ABSTRACT
The arts section of the New York Times for 30 November 2004 serendipitously juxtaposed two articles. The first concerned GuitarBot, a self-playing digital musical instrument that has performed both with human accompanists and in solo recitals. One of the latter, at the Juilliard School in New York City, was billed as a ‘Robo Recital: No Human Performers’ ( Beckerman 2004). The second article was about Cavalia: A Magical Encounter Between Man and Horse, an extravaganza produced by one of the founders of Cirque du Soleil, intended to show ‘the horse unfettered’ ( Sharkey 2004). Together, these two articles suggested the two sides of posthuman performance: the technological (performance by machines) and the zoological (performance by animals other than human beings).
