Performance and Mind-Reading

September 2nd, 2006 Fred McVittie Posted in Agency, Auslander, Philip, Performance, Presence, Telepresence |

A significant aspect of being human is the ability to ascribe agency to other humans (and occasionally non-humans); a faculty sometimes referred to as ‘mind reading’. This consists of the ascription of various abilities to the agent, including intentions, beliefs, desires etc. These abilities are not part of a mechanistic paradigm and do not figure in most of the nuts and bolts psychology literature. This ability to ‘mind read’ is one element which makes up what Philip Auslander refers to as ‘liveness’, the ontologically distinct (although problematised) phenomena of live performance which distinguishes it from recorded or ‘mediatised’ phenomena. To attribute liveness to an entity requires an attribution of agency (even if the entity is dead, as opposed to simply inert. A corpse possesses more ‘liveness’ than an inert object). Other elements which vary the extent to which an event or entity displays ‘liveness’ include mediation (being present, being telepresent), empathy (the simulated sharing of a biological narrative) etc. The binary that Auslander set up erases the distinction between the various elements which make up liveness.