Multimedia Theatre in the Virtual Age

Rosemary Klich

BA(Drama), BCI(Hons), QUT.

A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the

degree of Doctor of Philosophy

School of Media Film and Theatre

University of New South Wales

May 2007

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ORIGINALITY STATEMENT

‘I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and to the best

of my knowledge it contains no materials previously published or

written by another person, or substantial proportions of material

which have been accepted for the award of any other degree or

diploma at UNSW or any other educational institution, except where

due acknowledgement is made in the thesis. Any contribution made

to the research by others, with whom I have worked at UNSW or

elsewhere, is explicitly acknowledged in the thesis. I also declare that

the intellectual content of this thesis is the product of my own work,

except to the extent that assistance from others in the project's design

and conception or in style, presentation and linguistic expression is

acknowledged.’

Signed ……………………………………………..............

Date ……………………………………………..............

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Acknowledgments:

I owe enormous thanks to my supervisor Dr Edward Scheer, whose guidance and

support of this research have been invaluable. I greatly appreciate his encouragement,

his belief in me, and his incisive questioning which demanded nothing less than the

best that I could give.

I also extend my gratitude to my co-supervisor Dr Meg Mumford, for whose patience

and feedback at a critical stage in my journey I am indebted.

Thanks to the academic staff in the School of Media, Film and Theatre at the

University of New South Wales who did so much to stimulate my growth as a scholar

and my thinking on a whole range of topics. Special thanks to Dr George Kouvarous

for his early assistance, and to Prof James Donald, Claire Grant, John McCallum, Dr

John Golder, and Dr Moe Meyer.

In addition I am grateful for the financial assistance given me by the University of

New South Wales, in the form of external research and conference funding, and for

the facilities provided to me during my research. Thank you also and cheers to the

School’s administrative staff, Julie and Jennifer.

To my fellow students with whom I have taken this journey, Caroline, Sam, Bryoni,

David, Bec and Sarah, and to my dear friend Tessa: our years of shared support,

debate, and insecurities will be fondly remembered. I also acknowledge all the friends

I have neglected over the duration of this project, yet who are still my friends as it

comes to an end. And thanks always to Jess and Seb, for being my best mates.

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It is hard to express strongly enough my appreciation of the inspiration and undaunted

support I have received from my father, Zbys. Both my parents are owed the deepest

gratitude for their confidence in me, their kindness, and for instilling in me a love of

learning.

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Abstract

This research aims to delineate various modes and means of communication in the

field of multimedia theatre and to relate this field of practice to contemporary debates

in both theatre and media studies. This thesis defines 'multimedia theatre' in two

ways: firstly to include performance where media technologies are brought into the

theatrical frame as a feature of the mise en scene, and secondly to refer to the area of

new media performance, where a live performer may not be present but a high degree

of performativity and liveness are achieved. Discourse in the field of digital aesthetics

and new media theory is applied to examples and case studies of contemporary

multimedia theatre practice to highlight the formal structures and modes of audience

engagement operating within such work. Multimedia theatre may be characterised by

the qualities of intermediality, immersion, interactivity, and postnarratvity, and these

characteristics are used in this thesis as focal points to structure analysis and

investigation.

The thesis also argues that recent developments in the field of multimedia theatre and

performance may be viewed as related to a larger cultural shift predicated on the

dissolution of the separation of the real and the virtual. It is further argued that

multimedia theatre is acting as a forum for the exploration of the contemporary

human experience, an experience shaped by the ubiquity of digital media and the

development of a 'posthuman' perspective.

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Publications

Sections of the work in this thesis have been published in the following articles:

Klich, R. (2005) “The Play’s The Thing No Longer: Non-Linear Narrative in Kate

Champion’s ‘Same, Same But Different”, Australasian Drama Studies Journal, Vol.

46, p. 58-69.

Klich, R. (2006) “David Pledger: On Eavesdrop and New Media” Performance

Paradigm Journal, Vol. 1 March 2005, peer-reviewed e-journal

(www.performanceparadigmjournal.org.au).

Klich, R. (2007) “Immersion and Remediation in New Media Performance” SCAN:

Journal of Media Arts Culture, peer-reviewed online journal, (www.scan.net.au).

Forthcoming (Accepted for Publication):

Book Chapter:

Klich, R. “Between Realities: Intermediality and the Blurring of Boundaries in

Multimedia Theatre,” in M. Sugiera and M. Borowski eds. Fictional Realities and

Real Fictions, Cambridge Scholars Press. A collection of essays by the “Postdramatic

Text in the Theatre” Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre

Research (IFTR/FIRT).

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Contents:

Acknowledgements…………………………………………………….………… 3

Abstract………………………………………………………………….……….. 5

Publications………………………………………………………………… ……. 6

Introduction……………………………………………………………….……… 9

Theatre in the Digital Age………………………………………………….……… 9

Theatre and Multimedia: A Poetics…………………………………………..……. 14

Thesis Outline………………………………………………………………..…….. 16

Chapter 1. Virtuality: A New Paradigm for Theatre?............................................ 21

Theories of Media and Technology………………………………………………. 22

Virtualisation……………………………………………………..………………. 27

A ‘Digital Aesthetic’……………………………………………………………… 31

Digitalisation……………………………………………………………………… 35

The Posthuman…………………………………………………………………… 40

Semiotics of Virtuality……………………………………………………………. 43

Chapter 2. Multimedia Theatre: Defining the Field………………………………… 47

Multimedia vs Virtual Theatre …………………………………………………… 47

Evolution of Multimedia Theatre…………………………………………………. 50

- Hybridisation of Disciplines………………………………………………. 50

- From Object to Action…………………………………………………….. 56

- From Passive to Active Spectator…………………………………………. 58

Postdramatic Theatre……………………………………………………………… 60

Virtual Theatre…………………………………………………………………….. 65

New Media Performance………………………………………………………….. 67

Chapter 3. Intermediality…………………………………………………….………... 73

Definitions of Intermediality…………………………….………………………… 74 Intermediality as Remediation in Theatre……………….………………………… 79

Into Virtuality: Intermediality in Multimedia Theatre….…………………………. 84

Remediation and Hyperreality in Wages of Spin……….…………………………. 86

Pattern, Presence and Intermediality in Supervision….…………………………… 93

Conclusion………………………………………………………...…………..…... 100

Chapter 4. Immersion…………………………………………………………………. 102

Cognitive Immersion……………………………………………………………… 103

Sensory Immersion………………………………………………………………... 107

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Immediacy and Hypermediacy………………………………………………….… 111

Immersion in the Gallery: Bill Viola and Janet Cardiff…………………………... 114

- Five Angels for the Millennium…………………………………………... 114

- 40 Part Motet…………………………………………………………….. 119

Modell 5………………………………………………………………………….. 122

- Remediation, Immediacy and Hypermediacy…………………………….. 125

- Performing Posthuman Perspective……………………………………… 126

Desert Rain and the ‘Desert of the Real’: Composite Reality and Spatial

Immersion………………………………………………………………………… 129

Reflection…………………………………………………………………………. 133

Chapter 5. Interactivity…………………………………………………………... 136

Human/Machine Interaction: A Posthuman Perspective…………………………. 137

Theatre and Interactivity………………………………………………………….. 139

Openings: ‘Active’ and ‘Interactive’……………………………………………… 144

Interpretive Engagement………………………………………………………….. 149

Navigation………………………………………………………………………… 150

Interactivity: Response-Based Interaction………………………………………… 153

Interactivity: Complex Interaction……................................................................... 158

Interactivity in Blast Theory’s Can You See Me Now?…………………………… 162

- From Presence to Pattern………………………………………………… 166

- Access, Audience and Community………………………………………… 167

Conclusion: The Limits of Interactivity……………………………………….….. 169

Chapter 6. Narrativity and the Postnarrative Text in Performance……………... 171

Narrativity of New Media: Eavesdrop…………………………………………… 173

Traditional Narrative: Elements and Definitions………………………………… 179

Contemporary Approaches: Poststructuralism and Narrativity………………….. 182

The Postnarrative Text…………………………………………………………… 185

New Media and Narrative: Contemporary Discourse……………………………. 189

Poetics and Postnarrativity……………………………………………………….. 195

Presence, Pattern and The Postnarrative Text……………………………………. 198

Conclusion………………………………………………………………………. 202

Theatre and the Caesura of the Digital Age……………………………………… 202

- Corporeality………………………………………………………………. 204

- Virtuality………………………………………………………………….. 206

Limitations of this Research……………………………………………………… 209

Further Questions from this Research……………………………………………. 211

List of Images………………………………………………………………………….. 214

Works Cited……………………………………………………………………… 216

Works Consulted………………………………………………………………… 229

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Introduction

Theatre in the Digital Age

In the prologue to Postdramatic Theatre, Hans-Thies Lehmann suggests that “the

spread and then omnipresence of the media in everyday life since the 1970s has

brought with it a new multiform kind of theatrical discourse”1 and he recognises the

“caesura of media society” as an integral context for the evolution of contemporary

performance practice. This important transition in twentieth century cultural practice

was preceded by an earlier shift “caused by the historical avant-gardes around 1900”,2

which paved the way for the development of postdramatic forms. Trends within

contemporary theatre and performance practice can be recognised as profoundly

linked to both these key transitional moments. However, the existence of a more

recent cultural rupture resulting from the advent of digital technologies and their

colonisation of ‘old’ media can now be recognised.

The potential for a ‘digital aesthetic’ to operate within theatre practice is already

being realised and theatre studies is acknowledging the effect of these new structures

and strategies, not as simply extending theatre into the virtual realm, but as affecting

the poetics of live performance. This study draws from new media discourse to focus

on some of the emerging formal structures manifesting across a range of multimedia

theatre practice. This thesis will argue that a cultural shift has been triggered by the

ubiquity and dominance of digital technologies and that multimedia theatre is acting

as a forum for the exploration of this shift. This thesis also theorises practice that

includes both performance where media technologies are brought into the theatrical

frame as a feature of the mise en scene, and the area of new media performance,

where a live performer may not be present but a high degree of performativity and

1 Hans-Thies Lehmann (2006) Postdramatic Theatre, trans Karen Jurs-Munby, London: Routledge, p.

22. 2 Ibid.

