Theatre in the Digital Age: When Technology Meets the Arts (original) (raw)

Digital Performance: The Use of New Media Technologies in the Performing Arts

This research project analyses the relationship between performing arts and new media technologies. The project explores this interchange through the lens of a mobile application protocol which, we submit, could be employed to augment drama performances through an interactive approach. The research problem rests on the question of how modern technology has shaped the perception of performing arts in the contemporary techno-culture. The research is supported by expert interviews, all of which have bolstered my main finding that technology acts as an extension of the outer-world, as well as society. Thus, the overarching contribution of this research posits that performing arts should acknowledge this finding in order to reflect shifts within the techno-culture.

The Impact of Digital Media on Contemporary Performance

This thesis investigates artworks born at the convergence of digital media and contemporary performance, and the ways in which technology impacts the field of performance. The term digital media refers to technology that produces digitised (as opposed to analogue) content such as text, audio, video, graphics and metadata. Contemporary performance refers to artworks that combine different artistic traditions—experimental theatre and dance, video art, visual art, music composition and performance art—in a single performance event. The convergence of these two fields has produced a significant body of technological works of art that challenge and reconfigure traditional conventions in contemporary performance. This thesis examines the impact of digital media on the ways performance is created, received and experienced, and the extent to which media open up new possibilities for creative expression and may generate new art forms. I mapped the field by defining three large categories that mark the heterogeneous landscape of technologically enhanced performances today, namely multimedia theatre, telematic performance and pervasive performance. Methodologically, I combined hermeneutic methods of interpretation and reflection with academic forms of practical inquiry, combining textual analysis of relevant works from each of the three categories—such as Ghost Road (Murgia and Pauwels 2012), make-shift (Jamieson and Crutchlow 2010) and Rider Spoke (Blast Theory 2007)—with the practical development and analysis of a pervasive performance experiment titled Chain Reaction (Pérez 2009 and 2011). Theoretically, the project is interdisciplinary, bringing together performance theory, digital media studies, experimental game scholarship and experiential art documentation. In discussing the ways in which digital media impact contemporary performance, I identify a number of traditional conventions in the field of theatre and performance that are currently being challenged. These are in the areas of audience participation, use of space, actor role, rehearsal and staging, and performance documentation. Central arguments in the thesis are, on the one hand, that researchers, critics and practitioners must look beyond the visionary expressions of aesthetic potential in order to grasp the real state of technologically enhanced art forms. On the on the other hand, it is only by considering both, the horizon-pushing high-tech along with the purpose-orientated low-tech, that a more grounded understanding of the present impact of developing technology on art culture can and should be reached.

Digitalization of Arts

Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, 2021

The currents of the industrial revolution 4.0 and society 5.0 have changed the world order from computerization to digitalization. One of them that was seriously affected was the world of dance, because dance artists (choreographers) had to keep up with the times. Plus the Covid-19 pandemic which forced the world to completely change the order of life from manual to digital. The COVID-19 pandemic requires choreographers to be more creative in packaging works from creation to showing the work in digital form. This makes the choreographer work more extra because it no longer just stops until the work is performed in front of an audience on a 'stage' but until the work is digital. In this condition, there are still many artists who try to keep working but still rely on live performances even with health protocols, but have not produced significant results. Thus the digitization of dance works becomes something very urgent. This article tries to analyze how the form of dance performances during the pandemic is a challenge and opportunity for artists to keep the dance world alive. This study uses a qualitative descriptive method, with data collection of observations, documentation, and literature studies. The results showed that during the pandemic, dance works were in digital form using social media as a 'stage'. The challenges that must be faced by choreographers are not only having to work extra but also having competence and/or knowledge of video editing and social media management so that dance works can be appreciated to the maximum. Opportunities that are obtained with the form of digital dance works, namely creative social media management, will bring a lot of appreciation to bring commercial benefits.

