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        Article contents

  Introduction
  Rehearsing Laboratory
  Rehearsing Connection
        Rehearsing van der Aa
    Footnotes
    


    
     
		
	

    ARTICLE
    
Rehearsing Upload
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    Lea Luka Sikau
    


    Sound Stage Screen, Issue 2 (Fall 2022), pp. 61–83, ISSN 2784-8949. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. © 2022 Lea Luka Sikau. DOI: https://doi.org/10.54103/sss18841.




    
    I enter the rehearsal studio of the new opera 
    Upload
    
        by Michel van der Aa at the Dutch National Opera in February 2021.
        Lights are low. Projectors hum. The set consists of seven giant
        screens. Two singers stand on the stage: the baritone
        Roderick Williams gazes into a motion tracking camera while the soprano
        Julia Bullock watches his oversized avatar, brightly projected on the
        screens. Van der Aa faces a multiple-screen setup, focusing on how to
        transform Williams’s body into a virtual gestalt. The stage projections
        show the avatar’s face repeatedly disintegrating into thousands of
particles, every time with different granular structures and contrasts. After some discussion, van der Aa walks back to his
        desk and announces that he would like to run through the scene again.
        The stage manager queues the projections, the stage lights, and the
        click track. Bullock starts singing, addressing the screens.
    
    [1]
    



    In this ethnographic vignette, all eyes are on the avatar. Humans and
    nonhuman matter center around the virtual protagonist as Upload 
    stages a posthuman. The narrative tells a typical science-fiction tale,
    dealing with uploading the human mind to a server, developing into an
    avatar, and losing the physical body in the process. In the opera’s plot,
    the figure of the avatar is founded on the withdrawal of a foundation in
the form of a congenital body.    [2] A
    “father” (Williams) uploads himself at a futurist laboratory and continues
    to exist as a virtual being: he thinks without having access to the
    tactility of a lived experience. Surprising his “daughter”
    (Bullock) with this transformation, a paternal dispute begins which
    questions life without a congenital body. In multiple ways, Upload
is reminiscent of the fiction presented in Hans Moravec’s    Mind Children (1988) as well as Tod Machover’s and Robert Pinsky’s
    robot opera Death and the Powers (2010) developed at the MIT Media
Lab. [3] Upload, too, explores state-of-the-art technology on stage.    [4]
    Composer, librettist, and director van der Aa conceptualized this posthuman
    opera for two voices, a chamber ensemble of eleven players, an electronic
    soundtrack, film, and motion capture. The story is driven by films
    projected on gigantic screens, stage action, and the singing avatar of the
    father, rendered in real time. To portray him as a virtual body, the opera
    recalibrates canonical operatic practices.



    This article examines the process of rehearsing a posthuman opera from the
    perspective of a self-reflective ethnography. Proposing a
    rehearsal-oriented ontology of opera, I avoid discussions of the
    performance and even the music itself. Whereas ethnographic investigations
    of the performing arts have greatly added to other disciplines such as
    performance, theater studies, and anthropology in the last decades, I
    strive to make the case for including the rehearsal more substantially in
discussions that bridge contemporary opera and media studies.    [5]
    Tying into transdisciplinary discourses within opera, media, and critical
    posthuman studies, rehearsal ethnography showcases moments in the process
    and elements of productions mediated by technologies that remain difficult
to trace in retrospect.    [6] In
    the midst of opera’s production process—after the composition phase and
    before the premiere—I situate myself in the rehearsal studio and observe
the development of an opera over the course of two months.    [7]
    Within this case, I enter the field as a writer for the Dutch National
    Opera and a participant-observer with a background as mezzo-soprano,
dramaturg, and director of new opera.    [8] By
    looking into the rehearsal instead of at the performance,
    I shift my focus from the written score to verbal interactions and nonhuman
    sounds in the rehearsal studio. I comprehend opera’s contemporary practices
    as a continuation of a genre that has historically driven scientific
experimentation and technological innovation.    [9]
    Operatic technologies both constitute the art form and interact with its
    agents. Intertwining sounds, stages, and screens, the rehearsal detangles
    how opera can be understood as an interface which interacts vibrantly
through nonhuman technologies and human bodies.    [10]



    Rehearsal ethnography offers the opportunity to examine the agential
    relations of material and bodies that sustain opera at large. Rather than
    merely singling out one technology of wonder, such as the motion capture
    system, the rehearsal also highlights its embeddedness with material and
bodies that have belonged to the operatic vocabulary for centuries.    [11]
    The interface highlights opera’s technogenesis, the dynamic co-evolution of
humans with “old” and “new” technologies.    [12]
    Beyond acknowledging the co-evolution within the rehearsal, I also draw on
    Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction” to conceptualize
    the rehearsal itself not only as an environment facilitating technogenesis,
    but as an immersive, co-evolving technology itself. Le Guin theorizes the
    first technologies in the Paleolithic age as containers which carry their
    interiors, explicitly opposing the narrative of sharp tools sticking out
and producing hero stories.    [13]
    The rehearsal carries the ensemble of technogenesis over the course of
several months.    [14]
    Its space contains physical connections between its agents, and its time
carries electromagnetic signals and sound waves.    [15]
    With the recognition of the rehearsal as immersive technology, I highlight
    its genesis in co-evolution with the matter and bodies inside, preventing
    to isolate singular operatic technologies in the discussion. Transforming
    along with its production processes, an ethnography of the immersive
    technology not only sketches out Upload’s production processes,
    but simultaneously reflects back on how the carrier bag of opera
    interfaces within the genre’s environment.



    In the process of this posthuman opera in particular, I interrogate how the
    immersive technology co-evolves in its production dynamics by transforming
    into a laboratory-like space. I dissect the composite of the avatar as an
    assemblage of (non)human agents that recalibrates processes of repetition
    and connection. Ultimately, this leads me to trace how van der Aa himself
    co-evolves into the posthuman form of an opera production.



