The First Non-Human Action Artist: Charlotte Moorman and Nam June Paik in <i>Robot Opera</i>

Abstract

s Originale (Originals, or Real People) for her 1964 New York Avant Garde Festival. Written in collaboration with the artist Mary Bauermeister, Originale seemed to encompass the most radical developments in post-war composition: electronic sounds, the austere mathematical order of serialism, and the messy, veristic improvisations found in happenings. Moorman was relatively new at producing but well established as a wayward cellist whose interpretation of New Music exceeded the job description. Rather than interpret scores with fidelity to the composers' intent, Moorman began to read political or affective content into notation, ignored time brackets, and explored what I refer to as the meta-histrionics of simultaneously being and being tasked to act like a professional performer. This was especially the case in compositions that contained elements of indeterminacy. Moorman seized such work as an opportunity to redistribute musical assignments, past the point of re-authorship and into a transhumanist realm where even she and her cello were commutable.