Jon McKenzie is a performance theorist, media maker, and transdisciplinary researcher and teacher at Cornell University.

McKenzie's main interests are in new media, performance theory, and the role of art and technology in cultural research, contemporary processes of globalization, and emerging forms of social activism.

[2] During his time as an undergraduate at the University of Florida McKenzie was heavily influenced by the work of Professor Gregory Ulmer and his theories of applied Grammatology.

By taking film classes with Ulmer and fellow Professor Robert Ray, McKenzie began to explore art informed by theories of relativity and psychoanalysis.

The second lesson Ulmer taught McKenzie was to approach the classroom as a performance space, a site where materials (bodies, ideas, media) could be mixed together to create pedagogical events.

[4] The years at Florida shaped McKenzie's approach to theory and life and Ulmer's teaching left a big thumbprint on his mind.

This stratum involves the intersection of power and knowledge; although he admits that it has not ‘fully installed itself’ (McKenzie, 2001; 6); he has come to this conclusion by extending Michel Foucault's theories of discipline, in which he believes there needs to be a term to explain the different degrees of performance; cultural, organizational, and technological, although this term is only new due to the emergence of the globalization of performance; which is rapidly increasing.

Although he generally sees the globalization of performance as having a negative impact, he does see some positive aspects, such as: the emergence of universal human rights, establishment of the world court (international court of justice), annual conferences on global warming and the AIDS crisis, and the formation of Performance Studies International, co-founded by noted American feminist scholar Peggy Phelan.

[9] The StudioLab is designed to take place in studio and computer lab environments, allowing students to develop critico-creative projects and digital skills using models drawn from cultural performance: theatre, performance art, ritual and practices of everyday life.

However, in the lab, the same students work in different groupings called ‘guilds’ to develop the electronic elements needed by the bands.

Moving between studio and lab, band and guild, these projects unfold through the interlacing of bodies, ideas and media.

Another project is a transformation of Brenda Laurel’s Computers as Theatre, which developed a theory of human-computer interaction using Aristotle's Poetics.

McKenzie believes that the model of individual genius that has dominated modern aesthetics is giving way to collaborative modes of creativity.

Second, the joke suggests Manuel De Landa's notion of inorganic life, which teaches us something important about human-computer interfaces, namely, that there are feedback loops and machinic processes everywhere, operating in all mediums—organic and inorganic—and doing so at very different scales and temporalities.

[9] In sum: StudioLab is characterised by the circulation between studio and lab environments, by collaborative learning in different sociotechnical groupings and by the mixing and fine-tuning of physical, conceptual and multimedia elements.

[12] McKenzie Stojnić operated at the intersections of art & life, theory & practice, playing & reality and episteme & doxa and performed across a variety of media.

[14] Aneta Stojnić elaborates: "TAFs are figures of thought as well as concrete objects that allow us to transform and perform ideas, concepts, and knowledge across different media and in variety of forms.

Meaning that it can finally end the ongoing discussion battle of performance; solving the problems of global communications.

The first being an extension of today's society he calls this ‘clean torture’ (McKenzie, 2005:2) which entails; stun guns, stress position and highly public human rights initiatives.

This meaning the theatre of torture goes public as civilians begin to support ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ (McKenzie, 2005:2).

[citation needed] In 2005 McKenzie wrote another article titled ‘Hacktivism and Machinic Performance’ in which he attempted to define both terms in context to the social climate of today.

He referred to his book ‘Perform or Else’ when he defines Hacktivism: ‘the emergence of political activism within digital environments, primarily but not exclusively, the Internet’.

In new media interface design is primarily in discrete human-computer interactions, such as an exchange in front of an automated teller machine (ATM) or on a web page.

Through discussing this he gives his theory structure by using evidence linking the idea ‘the will to become in power’ (McKenzie, 2003: 119) to performance through George Bush.

He does this by showing how Bush's will makes his speech become a performance as he emphasizes his democratic views in order to gain the public's faith.