Rehearsing Laboratory



    The virtual body recalibrates the architecture of opera’s immersive
    technology and imposes a prioritization of the digital scenography over the
    live mise-en-scène. As the opera is dependent on rehearsing with an avatar,
    the technologically ambitious project results in a significant
    transformation of the space. For Upload, the immersive technology
    evolves into a laboratory-like space. A technical crew sets up an interior
    architecture saturated with new technologies two days in advance of
    rehearsal. From the start, the rehearsals are embedded in a technological
    corset instead of a system of substitutes being simultaneously created
around the performers.    [16]
    Whereas most opera productions nowadays work with set and prop substitutes
    while the final set is manufactured in operas’ workshops, Upload
    exclusively employs parts of the original stage technology. From the first
    day of rehearsals, the score is set in stone as the sets and the
electroacoustic soundtrack are preprogrammed.    [17]
    When looking at other opera productions that are comparable in terms of
    their screen usage, they differ in that they only install the original
    projectors, full-size screens, and spotlights in the auditorium, not in the
rehearsal studio already.    [18]
    To incubate the virtual in an environment not originally designed for
    testing technology, Upload becomes dependent on the material’s yet
    unknown affordances.



    The technological infrastructure erects a laboratory-like structure which
    is best described through the notion of the “experimental system” as
    theorized by the Science and Technology Studies scholar Hans-Jörg
    Rheinberger. This system is made up of two entities: technical objects and
epistemic things.    [19]
    Technical objects repeat processes, transmitting knowledge that is common
    sense in the field, such as the opera’s schedule and technologies that have
    been part of the operatic vocabulary for centuries. These objects appear in
    the rehearsal as always already repeated. Through repetition, they enable
    epistemic things—chimeras which embody what the field does not know yet—to
occur and co-evolve.    [20]
    Generating difference within repetition, the epistemic thing is reworked
    with and against the repeated. This “thing” in flux magnifies the
    difference within repetitive structures and raises new questions, receiving
the effort of knowledge.    [21]
    In Upload’s rehearsal, the chimera is literally the avatar which
    cannot be delineated by screen projections. Its agency expands as a
    compound of relations: it spans from Williams’ appearance, his amplified
    voice and the avatar designer’s code over van der Aa’s vision, to the
    recalibration of the studio into a laboratory. The avatar introduces
    difference to the production practices of opera by experimenting with more
    responsive ways of interaction between performer and digital technologies.



    By being explored in the rehearsal studio, the motion capture system
    contributes to reproduce Upload out of canonical practices, while
    it simultaneously reproduces itself out of the scientific context.
    According to avatar designer Darien Brito, the rehearsal forms an
    uncontrolled environment with significantly more unknown variables to
    navigate:



    We [the Upload production team] are using tools that are not
    originally designed to behave in a way that is useful for opera
    productions. For these devices, the things that we are doing are a bit
    weird. They are not meant to be used in this setup. Normally, you would
have a studio with proper lighting and the actors would not move much.[22]



    Brito describes the technological challenges in this production by taking
    on the perspective of the devices themselves. Even if the rehearsal studio
    recalibrated itself to accommodate the epistemic thing, the opera affords
    new capacities, culminating in a performance that has to render the
    protagonist in real time without recalibration and delay (but with costumes
    and changing lighting) for ninety minutes consecutively. Whereas performers
    can act as if a prop would be the original one—creating a culture of
    substitutes—the avatar only works with the original stage technology in
    place. The immersive technology of rehearsal modifies to co-evolve with the
    motion capture system at the same time as the computational system learns
    to adapt to the uncontrolled environment.



    What drives the rehearsal to produce an avatar (and repeat itself) out of
    canonical practices? Van der Aa seeks for an avatar look which is dynamic
    and at the same time abstract enough, and which does not resemble the
    imagery of a live projection. I extract the artistic research question of
    how the avatar can embody the congenital body of the father in the virtual
    space, displaying credibility towards both its existence as a virtual being
    and its human “nature.” During the coding sessions, the team intends to
    create an avatar that retains the attention of the audience, even in
    moments when it competes with Williams’ physical body on the side stage.
    The avatar seeks to draw the audience’s gaze towards his virtual projection
    to make his congenital body appear as a substitute, proving liveness and
    serving the trend in contemporary music theater to reveal its own technical
materiality.    [23]
    For this effect to work, the avatar has to be projected in real time with
    minimal latency. Robert Wechsler argues that highly accurate motion capture
systems mostly remain unused in realtime performances.    [24]
    Against the grain of industry practices, Upload experiments with a
    real time motion capture system. As the look of the avatar changes in every
    scene, the rendering process is quite complex. The team tries to decrease
    the delay of the projected image so that the lip movement of the avatar is
    in sync with Williams’s singing voice. Van der Aa is in close contact with
    Brito about changing the look. A few times, the avatar designer replies
    that the composer’s requests are not feasible to translate into this
    virtual environment. Van der Aa counters half-jokingly: “I don’t like to
    hear no.” This back and forth between Brito, van der Aa, and the material
    capacities is characteristic for the research on the avatar’s properties.
    In these moments, the avatar receives the effort of knowledge as hypotheses
    are falsified. The immersive technology of rehearsal carries a laboratory
    for the process of technogenesis to evolve through testing and
    falsification. The director tests his theories while the technology fails
    to meet his expectations. But instead of compromising his aesthetic ideas
    to technological feasibility within the framework of opera’s schedule, he
    prioritizes the avatar imagery over rehearsal time with the cast.



	Rehearsing Connection



    Beyond testing the technical affordances, the virtual body reverses how
    other bodies in the studio comprehend interaction. Van der Aa, Brito, and
    the performers all interact distinctively with the avatar. The composer and
    the coder approximate the avatar while the performers are disconnected from
    their virtual interlocutor. Despite its virtual character, the composer and
    the avatar designer see it evolving from an imaginary vision into a more
    tangible image. While van der Aa steers the avatar artistically, Brito is
    the expert who understands how to accommodate for the avatar’s affordances.
    In TouchDesigner (a software to simulate virtual objects) Brito
    creates a virtual environment that embeds the uploaded father and
    translates him into a cloud of particles in real time. The data tracked by
    the motion capture system is modified with different sets of filters that
    lend the avatar a different look in every sequence. The avatar designer is
    the only person interviewed who notices the avatar as “real and tangible,”
as he can “touch, move, and transform [it] in a literal sense.”     [25]
    For the other team members, the avatar seems to be an untouchable body.
    They perceive the avatar projections more as a cinematic screening merging
    with the films and less as an interactive body within the mise-en-scène.
    This notion is intensified as the conversations at the avatar designer’s
    desk are so quiet that they remain incomprehensible for most of the
    production team. The knowledge generated about the epistemic thing in the
    studio is inaccessible and creates a distance between the virtual being and
    the team. The process relating to the avatar creation becomes opaque.



