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10/29/13 1:ritical Essay—Performing Technodrama: Towards a Technocultural Aesthetic in the Age of Digital Anxiety

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Home > Critical Essay—Performing Technodrama: Towards a Technocultural Aesthetic in the Age of Digital Anxiety

Critical Essay—Performing Technodrama:Towards a Technocultural Aesthetic in the

Age of Digital AnxietyStephen Fernandez, The University of Waterloo

Abstract

The late-Twentieth century witnessed the emergence of Technodrama, a new theatrical form thatfuses mixed media elements with playacting and dramatic narrative. In contrast to earlier attempts atintegrating technology into drama (such as Richard Wagner’s and Bertolt Brecht’s incorporation of varioumixed media technologies into their theatrical works), the Technodramatic stage is a liminal space in

which a reconfiguration of creativity and experimentation takes place by way of the interaction between‘live’ actors and technological devices (both physical and virtual) on the same performance stage. As suchI argue that the notion of art in Technodrama is complicit with the politics of technoculture (i.e., the

problems surrounding the culture of technological dependence in almost all facets of modern society), sucthat each technological device presented in a Technodrama play is capable of communicating—exclusiveof the narrative content—both artistic and cultural meanings. Drawing upon the concept of technocultureand such analytical approaches as aesthetic, literar y and cultural theories, this paper explores the aesthetic

potential and the cultural implications of integrating technology into dramatic theatre by examining the usof digitally rendered virtual and augmented reality technologies in recent Technodrama productions suchas Everyman: The Ultimate Commodity by Singapore’s Interaction and Entertainment Research Centre(IERC) as well as Susan Broadhurst’s The Jeremiah Project (Blue Bloodshot Flowers).

Once the technological differentiation of optics, acoustics and writing exploded theGutenberg monopoly around 1880, the fabrication of so-called Man became possible.His essence escapes into apparatuses [...] So-called Man is split up into physiologyand information technology.

Friedrich A. Kittler, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter , 1999, p.16.

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The late-Twentieth century witnessed the emergence of Technodrama, a new theatrical form thafuses elements of digital media with playacting and dramatic narrative. In contrast to earlierattempts at integrating technology into drama (such as Richard Wagner!s and Bertolt Brecht!sincorporation of various mixed media technologies into their theatrical works), theTechnodramatic stage is a liminal space in which the question of identity is made complicated bythe interaction between "live! actors and a myriad of sophisticated technological devices (bothphysical and virtual ones) on the same performance stage. In light of this juxtaposition between

advanced digital technologies and so-called "live! bodies, I argue that the notion of art inTechnodrama is complicit with the politics of technoculture (i.e., the problems surrounding theprevalent culture of technological dependence in almost all facets of modern society), such thateach technological device presented in a Technodrama play is capable of communicating—exclusive of the narrative content—both artistic and cultural meanings. What this means is thatthe relationship between theatre and technoculture creates in Technodrama a technoculturalaesthetic which further alienates the audience by forcing them to deliberate on the constructivismas well as the artistic and cultural implications of these digitally-enhanced mixed media playsproduced in the age of digital anxiety. In turn, the performance space in Technodrama becomesa site of constant tension generated by the juxtaposition of physical bodies and virtual elementson the same stage.

This tension between the physical and the virtual, I would argue, is vital for the development ofTechnodrama. As British dramatist and scholar Susan Broadhurst suggests in a 2004 essay forThe Drama Review , it is within the “tension-filled spaces” which result from the interface of bodyand technology on the same stage that “opportunities arise for new experimental forms andpractices” in contemporary theatre (48). Drawing upon the concept of technoculture and suchanalytical approaches as aesthetic, performance, and cultural theories, this essay explores theaesthetic potential and the cultural implications of integrating digital technology into dramatictheatre by examining the use of virtual and augmented reality technologies in recentTechnodrama productions such as theatre scholar Susan Broadhurst!s The Jeremiah Project

(Blue Bloodshot Flowers) and NTU-IERC!s Everyman: The Ultimate Commodity , a theatricaladaptation based on Singaporean writer Gopal Baratham!s short story “Ultimate Commodity”).

Over the past decade, the plurality of elements on the contemporary performance stage hadgenerated a desire among dramatists to experiment with the combination of theatre performanceand other art and media forms (for example, the use of augmented reality technology to createvirtual face masks in Everyman: The Ultimate Commodity ). The extensive use of digital mediaand computer technologies that include mixed reality presentations has morphologically alteredthe landscape of the performance stage, which had for over two and a half millennia, only beenable to incorporate traditional mechanized and analogue technologies that simply serve tocomplement the play!s thematic concerns. In fact, mixed media performances have become so

prominent that the numerous ways in which “live performance now endeavors to replicatetelevision, video and film” is indicative of theatre!s remediation of new media technologies, furthelegitimating its position within the increasingly mediatized field of cultural production in thetwenty-first century (Auslander 24). A recent example of such remediation of new mediatechnologies in the theatre is Robert Lepage!s integration of "live! and virtual realities through theuse of 3-D projections in the Metropolitan!s production of Siegfried . Even though Lepage is well-known for his mixed media approach towards the operatic stage, his employment of motion-capture cameras and high-resolution projectors to create a three-dimensional world in which the

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singers interact with the 3-D images projected on a ring of tilted screens surrounding theperformance space is undoubtedly an artistic innovation. However, it is worth noting that theproduction of mixed media performances is not confined only to the developed West.

Take for example Huzir Sulaiman!s 2007 production of Cogito at the Singapore Arts Festival. Thplay features the projection of a human head on a specially-designed wire mesh which renders athree-dimensional illusion of the image. As the dramatic action unfolds, the head interacts with

the actors in real-time and plays the role of a commentator that criticizes the goings-on of theperformance. Interestingly, just as Asia discovers the aesthetic potential of integrating "live! andvirtual realities in the theatre, Broadway is also witnessing a surge in the number of mixed mediaproductions. Sam Buntrock!s 2008 revival of Sunday in the Park with George and JorgeCousineau!s 2011 production of the same musical with the Philadelphia-based Arden Theatreare just two examples. In Buntrock!s production of Sunday , 3-D animation is used to fashion a"live! multimedia conceptual painting alongside dramatic playacting, while in Cousineau!s versionanimated copies of the lead character, Georges Seurat, are projected by way of "live! videotechnology on vertical screens positioned throughout the stage. Indeed, such innovative uses ofdigital technology in the theatre do attest to Technodrama!s potential in augmenting its ownaesthetic qualities through the interface between "live! performance and the computer-generated

virtual environment. But then again, the emergence of Technodrama in the late-Twentiethcentury is by no means a chance occurrence, as its evolution is built upon earlier attempts atintegrating technology into dramatic performance. Given that Richard Wagner and Bertolt Brechtwere already incorporating technology into their own productions before the late-Twentiethcentury, I hold that an exploration of these early experiments with technological drama wouldallow us to better appreciate the unique aesthetic qualities of Technodrama.

