Constructing Liveness Exploring the Artificial Presentation of Live Performance on YouTube.

Abstract

Online video sharing platforms are situated amidst a culture of ‘vernacular creativity’, since YouTube’s 2005 launch as a place to ‘Broadcast Yourself’. With this social cachet of authenticity and liveness, as well as the addition of live streaming capabilities in recent years, the incorporation of audio staging and manipulation technologies into content production has blurred the transparency and intent of online performance. This paper suggests the concept of ‘constructed liveness’ to problematise the presentation of pre-recorded performance as live performance content on YouTube. This presentation of a pre-recorded and produced musical performance as an ‘unmediated’ live performance by way of language, visual set up and existing cultural assumptions, exists separately from music video research, as the aesthetic make up of such videos imitates the colloquial character of vlog culture rather than that of a produced music video. By examining the convergence of audio-visual signifiers in the context of blog culture, we can analyse how markers of liveness such as instruments and microphones suggest a demonstrable aim to portray live performance, and conversational speech help to construct the scenario as natural and genuine. When these visual markers of live performance are juxtaposed by the use of pre-recorded or post-produced sounds, the issues of transparency of production problematise the content’s reception. This paper will use audio-visual case studies to highlight particular aspects of content creation that problematise the concepts of authenticity and liveness online.