many exciting examples which include Celtic mouth music and Inuit
throat music (UbuWeb Ongoing).MIXING THE MEDIA
Performance can form a site for intersections between the verbal, visual,
sonic and gestural, which result in a mixed-media (or intermedia) event.
These intersections greatly enlarge what language can do: they make lan-
guage speak more rather than less. Furthermore, we live within a culture
where the supremacy of the written word is diminishing, and the visual
and aural are increasingly important. Videos, advertisements, TV, radio,
CDs and the computer dominate our lives. In this section we will explore
how you can extend your writing into other media.
Traditional drama involves the integration of words, visual images,
gesture and lighting: in this sense mixed-media work is nothing new.
However, in drama the relationship of language to the visual, sonic and ges-
tural is usually subordinated to, and subsumed within, the development of
plot and character. In intermedia performance work, the juxtaposition of
words with visual images or gestures is highly interactive and constantly
changing. This creates a complex interweaving of sign systems, what I call
‘semiotic exchange’: a continuous modification by, and of, the different
elements (Smith & Dean 1997; Smith 1999). In such work there will not
necessarily be a strong storyline or identifiable characters, though there
may be elements of both. Some performance works may be large scale, but
they can arise out of simple juxtapositions of words and visual images, or
words and physical gestures. A student in one of my classes, for example,
created a piece in which she changed hats to signal changes in identity,
context and mood. It was a simple device which, nevertheless, modified
and counterpointed the spoken text in an engaging way.
Performance work of this kind may benefit from professional perform-
ers, but you may be able to write the material in such a way that it does not
require this kind of training. Of course, some readers of this book may
have theatrical experience, and be able to capitalise on it most effectively
in this context.
Making intermedia work
Below are some possible ways of exploring language in an intermedia and
performance context (see Exercise 2):
- Present words and letters as visual objects, either on paper, slides, video
or computer. The words can appear in colour, in different fonts, and, if
222 The Writing Experiment