Wagner and Brecht: Early Experiments with Technological Drama

Although Technodrama is very much a recent theatrical movement, it is still plausible to assumethat many of its morphological traits (e.g., the use of augmented reality technology) might havebeen influenced by earlier experiments with the creation of technological drama, in particular,Richard Wagner!s and Bertolt Brecht!s incorporation of mixed media technologies into their ownproductions. However, in contrast to the mechanical technology employed by Wagner and Brechin their works, wherein the distinction between the physical reality of the actors and the materialartificiality of the technological devices is obvious, I would argue that the use of digital technologin Technodrama creates a liminal performance space in which the physical presence of theactors on the stage and the virtuality of the digital devices used in the production exist in constantension with one another. Furthermore, given the ability of digital devices to accurately reproducethe human body in the virtual realm (be it entirely or in its constituent parts), it would appear thatthe demarcation between the real and the virtual in Technodrama is increasingly porous. As

such, it is imperative that I should explore the ways in which the stages in Wagner!s and Brecht

!searly experiments with technological drama were not liminal spaces.

Living in the age of the Industrial Revolution might have inspired Wagner to harness the potentiaof technology in creating Gesamtkunstwerke (Total Artwork). Gesamtkunstwerke was an inter-media performance where a combination of scenic painting, lighting effects, and acousticaldesign, served to create a believable "virtual! world on the stage. In fact, Wagner himself hadargued that the true and complete artwork consists of the “reciprocal agreement and co-operation of all the branches” and mediums of art (5). What this means is that every theatrical


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device in a Wagnerian opera, be it the scenery or the actors! gestures, is in support of theoverarching theme of the drama. This structural concept is emblematic of Wagner!s emphasis onharmony in the creation of Gesamtkunstwerke (Total Artwork), whereby, as Patrick Carnegyexplains, “[a]ll the constituent elements” in a play “carried equal weight and had to be held inbalance” (118). In this sense, Wagner!s employment of mechanical technology serves as acontrived solution that overcomes the physical constraints of a performance stage.

For example in Parsifal , Wagner made the actors pretend to walk while “the scenery, on threehuge canvas rolls, moved behind them” (Carnegy 112). Propelled by electric motors, the canvasrolls moved continuously from left to right until the painting of the temple was eventually revealedon the last canvas located at the back of the stage. Such a configuration of the stage set allowedthe scenery to change rapidly as the actors pretended to walk through the artificial forest.However, while technology was able to fulfill Wagner!s desire to construct a “stage world thatwas rooted in myth rather than history,” he could not find the “appropriate visual language” to doso, as the dream-like, illusory world contained symbols that represented aspects of reality fromthe historical past (Carnegy 131). In this way, the scenery rendered in Wagner!s opera becomesa vortex that sucks the audience into the dreamscape. Perhaps it is this ability of the Wagnerianstage to completely immerse the audience into the virtual world of the opera that sets it apart

from the liminality of the Technodramatic stage, wherein the tension between the real and thevirtual is reinforced by the ontological ambiguity that pervades the interface between the physicareality of the actors and the virtuality of the digital devices on the same stage. As such, it mightbe tempting to assume that Technodrama has more in common with the constructivism of BertolBrecht!s drama than it does with the dream-like quality of Wagner!s opera.

Brecht made full use of the mechanical technology of the early-Twentieth century (e.g.,photographic and filmic projections) in most of his productions. In describing his method as theVerfremdungseffekt , or 'distancing effect' Brecht believed that the use of technological devicesin performance would prevent the audience from emotionally identifying with the action in theplay (as it was the case in dramatic realism). For this reason, Brecht, unlike Wagner, did not seeto immerse his audience into a theatrically rendered virtual world. Instead, by harnessing thepower of mechanical technology, he was able to distance them from the dramatic action on thestage, such that they may be compelled to deliberate on the pertinent issues raised in his plays.

For instance in Galileo , Brecht captured the cinematic qualities of “vivid visual images and itscombination of fluidity and abruptness” in a theatrical context (Willett 122). The stage designer,Caspar Neher, supplemented the performance with such mixed media tools as the “projections omaps, documents and works of art of the Renaissance,” thereby reinforcing the artificiality of thedrama (Esslin 128). Nevertheless, while this Brechtian play may be capable of distancing theaudience from the action on the stage by self-consciously exposing the artificiality of the

performance, it is not difficult to distinguish between the physical reality of the actors and thematerial artificiality of the technological devices employed in the drama. As such, the Brechtianstage cannot be considered a liminal performance space, as there is a clear distinction betweenthe real (human) and the artificial (technological) elements presented in the play, whereas theinterface between "live! actors and digital technology in Technodrama does not provide theaudience with the ability to easily distinguish between the real and the virtual. Therefore, asopposed to the non-liminal stages in Wagner!s and Brecht!s early experiments with technologicadrama, the Technodramatic stage is, I would argue, a liminal space in which the reality of the

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actors and the virtuality of the digital devices exist in constant tension with one another and thistension is especially pertinent to the state of the human condition in this age of digital anxiety.

Living in the Age of Digital Anxiety

While it might be tempting to study Technodrama on its own terms without considering thecontext within which it is produced, the very fact that drama is itself a mode of cultural production

in contemporary society clearly suggests that it does not and cannot exist in a vacuum. In thisregard, we have to take into account the ways in which the performance of Technodrama isinfluenced by the socio-cultural contexts from which these plays emerge. As the world continuesto evolve into a network of interconnected places due to rapid globalization, any form ofknowledge (technological knowledge included) produced in one locality can easily be transferredto another with the help of advanced communication technologies such as the internet. In fact,collaborations between dramatists from different parts of the world have in recent years becomea common practice in theatre production; for example, the production team for the Singapore-based Interaction and Entertainment Research Center!s (NTU-IERC) 2007 Technodrama play,Everyman: The Ultimate Commodity, comprises of dramatists from the United States, SingaporeMalaysia, Vietnam and Spain.

The introduction of digital and high-speed communication technologies into our lives has madeus conscious of our position within global space, and for this reason, it is not surprising that wemight begin to cast doubts on our ontological status by questioning our own existence.Furthermore, while most Marxist scholars maintain that technological advancement is inextricabltied to capital accumulation, I am inclined to take this notion further by looking beyond thecriticism of economic imperatives and at the cultural effects of using technology. In his essay“Time-space Compression and the Postmodern Condition,” David Harvey suggests that time-space compression in the postmodern world radically redefines our perception of time andspace, because technological advancements such as the creation of the internet allows formultiple temporalities to exist at the same time over space. In other words, people from differentparts of the world can share common experiences and immerse themselves in multiple"consciousnesses! at the same time (albeit virtually) on such high-speed digital communicationalplatforms as Facebook, Tweeter and Skype.