Digital Perspective: Relationships between Visual and Performing Arts

This international workshop aims to advance the contemporary discussion of Digital Humanities. It will offer to the scientific community – and also to interested guests – the opportunity to learn more about some of the newest digital tools used by researchers. The workshop will also present a significant number of innovative projects related to the research programme ART-ES: Appropriations and Hybridizations of Visual and Performing Arts (https://artes.hypotheses.org/). With a focus on festivals, performances, urban spaces and artworks from the early modern period in Europe, the main interest is to study transfer processes and common sources shared between visual and performing arts. The results of this workshop will be included in a digital exhibition which will be launched in 2019.

Theatre and technological development

This study "Theatre and digital, technological development" aim at advocating the development of theatre across the ages, and it's impact on its society. As the technology is becoming more viral and necessary in our society, every sector and discipline have adopted this technological advancement into their discipline to enjoy its advantage and to make thier own work more easier, beautiful, and accessible. However, theatre as one of this sector has also developed from the ritual practises to the public stage and into a digital media that has paved ways into a different branches of presentations. Theatre which was once a Egyptian ritual practise became public stage performance in Greece and today has developed into different branches and types with it's own role and uniqueness. Thus, this study would identity the development and defines the impact of theatre technology in contemporary digital society through the use of media tools and outlet called "multimedia" .

Artistic Creativity, Digital Technologies and Theatrical Sustainability: Integrating New Media in Theatre Practice

Nigerian Theatre Journal, 2023

Arts and technology have always been interrelated , and artistic expressions have been facilitated by technological innovations that enable artists either to adapt technologies meant for other purposes, or to invent them as a way to foster the creative process.The evolution of digital technologies in the knowledge era has had a huge impact on the theatre profession, in which digital transformation has influenced the ways theatrical contents are created, presented, distributed and circulate to audiences. This paper examines technological advances of the digital era and their impact on the performing arts, in particular the theatre.Relying on the Technology Acceptance Model, this study argues that new technologies and media enable the creation of new forms of arts that inspires radical changes in the distribution channels of cultural products based on their digitalization and dematerialization.The study finds that Digitalisation provides creative artists with new tools and means of artistic expression. Indeed, digitalisation enhances and inspires not only the creation of new art forms but also the presentation of traditional arts by enabling multimedia experiences and interactivity.

Editorial Comment: Digital Media and Performance, Theatre Journal 61.4 (2009): 1-3

As Steve Dixon has observed in his influential book Digital Performance, 1 which is cited frequently in this issue of Theatre Journal, the 1990s represented a high-water mark in digital performance. That decade saw an explosion of innovation and euphoria surrounding the use of digital technologies-video projections, MIDI-triggered images and audio, sensors, telematics-in live performance events and performative installation art.

From the hybridization of the theatrical space to the contemporary digital performance

Anuario FAD UCALP, 2019

This article explores the notion of hybridity in the traditional theatrical space (analogical era) and in the immersive contemporary performance that now combines theatre, game and art installation (digital era). To that purpose, on the one hand, we examine the scenic situation in the capital of Argentina, now the so-called Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, at the end of the 19th century and the early 20th century, as a paradigm of the analogical scenic art; and, on the other hand, the performative artistic present by means of a series of contemporary exhibitions in Europe, Japan and the United States. Through this geographic and temporal selection, we analyze a series of plays and we make them enter into a dialogue with some critical works in order to question the hybrid nature of the digital and analogical theatre practice.

Digital challenges for creative industries: case of opera

SHS Web of Conferences

Digital technologies today are seen as a powerful driving force of creative industry growth. The authors reveal the development of operatic theatre as a significant entity of a new market reality - the economy of impressions. Notwithstanding the fact that the majority of opera houses are state funded, the issue of economic efficacy is gaining relevance for theaters; increasingly more attention is paid to promoting theatrical product. Despite the fact that the eliteness of operatic art and loyalty to tradition poses restrictions on implanting new instruments of theater branding. active digitization of the opera product is the only plausible means of attracting the attention of the new generations who are used to this format of representing cultural content. This dilemma is analyzed in the article on the basis of the data yielded by a field study in the form of a survey involving Russian and Italian opera lovers.