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liveness are achieved. Finally, the thesis delineates the modes and means of

communication utilised in multimedia theatre, and relates the defining elements of

this field to contemporary discourse in both theatre and media studies.

Inspiration for this thesis can be traced back to a crucial moment in my journey as an

aspiring theatre scholar. In 2002 I attended a production in Brisbane written and

directed by Australian choreographer Kate Champion in collaboration with Force

Majeure, and became intrigued by the field of multimedia theatre as a site of cultural

critique. Stylistically this work was not radical; with its emphasis on physicality,

juxtaposition and the use of multimedia, it was emblematic of the well-established

field of ‘dance theatre’. However, certain aspects of this work evoked an amazement

and curiosity that triggered within me an urge to further explore the significance of

these provocative elements on a cultural level.

That work, Same, same But Different, blended the spoken, physical, musical and

cinematic texts to present an aesthetically rich exploration of the vicissitudes of

romantic relationships. Dramatic conventions were abandoned and the text unfolded

dynamically, creating a kind of audio-visual-physical poetry. It was viscerally

encompassing and I was struck by the uncanny sense of being totally absorbed within

the world of the performance, and yet simultaneously aware of this immersion as if

from the perspective of an objective outsider. Even more intriguing, capturing both

my imagination and stimulating conceptual thought, was the intricate interaction

between the live performers and the filmic imagery. Enormous screens provided a

surface for projection that extended the choreography and the presence of the live

performer into another dimension; projected versions of the dancers performed

movement sequences in synchrony with the real performers, and the audience

encountered the ‘doubling’ of the live performer. The boundary between the real and

the virtual disintegrated as it was no longer evident which performers were real and

which were two-dimensional. The performers became part of the cinematic scape,

moving in and out of the flat surface, while the virtual performers seemed to step out

of the frame as if materialised.

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This image of the interaction between live performer and their projected double

presented a visual metaphor for the blurring of the boundary between the real and the

virtual that has become a feature of much of everyday life. As the live dancers and the

media technologies performed symbiotically, I was confronted with an illustration of

the impact of virtual spaces upon perceptions and definitions of the human subject. I

was infused with philosophical questioning, and as the work progressed, I appreciated

the potential offered by multimedia performance as a means of exploring, and even

answering, some of these questions. I felt challenged to investigate this field of

practice, and it became my purpose to address the need for further research into the

effects of new media on theatre practice generally, and to recognise the role of theatre

as a key site for the expression of cultural reactions to the spread of digital

technologies.

Theatre, as a meta-medium that incorporates both live performance and mediatised

elements, is in a unique position to explore and investigate the effect of extensive

mediatisation on cultural perception and subjectivity. By celebrating the increasingly

‘multimedial’ nature of theatre, and through both the overt and implicit representation

of critical perspectives regarding the mediatisation of society, contemporary

multimedia theatre is presenting an exploration into, and a cultural critique of, the

impact of media technologies. Scott deLahunta asserts that throughout the twentieth

century, “art movements and forms of dance and theatre have served a crucial

function as one of the places from which to critique the relationship between the

individual and the machine, society and technology”.3 As advances in technology and

science alter our perception of the world, so then do our perceptions of the world

inform our art making, and as argued by Matthew Causey, theatre is “once again the

test site, the replica, or laboratory, in which we can reconfigure our world and

consciousness, witness its operations and play with its possibilities.”4 While the

pervasiveness of digital media has been viewed by some as posing a threat to the

cultural value of theatre and the ontology of performance, Causey argues it is not

3 Scott deLahunta (1998) Speculative Paper: Theatre, Dance and New Media Information

Technologies, Written and presented to the Working Groups on Dance and Drama, Research Group on

Reorganisation of Professional Arts Education, Amsterdam, 11/04/1998,

(www.art.net/~stz/scott3.html) accessed July 2004, p. 2. 4 Matthew Causey “A Theatre of Monsters: live performance in the age of digital media” in Maria M.

Delgado and Caridad Svich eds. (2002) Theatre in Crisis?: Performance Manifestos for a New

Century, Manchester: Manchester University Press, p. 182.

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theatre that is in crisis but the human itself as “it attempts to understand its position in

the space of technology.”5 As this crisis plays out in the forum of experimental

theatre, theatre too is affected and infiltrated by media technologies.

Recent developments in theatre practice manifest current perspectives regarding the

position of the human in the ‘space of technology.’ Theatre has always functioned as

a rehearsal space for new ideas and modes of cultural awareness and this research

places recent developments in the field of multimedia theatre in relation to a cultural

shift into what Katherine Hayles has described as “a condition of Virtuality”.6 This

shift is predicated on the dissolution of the separation of the real and the virtual, and

the perception that informational pattern is displacing and pre-empting materiality.

This research positions the field of contemporary multimedia theatre within the wider

context of this transition into a state of Virtuality, and suggests how current structures

and processes employed within contemporary practice may be symptomatic of this

cultural condition.

Our condition of Virtuality “finds instantiation in an array of powerful technologies.

The perception facilitates the development of the technologies, and the technologies

reinforce the perception.”7 Digital technologies have infiltrated nearly all aspects of

human creativity and communication. Like theatre, digital multimedia is a meta-

medium, able to provide a platform for the synthesis of different pre-existing or ‘old’

media. This thesis examines the impact of ‘new’ media upon the medium of theatre

and explores the relationship of contemporary theatre practice to a ‘digital aesthetic’.

Dialogue between theatre and media discourse has long been ongoing, reflecting the

continually evolving reciprocity of theatre and creative technologies. This research

builds on this history, appropriating elements of new media theory for application to

the field of theatre analysis, with the aim of providing a language through which to

articulate the poetics of emerging theatrical forms.

Theatre and new media are continually reframing and colonising each other in

inventive ways, and this research examines an area of practice that draws influence 5 Ibid.

6 Hayles in Peter Lunenfeld ed. (2000) The Digital Dialectic: New Essays on New Media, Cambridge

MA and London: The MIT Press. 7 Hayles in Lunenfeld (2000) p. 69.

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from both of these creative fields, using digital technologies within the theatrical

frame or in a performative mode. However, this thesis does not assume that theatre

practice in general is not affected in different ways by the pervasiveness of digital

technologies and the resulting cultural shift. The key questions that gave onto this

research project were: how can theatre respond to the technology-saturated

consciousness of contemporary culture and how can it employ media technologies to

create theatrical events relevant to a mediatised society?

An important answer to these can be found in Matthew Causey’s emphatic declaration

that it is not sufficiently provocative for theatre to merely represent or discuss new

technologies. Rather, he suggests, practitioners need to evolve new forms of

performance that are a hybrid of live performance and mediated technologies, a

‘monstrous theatre’ that both extends and closes the gap between the live and the

mediated. Such a theatre, suggests Causey,

would violate the norms of live theatrical performance of the ‘here and now’ with

dislocation and fluidity of narrative, character and theme, both ‘here and now’

and ‘not here and now’. This theatre of monsters is possible through the

incorporation of the technologies of digital media in such forms as video,

hypertext, interactivity, and virtual presence within live performance. The theatre

of monsters is a theatre that is not theatre, but also that is not, not theatre.8

In contemporary multimedia theatre we see these ‘monsters’ brought to life.

Practitioners are combining video, hypertext, interactivity and virtual presence

alongside the live performer, creating an emerging field of theatre that is, and is not,

theatre as we have known it. The decision to select multimedia theatre practice as the

site for exploration into the relation of theatre, digital media, and Virtuality, rather

than theatre practice in general, was made due to the potential for this exciting hybrid

form to make visible the reconceptualisation of the binaries of human/technology,

live/mediated, presence/absence, and real/virtual, and so manifest a connection to a

cultural transition into Virtuality.

8 Causey in Delgado and Svich eds. (2002) p. 182.

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Theatre and Multimedia: A Poetics

Multimedia has been described as the defining medium for the twenty first century,9

but the inferences of the term multimedia have become many and are often non-

specific. The word is broadly used to describe an area of digital computer

development that includes The World Wide Web, CD-ROMs, virtual reality and

computer gaming. In the book Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality, Packer

and Jordan offer five characteristics intrinsic to computer-based multimedia:

integration, interactivity, hypermedia, immersion, and narrativity.10

‘Multimediality’

may be regarded as the sum of these qualities and it is my intention to utilise these

terms as an initial framework upon which to build an analysis of multimedia theatre.

As the name suggests, multimedia theatre does not simply involve the use of media

onstage but involves a synthesis of multimedia communication structures within live

performance. Theatre is inherently multi-medial and so the term ‘multimedia theatre’

could be considered tautological; a medium may be simply understood as a technical

means of communication, and modes of expression inherently embedded in theatrical

communication such as the written text, the spoken text, and the body, may all be

considered media. However, this research regards multimedia theatre as founded on a

relation between two major meta-media: digital multimedia and theatre. It is argued in

this thesis that multimedia theatre is theatre that can be characterised by the same key

principles as digital multimedia. The approach in this thesis adapts the definition of

multimedia offered by Packer and Jordan into a framework through which to establish

the distinguishing principles of communication operating in this field of practice.