According to Harvey, the postmodern condition of such innovations would so undermine thetraditional linear correlation between time and space that what we project to be the “future can bdiscounted into the present” in the same way that “[p]ast experience gets compressed into someoverwhelming present,” so that what we are left with is an ephemeral montage of images whichis perpetually stuck in the present moment (291). At the same time, technology has become apart of the commodification process, whereby the acceleration in the turnover time of production

emphasizes the “values and virtues of instantaneity” and of “disposability,” so much so that the“commodification of images of the most ephemeral sort”—such as those in film and television aswell as those on the internet would serve to sustain the accumulative mechanism of capitalism(Harvey 288). It is this ephemerality of information, culture, technological innovations and evenour existence that alienates us from any central core of knowledge, such that we becomesuspicious of our own identity as well as the integrity of our ontological status. As a result of thisphenomenon, we begin to live in perpetual doubt and in constant anticipation of the unknown(such as the fear that technology might one day replace us). In turn, the constant redevelopmenand redeployment of technology at increasingly rapid rates could only serve to reinforce the

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asymptotic nature of representation in our postmodern world, as any technological device that isconsidered new one day might become passé or obsolete the next.

The notion of digital anxiety provides the ideal cultural environment for the creation anddevelopment of Technodrama as a new and evolving theatrical paradigm in the postmodern era,whereby the idea of “culture” has become, as Fredric Jameson asserts, “a product in its ownright,” especially since the marketplace is “fully as much a commodity as any of the items it

includes within itself” (Postmodernism 1991, x). Jameson explains that while modernism wassomewhat critical of the commodity as an organizing principle in our quotidian lives,postmodernism is in essence “the consumption of sheer commodification as a process” (x). Inother words, the postmodern condition is governed by a process of producing and consumingcommodities at such a rapid rate that a culture of commodity gratification has come to definecontemporary social life, thereby contributing to the emergence of a seemingly endless appetitefor new goods. In the case of technological products, the ephemeral nature of this culture ofcommodity gratification is reflected in our constant desire for newer and more sophisticateddevices, even if we do not know what we actually need them for. As such, it would appear thatour postmodern understanding of technology as an ephemeral and a disposable commoditystands in contrast to the modernist faith in technological innovation as a means by which to

improve our lives. As Alan Sikes explains, in the modern era, “[c]hampions of technology arguedthat advances in industry, transport, and communication would supply new solutions to the mostintractable difficulties” in the world (149). However, in light of the tendency of most high-techcorporations to market their technological products as commodities of pleasure, Sikes concedesthat despite his longing for technology to change the world, his “Postmodern perspective”compels him to “view such revolutionary promises with suspicion” (149).

Sikes! suspicion of the world-changing potential of technology in the postmodern era mightindeed be symptomatic of the sense of digital anxiety which permeates almost every facet ofcontemporary society ranging from our anxiety about the arrival of virtual reality technology, toour desire for automated robots that look, talk and behave exactly like real human beings. As oupostmodern lives become increasingly dependent on the ephemeral pleasure of usingtechnological devices that reproduce animated copies of our bodies or body parts in the virtualrealm, this sense of digital anxiety is quickly transformed into a deeper sense of ontologicalanxiety about our existence vis-à-vis our perception of our own identity in a highly mediatizedworld. Such an idea is most significant in a theatrical context. By using sophisticatedtechnological devices as part of its theatricality, the performance of Technodrama within theboundaries of the stage is able to reflect and even reinforce the more deeply ontologicalanxieties that results from the rapid penetration of digital technology into our lives. In the sameway that the sense of digital anxiety in contemporary society might alienate us from any centralcore of knowledge, the employment of digital technology in Technodrama could potentially

alienate us from the materiality of the human condition, especially when it comes to thefragmentation of human identity as well as the ontological uncertainty over our existence andsense of "Being! as shown in the use of augmented reality technology in Everyman: The UltimateCommodity and the integration of artificial intelligence into The Jeremiah Project (Blue BloodshoFlowers).

Towards a Technocultural Aesthetic

>Perhaps it is the relative youth of technoculture as a concept that provides the impetus for


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students and scholars of the humanities to further explore the potential applications of thistheoretical model to different modes of cultural expression in contemporary society. Whileproponents of technoculture have focused primarily on conceptualizing the positive and negativeeffects posed by the penetration of advanced media technologies into every facet ofcontemporary social life, this approach has led most cultural theorists as well as literary andtheatre scholars to lapse into a discourse of technological determinism (i.e., a critical perspectivethat only emphasizes the benefits and dangers of using technology) and in doing so, little or eve

no attention is being paid to the complex aesthetic and cultural implications which pertain to theemployment of digital technology in dramatic theatre. In this sense, anyone who wishes to studyTechnodrama as both an artistic movement and a cultural phenomenon has to recognize that“cultural technologies,” warn Constance Penley and Andrew Ross, “are far from neutral, and thathey are the result of social processes and power relations” (xii). On the one hand, dramatictheatre, like any art form, is a mode of communication. On the other hand, technology is capableof becoming a double-edged sword that delivers both good and evil consequences. As such,Technodrama is intrinsically enmeshed in the complex politics of technoculture, whereby the“disempowering habit of demonizing technology as a satanic mill of domination” is pitchedagainst the “postmodernist celebrations of the technological sublime” (Penley & Ross xii).

In light of the deterministic technocultural politics which problematize the incorporation of mixedmedia technologies in Technodrama, it has become even more challenging to adopt a morenuanced approach towards the examination of the aesthetic and cultural effects of integratingtechnology into dramatic performance, one that does not brutally condemn or wholly favor theuse of technology within a theatrical context. However, while it may not be easy to adopt abalanced viewpoint when criticizing Technodrama, we ought to remember that this evolvingtheatrical paradigm is not simply a compilation or collage of various media and artistic forms, butrather, its inclination towards experimentation connotes the dissolution of “a boundary” dividingtraditionally disparate disciplines, thereby embracing a spirit of multiplicity in dramaticperformance (Shepherd & Wallis 137). Theatre in all its manifestations has always been a social

spectacle which can neither exclude humans nor remove articles associated with social life fromthe stage. “The spectacle,” writes Marxist theorist Guy Debord, “is a social relationship betweenpeople that is mediated by images,” whereby the actors on the stage communicate with theaudience by means of action and speech, while the visual and audio elements of a performancecommunicate their own aesthetic and cultural meanings with or without regard to the dramaticcontent of the play (4). In this sense, the extensive use of mixed media technologies inTechnodrama would provide the ideal platform on which critiques of what Stephen Watt calls “acommodity culture driven by the media and the image” can be expressed (39).

