Visuals, often did have psychedelic qualities achieved through lighting that brought to mind the equally psychedelic events of the 1960s (see Chapter 3 for more on psychedelic events such as The Joshua Light Show’s performances and Chapter 11 for more on the hedonism of rave culture).
This chapter will select and discuss some of the most pioneering live-visual performers of the 1980s and 1990s as examples to illustrate what happened when culture was mediated through emerging technology. The chapter will begin in the UK with scratch video, stay in the UK to discuss rave culture, move to the United States to discuss Emergency Broadcast Network (EBN) and then return to the UK to consider Coldcut.
Routledge eBooks, Jun 9, 2022
Routledge eBooks, Jun 9, 2022
Interactions, Aug 22, 2018
Journal of Professional Communication, Jun 4, 2014
Live Visuals, Jun 9, 2022
Live Visuals, Jun 9, 2022
The aim of this research was to establish a new style of AV performance that facilitated me in kn... more The aim of this research was to establish a new style of AV performance that facilitated me in knowingly steering audience engagement. My interest in steering engagement stems from the intent I have with my performances; an intent to encourage audiences into considered thought about the topics I bring to my shows. As practice-based research, a series of performances formed its basis, with each adapted toward establishing a new style. I introduced audience conversations to my performances, doing so in real-time by harnessing the audience's second-screens. In this way, their smartphones facilitated spontaneous collaboration between the audience and I; in turn this gave me a way to steer them toward thinking about the themes behind my performances. By then bringing this style of performance to the context of live debate, a new paradigm emerged; one that challenges the audience to participate in shaping the emergent audio-visual event. I had to develop the capacity to monitor audience engagement, first online with the `video-cued commentary' and then in real-time via two different `audience-commentary systems'. This may be of interest to anyone engaging in forms of audience analysis or viewer studies. How I developed second-screen systems may be of interest to designers of phone-network-based social-media commentary platforms. My effort toward simplifying how I generated audio-visual content and how I controlled it on-stage may make this research of interest to other digital-media performers and installation-designers.
Proceedings of the Twelfth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction, 2018
"Let's Fake News" is an interactive media art installation that forces participants... more "Let's Fake News" is an interactive media art installation that forces participants to realize that anyone can create fake news and may even find joy in doing so. The artwork addresses the conference themes as an interactive installation that challenges ideas around "post-truth", creating an experience that engages with digital representations of the discursive interactions.
Journal of Professional Communication, 2014
Leonardo electronic almanac, 2013
This paper will report on the use of video-cued commentary as a method of gathering insightful au... more This paper will report on the use of video-cued commentary as a method of gathering insightful audience feedback on an audiovisual performance. Through my current audiovisual performances, I seek to present perspectives on social themes. Hence, I hope to communicate with audiences on an intellectual level, yet in the past, I have been unable to tell whether audiences were engaging sensually, intellectually or otherwise. My research seeks to glean in what manner audiences engage with a performance, ascertaining what elements of my performance may have triggered them to engage. I expect that in seeking answers to these questions, I will understand more about how audiovisual content, gesture and stage-setup can lead audiences to engage intellectually. I have used post-performance audience surveys to gather subjective feedback. The analysis of these surveys revealed useful general impressions, yet feedback rarely revealed the impact of specific audiovisual events or moments. Seeking fee...
Performance is a medium through which alternate perspectives can occupy alternate spaces. Where t... more Performance is a medium through which alternate perspectives can occupy alternate spaces. Where the rendered media of advertisements, reportage and documentary appeal primarily to the intellect of the viewer, the ephemeral nature of performance tends to first engage the emotions and senses of an audience. By practicing across film, graphic design and data-visualisation, audio-visual performers can document themes of social relevance and it could be said that through such trans-disciplinary practice, a form of ‘documentary performance’ emerges. This premise has led me to harness audio-visuals toward championing social topics. Thematically, my current performances question whether industrial fishing methods are sustainable. Performing to varied audiences in varied contexts has given me insight into the impact that a documentary style of performance can have. This paper documents my process toward realising such a performance paradigm - a trans-disciplinary practice fusing film, science, technology and art.