This thesis essentially offers a poetics of contemporary multimedia theatre,

systematically describing the terms, tools and principles of the negotiation of meaning

between the presented text and the audience. A methodology of poetics studies “the

conditions of meaning, the formal structures that organise a text and make possible a

range of meanings”.11

This research utilises that approach, establishing the key

9 Randall Packer and Ken Jordan eds. (2001) Multimedia: From Wagner To Virtual Reality, New York:

W.W.Norton and Company, p. xiii. 10

Packer and Jordan eds. (2001) p. xxx. 11

Culler in Daniel Mario Abondolo (2001) A Poetics Handbook: Verbal Art in the European

Tradition, London: Routledge, p. 50.

15

characteristics that determine the nature of audience engagement and affect the

production of meaning. Focus is placed on the effects of the work experienced by the

audience, and investigation determines how these effects are facilitated by the

performance text.

This investigation seeks to avoid questions of appreciation, and focuses instead on

determining trends emerging across a broad spectrum of practice. It is not intended

that the characteristics identified in this study be interpreted as fundamental rules.

Rather, this thesis offers a map of the complexities of the communication systems

formed within multimedia theatre practice. Of particular significance in this research

is the reinterpretation of the qualities of integration, immersion, interactivity,

hypermedia, and narrativity, in light of theatre discourse and the historical evolution

of multimedia theatre. These qualities are reconceptualized here as intermediality,

immersion, interactivity, and postnarrativity to form the foundation for an analytical

framework relevant to theatre practice. The quality of hypermedia has not been

represented as a separate focus of the thesis design; hypermedia are defined by “the

linking of separate media elements to one another to create a trail of personal

association”12

and aspects of this quality are discussed in the examination of the

principles of intermediality, interaction, and postnarrativity. The characteristic of

‘intermediality’ is used to extend the concept of the ‘integration’ of artistic

disciplines, and it is related to both the reciprocity and amalgamation of live and

mediated elements within performance. Audience engagement is articulated through

the frames of ‘interactivity’ and ‘immersion’, and the content of communication is

discussed in terms of ‘postnarrativity’, where the text does not dictate narrative but

where the audience’s impulse to narrativise experience is stimulated.

Intermediality, immersion, interactivity, and postnarrativity further extend a number

of key trends that evolved as part of a twentieth century dynamic in experimental

theatre practice, such as the hybridisation of disciplines, the move from product to

process, and the shift from passive to active audience spectatorship. These trends may

be considered the key principles upon which the poetics of multimedia theatre have

gradually been built, linking contemporary multimedia theatre practice to an ongoing

12

Packer and Jordan eds. (2001) p. xxxv.

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process of evolution within theatre history. As such, multimedia theatre should not be

regarded merely as theatre’s reaction to the challenge posed by the hegemony of mass

media, but should be recognised as a historically embedded and culturally relevant

field of creative practice.

Thesis Outline

The trajectory of this thesis gradually narrows and deepens the focus of study, moving

from larger domains through to detailed analyses. This research firstly embeds

multimedia theatre within its cultural context, and then defines it in relation to other

areas of creative practice operating within the same cultural arena. Subsequent

chapters address the characteristics specific to the field of multimedia theatre and

utilise relevant case studies to illustrate the modes and means of communication that

constitute this theatrical form. Throughout this research Hayles’ framework of the

‘semiotics of Virtuality’, a framework based on the interaction of information and

materiality, is frequently employed as a new lens through which to holistically view

the complex processes of communication and posthuman embodiment established in

multimedia performance.

The opening chapter of this thesis frames multimedia theatre within the context of

mediatised society and a digital aesthetic. Digital media impact on the conditioning of

perception, and an understanding of the ways in which media influence and alter

subjectivity is important in understanding the efficacy of multimedia theatre.

Relevant discourse is examined in the fields of media and technology, and various

theoretical positions regarding the relationship of media and society from theorists

such as McLuhan, Baudrillard, Virillio, and Michel Heim are considered. The notion

of a digital aesthetic is discussed in relation to Peter Lunenfeld’s vision of an

‘aesthetic of unfinish’, and the relevance of digitality is addressed through the

writings of Lev Manovich. It is argued that an awareness of the language utilised in

new media discourse assists the analysis of recent developments in multimedia theatre

practice. This chapter also positions multimedia theatre within the context of a wider

cultural shift into a ‘condition of Virtuality’, predicated on the dissolution of the

duality of the real and the virtual. It is further argued that the merging of the virtual

17

and the real in multimedia theatre manifests the concept of ‘posthuman’ embodiment,

and suggests the need for an alternative analytical framework through which to

address the nature of embodiment in multimedia theatre.

Having established the cultural context shaping multimedia theatre, the parameters of

this specific field of practice are then defined. The second chapter begins with

justification for use of the term ‘multimedia theatre’, rather than the recently popular

‘virtual theatre’. It is argued that the field of multimedia theatre is not simply a

product of new technologies but is part of an ongoing dynamic that has developed

throughout the twentieth century. Contemporary multimedia theatre is related to other

fields of practice such as postdramatic theatre, virtual theatre, and new media

performance. Multimedia theatre is identified as inherently postdramatic and as

including within its scope the areas of virtual theatre, new media performance and

intermedial staging. Following the explication of the cultural and creative context that

characterises multimedia theatre, the final four chapters delineate the four key

principles that are central to multimedia theatre: intermediality, immersion,

interactivity and postnarrativity.

Chapter 3 investigates manifestations of intermediality in multimedia theatre and

argues for the reconceptualisation of intermediality in light of discourse addressing

the ‘remediation’ that occurs as a result of digitalisation. Theatre, like digital media,

translates other media into a new format; theatre subsumes media, uniting both live

and mediated communication within the frame of performance. Intermediality denotes

the audience’s experience of the integration of all media and systems of

communication within a theatrical performance, and so relates to the functioning of

theatre as a hypermedium. This chapter addresses the history of intermediality in

theatre studies through an examination of concepts such as Wagner’s

Gesamtkunstwerk and Thomas Jensen Hines’s notion of ‘collaborative form’, and

comes to a contemporary definition of intermediality in relation to multimedia theatre

through Schroter’s typology of forms of intermediality. Theatre and digital media

both ‘remediate’, and this chapter uses Bolter and Grusin’s discussion of remediation

in digital multimedia, and the related qualities of ‘immediacy’ and ‘hypermediacy’, to

elucidate the remediation of live and mediated elements in multimedia theatre. This

18

chapter also argues that an analytical framework that foregrounds the dialectic of

pattern and randomness over presence and absence would enable theatre analysis to

avoid reinforcing the distinction of the ‘live’ and the ‘mediated’, and focus instead on

the patterns and rhythms created across media.

Chapters 4 and 5 examine audience engagement in terms of ‘immersion’ and

‘interactivity’. Theatre has always traditionally been a site for immersion, not

interactivity, but as theatre practice dismisses the representation of a fictional world,

audience engagement moves beyond cognitive immersion and becomes a physical

and sensory experience grounded in an actual world, a sculpted space. Consequently,

multimedia theatre is enabling the audience to simultaneously experience both

immersion and interactivity. Participants are able to interact with responsive

environments and connect to other participants via networked technologies. While the

degree of immersion and/or interactivity varies immensely throughout the panorama

of multimedia theatre, these two characteristics shared by both digital media and

theatre practice are critical in understanding the processes of audience engagement in

multimedia theatre.

In an exploration of immersion, Chapter 4 argues against Oliver Grau’s assertion that

“staged media” are not appropriate for the study of immersion as they do not appeal

to the audience on a sensory level.13

As postdramatic theatre rejects the portrayal of a

discrete fictional universe and instead creates physically immersive spaces, the

potential for multimedia performance to create visceral immersion is being realised.

This chapter utilises Bolter and Grusin’s terminology of ‘immediacy’ and

‘hypermediacy’ to articulate the layers of immersion experienced by audience

members, and examines audience immersion in a variety of case studies. The first

work examined is Bill Viola’s Five Angels for the Millennium, a new media

installation that uses digital imagery to explore the concept of immersion in water.

Next, Janet Cardiff’s Forty Part Motet creates audience immersion not through

imagery, but through the use of digital sound. Granular Synthesis’s Modell 5, an

audio-visual installation that involves elements of live mixing, is discussed in detail

and the various levels of immersion identified. The work is also discussed in terms of

13

Oliver Grau (2003) Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion, Cambridge MA and London: The MIT

Press, p. 14.

19

its relation to a ‘posthuman perspective’, both through its use of distorted imagery and

through audience embodiment. Finally, immersion in an ‘augmented reality’ is

explored in an examination of Blast Theory’s Desert Rain, which also combines all

previously mentioned modes of audience immersion.

Contemporary multimedia theatre is facilitating various degrees of direct audience

participation and interactivity. In new media theory, the term ‘interactive’ relates to

the feedback loop between technology and user and as such, ‘interactivity’ is an

important concept in the articulation of posthuman embodiment. Chapter 5 of this

thesis explores the inferences of interactivity in relation to creative practice and

identifies specific forms of active spectatorship manifesting in contemporary

multimedia performance. Marie-Laure Ryan outlines the significance of audience

interaction in theatre history as an inspiration and initial foundation for the

development of interactivity in electronic forms, and this chapter begins with an

assessment of the development of an active audience within theatre history.

Definitions of ‘active’ and ‘interactive’ are explored through a discussion of ideas

from theorists McLuhan, Eco and Ryan, followed by the presentation of an original

typology of forms of interaction in contemporary multimedia theatre. Concepts

discussed within the chapter are then explored through a case study of Blast Theory’s

Can You See Me Now?, which utilises networked and locative technologies to create

complex interaction and posthuman embodiment.

Chapter 6 analyses the nature and structure of the text in multimedia performance and

positions these texts as no longer narrative or non-narrative texts, but as postnarrative

texts. The ‘postnarrative text’ refers to a process of expression/reception in which

narrative is not dictated by an authored script, rather, the audience’s innate tendency

to narrativise experience is stimulated and encouraged. Postnarrative texts are formed

through audience engagement and cannot be dismissed as non-narrative, for they may

utilise such inherent elements of narrative as story, plot, and temporal progression.