“Technoculture,” as Penley and Ross conceive it, “is located as much in the work of everydayfantasies and actions as at the level of corporate or military decision making” and the only way to

react against the dominance of technology in our lives is to encourage “the capacity of ordinarywomen and men to think of themselves as somehow in charge of even their most highlymediated environments” (xiii). As such, there is a need for audiences across the world todeliberate on the pervasiveness of technoculture in contemporary social life and to considerways of reacting against the effects of the digital anxiety that permeates every facet of atechnologically-dependent society. However, amidst the increasing popularity of technoculture aa critical lens by which to interpret such artistic forms as literature and drama, I find it necessaryto look beyond Penley!s and Ross! theoretical perspectives on this concept, in order to


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understand its relationship with a more aesthetic perspective on the performance ofTechnodrama. In Times of the Technoculture (1999), Kevin Robins and Frank Webster assertthat the “technocultural project, as it is concerned with information and communicationstechnologies, now embraces a very broad range of issues—from economic policy to virtualpopular culture—and consequently mobilizes a variety of discourses” in areas such as media,cultural studies and, I would argue, most recently, in Technodrama, where technoculture andaesthetics are deeply intertwined (3). The changing technoscape since the 1960s has been

reflected in the overall shift in perspective from the political-economic to the cultural, aphenomenon which has resulted in the “opening up of the agenda, from a concern with theinformation society to an interest in the virtual life,” thus marking a cultural transition fromepistemological doubt to ontological uncertainty (Robins & Webster 3). What this means is thatthe questioning of knowledge (how we know what we know) has become passé, replaced by anew kind of skepticism that has emerged in the age of digital anxiety, one that is suspicious ofthe "realness! of our existence in the physical world.

In a postmodern environment where we are anxious to locate our position within global spaceand to ascertain the veracity of our existence, the interplay of various social, political and culturaforces compels us to constantly anticipate the arrival of new technologies and, in turn, to be

alienated by the unfamiliarity of their dominant presence in our lives, even though most of theseso-called new and innovative technological products are merely variations of the same basictechnical concept. As such, it is this desire for new things that forms the bedrock for the infinitereproduction of reality as we know it (most notably in the form of objects, images, people,environments etc.) by means of machinery. The representational power of machinery in themodernist period of the early-twentieth century was manifested, as Fredric Jameson claims, inthe celebration of mechanical systems like the machine gun and the motor car as “visibleemblems, sculptural nodes of energy which gives tangibility and figuration to the motive energiesof that earlier moment of modernization” (36). As such, while the "metaphorical presence! oftechnology (i.e., its symbolic power) produced in the era of modernization could articulate certain

cultural points—mainly because the materiality of these devices inherently possessed thecapacity for tactile representation—this distinctively modernist ability, however, does not holdtrue for the technology of the postmodern age. Instead, as Jameson points out, machinery in thepostmodern age is only capable of representing the process of reproduction which pervadesmost postmodernist texts. In this sense, beyond the thematic concerns of the dramatic content,the employment of technological devices in Technodrama participates in the process ofreproducing "realities! in the form of images and sounds, thereby affording us “some glimpse intoa postmodern or technological sublime, whose power or authenticity is documented by thesuccess of such works in evoking a whole new postmodern space in emergence around us”(Jameson 37). Thus, despite the absence of technology!s representative power in thepostmodern age, simply experiencing its presence in Technodrama could raise our awareness o

the technocultural landscape that has dominated much (if not all) of our postmodern world.

As technology continues to advance at a rapid pace in the new millennium, more sophisticatedsystems will be created and it is inevitable that these inventions will eventually dominateeveryday life in contemporary society. Perhaps no other technological innovation in recent timescan match the computer in terms of its pervasiveness in our postmodern world and its ability toshape the ways in which we organize our lives; this latter point becomes even more prominent amore people begin to use the computer for a multitude of activities ranging from writing to the


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creation of art. With the arrival of digital technology, questions regarding the relationship betweereality and virtuality have emerged. Furthermore, the notion of art in new dramatic movementssuch as Technodrama has also been refashioned by the increasing use in contemporary theatreproduction of machines with high computing power. Fredric Jameson, in his study of the role thatechnology plays in the artworks of the postmodern age, argues that the demands whichcomputer technology makes “on our capacity for aesthetic representation” allow for the creationof non-physical entities that challenge the traditional idea of tangible presence, a quality which is

characteristic of the older machineries that were produced in the era of modernization (37).However, this new capacity for aesthetic representation is further complicated by the advent ofvirtual reality, which calls into question any preconceived notion of what constitutes reality.Because virtual reality has the potential to distort the boundary that divides the "real! and thevirtual (i.e., the technology could potentially cast doubt on our very own existence), it becomeseven harder to formulate an appropriate aesthetic response to works of art that employ thishighly advanced but ontologically problematic technology.

While some cultural critics may point out that the apparent ubiquity of virtual reality technology inour postmodern world (as reflected in some Asian advertisements that employ augmented realitytechnology) could potentially result in the impossibility of differentiating between reality and

virtuality, such a postulation, I would argue, is driven by the often unsubstantiated fear that virtuareality might one day supplant the physical reality of the world as we know it. As such, the onlyway to dispel such assumptions about the dangers of integrating virtual reality into our physicalworld (including theatre production) is to examine how virtual reality functions. Slavoj #i$ek, in hifilmed lecture The Reality of the Virtual (2004), sees virtual reality as a miserable idea which, inhis opinion, is essentially a way to “reproduce in an artificial digital medium our experience ofreality” (48). What this means is that virtual reality creates by way of digital media technologies, a"double! that aims to duplicate aspects of what we conceive to be (physical) reality. In otherwords, virtual reality is very much a technologically reproduced image of reality. Because thisimage is a product of the "real! world (as it is produced by human programmers), it is possible to

suggest that virtual reality exists inside—and not outside—of reality as we know it by creating anew virtual space.

As I mentioned earlier, some cultural critics assume that this new virtual space exists in a realmthat is completely separate from reality, that it is the ontological antithesis of the "real! world. Intheir analysis of the effects that virtual reality imposes on the perception of space in thepostmodern age, Robins and Webster assert that “virtual culture is a culture of disengagementfrom the real world and its human condition of embodied (enworlded) experience and meaning”(244). The argument above is based on the idea that the virtual world is distinct from the so-called "real! world, such that our contact with the technological might serve to immerse us in “analternative space that will entirely fulfill the desire for effective disconnection and refuge from the

world,” a space that compels us to go on “ignoring the erosion of the world!s reality” (Robins &Webster 246-47). However, I would contend that Robins! and Webster!s distinction betweenreality and the virtual inadvertently obscures the fact that virtual elements are very much a part oreality, in so far as it remains a product of human intelligence and labor (i.e., it is made byhumans using materials from the "real! world). Moreover, even if one were to completely immershimself, or herself, in the digital world of virtual reality, it is currently impossible to sustain thisimmersion without the help of tactile elements such as a constant supply of energy which atpresent can only be produced in the "real! world. Likewise, in the context of Technodrama, the

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validity of any theoretical model that divides the "real! and the virtual into two distinct entities isundermined by the interaction on the same stage between virtual characters and "real! characterplayed by "live! actors in The Jeremiah Project (Blue Bloodshot Flowers) and Everyman: The Ultimate Commodity . Therefore, in the subsequent sections of this paper, I will be examining ingreater detail the implications of integrating "live! and virtual realities in these two Technodramaplays.