    The performers, usually the most connected with fellow performers, are
    removed from tangible connection as their interactions are always mediated
    via screens and loudspeakers. Even for the baritone Williams, who lends the
    virtual chimera his bodily appearance, the avatar is out of his reach of
    control. Except when stepping out of the motion capture space and, thus,
    erasing the virtual body, Williams is not involved in how his bodily input
    is processed. To learn his part, he is dependent on technical instructions
    by Brito and conceptual guidance by Van der Aa. Restricted to a tiny square
    captured by the motion tracking system, he carries out his gestures,
    displaced in a ninety degrees angle from his performing counterpart. In
    conversations, he mentions that he does not know how his facial expressions
    are mediated—eliciting estrangement and disconnect—but that he fully trusts
van der Aa in directing him.    [26]
    The avatar projections require a counterintuitive acting style from
    Williams and a real-time modification from Brito that multiplies the
    performer, disseminates him all over the stage, and fragments his agency.



    In the meantime, Bullock plays a daughter who is deprived of physical touch
    with her father, but still feels an emotional connection with him. In the
    rehearsal weeks, the soprano seeks to create this connection by
    acknowledging the virtual body as a sovereign stage persona:



    I need to connect emotionally and start establishing a relationship with
    [his] avatar. It is such a bizarre thought, but I have to build a
    connective tissue with the avatar separated from [Williams] and [his] stage
presence.[27]



    By splitting Williams in two, she defines the projections as her
    counterpart, as if the avatar itself was an autonomous body. She intends to
    match Brito’s viewpoint—i.e., seeing the avatar as an entity she can affect
    and which, in turn, can also affect her actions. However, the avatar’s
    constant fragmentation, the surround sound of its voice, and the several
    different filters make it difficult to locate and address her interlocutor.
    In the rehearsal process, the virtual body becomes a compound protagonist.
    Visually and sonically fragmented, Bullock seeks to find virtual touch
    points to connect with. Dramaturg Madelon Kooijman facilitates this process
    by tying each scene to an emotional expression of the daughter’s character.
    Bullock projects her emotions onto the screens even if she does not receive
    a human performer’s immediate response.



    Zooming out from the individual interactions, the recalibration of
    connection culminates in the substitution of singers. Whereas most opera
    productions work with fake sets and props in the rehearsals, which replace
    the original performance objects, Upload uses the official sets
    from the first rehearsal day onwards. More specifically, it not only uses
    the same sets, but it replaces the performers to incubate the virtual, too.
    This process reverses canonical production logistics in modern opera
    houses. Williams is replaced by an intern who stands in front of the motion
    capture camera to experiment with the technology. While one human turns
    into a substitute for another human, matter is explored in its vast
    affordances. In conversation, the intern said that she “started to do
    extensive yoga and stretching sessions every morning before the rehearsals
    as the hours of standing and little movement in front of the camera were
physically quite exhausting.”     [28]
    In addition to the intern who facilitates the repetitive testing process,
    the performing covers for Bullock and Williams are frequently present in
    the studio. Compared to other new opera productions, in which covers attend
    the last rehearsals only and practice the mise-en-scène separately (for
    instance, with the stage director’s assistant), this production includes them to a significant extent during the rehearsal period.    [29]
    On one rehearsal day, van der Aa starts staging the ninth scene of the
    opera, the daughter’s solo aria, even though Bullock is not present. Her
    cover, Verity Wingate, has to jump in so that van der Aa can begin to stage
    the scene. In Upload’s rehearsals, humans function as substitutes.
    By demanding qualities from humans that one might attribute to matter, and
    exploring the vibrant capacities of material, Upload’s rehearsal
    practices propose a reversed understanding of nonhuman and human bodies in
    interaction, subverting canonical production practices.



	Rehearsing van der Aa



    Who exactly is this virtual body that recalibrates connections by erecting
    a laboratory? Up until this point, I focused on the avatar projection as a
    compound existence of Williams’ appearance, his amplified voice, Brito’s
    code, projectors, screens, and van der Aa’s vision. The multiple agents are
    confounded by Williams’ appearance, pretending to display his agency in the
    virtual realm. When he upsets himself, the particles of his face suddenly
    bluster around, seemingly elicited by his emotional reaction. However,
    Williams has nothing to do with the fragmentation and does not even know
    how exactly his look changes, as it is engineered from the avatar
    designer’s desk. When seeing the avatar coming into being, his compound
    existence comes to the fore, made of the fusion of different data sets.
    Does the inquiry about virtual bodies in rehearsal culminate in the avatar,
    or does it rather lead to a broader examination of how humans, through
    opera rehearsals, store data in (non)human forms as data carriers?



    Brito argues that “the idea of the avatar itself is in a way quite
romanticized in the human form.”     [30]
    Staging a “romanticized” form, the avatar significantly impacts the
    immersive technology, the temporalities, and the interaction between
    (non)human bodies in the studio. However, when looking beyond the avatar
    projections, Upload’s rehearsals function as the
    generation of data storage in less romanticized forms and with a broader
    scope. The avatar is always already in the studio, even before Williams’
    virtual body gets rendered smoothly. The baritone, for instance, recounts
    feeling like being a bodily extension of the composer, seeing himself as
“an avatar for his artistic vision.”     [31]
    For van der Aa, the rehearsal at large becomes his posthuman form. He
    stores his vision in the bodies and matter in the studio. He uploads his
    thoughts and corrections onto the rehearsal space, timing it precisely so
    that there is no overload. Williams reports to get as much information the
performer needs at a time.    [32]
    In the following, I examine the ways in which van der Aa sets up his data
    storage system, uploads his vision, and updates it during the evolving
    technogenesis. His Wagnerian strive to create Upload according to
    his artistic vision not only enables him to decide which bodies
    and matter are in the studio, but also how they, as well as the rehearsal
space and time at large, co-evolve into the composer’s posthuman form.[33]



    In informal conversation during Upload’s rehearsals, several
    production members mention the uniqueness of van der Aa’s position. Seldom
    does an opera house commission one person for the libretto, the film
    script, the film staging, the mise-en-scène, and the cast; as well as for
    deciding over large parts of the creative team and the technological crew.
    In opera productions of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, multiple
authorship is the default mode.    [34]
    Van der Aa constitutes an exception, as he launched an organizational
    structure for independently producing his works, called doubleA Foundation.
    He co-produces the opera with the Dutch National Opera as one commissioning
    partner out of six, enabling him to expand his agency and “own [his] own
works.” [35]



