Helen Varley Jamieson
Helen Varley Jamieson is a digital media artist, playwright, performer, director and producer from New Zealand. She "is engaged in an ongoing exploration of the collision between theatre and the internet."[1] Since 1997 she has been working on the internet professionally.[2] In the year 2000 Helen Varley Jamieson coined the term cyberformance. This term is a combination of two words, cyberspace and performance. Jamieson states that "cyberformance can be located as a distinct form within the subsets of networked performance and digital performance, and within the overall form of theatre, as it is a live performance form with an audience that is complicit in the completion of the work in real time."[3]
Cyberformances are "live theatrical performances in which remote participants are able to work together in real time through the medium of the internet."[4] In her Master Thesis, Jamieson states that "cyberformance, like all forms of theatre and artistic expression, offers a means to approach and respond to the changing world we exist in."[5]
In 2008 Helen Varley Jamieson completed her MA (research) degree in Cyberformance from Queensland University of Technology entitled "Adventures in Cyberformance: experiments at the interface of theatre and the internet."[6]
Contents
UpStage
Helen Varley Jamieson is one of the founders of the online performance platform UpStage, along with the other members of Avatar Body Collision (see below). UpStage is an open source browser-based application that provides a real-time collaborative platform for remote artists and audiences. It hosts online festivals of cyberformances as well as workshops and presentations.[7]
Avatar Body Collision
Jamieson is a founding member of Avatar Body Collision, which "is a desktop theatre troupe in its own right".[8] The Avatar Body Collision troupe is a "globally distributed performance group who live (mostly) in London, Helsinki, Aotearoa/New Zealand and cyberspace."[9] They use a free, downloadable chat software to rehearse and perform their work.
The Magdalena Project
Since 1997, Helen has been involved in the Magdalena Project, and international network of women in contemporary performance and theatre. She became involved with the New Zealand group, Magdalena Aotearoa, helping with the organisation of their 1999 International Festival of Women's Performance, and following that developed the Magdalena Project's first website. She became the project's "web queen" and continues to voluntarily maintain and update the project's web site and email list - since 2011 with the assistance of "web princess" Valentina Tibaldi. She has attended and presented her work at many Magdalena festivals around the world. Significantly, in 2001 at the Transit III festival (Odin Teatret, Denmark), she presented for the first time a cyberformance to a theatre audience; the audience response to this work challenged her to explore the intersection of theatre and the internet in her ongoing work and forms a starting point for her Masters' thesis. [10]
Performance work
All of the details of Helen Varley Jamieson's performance work have been taken from her official website unless stated otherwise.[11] Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- Mind Boggling (1982) – playwright
- Death in Namibia (1987–88) - deviser and performer
- Reigning Tampons (1988) - deviser and performer
- Coffee & Cake (1989) - deviser / playwright
- The Benefits of Sex (1991) - playwright
- Hersterix women's comedy group (1991–92) - producer
- The Winter Wife (1992) – director
- Women Like Us (1994) - playwright and producer
- The Debate (1994)- director
- Risky/Risque (1995) - playwright and producer
- Between (2001) - playwright
- Water(war)s (2001, 2002 & 2003; directed by Jill Greenhalgh) – collaborator
- the[abc]experiment (2002) - director and producer
- Phone Jam (2002) - playwright
- swim – an exercise in remote intimacy (2002 &2003) – Avatar Body Collision.[12]
- contributor to 1001 Nights Cast (2005–2008 – durational performance by Barbara Campbell) – contributor.[13]
- Recipes for Life (2007) - in collaboration with Eva Ursprung & Schaumbad artists
- Women with Big Eyes (2007, 2008 & 2009) – ongoing collaboration with artists of the Magdalena Project
- a gesture through the flames (2008) – deviser and performer; for Annie Abraham's project Breaking Solitude
- let ME go (2009) - performance installation; devisor/creator in collaboration with Antonella Diana
- Recipes for 2010 (2010) – in collaboration with Eva Ursprung and Schaumbad artists
- collaborator in Distant Presences (2010) – Ethernet Orchestra
- postajanje ženom (2010) - collaborative presentation for Rekonstrukcija Ženski Fond
- collaborator in Huis Clos/No Exit (2010) – curated by Annie Abrahams
- make-shift (2010-12) - in collaboration with Paula Crutchlow
- collaborator in Annie Abrahams's project Angry Women, 2011
- contributor to Repository for Knowledge & Art (2012) and Biennale For One (2012), curated by Dr. Cornelia Osswald-Hoffman
- We have a situation! (2013) – lead artist
- "The Salmagundi" (2014) - digital artist
- "Tales from the Towpath" (2014) - digital artist
Current and recent collaborations
List of Helen Varley Jamieson's current collaborations taken from Jamieson's official website.[14] Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- "CyPosium - the book" (2014) - co-edited with Annie Abrahams
- "Tales from the Towpath" (2014) - in collaboration with Maya Chowdhry, Sarah Hymas and Michelle Green
- "The Salmagundi" (2014) - in collaboration with B-Arts (UK)
- We have a situation! (2012–13)- In collaboration with APO33, Furtherfield, MAD Emergent Art Centre and Schaumbad Freiesatelierhaus.