Mixed Realities in Technodrama

Susan Broadhurst!s The Jeremiah Project (Blue Bloodshot Flowers) was an internationalcollaboration at Brunel University between British dramatists and computer engineers and ElodieBerland, a French actress. The project, which investigates the interface between physicality andArtificial Intelligence (AI) technology in contemporary theatre performance, consists of a numberof smaller projects that focus on the theatrical relationship between physical and virtual bodies indifferent forms of performance, ranging from dance theatre to dramatic theatre. For ourdiscussion, I will be looking at the 2001 staging of Blue Bloodshot Flowers , a Technodrama piecwhich explores the tensions that exist when technology interacts with the body on the stage. Thedramatic narrative of the play is based on a short text of the same name written by Philip Stainer

in which the narrator recounts a love affair with an unknown other long since gone. While theaesthetics of the story resides in the narrator!s distorted memory of and unrequited longing forlost love, it does not provide any information on the identity and gender of the lovers and it is notclear if the narrator is even alive. Nevertheless, Broadhurst realized the aesthetic potential thatthe narrative brought to her investigation of the interface between physical and virtual bodies in amediatized environment, as “no body,” she argues, be they physical or virtual, “can escape(re)presentation altogether” (48). For this reason, two actors—one "real! and the other virtual—were introduced to the dramatization of this love story, in order to examine the ways in whichvirtual bodies can be represented in relation to their physical counterparts. With this set-up, the"real! actor performs within the constraints of the stage, while the virtual actor, whose computer-generated animated head is the only body part that is seen by the audience, exists as aninteractive image that is projected onto a black cyclorama located at the upstage area. The "real!actor, played by the French actress Elodie Berland, does not speak with her own voice, butinstead, a French voiceover serves as a memory device which recounts the lost love in her life.For the virtual actor, visual surveillance and virtual reality technologies were employed to createJeremiah, an avatar that possesses human traits such as the ability to see and to express hisemotions (i.e., he can feel happy, sad or even angry during the course of the Technodramaperformance). The decision to cast a female actor and a male virtual avatar is intentional, asBroadhurst wanted to experiment with the audience!s interpretation of the relationship betweenBerland and Jeremiah, whose virtual presence on the stage is conveniently assumed to be theimage of the departed lover in the dramatic narrative. Subsequently, Berland!s relationship with

Jeremiah becomes even more ambiguous, as the interaction between these two actors conjuresa sense of ontological uncertainty which challenges the neat categorization between the "real!and the virtual. In Blue Bloodshot Flowers , the assumption that physical presence is "real!, whilevirtual presence is not, is further complicated by the fact that Jeremiah is not a passive but areactive avatar, one whose emotions are shaped by the behavior of bodies and objects within hisvisual field on the stage. For example, high rates of movement by Berland make him "happy!,whereas when she leaves the stage, the lack of company makes him "sad! and in both instanceshe expresses his emotions by way of his facial expression. What this means is that Jeremiah!s


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behavior is directly influenced by the different types and varying intensities of the stimuli thatexist on the stage. In fact, he possesses such a high level of artificial intelligence that he canexpress multiple emotions simultaneously, as he reacts to visual stimulus. Consequently, thisnon-prescriptive intelligence allows Berland, the "live! actor, to participate in a direct and real-timeinteraction with the avatar Jeremiah.

For every performance of Blue Bloodshot Flowers , Jeremiah is original in the sense that his

behavior is specific to the types of stimuli produced by Berland!s movements on the stage, whichrange from the rapid tossing of flowers which excites the virtual actor to the exceedingly slow-paced hand gestures that frustrate him. This computer-generated avatar is not simplyreproduced as a kind of pre-recorded scripted animation that exists in exactly the same formevery time it appears onstage. Instead, he behaves like an improvisation artist who changes hisperformance style in relation to the situation in which he is immersed, as he interacts withanother body that might cajole, abandon or provoke this virtual being, thereby causing it to reactaccordingly to these stimuli by expressing feelings of happiness, sadness or anger. Even thoughthe facial emotions that Jeremiah expresses in reaction to certain stimuli were electronicallyprogrammed by a computer, his ability to demonstrate random behavior adds a tinge ofunpredictability to his character, a trait which allows this virtual actor to inch even closer towards

becoming a "real-life! being. Because artificial intelligence is capable of producing a virtual bodylike Jeremiah who can express human emotions in an arbitrary fashion that defies the need toadhere to a fixed script whenever he performs on stage with the "live! actor Berland, Blue Bloodshot Flowers is therefore able to successfully subvert Jameson!s claim that machines in thpostmodern age only exist as machines of reproduction.

Far from simply being a tool for reproduction, the play!s use of advanced digital technology tocreate a life-like virtual being whose unpredictability fragments the formal coherence of thedrama is a distinct aesthetic trait in itself. By inviting the audience onstage to join the "live! actorBerland in her interactions with Jeremiah in the second half of the play, Broadhurst brings a newaesthetic experience to contemporary Technodrama, as this participatory mode of artisticappreciation requires the beholder to physically engage the work of art—which in this case is theavatar Jeremiah—in a two-way communication. As they wave their hands and walk about on thestage, members of the audience are able to instigate Jeremiah to respond specifically to theirgestures and movements. This interaction between physical and virtual bodies in a singleperformance space, Broadhurst argues, frustrates the audience!s “expectations of any simpleinterpretation” of the play which is “complicit with the dominant means of digital representation” icontemporary theatre such as the use of virtual reality and visual surveillance technologies (53).This “metaphysical complicity”—to borrow a term from Derrida—is necessary for any critique ofthe dominance of technology in our postmodern world to take place, for it would be difficult for usto criticize a certain cultural phenomenon if we were to ignore the machineries that produce the

phenomenon in the first place (281). For this reason, Technodrama!s critique of contemporarytechnoculture necessarily involves the use of advanced digital technologies such as artificialintelligence as part of the dramatic performance, in order to raise the audience!s awareness ofthe politics of technological dependence in contemporary society, a problem that is onlysustained by the narrative!s prevalent sense of digital anxiety about the relationship betweenhumans and advanced technologies.

