Live audiovisual performance is both an umbrella generic term and a specific category for work that fits none of the other four labels

The term live audiovisual performance operates on two levels simultaneously. As an umbrella, it names everything that combines live audio and live visuals in a performative context — VJing, live cinema, expanded cinema, and visual music are all subsets. In this sense the term is useful for festival programming, academic classification, and self-description (most surveyed artists identify with it). As a specific category, it names works that don’t fit the other four labels because they are neither sufficiently cinematographic (live cinema), nor club-based (VJing), nor abstract-compositional (visual music), nor apparatus-questioning (expanded cinema). Such works are identified by their intermediality: works which fall conceptually between media (Dick Higgins). The dual function means context matters when the term is used.

Examples

A performance combining live drawing, generative video, and analog synthesis by a single artist in an art gallery = specific live AV performance (intermedial, not classifiable under any single other term).

Assessment

Describe a live performance that cannot be accurately labeled as any of the other four categories and explain why live AV performance is the most accurate term.