ABSTRACT
In my article ‘ “Live” Versus “Real-Time” ’ of 1994, 1 I suggested that something had been lost in the apparent eclipse of the term ‘live’ by ‘real-time’ in the 1980s. While ‘live’ is embodied and essentially human, ‘real-time’ suggests the disembodied, the machine. I claim that the shift of the term ‘real-time’ into domains which are essentially live is invasive. I wish to argue that the reverse is true—we have an opportunity to humanise the technology and to animate the technological world through art and music made with technology. But, whatever my misgivings, increasingly the evidence for something ‘being performed live’ has shifted territory away from issues of physical action towards something we do not fully understand. Exactly what does ‘live’ mean any more?