However, the postnarrative text rearranges the traditional design of these narrative

elements to create new means and modes of communication. This chapter maps the

characteristics of the postnarrative encounter within the site of contemporary

multimedia theatre, and explores the potential for recognising the dynamism and

20

fluidity of the postnarrative text as symptomatic of current cultural perceptions.

Narrative construction reflects the cultural paradigm in which it is created, and this

chapter concludes by connecting the nature of the postnarative text to the cultural

condition of Virtuality as outlined by Hayles.

This thesis may be viewed as presenting the reader with i) an exploration, ii) a

definition and iii) an argument. Taking these in turn: i) the relationship between

digital communication structures and the characteristics of multimedia theatre is

explored, with the findings of this investigation offering a new language and

framework through which to articulate the nature of multimedia theatre; ii) the poetics

of multimedia theatre are defined; iii) it is argued that in order to examine and better

understand the efficacy of multimedia theatre, a new interpretative paradigm can be

utilised based on Hayles’ map of the semiotics of Virtuality and its emphasis on the

dialectic of pattern/randomness, the basis of information, over presence/absence, the

basis of materiality.

Packer and Jordan suggest that the only defining feature of multimedia is its inherent

mutability,14

and just as multimedia is constantly evolving and assuming new forms,

so the field of multimedia theatre is continuously pushing the parameters of theatre

practice and inventing new modes of performance. This thesis does not attempt to

definitively establish the limits of multimedia theatre, but rather to ascertain the

trends and principles that are manifesting across the wide field of practice suggested

by the title ‘multimedia theatre’. Lehmann wisely contends, “The task of theory is to

articulate, conceptualise and find terms for that which has come into being, not to

postulate it as the norm.”15

The following chapters mine the fields of theatre and

media studies for terms with which to discuss developments in contemporary theatre,

clarifying existing terminologies and refining or inventing new ones, so as to better

articulate that ‘which has come into being.’ Theory does not define the rules of

practice, but may instead aim to elucidate the underlying patterns, the relevant

language, and the implications of emergent phenomena. That is the intent of this

thesis.

14

Packer and Jordan eds. (2001) p. xxxviii. 15

Lehmann (2006) p. 25.

21

Chapter 1

Virtuality: A New Paradigm for Theatre?

Through experimentation and innovation, contemporary performance is challenging

the distinctions between reality, fictionality, and virtuality, and reflecting the impact

of new media and digital technologies on human perception. Not only is theatre

utilizing new media technologies to create innovative aesthetic forms, but it is also

functioning as a training centre for the exploration of contemporary perspectives

developing as a result of, or at least in conjunction with, information technologies.

The intention of this investigation is to suggest how theatre practice is both actively

and implicitly addressing the ways in which digitalisation impacts upon social

practices and cultural mentalities. While the manipulation of digital technologies

within theatre practice is creating new forms of performance that self-reflexively

address the media they rely on, I am also interested in how recent developments in all

forms of multimedia theatre, such as the effects of simultaneity and the advent of

'virtual theatres', can be seen as part of a larger cultural shift into a ‘condition of

Virtuality’ (Hayles). This condition is predicated on the dissolution of the perceived

boundary between the real and the virtual, and configures the human subject as

evolving into a ‘posthuman’ being.

Multimedia theatre’s reliance on digital technologies suggests that this area of

practice may be considered in terms of a ‘digital aesthetic’, and so this chapter firstly

identifies the characteristics of digital media and the terms in which a digital aesthetic

may be articulated. This chapter also provides insight into this contemporary cultural

condition by examining discourse regarding the social and cultural move into virtual

spaces. The transition into a state of ‘Virtuality’ and the evolution from human to

posthuman subjectivity is addressed through a discussion of N. Katherine Hayles’

theoretical framework mapping the semiotics of Virtuality. This framework then

provides a structural foundation for the ensuing investigation of multimedia theatre.

22

In Postdramatic Theatre (2006) Hans-Thies Lehmann declares, “In the theory of

avante-garde theatre it has become commonplace to say that it analyses, reflects, and

deconstructs the conditions of seeing and hearing in the society of the media.”16

He

then suggests that,

Regardless of the cogency of this statement, it is to be doubted that the self-

referentiality of the theatre…is really primarily driven by such a pathos of

analysis, which is more at home in theoretical efforts. Rather it seems realistic

that an aesthetic is manifesting itself here that seeks proximity to an artificially

changed perception.17

Contemporary multimedia theatre certainly exemplifies the aesthetic Lehmann refers

to, however, as argued in this thesis, it is often also explicitly driven by ‘a pathos of

analysis’, overtly deconstructing ‘conditions of seeing and hearing in the society of

the media’. This is evident in the ways that theatre companies such as Blast Theory

and The Builder’s Association address the ubiquitous presence of the virtual in our

everyday lives as a result of media technologies, self-reflexively presenting the real,

the fictional and the virtual alongside each and thematically addressing the conditions

of communication in mediatised society. Indeed theatre has always acted as an arena

for the critical investigation and mapping of new perspectives. As a forum for the

exploration of the changes affecting human experience, theatre is in a position to trial

new aesthetic forms through creative ‘remediation’ and to both represent and

challenge an ‘artificially changed perception’.

Theories of Media and Technology

It has been widely speculated that we now live in an ‘information age’, characterised

by the commodification of information enabled by the ubiquity of computer

technologies and global networks.18

The suggestion that our historical and social ‘age’

can be characterised by the nature of the embedded technology would appear to

advocate a certain degree of technological determinism. Technological determinism

has been a highly contentious position throughout the last century and may be

16

Lehmann (2006) p.167. 17

Ibid. 18

The terms ‘information age’ and ‘global village’ have been widely used since first coined by

McLuhan in Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964).

23

understood as “the idea that the mere presence of technology leads to familiar and

standard applications of that technology, which in turn bring about social change.”19

In the twenty-first century certain technological determinations are widely accepted.

Nick Stevenson explains, “From the production of daily newspapers to the electronic

transmission of the latest racing results, the technical forms of mass communication

are altering the experiential content of everyday life”.20

However, the concept of technological determinism has now been challenged by the

concept of social informatics, which as Mark Warschauer explains “argues that

technology must be considered within a specific context that includes hardware,

software, support resources, infrastructure, as well as people in various roles and

relationships with one another and with other elements of the system.”21

Within this

context the technology and the social system refigure and impact upon each other

“like a biological community and its environment.”22

It is important to recognise that

there is a ‘digital divide’ between the technological saturation of predominantly

Western conurbations and many under-resourced rural and of course third world

communities, and to acknowledge that the subsequent discussion is confined to the

context of highly technological Western society. Within this context it is generally

accepted that the ubiquity of information media and technologies, and the technical

modes of communication and interaction they employ, impact upon the social sphere

and affect the way we perceive and interact with the world.

Both in media theory and theatre studies there are those who oppose the perceived

domination of media technologies and those who embrace them. Michael Heim

addresses these positions, which he labels 'naive realism' and 'network idealism' as a

dialectic.23

On the one hand is the 'cyberspace backlash' that opposes the movement

of life and culture into digital and virtual spatialities, a position proffered by theorists

such as Kirkpatrick Sale, Clifford Stoll, Bill McKibben and Steven Talbott. On the

19

Mark Warschauer (2003) “Demystifying the digital divide”, Scientific American, Vol. 289, No. 2. 20

Nick Stevenson (2002) Understanding media cultures: social theory and mass communication.

London and Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, p. 120. 21

Warschauer (2003) 22

Warschauer (2003) 23

Michael Heim “The Cyberspace Dialectic” in Peter Lunenfeld ed. (2000) The Digital Dialectic: New

Essays on New Media, London and Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

24

other hand are the idealists that "celebrate an electronic collective,"24

the 'digerati' that

welcome the 'digital revolution', an outlook which Heim suggests traces back to

philosophers such as Leibniz, Descartes and the Cartesian revolution that prioritised

mathematical physics and the reduction of thought to rational logic.25

Whether resisted or celebrated, the idea that media fashions our perspectives and

alters our subjective engagements with the world is certainly not a new notion nor is it

a perspective unique to digital media theory. Media Theory throughout the twentieth

century has focused on the effect of technologies on culture and subjectivity, and how

in turn this has fashioned new technologies and new media. Contemporary theory

regarding the effect of mass media upon society and culture may be considered the

legacy of Walter Benjamin who addressed the reciprocal impact of media and culture

in his writings of the 1930’s. He examined the effect of technical media such as

photography and film upon the mythical status of art in society, emphasizing their

technical processes over their aesthetic values, and recognizing the role of media in

translating our historical circumstances into bodily experience. It should be

mentioned that the effect of technology upon the senses had already been discussed

by Henri Bergson, who as early as the turn of the last century suggested that modern

technology was negating the affective dimensions in human experience. He argued

that science was reducing human experience to the function of calculation and called

for the reestablishment of focus on the affective and sensorimotor experiences of the

body.26

His work has greatly influenced later theories of affect and subjectivity in

cinema and new media.

Following in the footsteps of Benjamin, the Canadian founder of Media Theory

Marshall McLuhan has been seminal in understanding how the dissemination of

cultural forms impacts upon perception. McLuhan asserted that the most significant

characteristic of media does not exist within the issues relating to cultural content but

in the technical processes of mediated communication: “the medium is the message”.

A groundbreaking facet of McLuhan’s work was his analysis of what he termed the

‘Gutenberg Galaxy’. Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press, invented in the late 24

Heim in Lunenfeld ed. (2000) p. 37. 25

Heim in Lunenfeld ed. (2000) p. 34. 26

Henri Bergson in John Weaver (2005) “Digital Aesthetics”, JCT, Rochester: NY, Vol. 21, No.1, p.

77.

