Samuel Shalhoub

Performer · Conductor · Composer · Lecturer

PhD Candidate in Creativity

Overview

Research Focus

This doctoral work investigates accidents, mistakes, and chain events in live performance settings, collectively theorized as anomaly. Drawing on performance studies, human factors, and differential geometry, the research examines how anomaly transforms what matters to the performer and audience from moment to moment, and across the arc of a performance as a whole.

Theoretical Framework

The Sociocultural Spatiotemporal Manifold

Live performance is situated within a large container described as a sociocultural spatiotemporal manifold: a dynamic, historically continuous volume of information extending from the deep past to the present moment of performance. This manifold holds the cultural, social, physical and temporal contexts within which any live performance event is embedded and through which it acquires meaning.

Core Concept

The Expression Nucleus

Within the manifold, the live performance itself constitutes the formation of an expression nucleus: the site where live performance is occurring in real time, interfacing with the future at the present moment. The expression nucleus contains the core variables of live performance, including performers, source materials, realizations, expectations, potentials, stakes, valence, arousal, and audiences.

Base variables of the expression nucleus:

PerformerSource MaterialRealizationExpectationPotentialStakeValenceArousalAudience

Heuristics

Field Functions

To organize the base variables of the expression nucleus into meaningful relationships, I have developed three heuristic field functions:

ff(expectation, potential)Anticipation Field Function

Describes how meaning condenses in a live performance through the dynamic interplay between what is expected and what is possible at any given moment. Work as imagined versus work as done.

gg(potential, expression nucleus)Articulation Field Function

Describes how information becomes intelligible in a performance, specifically the process by which latent potential is actualized within the expression nucleus.

hh(performer, audience)Coupling Field Function

Describes the degree to which the performer and audience are relationally connected at any given moment, and how that coupling shapes shared experience.

Central Phenomenon

Anomaly

Accidents, mistakes, and chain events in live performance are phenomena that may transform the valence and arousal within the expression nucleus, alter the coupling between performer and audience, and reconfigure the anticipation field in ways that affect co-created meaning. This research pursues an empirical, qualitative analysis of how and why anomaly transforms what matters between performers and audiences during live performance.

Research Tool

Anomaly Detection

This simple post-hoc analysis tool allows performers and audience members to independently flag anomalous moments retroactively by flagging them on an audio/visual recording, then compares both vantage points as a performer/audience spectral stripe graph. This allows for rapid identification of instability to within one second intervals across a performance, and serves as an orienting topographic map for the purpose of enhancing investigative inquiry and deep description.

Open the Anomaly Detection tool →