Consequently, the integration of artificial intelligence into Blue Bloodshot Flowers would serve to


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alienate the audience (in very much the same way as Brecht!s Verfremdungseffekt ) by allowingthem close contact with a virtual being, thereby arousing their awareness of the dominance incontemporary society of advanced digital technologies, in particular, the commodifiedtechnological devices produced by multi-national corporations for mass consumption. In fact, Iwould argue that the audience, through their physical interaction with Jeremiah, is better able toreflect on the ways in which technology has infiltrated every facet of contemporary life to theextent that it becomes increasingly challenging to distinguish between the "real! and the virtual.

Indeed, Blue Bloodshot Flowers is a self-reflexive dramatic performance in which we as humans“re-perform ourselves” in a highly mediatized theatrical environment, “in order to understandthrough culture!s eyes, what our performance means” in relation to the technocultural landscapethat is external to the theatre (Liu & Davenport 238). As such, not only does the employment ofartificial intelligence redefine the conventional reproductive status of technology in contemporarysociety (as is seen in Jeremiah!s ability to adapt to different situations in a theatrical context), it isalso indicative of how today!s advanced technologies behave more like humans than mechanicaconstructs, a paradoxical situation which results in the blurring of the boundary between the "reaand the virtual.

A Conflict between the Virtual and the !Real"

The potential for such conflation of the "real! and the virtual is pushed even further in NTU-IERC!Everyman , wherein questions about the reality of the virtual and the virtuality of the "real! (i.e.,questions that reflect the digital anxiety about existence in a highly mediatized world) becomeeven more apparent as augmented reality is integrated into a theatrical environment that consistof "live! actors, such that any assumption on the part of the audience of the neat distinctionbetween humans and virtual bodies becomes problematic. Augmented Reality (AR) in the theatris an outgrowth of table-top augmented reality art installation projects which evolved in the early90!s (Azuma 4). In the table-top AR configuration a participant wearing a mobile virtual-realityheadset could train the device on a black and white marker and witness a virtual objectsuperimposed in the place of that marker. As Ronald Azuma explains it, the more familiar VirtualReality Technology - which creates a virtual world that “completely replaces the real worldoutside”—is different from Augmented Reality in that AR “supplements, rather than supplants,the real world” (1). To this end, a mixed media performance based on Augmented RealityTechnology would need to combine the “real and the virtual environment[s],” making them“interactive in real time” and rendering the virtual image of the "live! performance to be “registerein three dimensions” (Azuma 356). NTU-IERC!s Technodrama project, Everyman , attempts toaccomplish this, beginning with the idea that if the interaction between the marker and the humaparticipant were to be inverted, so that the marker became mobile and the participant static, itwould be possible to employ Augmented Reality Technology in the theatre, where the audiencebecomes the static participant, while the actors set the mobile marker into motion (according to

this scenario, in the place of a virtual reality headset the audience would see the virtual-objectsuperimposition via an onstage screen). Such innovations when employed in the theatre shouldallow for the adoption of two ontologically distinct if sometimes overlapping spaces on the stage—one "real! and the other "virtual!.

The performance of Everyman at the 2007 Toronto Fringe Festival involved the incorporation ofcomputer-generated imagery (CGI) into traditional theatrical environments and, conversely, theinclusion of traditional theatrical scenes into a virtual environment. As the subject of their


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Technodrama play, NTU-IERC chose Singaporean writer Gopal Baratham!s short story “UltimateCommodity,” which it recognized as the ideal vehicle with which to investigate augmentedreality!s theatrical possibilities. Baratham!s short story imagines a future in which a Singaporeanscientist has created a formula (Substance X) which causes all those who ingest it to undergo aphysical transformation so as to become universal organ donors (i.e., so that their organs couldbe harvested and transplanted into any other person's body without fear of rejection). In thisimagined future, the Singaporean Government has taken the liberty of adding Substance x to the

city's drinking water, with the objective that Singapore might finally fulfill its destiny as a countrywhere the government's claim that “Our people have become our only resource [...] has becomeliterally true” (Jernigan 36). However, a significant side-effect of the formula is that it also causesthe various distinguishing characteristics of Singaporeans to disappear, so that every personbecomes morphologically identical to every other person. Against this backdrop, Everyman focused on a small part of the larger story; on the identity crisis which occurs when a father(Binny) confuses his daughter (Leeni) with his wife (Ri).

Throughout the Technodrama play, augmented reality proved itself to be uniquely suited to thetelling of this story due to the fact that Binny could be played by a "live! actor even as the othertwo characters! features could be "augmented! by virtual face masks superimposed into the

scene with Binny by means of screen projection. What NTU-IERC had created, in essence, weretwo stages: a "virtual stage! and a "real stage!. In the "real! stage the audience would always andonly see the real actors, albeit outfitted with the necessary devices used to deliver the necessaryprojections to the virtual stage. In the virtual stage (which was situated side by side with the "realstage - so that each shared half the stage) the audience would see these same actors from thereal stage projected onto a large screen, albeit augmented with their respective "virtual masks!.This set-up would allow "real! actors the ability to interact with the augmented ones in the virtualstage. Moreover, this conceptualization also allows for the possibility that while a scene canbegin with Binny talking to two characters (his wife and his daughter) it can end with him talkingto a single character (a morphed version of his mother and daughter) or, even, with him talking to

himself, as his features morph with those of the remaining characters. In relation to the dramaticcontent of Everyman , this innovative conception not only helps the audience to visualize theelimination of distinguishing characteristics in real-time, but also serves to reinforce the moregeneral theme of the work—i.e., that perhaps contemporary Singaporeans have already begunthe process of losing their various distinguishing characteristics. Furthermore, the simultaneousstaging of "real! characters with "simulated! characters also resonates with the theme of identityconflation, itself a prevalent theme in Baratham's original text, even though this interplay of "real!and virtual bodies in a single theatrical space raises questions about the assumed distinctionbetween the "real! and the virtual (but more on this later, as I will look first at the issue of identityconflation brought about by the use of augmented reality in theatre).

The potential of AR to express the nightmare which might arise from identity conflation becamemost notable in the scene that sees the lead character, Binny, mistake his wife Ri for hisdaughter, Leeni, because the two have become identical. The idea of "cloned! or "confused!identities among the characters in the play was implemented by "replacing! the head of one actowith that of another. As a result, the audience is able to simultaneously see both the maskedplayer on the virtual stage and the unmasked player on the "live! stage. Placing the virtual stageand the "real! stage side by side serves to accentuate the meta-theatrical elements of Everyman as both the "live! action and the virtual performance reflected on the screen are explicitly


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presented in real-time on a single stage, thereby providing the audience with a "double take! onthe artificiality of the dramatic action. The idea of splitting the stage into "live! and virtualperformance spaces not only makes it explicit to the audience that everything happening onscreen is happening in real-time, but it also serves an important thematic function in the actualnarrative, as the audience—in witnessing both stages simultaneously—is allowed to betteridentify with the very identity confusion which perplexes the characters themselves. For instancewhen Leeni very nearly seduces her own father, the audience!s investment in this identity

confusion is compounded by the fact that it witnesses both scenes simultaneously (i.e., whatlooks like the mother seducing the father from one perspective, is very clearly the daughterseducing her own father from another). Consequently, while a more traditional maskedperformance only allows audiences the ability to see the role-specific face mask, NTU-IERC!sEveryman simultaneously allows the audience the opportunity to pierce through the materiality othe mask to the actual human face of the performer playing the character, such that the audienceencounters what I call the "double vision! of witnessing in real-time, the identity confusionunfolding in the virtual space projected on the screen as well as in the "live! action.

