The Technology and the Performing Body in the Arts of Contemporary Societies (original) (raw)
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Digital cultures are performative cultures. This assumption is illustrated by the ubiquitous and invisible infrastructures that constitute them, which are interstratified by so-called ‘smart things’, creating a socio-technical environment, in which performances of the technological come about. The digital performs, the human reacts to the agency the technologies suggest, and vice versa: “Performing (the) Digital”. There is a considerable genealogical background to this assumption, which needs to be reconstructed. It is founded within a ‘discourse history of performativity’, which has been taking place across scientific disciplines concerning technology and the humanities since the 1950s. How then can performative methods engage with these cultures on a critical level? Methods and epistemology of socalled artistic research may hold an answer to this question.
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.
2013
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