    Before Upload, van der Aa has been successful in setting up this
    system, particularly in conceptualizing highly ambitious technological
projects that augment realities, such as the 3D film operas    Sunken Garden (2013) and Blank Out (2016), and the
    virtual reality installation Eight (2019). His foundation focuses
    on technological experimentation and the possibility of showcasing early
stages of creation for interested theaters and festivals.    [36]
    For artistic directors of opera houses and performing arts institutions,
    this offer is especially promising as it minimizes risks inherent to
    technologically ambitious productions. By establishing partnerships that
    finance specific stages of development more so than commissioning an
    overall opera, the doubleA Foundation can make use of an independent budget
    to introduce technological experimentation early in the process. The
    emphasis on the technological and artistic development, realized by
    multiple, week-long sprints for testing the technology, points to an
    alternative approach to operatic creation that rethinks opera by modifying
its process.    [37]
    By combining self-producing and commissioning, van der Aa’s strategy is
    reminiscent of the operatic entrepreneurship demonstrated, amongst others,
in the realm of Philip Glass and Robert Wilson’s Einstein on the Beach (1976) or Beryl Korot and Steve Reich’s    The Cave (1993). Seen as a precondition to experiment within opera
    in the late twentieth-century United States, Korot and Reich decided to self-produce The Cave
    with multiple commissioning partners and, thus, were able to steer all
aspects of the artistic process.    [38]
    In a similar fashion, van der Aa intends not to produce his operas under
    the umbrella of a single theater that chooses the production team. The
    doubleA Foundation enables him to surpass the role of the composer and
    oversee the entire chain of creation. Within Upload, he functions
    in multiple roles. Moreover, he chooses the set designer, the singers,
    external dramaturgs, and the technological experts. This leads to a
    collective dominion of men in the rehearsal studio. Beyond the
    gender-biased narrative told in the opera’s plot, the role division, too,
    reflects a gender divide with regards to responsibility. The leading roles
    in the production besides van der Aa, such as the set designer, the
    conductor, and cinematographer, are occupied by men, whereas the assistants
    and the dramaturg, who are responsible for organizational tasks and the
    “emotional journey” of the daughter, are women. The biases are carried over
    to the bodies and matter that store data in the rehearsal—the printed
    libretto, the video servers preserving the film, and the people co-evolving
    with such data.



    Similarly, the music is carried not only by the score, but also the spatial
    allocation of roles, van der Aa’s tempi dictated by a click track,
    amplification mechanisms, and the singer’s position. The spatial
    organization of the studio gives indications of how van der Aa turns the
    space into his avatar. In the rehearsal studios of most contemporary opera
    productions, there is a fixed spatial relationship: the musical side of the
    production situates itself on the right side and the singers on stage. Both
    of these subspaces are expected to sound and have the main agency over the
    audible space of a rehearsal studio. The spatial relationship between the
    mise-en-scène and the music is clearly separated. The music comes from the
    right and the front while stage direction comments are uttered from the
    left. Within Upload, this idea of rehearsal soundscape is
modified: the separation of sound and space is deconstructed, as    Upload’s sound spatialities are more enmeshed. As the stage
    director is also the composer, the lines between the mise-en-scène and the
    music are blurred. Sound no longer comes from the right and the front, but
    from everywhere as the sources are separated from their origin and
    distributed via surround speakers. This detachment of singers from their
    vocal output ties into larger debates on the ineffability of the voice in
    opera and sound cinema. Carolyn Abbate argues that such simultaneity of
    disembodiment and omnipresence “sets up a situation of mastery and
submissiveness.”     [39]
    In this case, the “mastery” over the sounds is animated by van der Aa, as
there is no piano and no accompanist.    [40]
    The accompanist is swapped for van der Aa’s electroacoustic tracks that are
    disseminated through surround speakers together with the singers’ amplified
    voices. The double-digit number of speakers is distributed along the walls
    of the studio and emits acousmatic sounds—an utterance that one hears
without seeing the cause behind the sound.    [41]
    The elaborated midi files mimic the orchestral sounds, making an
    accompanist redundant. While offering more diversification in sound than a
    piano accompaniment, they also disseminate the composed electronic track.



    In addition to restructuring the audible space, van der Aa controls the
    musical time by storing his desired tempi in external matter. He works with
    click tracks—cues that give the exact beat to facilitate synchronization
    with the films projected. The performers learned their parts with the click
    track prior to arriving at the Dutch National Opera. Having memorized the
    meter, they now experience more freedom in the studio as they sing on top
    of an electroacoustic track which does not feature any click. By following
    the conductor’s lead, they can increasingly focus on their musical
    interpretation without having to listen to every beat. In rehearsal, the
    metronome function is transferred to the conductor. The conductor’s desk is
    equipped with visual and audible signals. The beats dictate van der Aa’s
    time. The conductor follows the pulse van der Aa imagined for the music at
    a time when he composed the piece. Via the click track, the composer
    inscribes a musical meter from the past and conducts invisibly. Attached to
    the conductor’s desk I find a small click track box with a red and a green
    light. For the first beat in a bar, it shows the red light and for the
    other ones the green. Additionally, there lies an mp3 player with earphones
    that sends cues, which are exclusively audible for the conductor. The
    assistant conductor Fergus McAlpine comments on the shift in the
    conductor’s agency as manifested by the click tracks:



    The audio click isn’t simply like conducting to a metronome, it sends a
    pulse through your system that cannot not be followed; but it’s so rigid
    that it can take away from the music. The light, on the other hand, when on
    its own acts more like a guideline of the beat. This is nice, as my ears
    can completely open up to what’s going on around me—I can feel more
    musical. The downside is that if I’m not careful, it’s easy to lose the
    pulse. Additionally, the beat in the music comes at the start of the light,
    and not when it’s at its brightest. So, one has to conduct even more ahead
of the beat.[42]



