Live Performance and Video games (original) (raw)
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Performance and Games : A Love Story
2010
Video games structure play as performance in both the virtual and the physical space. On the one hand, the player encounters game worlds as virtual stages to act upon. On the other hand, the game world stages the player and re-frames the play space. This essay sets out to suggest some of the elements that are at work in this dualism of games as performative media. The two key elements here are the mediation of the game environment and the transformation of the player through virtual puppetry. Both cases will be argued with a focus on spatiality in performance.
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INTRODUCTION The act of playing does not occur in a vacuum but rather, in the words of Newman (2008), is “informed by and situated within the context of other players and their analyses and playing” (12). Although the public performances that shape players’ understandings of videogames today take different forms than they did a decade ago, Newman (2008) sheds light on the sociality that surrounds videogames and players, and the creativity inherent within works that modify, transform, adapt, and make sense of videogames. From the personal anecdotes and reflections present in videogame walkthroughs on gameFAQs, to the first appearance of a Let’s Play (LP) on somethingawful forums, through to the enormous success of LPs on YouTube, a trend may be observed to unfold in which players find novel and creative ways online to express and communicate their experiences in and around videogames. With each platform, new trends evolve, bringing with them new codes and conventions with which to de...
Performing Gameplay – A Study of Video Game Performance Workshops
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This article examines performances produced in two Performing Gameplay workshops in 2017 and 2019. These performances are labeled as intermedial, as they were produced by using video games alongside live performers. The aim is to explore the changes frame of performance causes in players and games, as well as in performances, performers, and spectators. The article focuses on two main themes: the transformative process from gameplay to performance, and vice versa; and the significance of non-human participants in this process.
A place to play - Experimentation and Interactions Between Technology and Performance.(2006)
The Potentials of Spaces : International Scenography and Performance for the 21st Century, 2006
This chapter explores issues associated with the use of technology in performance. Why is the use of technology seen by many as a threat to the liveness of the performance event? Does the use of technology necessarily distract the audience and detract from the art? Can there be a seamless integration within the performance event? What are the implications for designing for performance in and for, an increasingly technologically oriented world? Drawing on the work of key practitioners (including Robert Wilson, Josef Svoboda, and Robert Lepage), I aim to investigate the links between the use of technology and the creation of scenographic statements on stage. Whilst concentrating primarily on the convergence of digital and projection technologies, the article will advocate new ways of working if such technology is to be integrated successfully into performance work. An account of an exploratory project involving dance, digital media and projection is provided as part of an argument that attempts to counter suggestions that performance and technology, art and science are fundamentally incompatible.
Tweetre: What role can technology play in contemporary theatre?
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This article is a brief, individual review which illustrates some advances that digital technology can foster for theatre. Whether this can be seen as an encroachment or augmentation in this field, there are clear examples of significant opportunities for practitioners who follow the digital route as a means to increase theatrical participation. Concurrent to this, this article will demonstrate the validity of using the principles of game design to consider the potentials offered by digital theatre and indicate possible avenues for future research.
Play’s the Thing: A Framework to Study Videogames as Performance
Performance studies deals with human action in context, as well as the process of making meaning between the performers and the audience. This paper presents a framework to study videogames as a performative medium, applying terms from performance studies to videogames both as software and as games. This performance framework for videogames allows us to understand how videogames relate to other performance activities, as well as understand how they are a structured experience that can be designed. Theatrical performance is the basis of the framework, because it is the activity that has the most in common with games. Rather than explaining games in terms of ‘interactive drama,’ the parallels with theatre help usunderstand the role of players both as performers and as audience, as well as how the game design shapes the experience. The theatrical model also accounts for how videogames can have a spectatorship, and how the audience may have an effect on gameplay.
2015
Performance and Media: Taxonomies for a Changing Field, written collaboratively by Sarah Bay-Cheng, Jennifer Parker-Starbuck, and David Z. Saltz, takes on the timely project of organizing a genre that, due to its emergent, rapidly expanding nature, is frequently described in list form. Intervening in the familiar catechism of terms ("multimedia performance, intermedial performance, cyborg theatre, digital performance, virtual theatre, and new media dramaturgy, among others"), they argue: "we do not require another all-encompassing term or totalizing narrative; rather, we need new tools and methods that embrace and build upon the multiplicity of issues and perspectives inherent in the field" (1). As three of the leading scholars in the field of intermedial performance, Bay-Cheng, Parker-Starbuck, and Saltz are well suited to answer this need. Emerging out of several years of working group meetings that have tracked the proliferating "species" produced by the fertile intersection of media and performance, this book offers three distinct yet complementary taxonomic methods-each one developed independently by one of the authors. These insightful and user-friendly analytical frameworks, which can be used separately or in concert, will provide students, teachers, scholars, and practitioners of intermedial performance with a highly practical, thought-provoking resource for critically and creatively engaging with this growing field.
Games as Structures for Mediated Performances
Video games structure play as performance in both the virtual and the physical space. On the one hand, the player encounters game worlds as virtual stages to act upon. On the other hand, the game world stages the player and re-frames the play space. This essay sets out to suggest some of the elements that are at work in this dualism of games as performative media. The two key elements here are the mediation of the game environment and the transformation of the player through virtual puppetry. Both cases will be argued with a focus on spatiality in performance.