Live Performance and Technology: The Example of Jet Lag

Jet Lag, a collaboration between The Builders Association and Diller+Scofidio; directed by Marianne Weems, written by Jessica Chalmers, with video by Christopher Kondeck, lighting by Jennifer Tipton, sound design by Dan Dobson, and computer animation by James Gibbs/dbox. First presented in September 1998 at the Kulturhus in Aarhus, Denmark, and then throughout 2000, including performances at The Barbican Theatre, London; The Kitchen, New York; Lantaren/Venster, Rotterdam; Kaaitheatre, Brussels; Maison des Arts/Creteil, Paris; EXIT Festival, Maubeuge; Fin-de-Siècle Nantes, Trafo House, Budapest; Sommerscene 99 Copenhagen; Le Maillon, Strasbourg; Spiel-Art Festival at the Marstall Theatre, Munich; Mass MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts; and On The Boards, Seattle.

Jet Lag, a collaboration between the New York-based multimedia performance company The Builders Association and media artists and architects Diller+Scofidio, is an adventurous cross-media performance combining live action, live and recorded video, computer animation, music, and text. Developed collaboratively over a two-year period, the piece weaves together two fascinating stories of contemporary travel investigating the interaction between new technologies and live performance in a form of hybrid theatre.

Part One of Jet Lag is based loosely on the biographical figure Donald Crowhurst, an electrician who set off on a solo sailing race around the globe as part of the 1969 Round The World competition even though he was unprepared to make such a trip. Not only was he an inexperienced sailor, his boat was ill-equipped for the voyage. Even when he encountered severe setbacks, he refused to turn back, but instead sailed off the coast of South America, drifting in circles and sending back fictional reports of his positions and producing a counterfeit log. The British press dutifully published his reports of his (faked) journey, and he briefly became a working class hero. While circling at sea, Crowhurst kept a haunting diary, on film and reel-to-reel tape, as well as a written journal, which charted his mental deterioration and increasingly delusional episodes. While in the "falsified" lead in the race, Crowhurst threw himself off his boat and presumably drowned.

Part Two tells the true story of Sarah Ackerman (fictionalized as Doris Schwartz), an American grandmother who, in 1970, kidnapped her fourteen-year-old grandson and flew with him across the Atlantic 167 times over a period of six months in an attempt to elude the child's father and psychiatrist. Stopping only briefly in airport lounges before re-boarding the same trans-Atlantic flight, the grandmother gradually experienced the effects of jet lag and eventually died. This story was originally taken from a citation from Paul Virilio, who referred to the grandmother as "a contemporary heroine who lived in deferred time."

Part One opens with the character, Roger Dearborn, on his small boat. Performer Jeff Webster sits on a stool in front of a video camera. A changing seascape projected on a small screen behind him provides a backdrop which rocks mechanically at the same time that he sways back and forth on his stool, artificially creating the pitching deck of his boat, or the distant horizon line. A jaunty mariner at first, complete with hat and slicker, he announces: "I've been at sea for three days more or less," into the video camera, and confidently asks, "How does one survive alone at sea?" As he speaks to the camera, his live image is shot against the small screen behind him and the composite image is projected onto a large screen stage rear. Dearborn is able to "program" a variety of seascapes on his backdrop. At one point in the performance, images of high rolling waves combine with a soundscape of roaring winds, water against the hull, rigging in the wind, and sailboat creaks to create the illusion that the sailor is indeed in deep waters. Dearborn's initial shaky attempts at videotaping himself produce unsteady images and a snowy...