    The rigidity of the click tracks and the midi files as well as the presence
    of the composer modify operatic sound spatialities—and thus also the
    conductor’s role. In addition, their agency is decreased because of van der
    Aa’s time management to hand the score and the midi files to the singers in
time to rehearse properly.    [43]
    For the majority of blocking rehearsals, the conductor Otto Tausk is
    substituted by his assistant. In conversations, McAlpine compares his work
    for Upload to conducting film music concerts, or ballets in which
the choreographer’s steps are set in stone.    [44]
    Whereas typically the stage director and the conductor dominate the sound
    spatialities of opera rehearsals, here the relationship is shifted. While
    conforming to a sound source that nobody else in the studio can hear, the
    conductor translates the click tracks and musical dynamics into gesture.
    Within Upload’s rehearsals, the film cues, musical tempi,
    and dynamics are extremely precise, almost set in stone. The composer
    becomes a choreographer of time, while the conductor co-evolves into a
    translator rather than a musical interpreter—the composer diminishes the
    conductor’s area of responsibility. As the conductor’s agency gets
    significantly reduced to following instead of directing the music, van der
    Aa’s agency, in return, expands. Van der Aa decenters the conductor,
    decreases the singers’ flexibility, and transfers agency to the acousmatic
    sounds and their dissemination technology.



    Apart from the click track, the composer steers the vocal quality and the
    loudness of the singers in the rehearsal studio. He asks the singers for
    little vibrato while controlling their amplification via a mixing console.
    The singers are equipped with microphones in most rehearsals. Whereas
    usually they would be able to quietly check in with their fellow singer,
    they suddenly cannot steer their voices like they are used. The control
    over the sound spatialities, musical dynamics, and adjusting to an acoustic
    situation—techniques perfected by the operatic performer—are lost once the
amplification is outsourced beyond the performer’s body.    [45]
The composer seeks for an amplification, a “cinema-sizing” of voices.    [46]
    This “cinema-sizing” changes the rehearsal at large: In the studio, the
    singers practice their parts with the amplification mechanism in place;
    They adjust their physical technique to the technological device; The
    amplification capacity of the operatic voice itself is no longer needed to
the same degree and yields to another vocal quality.    [47]
    Associated with a more natural singing style, van der Aa prefers a
    non-vibrato voice with clear text comprehensibility over the operatic
voice.    [48]
    Maintaining the acoustic environment of the original stage in the rehearsal
    studio allows the singers to minimize insecurity factors and find the right
    technique early in the process. Rehearsing at the opera house for a period
    of eight weeks, they take on another acoustic body, a body which is
    constantly “cinema-sized,” even in the production studio.



    This is an unusual practice for opera rehearsals. From my experience with
    various canonical and new operas, productions usually work with some form
    of acoustic balance in the rehearsal studio before introducing
    amplification in the auditorium. When singers are exclusively amplified in
    the final rehearsals and performances, the sound engineers turn their
    microphones on when they are on stage and off when side stage. However, for
    the setting of Upload’s rehearsals, the microphones
    remain turned on throughout. Sonically, the singers are in “performance
    mode” even when waiting side stage for the avatar projections to be tested.
    Amplification makes each conversation audible in the studio, just like
    Williams’s close-up projections are visible for everyone. Detached from the
    privacy of personal interaction, and with their voices streamed with a
    surround sound setup, the singers reduce their utterances to whispering
    when they don’t sing. Through amplification technology, the singers’ spoken
    voices ultimately get silenced. Considering how much time the singers spend
    merely waiting for the avatar to be optimized, there are significantly few
    casual exchanges. The private speech yields to van der Aa’s idea of
    singing. In the score for Upload, vocal lines are written without
    any instruction for speech. Thus, conversations disseminated over speakers
    seem alienating. Within a rehearsal that is sonically set up to be a
    performance, the private speaking voice seems to dissociate from the
    singers’ bodies. Even if the whispers are produced by the singer’s larynx,
    they mark estranged sounds. The amplification produces a different order in
    the sonic spatialities of the studio. The occasional whisper—albeit
    elicited by the singer’s body—is an utterance that distorts van der Aa’s
    desired sound quality. The microphone hosts the voice, and the composer
    hosts the sonic space. Following the wires of the microphone, I am again
    directed to the composer who feeds the connection between the amplification
    system, the singers’ bodies, their voices, and the laboratory space.



    The entire development process of van der Aa’s opera can be read as a
    technogenesis of uploading that renders all involved (non)humans along with
    the immersive technology of rehearsal into van der Aa’s data outlets. The
    “epistemic thing” is essentially the avatar behind the avatar—i.e., van der
    Aa in his fragmentation of the rehearsals’ spaces and times. Through the
commissioning structure and the doubleA Foundation, he builds the    carrier bag of opera according to his preferences of people and
    matter as well as his reimaginings of sonic and spatial setups. He
    outsources himself in bits of data that get continuously updated until the
    rehearsal phase ends. The opera is not premiered in a physical space at
    first but, instead, shot as a film and uploaded online on the medici.tv
platform.    [49]
    The posthuman technogenesis of van der Aa’s rehearsal is ultimately
    compressed into one medium, reducing the space to one single screen, and
    condensing the years of development into ninety minutes.






    

    

   
        
            *
 I wish to thank the anonymous readers and editors of            Sound Stage Screen for their invaluable feedback on
earlier versions of this article. Beyond the scope of            Sound Stage Screen, other scholars have offered precious
            recommendations, amongst others Peter McMurray, Susan Rutherford,
            Annouchka Bayley, Elisabeth van Treeck, and Shadi Seifouri.
            Moreover, I am grateful for the rehearsal insights facilitated by
Djoere de Jong and the numerous exchanges with Upload’s production team on site and on Zoom.
        

    

    
        
            
                [1]
            
             Excerpt of my fieldnote journal formulated after a day at the
            rehearsal studio.
        

    

    
        
            
                [2]
            
             See Bernhard Siegert, Passage des Digitalen: Zeichenpraktiken der
            neuzeitlichen Wissenschaften 1500–1900 (Berlin: Brinkmann &
            Bose, 2003), 17.
        