25

fifteenth century, allowed ideas and perspectives to be circulated across space in a

short period of time and shaped a new cultural paradigm. McLuhan illustrates the

cognitive features that underpin this paradigm and suggests that print culture

produced a “predictable and standardized mode of thought” that replaced the

sensuous play of oral culture.”27

He comments “print is the technology of

individualism”28

for it is a privatised mode of reception. Alternatively, in a modern

electronic culture reception is passive and unavoidable as cultural forms “pour upon

us instantly and continuously”.29

As print culture was displaced by electronic cultural

forms, modernity became characterised as the “unceasing relocation of information in

time and space”.30

Taking the lead from McLuhan, Jean Baudrillard emphasises the role of the technical

medium of communication in establishing a ‘postindustrial’ media culture and

provides the most provocative and sophisticated postmodern critical assessment of the

role of mass communication in consumer culture. His later writings have been highly

influential and his pronouncements of ‘simulation’ and ‘hyperreality’ have laid the

foundations for the building of contemporary theories of ‘virtuality’ and social

processes of ‘virtualisation’. Simulation involves the mistaking of the media image

for the real, a process whereby the signs of the real replace the real. A simulation is

“different from a fiction or a lie in that it not only presents an absence as a presence,

the imaginary as the real, it also undermines any contrast to the real, absorbing the

real within itself”.31

Fiction or mere pretending leaves the principle of reality intact.

Baudrillard argues that here “the difference is always clear, it is simply masked,

whereas simulation threatens the difference between the ‘true’ and the ‘false’, the

‘real’ and the ‘imaginary’”.32

Hyppereality is thus produced when reality is simulated

and the representation of the real becomes reality.

27

McLuhan in Stevenson (2002) p. 123. 28

Ibid. 29

McLuhan in Stevenson (2002) p. 125. 30

Stevenson (2002) p. 125. 31

Mark Poster in Jean Baudrillard (1988) Selected Writings, ed and intro by

Mark Poster Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, p. 5-6. 32

Jean Baudrillard (1994) Simulacra and Simulation Ann Arbour: University of

Michigan Press, p. 3.

26

The effect of simulation in hyperreality, as in virtual reality, subverts conventional

concepts of time and space. The subversion of time and space into non-linear and

unstable frameworks is a feature of postmodernist thought and explored in

postmodern art and performance. The specific restructuring of time and space in a

‘condition of Virtuality’ is directly related to the form of computer technologies and

digital media. Paul Virilio addresses the contraction of time as a result of new

technologies and how “With the interfacing of computer terminals and video

monitors, distinctions of here and there no longer mean anything.”33

For Virilio,

technology is focused on speed and efficiency. The immediacy that new technologies

of communication enable means that in hyperreality, cyberspace, and virtual realities,

we “arrive” at information and images on cue. The interval of time is eliminated as

we see “the beginnings of a “generalized arrival” whereby everything arrives without

having to leave”.34

As we experience the hypertextual interfaces we arrive at a new

destination with each click of the mouse without having to wait the duration of the

journey. Virilio’s theories of speed and the ‘death of distance’ are useful as an

introduction to the analysis of human/media interaction, and his writings on mediated

spatialities may also be useful as a basis upon which to build a discussion of the

disappearing gap between the audience and the artwork in multimedia performance.

However Virilio offers a skeptical perspective, emphasizing the less progressive

aspects of the developments in new communication technologies, and his writing is

considered as “perhaps best read as a warning as to where technological change might

lead rather than as offering a balanced account of the effects of technological

development”.35

He argues that the notion of a ‘culture of interactivity’ is mostly false

and that “euphoric technological determinism” is creating cultural impoverishment

and leading to the eradication of our phenomenological faculties. His is a one-sided

view of technology, bordering on ‘technophobia’. Stevenson asserts, “The

development of what Virilio calls a political economy of speed is such that at times he

sounds as through the only way of resisting the totalitarian ambitions of technology is

through technological abstinence”.36

This is an extreme position and as such Virilio’s

33

Virilio in Gabriella Giannachi (2004) Virtual Theatres: An Introduction, London and New York:

Routledge, p. 11. 34

Giannachi (2004) p. 17. 35

Stevenson (2002) p. 206. 36

Stevenson (2002) p. 207.

27

work may be viewed as limited in scope as it does not offer a balanced account of the

effects of technological development.

It is my intention to avoid such an extreme position. While this thesis explores ideas

that build upon the seminal works of these media theorists, it neither celebrates nor

resists the influence of computer technologies on the development of a cultural shift

into a state of ‘Virtuality. The position assumed in this thesis relates to that which

Hiem promotes in terms of a 'virtual realism'. This position is a "delicate balancing

act [that] sways between the idealism of unstoppable Progress and the Luddite

resistance to virtual life".37

He suggests that we must be realistic towards virtuality,

both suspicious of the idealism and commercialisation in which it is embedded and at

the same time affirm that which is real and functional as our culture begins to inhabit

cyberspace:

it is important to find a balance that swings neither to the idealistic blue sky

where primary reality disappears, nor to the mundane indifference that sees

just another tool, something that can be picked up or put down at will. The

balancing act requires a view of life as a mixed bag, as a series of trade-offs

that we must discern and then evaluate. Balancing means walking a pragmatic

path of involvement and critical perception.38

In this investigation into the cultural paradigm of 'virtuality' and the poetics of its

manifestation in both live and mediated theatre spaces, it is my intention to maintain

balance upon the tightrope between idealism and scepticism, neither rejecting nor

advocating the influence of information technologies on community, culture and on

the live theatrical event.

Virtualisation

At the 1995 Ars Electronica Festival titled “Welcome to the Wired World”, Pierre

Levy offered the following declaration:

Listen to what could be the sensible message of this art, of this philosophy, of

this politics: human beings, people from here and everywhere, you who are

37

Heim in Lunenfeld ed. (2000) p. 41. 38

Heim in Lunenfeld ed. (2000) p. 42.

28

caught in this great movement of deterritorialisation… you who are caught in

this immense event of the world that never stops returning to itself and

recreating itself again, you who are launched toward the virtual, you who are

taken in this enormous jump that our species accomplished nowadays

upstream in the flow of being, yes, in the very heart of this strange whirlwind,

you are at home. Welcome to the human race’s new house. Welcome to

virtualisation.39

For well over a decade we technology-saturated Westerners have inhabited this

‘house of virtualisation’, holding our heads above the sea of information in which we

either become enveloped as vulnerable and susceptible consumers, or as critical

beings experience new forms and qualities of knowledge. We now not only live in a

‘wired world’ but in a digital world in which the translatability of information has

altered our social, economic, and creative practices.

‘Virtualisation’ is emerging as the defining cultural paradigm of our historical

present, manifest in the breakdown of the duality of actuality and virtuality in

everyday life. Virtualisation has been built on the foundations of postmodernism and

may be characterized by the condition in which the virtual is experienced as the real,

and the real as virtual. We now exist in the “the Desert of the Real” as articulated by

Slavoj Zizek (echoing Baudrillard) who explains, “Virtual Reality is experienced as

reality without being one. However, what awaits us at the end of this process of

virtualisation is that we begin to experience “real reality” itself as a virtual entity”.40

It

is as if cyberspace has leaked out of the computer-bound realm and contaminated, or

perhaps diluted, our immediate reality. Or perhaps users upon exiting computer-

generated environments never really leave ‘virtual reality’.

The shift into a state of ‘virtualisation’ though gradual, may be viewed as a cultural

shift embedded in our cognitive and social processes. As theatre is an arena for the

manifestation and exploration of such conditions, both trends and experiments in

theatrical performance may be placed within the context of this cultural shift. To

understand the significance of these trends and experiments they should be viewed in

relation to the principles of this informing cultural paradigm, and as potentially

39

Pierre Levy (1995) Welcome to Virtuality, Ars Electronica Festival Homepage,

(http://www.aec.at/en/archives/festival_archive/festival_catalogs/festival_artikel.asp?iProjectID=8616)

accessed May 2006. 40

Slavoj Zizek (2001) Welcome to the Desert of the Real, New York: The Wooster Press, p. 11.

29

affirming or challenging its espoused values. As such, it is the focus of this thesis to

firstly identify the nature of these ‘trends and experiments’ and secondly to address

how they are manifesting, reflecting and perhaps resisting the cultural paradigm of

‘Virtuality’.

Just as ‘Gutenberg’s Galaxy’ was characterised by a number of underlying

preconditions, so too can the nature of our current ‘galaxy’ be recognised by

addressing the preconditions of media presentation that shape the perception of the

contemporary media-saturated, computer-savvy human subject. Current theatre

academic Peter Boenisch has used McLuhan’s illustration of the cognitive

preconditions underlying the Gutenberg Galaxy to draw comparisons and create a

template of the fundamental principles of the current emerging cultural paradigm. His

examination of intermediality in the theatre focuses on the common denominator

across the range of media presented that reflects new modes of thought and

perceptions of the world that have developed in relation to our current historical and

cultural position. He asserts that, while a shift of cognitive standards is still in

progress today, we are now gradually entering ‘electrONic culture’ - a culture shaped

by “the perceptional conventions of electronic media technology”,41

and proposes a

number of preconditions that are informing current media presentation:

• the once dominating visual mode of perception is substituted by multi-

mediality and multi-sensoriality addressing all senses,

• instead of the hierarchic uniformity and self-identity, our new ‘virtual reality’

leaves space for varieties, minorities and numerous identities,

• in the place of segmentation, successive and causal linearity is now non-

sequential simultaneity of linked Hypertext systems,

• instead of being a passively consuming reader, the ‘user’ of electrONic

aesthetics becomes interactively involved. 42

Boenisch stresses that these principles inform our entire sensorial, cognitive, and

aesthetic outlook, and asserts that contemporary theatre is functioning as a ‘training

centre’ for these new modes of awareness.43

41

Peter Boenisch (2003) "coMEDIA electrONica: Performing intermediality in contemporary theatre",

Theatre Research International, Vol. 28, No. 1, p. 37. 42

Boenisch (2003) p. 37-38. 43

Boenisch (2003) p. 38.

