Realtime technology is what makes live AV performance possible by enabling simultaneous capture and manipulation of sound and image

Ana Carvalho identifies realtime as the technological capacity that defines live AV performance: realtime is a technological capacity that allies presence with manipulation of sound or image source material. Cameras, mixers, and software derived from television equipment now permit capturing and presenting simultaneously while an action is happening. This is what Kaizen means when he writes that video as a recording medium paradoxically produced the live in live television — liveness became technologically enabled at the same moment it became ideologically meaningful. For AV practitioners, realtime capacity determines what is possible in a performance: whether they can respond to the music, adapt to the audience, and make decisions in the moment.

Examples

An analog video synthesizer processing camera input = realtime manipulation. A pre-rendered animation triggered by a button = not realtime in the AV-performance sense.

Assessment

Explain how realtime processing capacity changes the relationship between composer and performer in a live AV act, compared to creating a fixed audiovisual composition.