    

    
        
            
                [3]
            
             In Machover’s opera, a man uploads his mind to gain eternal life
            and is confronted by the women of the family who question a life
            without a body. The divide between the “female-body versus
            male-brain” remains similar in Upload. Promoting problematic gender
            dynamics, the daughter argues: “I believe in my body more than in
            my soul,” while the father claims: “The world isn’t reduced to the
            surface of my skin … I can still think my own thoughts.” The
            rational of the Vitruvian man is contrasted with the impulsive,
            subordinated woman. Beyond the father-daughter hierarchy, binary
            gendered dynamics pervade the entire story line. One example off
            the main story being that Upload tells side plots of other men who
            are uploaded to save their scientific knowledge while the
            respective women turn into avatars to spend more time with their
            children. For more on the gender divide in Machover’s opera, see
            David Trippett, “Digital Voices: Posthumanism and the Generation of
            Empathy,” in The Cambridge Companion to Music in Digital Culture,
            ed. Nicholas Cook, Monique M. Ingalls, and David Trippett
            (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 244–48. For
            parallels in futuristic narratives about mind uploading, see Hans
            Moravec, Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence
            (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988).
        

    

    
        
            
                [4]
            
             The robotic opera Death and the Powers was developed at the MIT as
            a research project within the Opera of the Future Media Lab Group.
            As such, it circumvented canonical production practices. For more
            see Peter Torpey, “Media Scores: A Framework for Composing the
            Modern-Day Gesamtkunstwerk” (PhD diss., Massachusetts Institute of
            Technology, 2013), and Benjamin Bloomberg, “Making Musical Magic Live: Inventing
            Modern Production Technology for Human-Centric Music Performance”
            (PhD diss., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2020).
        

    

    
        
            
                [5]
            
             For more literature on rehearsal processes from anthropologists,
            sociologists, and theater scholars, see amongst others Susan
            Letzler Cole, Directors in Rehearsal: A Hidden World (New York:
            Routledge, 1992); Paul Atkinson, “Performance and Rehearsal: The
            Ethnographer at the Opera,” in Qualitative Research Practice, ed.
            Clive Seale et al. (London: Sage, 2004), 94–106; Atkinson, Everyday
            Arias: An Operatic Ethnography (Lanham: AltaMira Press, 2006);
            Josette Féral, “Introduction: Towards a Genetic Study of
            Performance—Take 2,” Theatre Research International 33, no. 3
            (2008): 223–33; Jens Roselt, Phänomenologie des Theaters
            (Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2008); Jen Harvie and Andy
            Lavender, Making Contemporary Theatre: International Rehearsal
            Processes (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010); Jens
            Roselt and Melanie Hinz, eds., Chaos + Konzept: Proben und
            Probieren im Theater (Berlin: Alexander Verlag, 2011); Matthias
            Rebstock and David Roesner, eds., Composed Theatre: Aesthetics,
            Practices, Processes (Bristol: Intellect, 2012); Gay McAuley, Not
            Magic but Work: An Ethnographic Account of a Rehearsal Process
            (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015); Vlado Kotnik,
            Opera as Anthropology: Anthropologists in Lyrical Settings
            (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016); Tamara Yasmin
            Quick, “Methodologische Diskurse der aktuellen Probenforschung,”
            Forum Modernes Theater 31, no. 1/2 (2020): 39–63.
        

            For an examination of historical rehearsal processes in opera, see
            amongst others Heinrich Porges, Wagner Rehearsing the “Ring”: An
            Eye-Witness Account of the Stage Rehearsals of the First Bayreuth
            Festival, trans. Robert L. Jacobs (Cambridge: Cambridge University
            Press, 1983); James Deaville, ed., with Evan Baker, Wagner in
            Rehearsal 1875–1876: The Diaries of Richard Fricke, trans. George
            R. Fricke (Stuyvesant: Pendragon Press, 1998); Mark Everist,
            “Rehearsal Practices,” in The Oxford Handbook of Opera, ed. Helen
            M. Greenwald (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 419–41.
        

            For rehearsal ethnographies of western new music rehearsals, see
            Amanda Bayley and Michael Clarke, “Analytical Representations of
            Creative Processes in Michael Finnissy’s Second String Quartet,”
            Journal of Interdisciplinary Music Studies 3, no. 1/2 (2009):
            139–57; Bayley, “Ethnographic Research into Contemporary String
            Quartet Rehearsal,” Ethnomusicology Forum 20, no. 3 (2011):
            385–411; Bayley and Nicole Lizée, “Creative Layers and
            Continuities: A Case Study of Nicole Lizée and the Kronos Quartet,”
            Musicae Scientiae 20, no. 3 (2016): 392–412; Bayley,
            “Cross-Cultural Collaborations with the Kronos Quartet,” in
            Distributed Creativity: Collaboration and Improvisation in
            Contemporary Music, ed. Eric Clarke and Mark Doffman (New York:
            Oxford University Press, 2017), 93–113; Nicolas Donin,
            “Domesticating Gesture: The Collaborative Creative Process of
            Florence Baschet’s StreicherKreis for ‘Augmented’ String Quartet
            (2006–08),” in Clarke and Doffman, Distributed Creativity, 70–87.
        

            For ethnographies from practitioners and opera scholars, see Daniel
            Helfgot and William O. Beeman, The Third Line: The Opera Performer
            as Interpreter (New York: Schirmer Books, 1993); Denis Laborde,
            “L’Opéra et son régisseur. Notes sur la création d’une œuvre de
            Steve Reich,” Ethnologie française 38, no. 1 (2008): 119–28; Megan
            Steigerwald Ille, “Bringing Down the House: Situating and Mediating
            Opera in the Twenty-First Century” (PhD diss., University of
            Rochester, 2018); Steigerwald Ille, “Live in the Limo: Remediating
            Voice and Performing Spectatorship in Twenty-First-Century Opera,”
            The Opera Quarterly 36, no. 1/2 (2020): 1–26; Michal
            Grover-Friedlander, Staging Voice (London: Routledge, 2021); Lea
            Luka Sikau, “‘I see Marina, but feel Maria’: Marina Abramović’s
            Mediation of Callas’ Voice,” in Singing Out: The Musical Voice in
            Audiovisual Media, ed. Catherine Haworth and Beth Carroll
            (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming); Sikau,
            “Rehearsing Callas,” The Opera Quarterly (forthcoming).
        