30

The recognition of media theory as providing an approach and a language that may be

applied to the analysis of multimedia performance is an important feature of

Boenisch’s article and it will inform the nature of analysis in following case studies

within this thesis. Boenisch also offers an insightful summation of the effects media

technologies have had on our contemporary cultural viewpoint since the dominance

of print culture and as such he offers a sound framework upon which to further build

an understanding of Virtuality and identify its defining characteristics. However

Boenisch draws on media theory generally and does not mention relevant aspects of

so-called ‘new media’ theory. For example, Lev Manovich’s discussion of the

structure of databases as alternative to narrative structure offers another ‘replacement’

for “segmentation, successive and causal linearity”. As Boenisch’s preconditions are

developed through the re-evaluation of the principles of print culture outlined by

McLuhan, and only address preconditions of media production, his list of principles is

limited as a template of cultural preconditions. For example, perceptions and

preconditions regarding the body and its relation to technology are not emphasised.

Boenisch focuses on a specific theatrical performance and asserts that theatre practice

may be informed by these proposed preconditions, but does not detail the influence of

computer technologies in shaping perspective. He does however contribute a clear

overview of key preconditions that may be considered as providing the basic

foundations of a ‘cultural shift’ that is manifest in the construction of media

presentation and that informs our aesthetic outlook. The parameters outlined by

Boenisch are extremely wide and it is within these we are currently building the

“human race’s new house” of “virtualisation” (Levy). Boenisch offers the broad

brushstrokes that illustrate the major developments since the age of the Gutenberg

press, but as such does not address the specific preconditions of Virtuality.

The specific preconditions of Virtuality are addressed in detail by N. Katherine

Hayles, who offers a list of principles that aim to define our current cultural condition.

Hayles’ preconditions are more specific to our current condition as influenced by

information technologies and virtual realities and address the cultural transition as a

shift in our subjectivity. Not only are we an ‘electronic culture’ as suggested by

Boenisch but we are highly digitised. This thesis attempts to determine the way in

31

which the underlying preconditions that shape our cultural condition are also shaping

theatre practice, and how it relates to a ‘digital aesthetic’.

A ‘Digital Aesthetic’

As Lunenfeld suggests in the following statement, the term ‘digital’ has become the

buzzword of our time, not only applied to the relevant technologies but also used to

encapsulate our contemporary present:

The digital is linked to other terms: electronic, cyber, telematic. These terms are

more than technological nomenclature. They are being tested to serve as

overarching descriptions of a moment. No one could ever quite define what they

meant by "modern", but to speak of the "modern moment" was at least a

comprehensible statement. Even harder to pin down was the word

"postmodern", but it, too, served for a time to describe a set of often conflicting

tendencies, movements, and artifacts. I would maintain that "digital" has a

similar function as a placeholder for whatever term we of posterity choose to

describe our immediate present.44

If, as Levy suggests, our immediate present is characterised by Virtualisation, then

there appears to be a clear connection between the digital and the virtual, between the

digitalisation of technology and the virtualisation of society. If we accept that our

contemporary cultural condition is highly influenced by the ubiquity of digital media

technologies, then the specific nature of these technologies as digital should be

addressed.

A key focus of current new media theory is whether or not there are qualities specific

to digital technologies and if so, what is the nature of the aesthetic particular to digital

media. Indeed, the notion of new media as ‘remediating’ other established media

(Bolter and Grusin) reinforces the idea that digital media is itself as yet largely

undefined as a cultural medium of communication. There is no definitive theory of

‘the digital aesthetic’ as it encompasses great variety. Andrew Murphy and John Potts

explain, “whatever the digital aesthetic is or is not, there seems to be a lot of it

around, and it is tremendously diverse. This diversity and the constant divergence into

44

Peter Lunenfeld “Introduction- Screen Grabs: Digital Dialectic and New Media Theory” in

Lunenfeld ed. (2000) The Digital Dialectic: New Essays on New Media, Cambridge MA and London:

The MIT Press, p. xvi.

32

new forms – and ever newer media technologies – might be one of the digital

aesthetic’s defining features”.45

If the poetics of multimedia performance are

manifesting a cultural shift into a ‘condition of virtuality’, then there is the potential

for these poetics to be influenced by or to reflect a ‘digital aesthetic’.

I am not arguing that theatre is imitating digital media, rather that an informed

awareness of the key concepts and language used in the discussion of new media

theory and practice may enhance understandings of the significance of recent

developments in theatre practice. As theatre is manifesting and attempting to address

conditions of seeing and hearing in a society largely dominated by digitalised

technology, where ‘digitalisation’ is revered as the height of sophistication and the

way of the future, then the values placed upon these technologies will inevitably

infiltrate the poetics of experimental theatre. Theatre as a medium (or ‘metamedium)

does not progress in isolation, and both theatre practice and new media practice

actively ‘remediate’ each other in innovative ways. Although the ‘digital aesthetic’ is

specific to digital technology, later chapters attempt to view multimedia theatre

practice in the light of digital aesthetics.

In his essay "Unfinished Business", which appears in the book The Digital Dialectic:

New Essays for New Media, Peter Lunenfeld declares the digital aesthetic to be an

'aesthetic of 'unfinish', for the "business of the computer is always unfinished".46

The

term 'unfinished' has often had connotations of failure, of unrealised possibilities and

death before due time. Lunenfeld suggests that the computer will make us face our

fear of unfinished business and celebrate an 'aesthetic of unfinish'. Celebrating the

unfinished is “to laud process rather than goal - to open up a third thing that is not a

resolution, but rather a state of suspension. To get to that unresolved third thing…we

need first to acknowledge the central effects the computer has had on art and

culture."47

In his examination of the effects of the computer on art and culture,

Lunenfeld addresses the 'real' of digital production, the movies, architectures, CD-

roms, hypertexts and websites.

45

Andrew Murphie and John Potts (2003) Culture and Technology, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, p.

84. 46

Peter Lunenfeld “Unfinished Business” in Lunenfeld ed. (2000) The Digital Dialectic: New Essays

on New Media, Cambridge MA and London: The MIT Press, p. 7. 47

Lunenfeld “Unfinished Business” in Lunenfeld ed. (2000) p. 8.

33

To explain the “aesthetic of the unfinish” he addresses the threads of story, space, and

time as accessed through digital interfaces, characterising each as 'unfinished' in a

number of ways. 'Unfinished spaces' refers to the virtual realities and on-line matrices

which are intimately navigated by users as they perform a form of "digital derive"48

a

'drifting' through the fluid virtual spaces. Lunenfeld clarifies that the 'digital derive' is

"ever in a state of unfinish, because there are always more links to create, more sites

springing up every day, and even that which has been catalogued will be redesigned

by the time you return to it".49

He also suggests that if the creative possibilities of the

‘unfinish’ are to be established, then the computer generated environments must be

recognized as fully spatialised experiences and the digital derive needs be

acknowledged as more than just channel surfing. Lunenfeld’s understanding of the

‘digital derive’ potentially explains the interaction of audience/users as they explore

performative new media environments such as those created by Jeffrey Shaw and

Blast Theory. Certainly these environments are ‘unfinished’ spaces requiring the

active navigation of participants, who as they direct their path through the work, enact

a type of derive.

By “unfinished stories” Lunenfeld is not merely referring to the qualities of hypertext,

but rather focuses on the dissolving boundary between text and context that allows for

the never-ending extension of the ‘paratext’, a term used by narratologist Gerard

Genette to refer to the discourse and materials that refer to and contextualise the

narrative but exist outside the narrative object. The blurring of the boundary between

the text and the paratext confuses the limits of where the story begins and ends.

Lunenfeld suggests that digital forms are more prone to this for “who is to say where

packaging begins and ends in a medium in which everything is composed of the same

streams of data – regardless of whether the information is textual, visual, aural, static

or dynamic?”50

Closely linked to our sense of narrative is our perception of time and our natural

tendency to ‘narratise’ experience. Lunenfeld suggests that the shift in narrative

48

Lunenfeld borrows this term from the situationists. 49

Lunenfeld “Unfinished Business” in Lunenfeld ed. (2000) p. 10. 50

Lunenfeld “Unfinished Business” in Lunenfeld ed. (2000) p. 14.

34

toward an aesthetic of ‘unfinish’ alters our sense of time and affects even our sense of

death, for the inevitability of plot is the move towards death. The question is posed,

“Will loosening the plot – as the aesthetic of unfinish implies - affect this trajectory

toward mortality?”51

It is this dream of avoiding, or at least decelerating death, that

Lunenfeld suggests evokes the urge to overcome the fear of unfinished business.52

The importance of ‘the unfinished story’ and ‘unfinished time’ is recognised later in

this thesis and will be addressed as a feature of the poetic framework of contemporary

multimedia performance. The narrativity, or ‘post-narrativity’ of multimedia

performance is discussed in Chapter 6 of this thesis where theories of narrative

structure in new media are applied to contemporary performance practice. The idea of

the ‘unfinished story’ is certainly not unique to either digital media or multimedia

performance with experimental theatre practice particularly in the sixties and

seventies rejecting the idea of an authoritative narrative and exploring non-narrative,

site specific, and environmental work. The narrative frameworks addressed by

Lunenfeld manifest in digital technology simply as ‘open-structured’ texts. This is not

a new concept, with Roland Barthes’ notion of the ‘writerly’ text, wherein “the reader

does not encounter a work with preconstituted meaning, but rather (re)writes the text

through the process of reading”,53

having been liberally applied to hypertext and non-

traditional narrative for a number of decades. It is an important framework though for

understanding some of the similarities in the fields of theatrical performance and new

media, for while it is an inherent structural feature of all interactive technologies, it is

also a concept explored by avant-garde theatre throughout the twentieth century and

built on by contemporary multimedia performance.

