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[ Graphical: Channel4 Homepage ]
Many live artists are deeply concerned with the role of camera, screen and internet in art, both as an empowerment and as a threat. In London, Rokeby, the 'human cyborg', has wired himself up to the internet and wanders the streets recording whatever happens to him. The results can be accessed by anyone with an internet connection. Mood music is supplied by the fluctuating patterns of electro-magnetic activity in his brain, converted into sound and transmitted live. Rokeby aims to create a kind of digital version of himself: 'a living library of a human being's life and civilization'.
Steve Mann is another who thinks 'It's fun being a cyborg'. Mann's Shooting Back project involves turning the tables on modern surveillance cameras, filming at sites at which such cameras are used and making the results available on the internet.
Stelarc's work is even more intimate. His website shows the artist directing his gaze inwards – literally: he uses miniature cameras and medical equipment to turn various parts of his body into artworks.
The internet has vastly expanded the public's access to live art. Viewers can browse e-zines, visit artists' personal sites and play interactive art games. E-mail has also made it easier for artists to organise group events - hence the rise of flash-mob performances, in which people turn up at pre-arranged venues, perform to a loose script, then disperse.
As technology, broadcasting and webcasting open up new avenues for performance artists, they also blur distinctions further. Can an archive of someone's life or a recording of a performance be called 'live' art? And what about the prankster comedy of Dom Joly and Four Non-Blondes, or Michael Moore's political stunts?
Perhaps one of the lessons of live art is that we shouldn't worry too much categorisation. But we should expect, in Joshua Sofaer's words, 'more than just a night out'.
Defying definition | Back to the future | Live on screen | Find out more
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