http://andrewmccausland.net/watchingNow.html

This work is a “collaborative performance” consisting of 9 live streams ( from Twitch‘s Creative section) playing simultaneously. The title of the piece (in bold) is constantly changing, being a combination of the title of all the currently playing streams. Authorship goes to the streamers themselves.

This piece attempts to provoke the following ideas:

Identity – these streamers have a carefully mediated online identities, each of their streams are sort of themed based on their various interests, they sort of perform for the user bases they develop, and for faceless masses (consciously or subconsciously) through the internet.

Agency – these people have no idea the context that I’ve put them in – up on a projector in a room full of people, contrasted with 8 other streamers.

What’s the nature of a performance, or any time-based work on the internet, with recordable, reproducible media? These users are performing, which is a time-based thing, a happening, but in this context there will always be other performers to replace them, so this piece is time-based in the sense that no one moment is the same as the next, but the piece is always going to be here, it’s constant in that sense.