As the "live! actors playing the characters Binny, Leeni and Ri in the "real! stage are pitchedagainst their virtual counterparts on the projection screen, it is tempting to presume that the

physical presence of the "live! actors renders them more "real! than the virtual presence of thevirtual characters whose faces can be morphed from one to another by way of augmented realitytechnology. In contrast to the explicit artificiality of the avatar Jeremiah, a virtual being inBroadhurst!s Blue Bloodshot Flowers that is constructed entirely by computer technology, thecreation of the augmented reality environment in Everyman involves a combination of computer-generated-imagery and real-time video recordings of the "live! actors, whereby the virtual imagesin the form of virtual face masks are juxtaposed with the human images on the projection screenthat divides the "real! performance space from that of the virtual. As such, it is easy to concludethat Jeremiah is obviously a virtual being, whereas the same cannot be that easily said of thevirtual manifestations of Binny, Leeni and Ri, as their existence on their projection screen is

marked by the symbiosis of a virtual face and a technologically reproduced human body. In thissense, they are neither entirely virtual nor are they completely "real!. Thus, it would be unfair toascertain that just because the virtual characters can only appear in the virtual stage, they areconsidered constructs and are therefore "unreal!, for it could be argued that the replication on theprojection screen of the images of the "live! actors who perform in the "real! stage might causethem to lose their "realness!, assuming that such a thing even exists.

If the difference between the "real! and the virtual is only a matter of perception (on the part of theaudience), then perhaps a better understanding of the conflict between the virtuality of the "real!and the reality of the virtual on the Technodramatic stage could be attained by turning to Slavoj#i$ek!s reading of the last scene in Robert Heinlein!s 1942 science fiction novel, The Unpleasan

Profession of Jonathan Hoag. #i$ek focuses on the part of the story where the protagonist Hoaginstructs the private investigator Randall and his wife Cynthia not to open the window of their carwhen they drive home to New York. At first, the journey proceeds without mishap as the couplefollows the prohibition. However, things take a turn when they witness an accident in which achild is run over by a car. Initially, they remain calm and continue to drive, but upon seeing apatrol officer, they stop the car to inform him of the accident. As Cynthia lowers the side windowa little, they realize that there is no sunlight, no cops, no children and no sound outside the openwindow, nothing except for a grey and formless mist which merges with the window and begins


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to drift into the car. Randall forcibly cranks up the window and suddenly, the sunny scenecomplete with the policeman, the sidewalk and the city is restored. Thus, by deciding to roll downthe window just a little and peering through the opening, he realizes that there is nothing, butthrough the glass, the scene of city traffic and sunny streets remains perfectly intact.

What is crucial here is the line of demarcation which separates the outside of the car from theinside and in this case, this line is materialized as the windowpane. The discord between inside

and outside is most apparent if we were to situate ourselves on the inside of a car. #i$ek explainthat this basic phenomenological experience of disproportion occurs when we perceive the worldbeyond the windowpane as “another mode of reality, not immediately continuous with the realityinside the car” (15). As we sit comfortably in the car, the external world outside the car “appearsto be fundamentally "unreal!, as if their reality has been suspended, put in parenthesis,” such thait seems as though the objects of the outside world exist only as “a kind of cinematic realityprojected onto the screen of the windowpane” (#i$ek 15). In other words, the external reality is"fictional! and if we were to join Randall and Cynthia in unwinding the windowpane and in sodoing, allow some of the outside world to flow into the inside of the car, the presumption that theexternal is fictional, whereas the internal is "real!, would collapse, as the neat division betweenreality and fiction is ruptured.

Essentially, what Heinlein!s science fiction and #i$ek!s analysis of it tell us is that the distinctionbetween the "real! and the virtual is artificial. The horror that Randall and Cynthia experience inrecognizing that there is no such thing as an inside or an outside world is in fact an artifice thatshapes the story into a work of art. Moreover, what is truly horrific in this last scene of the novelis the way in which the virtual and the "real! have bled seamlessly into one another, a fusionwhich has been theatrically (and corporeally) expressed in Everyman . Relating #i$ek!s point tothe audience!s phenomenological experience of the barrier (i.e., the projection screen) whichseparates the virtual stage and the "real! stage in the Technodrama play, let us imagine that the"real! stage, together with the space that the audience occupies, constitutes the inside of the car,while the virtual stage becomes the external world that lies beyond the barrier. Since theprojection screen is physically present on the stage, its materiality becomes too jarring for theaudience to ignore and in this sense, it is similar to the tightly shut windowpane of the car inHeinlein!s story, whereby the outside world has been completely shut off. In this way, the virtualcharacters and the virtual space in which they perform are considered fictional, so long as theprojection screen remains intact. However, once this barrier is removed to allow the virtualcharacters and the virtual stage to spill into the so-called "real! stage, then the differentiationbetween the virtual and the "real! becomes distorted in the same way that the assumedseparation between fiction and reality in #i$ek!s example of the car had been overturned. Whatthis means is that the "real! is perhaps no more different than the virtual, as the expression of thereality of the virtual and the virtuality of the "real! in Everyman reflects the way in which the

politics of technoculture has permeated our postmodern world to the extent that humans canbecome virtual characters in cyberspace, while virtual entities are able to exist as veneers thatcan be attributed to the identities of human beings living in what we regard as reality.Consequently, it is the foregrounding of this tension between the virtual and the real in theperformance of Technodrama that reinforces and sustains the liminality of the Technodramaticstage.