The concept is most clearly articulated in Umberto Eco’s revolutionary The Open

Work, which details an artistic form employed in works that appeal “to the initiative

of the individual performer, and hence, offer themselves not as finite works but as

‘open’ works, which are brought to their conclusion by the performer at the same time

as he experiences them on an aesthetic plane”.54

Eco claims that any work of art is

51

Lunenfeld “Unfinished Business” in Lunenfeld ed. (2000) p. 20. 52

Ibid. 53

Lunenfeld “Unfinished Business” in Lunenfeld ed. (2000) p. 14. 54

Umberto Eco (1989) The Open Work, trans. Anna Cancogni, Cambridge MA: Harvard University

Press, p. 3.

35

never really ‘closed’ or shall we say ‘finished’, as every work of art is open to a

variety of possible ‘readings’ and is the source of an infinite number of experiences.55

The ‘open work’ however may still be considered structurally ‘whole’. Eco also

proposes the notion of ‘work in movement’, which “characteristically consist of

unplanned or physically incomplete structural units”.56

‘Works in movement’ are

artistic products which present an “intrinsic mobility, a kaleidoscopic capacity”57

to

suggest themselves in continually renewed aspects to the consumer.

The digital texts addressed by Lunenfeld, the CD-ROMS, hypertexts, web sites,

digital movies, and dynamic architectures are not only open texts but are ‘works in

movement’. It is the nature of digital texts and virtual environments that they offer the

potential for active audience participation in the navigation and production of their

structures and so are inherently open, ‘unfinished’ until they are brought into

completion through audience engagement. In the case of computer users the

consumption of such texts is actually physically active; the efficacy of open texts

accessed via computer interfaces demands physical intervention on the behalf of the

user. The notion of the text being ‘accessed’ as opposed to merely ‘consumed’

highlights this aspect.

Digitalisation

Lunenfeld’s ‘aesthetic of the unfinish’ is valuable to all fields of new media art as it

attempts to articulate the nature of a digital aesthetic generally and not of specific

mediums such as digital cinema (Manovich), the digital image (Hansen), hypertext

(Landow) and digital literary texts (Hayles). However it lacks detail regarding the

technical medium itself and does not address the impact of digitalisation upon media

that have previously existed as analogue forms. The following section will briefly

ascertain what is the common denominator to all things ‘digital’ and summarise

theories suggesting what is new about ‘new media’. It is evident that while theatrical

performance is primarily an ‘old’ medium, changes within ways of thinking about

55

Eco (1989) p. 24. 56

Eco (1989) p. 12. 57

Ibid.

36

‘media’ and ‘the body’ that have been activated by ‘digitisation’ have already, and

will continue, to effect the medium of theatre.

The distinct properties of new media are addressed by Lev Manovich in his seminal

work The Language of New Media.58

Manovich addresses the significance of new

media and digital technologies upon the field of cinema, and highlights that new

media is not ‘new’ in a revolutionary sense but is developed through the evolution of

previous forms of media. As Bolter and Grusin also detail in their book Remediation,

new media evolves through the remediation of older media. Manovich discusses the

genealogy of digital cinema and suggests that new media is defined by the principles

of Numerical Representation, Modularity, Automation, Variability, and Transcoding.

He discusses the key forms and operations of new media and, while the overarching

focus of his work is the development of digital cinema, his ‘language’, and the

principles and forms of new media he identifies, hold potential for analytic

application to multimedia theatre.

The first principle outlined by Manovich, that of numerical representation, is the

defining characteristic of the digital. On a fundamental level, the ‘digital’ consists of

numerical code, representing, processing, storing, transmitting or displaying data in

the form of numerical digits. The digital is the representation of a varying physical

quantity, such as sound waves, as discrete signals interpreted through numbers. The

difference between media and ‘new media’ is that new media has been translated into

numerical representation so as to be made accessible to the computer. While new

media objects may be computer-generated, they can also be the product of the

conversion of an analogue or old media form into digital format. Indeed the move

from ‘old’ media to ‘new’ media is the move from analogue to digital.

Digitisation has profound consequences for the nature and status of the ‘medium’. As

Mark Hansen explains, digitisation transforms media “from forms of actual

inscription of “reality” into variable interfaces for rendering the raw data of reality”.59

Media come to function simply as ‘surface differences’, and the reality contained in

58

Lev Manovich (2001) The Language of New Media, Cambridge MA and London: The MIT Press. 59

Mark Hansen (2004) New Philosophy for New Media, London and Cambridge MA: The MIT Press,

p. 20

37

the digital database can easily manifest in any number of accessible interfaces, from a

video to an immersive world. Hansen claims that when viewed as such, the “digital

era and the phenomenon of digitisation itself can be understood as demarcating a shift

in the correlation of two crucial terms: media and body. Simply put, as media lose

their material specificity, the body takes on a more prominent function as a selective

processor of information.”60

Hansen is assuming a position critical of the vision projected by media theorist

Fredrick Kittler, who argues that not only does the digitisation of media erode the

notion of ‘media’ itself, but eradicates the necessity for human interface. Kittler

understands that, “When films, music, phone calls and texts are able to reach the

individual household via optical fibre cables, the previously separate media of

television, radio, telephone, and mail will become a single medium, standardised

according to transmission frequency and bit format.”61

Once this occurs, any media

can be converted into any other, turning the formerly separate data flows into

standardised numerical sequences. Kittler argues that not only does this ‘total media

link’ on a numerical base erase the very idea of medium, but “With numbers,

everything goes. …. Instead of wiring people and technologies, absolute knowledge

will run as an endless loop.”62

Kittler sees information as autonomous, and perceives digitisation as potentially

creating a medium able to record and write reality independent of human interference.

Hansen claims that Kittler’s vision is clearly posthumanist, for “in the future scenario

he depicts – one where optical fibre networks will have become ubiquitous and the

digitilisation of information will have encompassed the previously separated and

incommensurate media – there will, quite simply, be no need for the human”.63

Hansen however argues for the privileged position of the body in the flow of

information. While there is a danger that cybernetics will forget the human base of

information, information is not autonomous for it can only develop from the

60

Mark Hansen (2002) “Cinema Beyond Cybernetics, or How to Frame the Digital Image”,

Configurations, Vol. 10, No. 1, p. 51-90. 61

Frederick Kittler (1997) Literature, Media and Information Systems, Amsterdam: Overseas

Publishers Association, p. 31. 62

Hansen (2002) 63

Ibid.

38

transmission of patterns of numerical data into ‘informational’ form when it is

received by a conscious being. Hansen refers to Raymond Ruyer, who outlines that,

transmission itself, insofar as it remains mechanical, is only the transmission of

a pattern, or structural order without internal unity. A conscious being, by

apprehending this pattern as a whole [dans son ensemble], makes it take on [le

fait devenir] form…sound waves on the telephone have been redrawn

[redessinees] …by electrical relays, and if an ear, or rather a conscious “I” was

not, in the end, listening to all the stages of the informational machine, one

would only ever discover fragmented functions and never a form properly

speaking.64

(Hansen’s italics)

Ruyer argues that it is a mistake to endow mechanical transmission as having the

“formal order that only appears at the end, thanks to something which is not the

machine”.65

It would seem that information, to develop meaning and relation to the

reality it encodes, relies on embodied reception.

‘Embodied reception’ is recognised by theorists such as Hansen, Hayles and other

informatics and new media philosophers, as a necessary and empowering dynamic in

the relationship between human and machine. Attention is increasingly being focused

on the processes of bodily engagement that are produced through interaction with the

technical processes and products of the digital media. The dominance of the ‘visual’

as the revered mode of perception in our highly mediatised culture has perhaps led to

the relegation of other less cognitive and more holistic modes of awareness. Stephanie

Springgay explains that in the West we are used to understanding knowledge and

perception primarily on the basis of vision, a position that asserts the separation of

mind and body.66

However as portended by McLuhan, the age of information

technologies is moving “out of the age of the visual into the age of the aural and

tactile”.67

Springgay outlines that knowledge and perception through touch, as

opposed to through vision, can be understood through two modalities; “as the

physical contact of skin on matter that includes experiencing things as sensations

conveyed through the skin” and as “a sense of being in a proximinal relation with

64

Ibid. 65

Ibid. 66

Springgay, Stephanie (2002) “Thinking Through Bodies: Bodied Encounters and the Process of

Meaning Making in an E-mail Generated Art Project’, Studies in Art Education, Vol. 47, Iss. 1, p. 24-

50. 67

McLuhan in Springgay, Stephanie (2002) p. 36.

39

something”.68

This second modality has particular potential for the understanding of

the actor audience relation and immersion in the theatre. It is also being explored by

new media theorists as they attempt to articulate the dynamic experience of virtual

reality and digital imagery.

The modality of “being in a proximinal relation with something” and the concept of

media as offering “sensations conveyed through the skin”, establish computer media

as inherently “affective”. This is a point clearly articulated by Murphy and Potts:

New media are no longer to be seen as carriers of information (messages) that

we either receive, act upon or both. Rather media do things to us. In turn, we do

things with them. They are about affect – how things are affected. We could say

that this is about our ‘feelings and emotions’, but with affect we are also talking

about something more basic that this, the very engagement between body and

world from which these feelings arise. If computer interfaces engage our senses,

they also engage our bodies – a theme frequently explored by cyberartists.69

The engagement between body and world and the dynamic interplay of our bodily

engagement with the computer interface, is the informing analytical paradigm of a

number of theorists who utilise the Bergsonian, Deluezian understanding of ‘affect’ to

inform their approach to new media and digital technologies.

