Designing performer training: digital encounters with things and people (original) (raw)
Related papers
2017
We explore the phenomenology of embodiment based on research through design and reflection on the design of artefacts for augmenting embodied performance. We present three designs for highly trained musicians; the designs rely on the musicians’ mastery acquired from years of practice. Through the knowledge of the living body their instruments —saxophone, cello, and flute — are extensions of themselves; thus, we can explore technology with rich nuances and precision in corporeal schemas. With the help of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of embodiment we present three hypotheses for augmented embodied performance: the extended artistic room, the interactively enacted teacher, and the humanisation of technology.
The Interactivity Lab: training toward the performer as ‘Architect-Clown’
Theatre, Dance and Performance Training, 2018
A challenge for performers working in interactive and participatory performance forms is a need to navigate between the position of the ‘Architect’, designing and structuring an audience’s experience, and that of the ‘Clown’, sustaining a performance state that is present and responsive to the particularities of individual interactions. While design and structure can preoccupy the development of new work, rehearsing for participatory performance proves a challenge when the pivotal ingredient – an unpredictable audience – is absent. How can training support performers to attend to both performance structure and the immediacies of interactive exchange? How can it support them to think critically about the aesthetics, ethics and politics of both? This article reflects on my pedagogical process of working with a group of undergraduates in spring 2017, exploring training approaches to support their devising process as they created a self-directed interactive theatre piece. It offers an ethnographic glimpse into the studio work and students’ responses, as we investigated approaches to developing the performer as ‘Architect-Clown’. Drawing on 10 years’ experience as a performer-deviser in this field, I sought the tack between these two training zones, applying pedagogic methods that work to develop performance qualities of listening, presence and improvisation, alongside methods aimed at developing a critical and reflexive approach to experience-design. Are the two roles as distinct as is suggested? How might they interact, and what might be gained (or lost) from this cross-training studio approach?
But a walking shadow: designing, performing and learning on the virtual stage
Learning, Media and Technology, 2010
Representing elements of reality within a medium, or taking aspects from one medium and placing them in another is an act of remediation. The process of this act, however, is largely taken for granted. Despite the fact that available information enables a qualitative assessment of the history of multimedia and their influences on different fields of knowledge, there are still some areas that require more focused research attention. For example, the relationship between media evolution and new developments in scenographic practice is currently under investigation. This article explores the issue of immediacy as a condition of modern theatre in the context of digital reality. It discusses the opportunities and challenges that recent technologies present to contemporary practitioners and theatre design educators, creating a lot of scope to break with conventions. Here, we present two case studies that look into technology-mediated learning about scenography through the employment of novel computer visualization techniques. The first case study is concerned with new ways of researching and learning about theatre through creative exploration of design artefacts. The second case study investigates the role of the Immersive Virtual World Second Life™ (SL) in effective teaching of scenography, and in creating and experiencing theatrical performances.
Design in Action: Unpacking the Artists’ Role in Performance-Led Research
Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2021
This paper illustrates design work carried out to develop an interactive theater performance. HCI has started to address the challenges of designing interactive performances, as both audience and performers' experiences are considered, and a variety of professional expertise become involved. Nevertheless, research has overlooked how such design unfolds in practice, and what role artists play in exploring the both the creative opportunities and the challenges associated with digital technologies. A two-day workshop was conducted to tailor the use of an interactive mask within a performance. The analysis highlights the artists' work to make the mask work while framing, exploring and conceptualizing its use. The discussion outlines the artists' skills and design expertise, and how acknowledging them reconfigure the role of HCI in performanceled research.
InstaStan – FaceBrook – Brecht+: a performer training methodology for the age of the internet
Theatre, Dance and Performance Training, 2019
age of the internet. In particular, it focuses on our approach to creating a laboratory style training experience, engaging student-performers in criticalcreative processes as both participants and facilitators of creative practice. We argue that this exploratory and experimental journey of using social media and online platforms in live performance allows student-performers to make strong connections between everyday digital tools and theatre and performance methods and techniques. Additionally, we ask questions about what forms these laboratories may take in the future: What would a StanChat laboratory look like? How can we incorporate InstaStan, FaceBrook and Brecht+ into our training practices for digital performance more broadly?
Performing Embodiment: Pedagogical Intersections of Art, Technology, and the Body
Curriculum and the Cultural Body (Springgay & Freedman, Editors), 2007
It's not a matter of being "kicked out of our bodies by machines." Our bodies are what they are. To be an intelligent agent is to be both embodied and embedded in its environment. Stelarc (In Mulder & Post, pp. 30-31) For the past four decades Australian performance artist Stelarc has pushed the materiality of his body to its limits to expose and explore its intersections with the mechanical and electronic apparatus of technological culture.
Designing for performative tangible interaction
International Journal of Arts and …, 2008
We propose that designing tangibles for public interaction requires an understanding of both functional and non-functional aspects informed by Live Art theories. In this paper, we outline design requirements for performative tangible interaction, propose a framework for assessing performative interaction and demonstrate its use through four case studies of the iterative redesign of a highly portable, tangible exertion interface. By reflecting on our experience of designing for performative interaction we develop guidelines for developing multi-participant Digital Live Art.
Waves: Exploring Idiographic Design for Live Performance
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI '13, 2013
We explore whether idiographic design, a category of interaction design that focuses upon responding to detailed personal accounts of individuals’ practices, can be used to support interaction designers in responding to the complex and multifaceted design space posed by live performance. We describe and reflect upon the application of an idiographic approach during the design of Waves, an interface for live VJ performance. This approach involved a close and dialogical engagement with the practices and experiences of an individual live performer, during a series of semi-structured interviews and then the discussion and iteration of an evolving prototypical design. Reflection on the experience of applying this approach highlights idiographic design as a practical means to support interaction designers in proposing innovative designs that respond sensitively to the kinds of subtle and complex issues that underpin people’s lived and felt experiences of live performance and, potentially, many other domains.