Conclusion


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Throughout this essay, we have looked at the ways in which the performance of Technodramahas gradually developed into a technocultural aesthetic in the age of digital anxiety, a periodmarked by the dominance of consumerism which perpetuates the ephemerality of knowledge,culture, technological innovations and even our existence in space. As such, the pervasive sensof digital anxiety in contemporary society becomes a structure of feeling that alienates us fromany knowledge system that serves to ascertain the veracity of our identity or the integrity of ourontological status. As we have seen in the two Technodrama plays examined in this paper,

dramatic form is both mutable and fluid in the way that the virtual stage bleeds into the so-called"real! stage. Through the interaction between physical and virtual bodies in a single performancespace, the technological devices that these plays employ are able to communicate to theaudience both aesthetic and cultural meanings, as these devices draw the audience!s attentionto the technocultural politics surrounding the dominance of technology in contemporary society,while simultaneously allowing them to appreciate the formal beauty of the interface between thehuman and the technological. This dual-role that technology plays in enhancing the aestheticqualities of Technodrama and in inviting the audience to deliberate on the ramifications oftechnological dependence is by no means an erasure of the merits that dramatic content bringsto this evolving theatrical form. Rather, the emotional relationships articulated by the content ofeach of the two Technodrama plays provide the basis on which the idea of having "live! actors

interact with virtual actors can be materialized into dramatic action. Hence, while the uniquemorphological traits of Technodrama may serve to undermine the conventional distinctionbetween reality and virtuality as separate entities, these same traits are also capable offoregrounding the constructivism of this evolving theatrical art form, whereby the performance ofTechnodrama, with its employment of different types of digital technology, is as much afabrication as the technological devices themselves.

Notes

Works Cited

Such technological devices include electric pulleys for the rotation of painted scenes in Wagner!s operas as wellas photographic and filmic projections in most of Brecht!s plays.NTU-IERC refers to the Nanyang Technological University – Interaction and Entertainment Research Centre, amixed-reality and digital media research facility located in Singapore.According to Brecht, the distancing effect “prevents the audience from losing itself passively and completely in thcharacter created by the actor,” thus affording them the role of “a consciously critical observer” (91).In March 2011, the emerging field of Digital Interactive Theatre was further enriched by the production of theworld!s first “Skype Play” entitled “You Wouldn!t Know Him, He Lives in Texas. You Wouldn!t Know Her, She

Lives in London.” However, a discussion on the cultural implications of this production is beyond the scope of thispaper.Willis Wee!s article "5 Cool Augmented Reality Case Studies in Asia" takes an in-depth look at this recent culturaphenomenon in Asia. The URL for this article is http://www.penn-olson.com/2011/04/20/augmented-reality-in-asia

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Auslander, Philip. Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture . New York: Routledge, 1999.Print.

Azuma, Ronald T. “A Survey of Augmented Reality.” Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments 6.4 (1997): 355–385. Print.

_____. “Overview of Augmented Reality.” International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques: ACM SIGGRAPH 2004 Course Notes No. 26. New York: ACM,2004. Print.

Azuma, Ronald T. and Gary Bishop. “Improving Static & Dynamic Registration in an OpticalSeethrough HMD.” International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques . New York: ACM, 1994. Print.

Baratham, Gopal. “Ultimate Commodity.” The City of Forgetting: The Collected Stories of Gopal Baratham . Shah Alam, Malaysia: Times, 2001. Print.

Brecht, Bertolt. Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic . Ed. and Trans. JohnWillett. New York: Hill and Wang, 1964. Print.

_____. Galileo. 1943. Trans. Charles Laughton. Ed. Eric Bentley. New York: Grove Press, 1994.Print.

Broadhurst, Susan. “The Jeremiah Project: Interaction, Reaction and Performance.” The Drama Review 48.4 (2004): 47-57. Print.

Carnegy, Patrick. Wagner and the Art of the Theatre . New Haven: Yale UP, 2006. Print.

Debord, Guy. The Society of the Spectacle. 1967. Trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith.Cambridge,MA: Zone & MIT Press, 1995. Print.

Derrida, Jacques. Writing and Différance. Trans. Alan Bass. Chicago, IL: University of ChicagoPress, 1978. Print.

Esslin, Martin. Brecht: The Man and His Work. New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1961. Print.

Everyman: The Ultimate Commodity. Daniel K. Jernigan and Russell W. Pensyl. NanyangTechnological University—Interaction and Entertainment Research Centre (NTU-IERC).

Esplanade Theatre Studio, Singapore. 9 September 2006 / Toronto Fringe Festival 2007,Toronto, Ontario, Canada. 6-12 July 2007. Perf.

Harvey, David. “Time-space Compression and the Postmodern Condition.” The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change . Cambridge, MA: Blackwel1990. Print.

Heinlein, Robert A. The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag. 1942. New York: Berkley,1983. Print.


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Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham, NC: DukeUP, 1991. Print.

The Jeremiah Project (Blue Bloodshot Flowers). Susan Broadhurst. Brunel University, London.August 2001. Perf.

Jernigan, Daniel. Everyman: The Ultimate Commodity. Singapore: Nanyang UP, 2007. Print.

Jernigan, Daniel, Stephen Fernandez, Russell Pensyl and Lee Shang Ping. “Digitally AugmentedReality Characters in Theatre Performances.” International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media 5.1 (2009): 35-49. Print.

Kittler, Friedrich A. Gramophone, Film, Typewriter . Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1999. Print.

Liu, Hugo and Glorianna Davenport. “Self-reflexive Performance: Dancing with the ComputedAudience of Culture.” International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media 1.3(2005): 237-247. Print.

Penley, Constance and Andrew Ross. Technoculture. Minneapolis: University of MinnesotaPress, 1991. Print.

Robins, Kevin and Frank Webster. Times of the Technoculture. London: Routledge, 1999. Print.

Shepherd, Simon and Mick Wallis. Drama/Theatre/Performance. Oxford: Routledge, 2004. Print

Sikes, Alan. Representation and Identity from Versailles to the Present: The Performing Subject .New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Print.

Slavoj ! i " ek: The Reality of the Virtual . Dir. Ben Wright. Olive Films, 2004. DVD.

Stanier, Philip. “Blue Bloodshot Flowers: Text for Performance.” 2001. Body, Space, &Technology 2.1 Brunel University. 27 Dec 2009. Web.

Wagner, Richard. “Outlines of the Artwork of the Future.” Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality. 1849. Ed. Randall Packer and Ken Jordan. New York: Norton, 2001. Print.

_____. Parsifal. 1882. Parsifal a Drama by Wagner. Ed. Oliver Huckel. Whitefish,MT: Kessinger2004. Print.

Watt, Stephen. Postmodern/Drama . Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan UP, 1998. Print.

Willett, James. The Theatre of Bertolt Brecht: A Study from Eight Aspects . 1959. London:Methuen, 1977. Print.

#i$ek, Slavoj. “From Reality to the Real.” Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991. Print.

Biography: Stephen Fernandez works at the intersection of dramatic theatre, critical theory and digital


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media. His research interests include technoculture, postmodernism, and the interface between technologyand performance. In fact, he is particularly concerned about the impact of digital technology (especiallyvirtual and augmented realities) on the quality of human existence in the Twenty-first century. Besides

pursuing such academic topics, Stephen is also an active theatre practitioner. Over the past few years, hehas directed several original plays in Singapore, some of which have been produced in support of charitable causes such as the International Down Syndrome movement. Stephen is a graduate student at thUniversity of Waterloo.

© 2011 Stephen Fernandez, used by permission.

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