Site-Specific Multimedia Performance as a Contemporary Artform

Site-specific multimedia performance is a distinct art form that has been systematically overlooked by the disciplines that come closest to addressing it. This dissertation pursues three aims: to define site-specific multimedia performance as an autonomous art form, to establish its historical roots, and to build a cross-disciplinary framework drawing on musicology, sound studies, media theory, and performance studies. Tracing a history that opens in the late nineteenth century and extends across six chapters, the dissertation draws on primary sources from the United States, Canada, Europe, and East Asia, including scores, video recordings, composer lectures, published papers, and performance location maps. Original interviews conducted with composers and project participants are excerpted throughout and reproduced in full in the appendix; the author's own practice further informs the analysis. Six in-depth case studies illustrate the compositional and aesthetic principles advanced by the historical and theoretical arguments, before a following chapter assesses the form's influence on neighbouring art practices and the broader implications for scholarship. By recovering the history of site-specific multimedia performance and providing the first sustained scholarly framework for the form, this dissertation fills a significant gap and opens a field of inquiry for composers, musicologists, sound researchers, media theorists, and performance scholars alike.