Damian Catera performs, "Strategies Against Communication: The Semiotics of The Headless Dachshund (for tremor_4 <Live.Doc> festival)." This 45-minute live, online sound performance is the latest in a series of pieces which explore and realign the relationship between the components of the linguistic sign: signifier and signified. More specifically, it functions as an examination of the dynamic relationship between text (content) and emotion (expression). It is my belief that our cognition of information and negotiation of meaning is largely based on the interdependence of these two elements. Poet GE Schwartz and performance artist Abbey Brace will be special guest vocalists. The text component of this performance piece is appropriated from an internet community discussion forum in Jersey City, New Jersey. The text is from a discussion thread about an unsubstantiated account of a dachshund, who’s head was allegedly bitten off during an attack by an off-leash pitbull, and the subsequent neighborhood outrage over the rumored event.

As in previous Strategies pieces, the appropriated text is cut up and randomly reassigned to one of a variety emotional states for recitation. For this version, the text fragments will be randomly aligned to the various synthetic voices of the Mac OS and will be recited by the computer itself.

I find online discussion forums to be interesting on a variety of levels. At their best, they can be tools for community building and at their worst, they can be vehicles of mass hysteria and harassment. Participants in these communities create their own online identities as an extension of themselves, yet also construct the personalities of the other participants based on their own negotiations of signified and signifier. Participants my never actually meet but have created these very specific identity constructions of the people that they communicate with.

Aside from the formal/ semiotic explorations of appropriated text, this piece implicitly functions as a critique of the inherent limitations of language and the internet as communication technologies.

Tremor Live Arts, presents Tremor_4, a festival of performance art that will occur in the artist’s present location. This year’s version of the annual Tremor Live Arts Event, <Live.Doc>, will happen on the internet in the form of a gallery, online portal, program and archive. Tremor_4 will be a freestyle and open-source festival that depends on the cooperation of the participating artists to succeed. We invite your collaboration in the production of this shared event! The festival is divided into four arenas of activity; street art, art space, transmission and electronic arts, and missing link. No-media is restricted to a specific Arena of activity." - Damian Catera
http://art.rutgers.edu/~catera/tremor4.html