    

    
        
            
                [6]
            
             From the relations of cinema with opera to emerging technologies
            in new music theater, operatic performance and its mediation in the
            digital era take center stage in the current discourse, highlighted
            amongst others by the recent foundation of this journal. See also
            Marcia Citron, Opera on Screen (New Haven: Yale University Press,
            2000); Melina Esse, ed., “Mediating Opera,” special issue, The
            Opera Quarterly 26, no. 1 (2010); James Steichen, “HD Opera: A
            Love/Hate Story,” The Opera Quarterly 27, no. 4 (2011): 443–59;
            Jelena Novak, Postopera: Reinventing the Voice-Body (Farnham:
            Ashgate, 2015); Karen Henson, ed., Technology and the Diva:
            Sopranos, Opera, and Media from Romanticism to the Digital Age
            (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016); Milla Tiainen,
            “Sonic Technoecology: Voice and Non-anthropocentric Survival in The
            Algae Opera,” Australian Feminist Studies 32, no. 94 (2017):
            359–76; Gundula Kreuzer, “Operatic Configurations in the Digital
            Age,” The Opera Quarterly, 35, no. 1/2 (2019): 130–34; Tereza
            Havelková, Opera as Hypermedium: Meaning-Making, Immediacy, and the
            Politics of Perception (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021).
        

    

    
        
            
                [7]
            
             Upload was produced during a national lockdown in spring 2021 at
            the Dutch National Opera. The restrictions caused by the Covid
            pandemic made it impossible to premiere the work in March 2021, as
            originally planned. However, the last rehearsal days on the main
            stage were used to shoot a film version of the production that was
            streamed via medici.tv even before its world premiere in July at
            the Bregenzer Festspiele.
        

    

    
        
            
                [8]
            
             Lea Luka Sikau, “Upload en de stem zonder lichaam,” in “OFF 2021,”
            special edition, Odeon Magazine 30, no. 121 (2021): 56–57.
        

    

    
        
            
                [9]
            
             David Trippett and Benjamin Walton, “Introduction: The Laboratory
            and the Stage,” in Nineteenth-Century Opera and the Scientific
            Imagination, ed. David Trippett and Benjamin Walton (Cambridge:
            Cambridge University Press, 2019), 2.
        

    

    
        
            
                [10]
            
             Hereby, I draw on Daniel Chua and Alexander Rehding, who elaborate
            on the interface of music at large as something that “interacts
            dynamically with a network of discourses and objects.” Daniel K. L.
            Chua and Alexander Rehding, Alien Listening: Voyager’s Golden
            Record and Music from Earth (New York: Zone Books, 2021), 200.
        

    

    
        
            
                [11]
            
             Walton points towards the materials of operatic productions that
            remain invisible because of their long-lasting history within the
            genre. He proposes to include the multiplicity of material rather
            than merely zooming on the technologies of spectacle. See Walton,
            “Technological Phantoms of the Opéra,” in Nineteenth-Century Opera
            and the Scientific Imagination, 226.
        

    

    
        
            
                [12]
            
             Katherine Hayles, How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary
            Technogenesis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 10.
        

    

    
        
            
                [13]
            
             Le Guin lists some exemplary devices for containing goods: “A leaf
            a gourd a shell a net a bag a sling a sack a bottle a pot a box a
            container.” Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction,”
            in Women of Vision: Essays by Women Writing Science Fiction, ed.
            Denise Du Pont (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988), 3.
        

    

    
        
            
                [14]
            
             “Contemporary technogenesis is about adaptation, the fit between
            organisms and their environments, recognizing that both sides of
            the engagement (humans and technologies) are undergoing coordinated
            transformations.” Hayles, How We Think, 81.
        

    

    
        
            
                [15]
            
             Music and computation scholar Shintaro Miyazaki expands on
            wireless spaces with regards to the notion of containing and
            carrying: “A space is not a network, but a channel and container
            for an infinite number of physical connections and the carrier of
            an infinite number of signals.” Miyazaki, “Algorhythmics:
			Understanding Micro-Temporality in Computational Cultures,”
            Computational Culture, no. 2 (2012).
        

    

    
        
            
                [16]
            
             This is different from previous ethnographic fieldwork I have
            conducted within other new operas, for example within Marina
            Abramović’s opera production 7 Deaths of Maria Callas (2020) or
            Sivan Eldar’s Like Flesh (2022). In these cases, the set on the
            rehearsal stage is constantly adapting, for example when new props
            are being added. Contrastingly, Upload does not employ props, other
            than a blanket and a pillow in the last scene.
        

    

    
        
            
                [17]
            
             Whereas in world premiere productions it is usual to change parts
            of the score quite flexibly or even to finish writing the music
            during the rehearsal phase, van der Aa merely changed one note in
            the daughter’s part. The composer elaborated on this during a panel
            discussion at the symposium Musiktheater der Zeitgenossenschaft:
            Michel van der Aas Schaffen an den Schnittstellen der Künste (Ruhr
            University Bochum, 16 September 2022).
        

    

    
        
            
                [18]
            
             Two examples for productions that work with elaborate live-cued
            screens, and from which I can recount the rehearsal processes, are
            the aforementioned Like Flesh and the 2012 collaboration between
            Barrie Kosky and the theater collective 1927 on Mozart’s Die
            Zauberflöte (1791).
        

    

    
        
            
                [19]
            
             Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, Toward a History of Epistemic Things:
            Synthesizing Proteins in the Test Tube (Stanford: Stanford
            University Press, 1997), 28.
        

    

    
        
            
                [20]
            
             Rheinberger, Toward a History of Epistemic Things, chap. 5
            “Reproduction and Difference.”
        

    

    
        
            
                [21]
            
             Rheinberger, 29.
        

    

    
        
            
                [22]
            
             Darien Brito, in interview with the author, February 25, 2021.
        

    

    
        
            
                [23]
            
             Ulrike Hartung, Postdramatisches Musiktheater (Würzburg:
            Königshausen & Neumann, 2019), 75.
        

    

    
        
            
                [24]
            
             As exceptions to contemporary theatrical production processes,
            Wechsler points out two projects conducted in collaboration with
            universities: motione by Trisha Brown, Bill T. Jones et al.
            (Arizona State University, 2005) as well as Luc Vanier’s Bob’s
            Palace created at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts
            (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 2003). See Robert
            Wechsler, “Artistic Considerations in the Use of Motion Tracking
            with Live Performers: A Practical Guide,” in Performance and
            Technology: Practices of Virtual Embodiment and Interactivity, ed.
            Susan Broadhurst and Josephine Machon (Basingstoke: Palgrove
            Macmillian, 2006), 60–77.
        