- 121212 UpStage Festival of Cyberformance – live online performance (December 2012)
- Cyposium: the first cyberformance symposium (October 2012)
- make-shift (2010-12) – in collaboration with Paula Crutchlow
References
- ↑ "The ABC Experiment. Avatar Body Collision". Retrieved 23 October 2012.
- ↑ "About Helen." Helen Varley Jamieson. Retrieved 25 October 2012
- ↑ Jamieson, Helen Varley "Adventures in Cyberformance experiments at the interface of theatre and the internet" page 6, Master Thesis, 2008, Queensland University of Technology.
- ↑ Simonson, Michael and Ayres Schlosser, Lee "Distance Education: Definition and Glossary of Terms" page 121 Information Age Publishing, 2010
- ↑ Jamieson, Helen Varley "Adventures in Cyberformance experiments at the interface of theatre and the internet" page 6, Master Thesis, 2008, Queensland University of Technology.
- ↑ Journal: Creative Technologies "The Authors" http://journal.colab.org.nz/ Retrieved on 29 October 2012
- ↑ UpStage "UpStage: About" http://upstage.org.nz/blog/?page_id=2 Retrieved 25 October 2012
- ↑ Sant, Toni. "Franklin Furnace and the Spirit of the Avant-Garde: A History of the Future" pg 127. Intellect Ltd 2011.
- ↑ Avatar Body Collision Website. "Avatar Body Collision: About",http://www.avatarbodycollision.org/ Retrieved on 23 October 2012.
- ↑ Jamieson, Helen Varley "Adventures in Cyberformance experiments at the interface of theatre and the internet" pages 1-2, Master Thesis, 2008, Queensland University of Technology.
- ↑ Helen Varley Jamieson. "Helen Varley Jamieson: Collaborator" http://www.creative-catalyst.com/what.html.
- ↑ Avatar Body Collision "Swim".http://www.avatarbodycollision.org/abc/. Retrieved 25 October 2012
- ↑ 10001 Nights Cast – a durational performance by Barbara Campbell, 2005–08. http://1001.net.au (accessed 27 August 2013).
- ↑ Helen Varley Jamieson. "Helen Varley Jamieson: Collaborator"http://www.creative-catalyst.com/popups/collaborate.html.
Further reading
- Abrahams, Annie and Jamieson, Helen Varley (eds), "CyPosium - the book", published 2014 by Link Editions and La Panacée; ISBN 978-1-291-98892-5.
- Jamieson, Helen Varley "Adventures in Cyberformance experiments at the interface of theatre and the internet", Master of Arts (Research) Thesis, 2008, Queensland University of Technology.
- Jamieson, Helen Varley. "Real Time, Virtual Space, Live Theatre" – chapter in the ADA Digital Arts Reader, published 2008, Clouds Publishing.
- Sant, T. "A Second Life for online performance: Understanding present developments through an historical context" – in the International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, Volume 4 Number 1 Published 2008.