This paper will report on the use of video-cued commentary as a method of gath¬ering insightful a... more This paper will report on the use of video-cued commentary as a method of gath¬ering insightful audience feedback on an audiovisual performance.
Through my current audiovisual performances, I seek to present perspectives on social themes. Hence, I hope to communicate with audiences on an intellectual level, yet in the past, I have been unable to tell whether audiences were engaging sensually, intellectually or otherwise.
My research seeks to glean in what manner audiences engage with a perfor¬mance, ascertaining what elements of my performance may have triggered them to engage. I expect that in seeking answers to these questions, I will understand more about how audiovisual content, gesture and stage-setup can lead audi¬ences to engage intellectually.
I have used post-performance audience surveys to gather subjective feed¬back. The analysis of these surveys revealed useful general impressions, yet feed¬back rarely revealed the impact of specific audiovisual events or moments. Seek¬ing feedback on specific events could isolate the impact I had on the audience making it impossible to replicate the same impact in future performances.
In seeking to gather specific feedback, I came across the use of video-cued commentary, a method used to assess user-experience within interactive instal¬lations. I adapted this approach to the field of live audiovisuals, inspired by the writings of Sergei Eisenstein and adopting the listening modes suggested by Michel Chion.
The design, implementation and analysis of a video-cued commentary will be part of this analysis together with alternative uses of the video-cued commentary for researchers and practitioners in other fields.
This thesis was a study in prototyping a binaural surround-sound processor, solely within the MAX... more This thesis was a study in prototyping a binaural surround-sound processor, solely within the MAX/MSP/Jitter software domain. The processor synthesises sonic-environments for a single user, such that sound-objects remain at specific points in space, independent of the user’s movements. This is achieved by monitoring the user’s position and head-orientation with a camera. The camera is connected to a laptop, where all processing takes place. The user’s head-data, along with the sounds position on a 2-D panner, control the spatial processor. Localization cues are then generated in a manner similar to how the human auditory system operates.
The aim of this research was to establish a new style of AV performance that facilitated me in kn... more The aim of this research was to establish a new style of AV performance that facilitated me in knowingly steering audience engagement. My interest in steering engagement stems from the intent I have with my performances; an intent to encourage audiences into considered thought about the topics I bring to my shows. As practice-based research, a series of performances formed its basis, with each adapted toward establishing a new style.
I introduced audience conversations to my performances, doing so in real-time by harnessing the audience's second-screens. In this way, their smartphones facilitated spontaneous collaboration between the audience and I; in turn this gave me a way to steer them toward thinking about the themes behind my performances. By then bringing this style of performance to the context of live debate, a new paradigm emerged; one that challenges the audience to participate in shaping the emergent audio-visual event.
I had to develop the capacity to monitor audience engagement, first offline with the `video-cued commentary' and then in real-time via two different `audience-commentary systems'. This may be of interest to anyone engaging in forms of audience analysis or viewer studies. How I developed second-screen systems may be of interest to designers of phone-network-based social-media commentary platforms. My effort toward simplifying how I generated audio-visual content and how
I controlled it on-stage may make this research of interest to other digital-media performers and installation-designers.
'Let's Fake News' is an interactive media art installation that forces participants to realize th... more 'Let's Fake News' is an interactive media art installation that forces participants to realize that anyone can create fake news and may even find joy in doing so. The artwork addresses the conference themes as an interactive installation that challenges ideas around 'post-truth', creating an experience that engages with digital representations of the discursive interactions.
Reader-response theories suggest that to learn, we interact with our surroundings. Conversing can... more Reader-response theories suggest that to learn, we interact with our surroundings. Conversing can be a form of engaged learning and can take place during live events in informal venues such as nightclubs. As a VJ, having moved away from the nightclub to the cinema-type environment, I may have lost the socially engaged learning that conversation facilitates. What would happen were I to introduce virtual conversations? What would the audience talk about and would the experience, both for the audience and I, be any the richer for it?