    

    
        
            
                [25]
            
             Brito, interview.
        

    

    
        
            
                [26]
            
             Roderick Williams in interview with the author, January 12, 2021.
        

    

    
        
            
                [27]
            
             Julia Bullock, in interview with the author, March 10, 2021.
        

    

    
        
            
                [28]
            
             Anne van Brunschot, in interview with the author, February 17,
            2021.
        

    

    
        
            
                [29]
            
             As both covers Verity Wingate and Michael Wilmering are members of
            the Opera Studio of the Dutch National Opera, they are asked to
            join Upload’s rehearsals whenever they do not have rehearsals for
            other productions running at the same time.
        

    

    
        
            
                [30]
            
             Brito, interview.
        

    

    
        
            
                [31]
            
             Williams, interview.
        

    

    
        
            
                [32]
            
             Williams, interview.
        

    

    
        
            
                [33]
            
             The director of the Dutch National Opera, Sophie de Lint,
            introduces the composer as today’s Wagner within the interviews for
            the documentary on Upload. Curiously, the first significant account
            of verbal interactions in operatic rehearsals at large focuses on
            Wagner’s Ring (1875–76). The choreographer Richard Fricke was asked
            by Wagner to document everything he said during the rehearsals of
            the Bayreuth world premiere. Whereas this account could be
            considered as one of the first rehearsal ethnographies, it is
            almost entirely centered on the composer. In the diaries, it
            becomes apparent that Wagner was an unpredictable director, who
            drastically changed his ideas on the mise-en-scène from one to
            another: “In this condition, it is a necessity for him to block
            everything one way today, and then change it tomorrow.” See
            Deaville and Baker, Wagner in Rehearsal, 80. While Upload may be
            considered a Gesamtkunstwerk in scope, van der Aa’s direction is
            quite distinct from Wagner’s rehearsal practices. Whereas Wagner
            constantly changed his mind during the final stages of production,
            van der Aa arrives at the rehearsals with precise, uncompromising
            ideas. Relating thereto, he might be considered to be more of a
            Verdian type, who rehearsed to approximate his ultimate vision of
            the opera. For Giuseppe Verdi’s rehearsal practices, see Clemens
            Risi, “Encore! Oper wiederholen,” in Chaos + Konzept, 97-109.
        

    

    
        
            
                [34]
            
             Nicholas Till argues that “the multiple authorship of opera has
            remained common throughout the twentieth century.” “The Operatic
            Work: Texts, Performances, Receptions and Repertories,” in The
            Cambridge Companion to Opera Studies, ed. Nicholas Till (Cambridge:
            Cambridge University Press, 2012), 245.
        

    

    
        
            
                [35]
            
             The opera Upload was financed by the following commissioning
            partners: Dutch National Opera, Opera Cologne, Bregenzer
            Festspiele, Ensemble MusikFabrik, Park Avenue Armory, and the
            doubleA Foundation itself. During a panel discussion at the
            symposium Musiktheater der Zeitgenossenschaft (see note 17), the
            composer claimed that he seeks to own his works.
        

    

    
        
            
                [36]
            
			See “doubleA Lab,” doubleA Foundation website, accessed January 8,
            2023.
        

    

    
        
            
                [37]
            
             This is not to say that opera theaters are not themselves already
            working on rethinking production processes. Operas such as Eldar’s
            Like Flesh demonstrate that there are alternative forms of
            collaboration with institutions such as the IRCAM within the
            framework of more traditional operatic production to enable
            research, experimentation, and testing phases. Such development is
            further reinforced by European initiatives such as FEDORA (European
            Circle of Philanthropists of Opera and Ballet) and ENOA (European Network of Opera
            Academies), which establish partnerships
            between opera houses and other cultural institutions.
        

    

    
        
            
                [38]
            
             See Ryan Ebright, “‘My Answer to What Music Theatre Can Be’:
            Iconoclasm and Entrepreneurship in Steve Reich and Beryl Korot’s
            The Cave,” American Music 35, no. 1 (2017): 30.
        

    

    
        
            
                [39]
            
             Carolyn Abbate, In Search of Opera (Princeton: Princeton
            University Press, 2001), 148.
        

    

    
        
            
                [40]
            
             The piano is replaced by a keyboard which is only used to give
            single notes to the singers.
        

    

    
        
            
                [41]
            
             To expand on the notion of acousmatic sounds, see Pierre
            Schaeffer, Treatise on Musical Objects: An Essay across
            Disciplines, trans. Christine North and John Dack (Oakland:
            University of California Press, 2017), 64–69 (“Acousmatics”).
        

    

    
        
            
                [42]
            
             Fergus McAlpine, in interview with the author, March 8, 2021.
        

    

    
        
            
                [43]
            
             From my previous experience in new opera productions, it is quite
            rare for opera creations to have such a fixed score this early in
            the process. During the musical rehearsals for Upload with the
            Ensemble Musikfabrik, the conductor Otto Tausk stated that he only
            found two errors in the entire score, something he claimed to be
            extremely impressive.
        

    

    
        
            
                [44]
            
             McAlpine, interview.
        

    

    
        
            
                [45]
            
             Having worked with van der Aa before, Williams states that he
            learned to trust both van der Aa’s idea of the voice as well as the
            expertise of the sound engineers. During the interview, he
            elaborates further on Van der Aa disliking the canonical operatic
            voice and aiming for a non-vibrato one with crisp and clear
            diction. For Williams, this vocal technique is quite effortless and
            gentle to produce. Moreover, these features are reminiscent of
            vocal styles associated with other music theater works from the
            late twentieth and the early twenty-first century by Steve Reich,
            Beryl Korot, Philip Glass, and Louis Andriessen.
        

    

    
        
            
                [46]
            
             Jonathan Burston, “Theatre Space as Virtual Place: Audio
            Technology, the Reconfigured Singing Body, and the Megamusical,”
            Popular Music 17, no. 2 (1998): 207.
        

    

    
        
            
                [47]
            
             See Paul Sanden, Liveness in Modern Music: Musicians, Technology,
            and the Perception of Performance (New York: Routledge, 2013), 22.
        

    

    
        
            
                [48]
            
             Williams, interview.
        

    

    
        
            
                [49]
            
             Upload (2019–20), film opera, on medici.tv platform, accessed January 8, 2023.
        

    




    



                

            

                

            

          
          
        
        
        