Live Visuals: History, Theory, Practice, 2022
Live Visual performers rely on technologically enabled workflows to realise their art to such a d... more Live Visual performers rely on technologically enabled workflows to realise their art to such a degree that technology is as much their medium as light. This is evident throughout Live Visuals practice: from the pre-production of motion graphics to the design of control interfaces through to the selection of media-diffusion systems. As Part I of this book has already shown, trends in aesthetics tend to change from decade to decade: what this chapter will argue is that aesthetics tend to converge into trends when a critical mass of artists appropriate technologies in similar ways. As a result, within Live Visual performance practice, aesthetics are profoundly coupled to technological processes and inventions.
The term ‘live’ in Live Visual performance emphasises that it is art created for and in the presence of an audience: the rendering of the artwork happens in real time as an ephemeral experience shared between performer and audience. The level of spontaneity that a performer strives for will vary, but in all cases the presence of the audience impacts on the performance that is realised. This chapter will discuss how the aesthetics of Live Visuals are the function of three components: artist, technology and audience.
Live Visuals: History, Theory, Practice, 2022
During the 1980s and 1990s the aesthetics and practice of Live Visuals entered the mainstream, le... more During the 1980s and 1990s the aesthetics and practice of Live Visuals entered the mainstream, leading to better acknowledgement of the ‘Live Visuals performer’ as an important creative role. The rise of rave culture also created changes in audience experience – being in a large, disinhibited dance-focused crowd now demanded an alternative form of visual spectacle to replace the previous tradition of the stage as the place of visual focus. Simultaneously the growth in stadium-scale gigs also instigated the need to create more ambitious visuals, allowing Live Visual performers to work on larger-scale and visually more innovative productions.
These new contexts also provided live visualists new opportunities to present contemporary socio-political subject matter to their audiences; themes such as Thatcherism, Reaganomics, mass consumption and environmental degradation were commonly addressed within the audio-visual content of this period. Interestingly, while mass media was a site for their criticism, for some artists, it also became a channel through which they found a more mainstream voice – the prime example being through the creation of music videos that were then seen on MTV (as outlined in Chapter 3).
Developments in technology played an important role in driving these changes. The emergent media technologies of the VHS video, the Panasonic MX10 Digital Video Mixer and rudimentary computer-based video editing greatly facilitated new forms of creation and production. As is argued in Chapter 8, such experimental use of technology helped shape the visual aesthetic that emerged during this era. By reappropriating broadcast content on VHS tapes, irony and juxtaposition came to underpin the aesthetic; these approaches are also reminiscent of the ‘montage’ technique used by Sergei Eisenstein (as discussed in Chapter 2). By combining broadcast content with computer-generated graphics and text, visual artists could elect to be more narratively ambitious. Later hardware developments afforded better real-time computer processing, which when harnessed, allowed for the generation of ‘audio-responsive’ visuals. For Live Visual performers, the development of better interactive interfaces made it possible to utilise all the new advantages of desktop computers and software into their stage productions.
Parallel to these developments, the acid house movement began in Chicago in the mid-1980s and moved quickly to the UK, culminating with the “Second Summer of Love” in 1987.1 Acid house was a simple form of dance music, with a pulse that was driven by the iconic Roland TB-303 synth. Acid house fed directly into the establishment of rave culture, which was christened by former Throbbing Gristle/Psychic TV singer Genesis P-Orridge in 1989.2 Rave usually consisted of illegal events in huge venues, where drugs were consumed and hedonistic dancing took place to electronic music. Though initially driven by acid house, other forms of electronic music such as drum and bass and techno became common at raves in the 1990s. The rave, while not always employing Live Visuals, often did have psychedelic qualities achieved through lighting that brought to mind the equally psychedelic events of the 1960s (see Chapter 3 for more on psychedelic events such as The Joshua Light Show’s performances and Chapter 11 for more on the hedonism of rave culture).
This chapter will select and discuss some of the most pioneering live-visual performers of the 1980s and 1990s as examples to illustrate what happened when culture was mediated through emerging technology. The chapter will begin in the UK with scratch video, stay in the UK to discuss rave culture, move to the United States to discuss Emergency Broadcast Network (EBN) and then return to the UK to consider Coldcut.