Mark Hansen is leading this field and in his groundbreaking work New Philosophy for

New Media (2004) he redefines the digital image and details its impact upon all areas

of human existence. He approaches new media through affect and focuses on the

sensations and modes of perception that develop in the experience of virtuality.

Hansen examines new media in relation to Henri Bergson’s understanding of the

embodied nature of perception, declaring that, regardless of how recent critics have

interpreted Bergon’s theories, “Bergson remains first and foremost a theorist of

embodied perception: with his central concepts of affection and memory – both of

which are said to render perception constitutively impure – Bergson correlates

perception with the concrete life of the body”.70

68

Springgay (2002) p. 34. 69

Andrew Murphy and John Potts (2003) Culture and Technology, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, p.

86-87. 70

Hansen (2004) p. 3.

40

Embodied reception is a feature of the poetics of multimedia performance and it is my

intention to focus on the materiality of how “media do things to us” and how in turn

“we do things to media” (Murphy and Potts). The potential for high levels of

immersion and interactivity in multimedia performance implicate the physical

participation of the audience and suggest the importance of sensory engagement.

However the philosophy of the nature of perception and affect is not a trajectory

pursued in this thesis and the Deleuzian theoretical paradigm is not a focus of this

study. Rather, focus is placed on the nature of the physical involvement of the

audience and the relationship of the body and technology that preconditions

contemporary performance. It is within these poetics that we can see manifest a

fundamental characteristic of the condition of Virtuality; the fusion of the human and

technology that produces ‘posthuman’ subjectivity.

The Posthuman

The idea of a ‘posthuman age’ in which the human is morphed with the technological

is illustrated in detail by cybernetics and literary theorist N. Katherine Hayles.

Hayles’ writing, along with the ‘cyborg’ social feminism of Donna J. Harraway,

envisions the fusion of the human and the machine as creating an hybrid subjectivity

that is continuously moving between the material realm of bodily agency and the

dematerialised realm of digitality. As Brian Lennon elucidates, “cyborg or posthuman

neither dystopically rejects the automaton, nor transcendentally dissolves itself in it,

but instead moves continually between nature and culture, organic and synthetic,

individual and collective”.71

Katherine Hayles’ influential book How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in

Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics (1999) explores the human/machine

interface and argues for an ‘embodied virtuality’. Hayles looks into the history of

cybernetics to demystify our journey into inhabited virtuality and outlines the nature

of this cultural shift. She explores three interwoven narratives that expose the shift

from the human to the ‘posthuman’, how information came to be separated from

71

Brian Lennon (2000) “Screening a Digital Visual Poetics”, Configurations, Vol. 8, No. 1, p. 63-85.

41

material forms, the construction of the cyborg, and the deconstruction of the liberal

humanist subject in cybernetics.

Hayles’ ‘posthuman point of view’ is characterized by four key assumptions that

precondition its formation. Firstly, informational pattern is privileged over material

presence, so that biological embodiment is not viewed as an inevitability of life but

rather as “accident of history”.72

Secondly, consciousness, widely understood as the

locus of human identity, is viewed as an “evolutional upstart trying to claim that it is

the whole show when in actuality it is only a minor sideshow”.73

Thirdly, the body is

viewed as a manipulable prosthesis, so that extending or altering the body with other

prostheses is essentially just the continuation of an ongoing process that begins before

birth. Fourthly, the posthuman view constructs the human being so that it can be

‘seamlessly articulated’ with intelligent technology.

The posthuman subject rejects the ‘natural’ self, having become a composite, “an

amalgam, a collection of heterogeneous components, a material-informational entity

whose boundaries undergo continuous construction and reconstruction.”74

As

fantastical as this may sound, the posthuman does not necessarily involve the literal

mutation of the human being into the semi-machinic cyborg but rather requires the

construction of subjectivity. Hayles further elucidates her vision:

If my nightmare is a culture inhabited by posthumans who regard their bodies

as fashion accessories rather than the ground of being, my dream is a version of

the posthuman that embraces the possibilities of information technologies

without being seduced by fantasies of unlimited power and disembodied

immortality, that recognizes and celebrates finitude as a condition of human

being, and that understands human life is embedded in a material world of

great complexity, one on which we depend for our continued survival.75

Hayles argues strenuously against the apocalyptic vision of a ‘postbiological’ future

in which the mind exists separately from the dematerialized body, which has been

substituted by information. She warns us, “As we rush to explore the new vistas that

72

N. Katherine Hayles (1999) How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature,

and Informatics, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p. 2. 73

Hayles (1999) p. 3. 74

Ibid. 75

Hayles (1999) p. 5.

42

cyberspace has made available for colonization, let us remember the fragility of a

material world that cannot be replaced”.76

These “ecstatic pronouncements and

delirious dreams” of a disembodied existence “should be taken as evidence not that

the body has disappeared but that a certain kind of subjectivity has emerged”, a

subjectivity constituted by the interplay of the materiality of informatics with the

immateriality of information.77

This embodied subjectivity is not necessarily a ‘body’,

or even an identity’, but a configuration “enmeshed within the specifics of place,

time, physiology, and culture”.78

The inherent physicality of the body is never fully

absorbed into dematerialisation, and likewise, digitalised data is not totally removed

from its material context.

It is the continuous tension between materiality and information that is the defining

dialectic in what Hayles labels our “condition of virtuality”, a condition she asserts is

now inhabited by millions of people. She defines virtuality as “the cultural perception

that material objects are interpenetrated by information patterns”.79

This definition,

notes Hayles, plays off the separation of materiality and information, a duality that

emerged as a historically specific construction in the 1940’s and 50’s. In our

condition of virtuality, the balance in the relation of information and materiality is

uneven. In the contemporary perspective, information is viewed as subordinating the

material. For example, molecular biology has constructed the understanding that

human physicality is ‘encoded’ as information in genes: “The content is provided by

the genetic pattern; the body’s materiality articulates a preexisting semantic structure.

Control resides in the pattern, which is regarded as bringing the material object into

being”.80

The focus upon the dialectic of pattern/randomness, the basis of information, is the

defining dynamic of ‘Virtuality’. Hayles articulates the features of virtuality in her

essay “The Condition of Virtuality” which appeared in the collection The Digital

Dialectic: New Essays for New Media. Here she presents Virtuality as an emerging

76

Hayles (1999) p. 49. 77

Hayles (1999) p. 193. 78

Hayles (1999) p. 196. 79

N. Katherine Hayles, “The Condition of Virtuality” in Peter Lunenfeld ed. (2000) The Digital

Dialectic: New Essays on New Media, Cambridge MA and London: The MIT Press, p. 69 80

Hayles in Lunenfeld (2000) p. 70.

43

cultural paradigm, positioning it as closely related to postmodernism but as also

having distinct characteristics. The most prominent characteristic of Virtuality is the

dominance of the information over materiality. Information consists of bits of data

that have been sequenced to create recognisable forms. It relies on the organisation of

otherwise random units, and as such, information may be characterised by the

interrelation of pattern and randomness. Materiality implies physical presence, the

existence of matter, and may be characterised by the interrelation of presence and

absence. So in our condition of Virtuality, Hayles asserts that the dialectic of

pattern/randomness, the basis of information, is beginning to develop prominence

over the dialectic of presence/absence. While the dialectic of pattern/randomness may

have prominence over the dialectic of presence/absence, Hayles explains that it would

be a mistake to view the dialectic of presence/absence as no longer having relevance,

for it “connects materiality and signification in ways not possible within the

pattern/randomness dialectic”.81

Both dialectics are central in the formation of the

posthuman point of view.

The ‘posthuman being’ exists as both material entity and simultaneously extended

into the dematerialised realm of digital information. As such, the posthuman

perspective does not view information and materiality as discrete concepts. There are

a number of problems with the notion of information and materiality as being

inherently demarcated and mutually independent: Hayles explains that she finds the

view of information as superseding materiality ironic as “The efficacy of information

depends on a highly articulated material base.”82

Information is reliant on material

properties, and so too is materiality dependant on informational pattern.

Semiotics of Virtuality

The ‘posthuman point of view’ perceives the boundary between information and

materiality as fluid and ever dissolving, and it is the merging of these two realms that

defines our current human condition. Working with the concepts of information and

materiality as a foundation, Hayles develops what she has labelled the “semiotics of

Virtuality”. She begins by placing the dialectics of pattern/randomness (information)

81

Hayles (1999) p. 247. 82

Hayles in Lunenfeld ed. (2000) p. 72.

44

and presence/absence (materiality) as two axes of a ‘semiotic square’. She then

proceeds to make all possible connections between these four terms, with each

connection producing a ‘synthesising term’. Together these synthesising terms

produce the dominant characteristics of the posthuman condition and create a

semiotic framework that shows the key perspectives in our ‘condition of Virtuality.

These perspectives are potentially encoded within contemporary art and performance.

Hayles firstly connects the terms ‘pattern’ with ‘presence’, and ‘absence’ with

‘randomness’. To envisage Hayles’ framework, imagine the terms ‘presence’ and

‘absence’ as the top two corners of a square and the terms ‘pattern’ and ‘randomness’

as the bottom two. While the axes themselves are rigid, the terms of which the axes

are composed are not static but “interact dynamically with their partners, and out of

these interactions new synthetic terms can arise”.83

The interaction between presence

and pattern (along the diagonal axis) is labelled ‘replication’, for it suggests

continuation: “An entity that is present continues to be so: a pattern repeating itself

across time and space continues to replicate itself”.84

The interaction of absence and

randomness (along the other diagonal) creates “disruption”: “Absence disrupts the

illusion of presence, revealing its lack of originary plenitude. Randomness tears holes

in pattern, allowing the white noise of the background to pour through”.85

Hayles uses this structural foundation as a basis for elaboration. She offers a layer of

transformation, adding a series of ‘synthesising terms’ to her original semiotic

square.86

The interplay of presence and absence produces the synthetic term

materiality. The dialectic of pattern and randomness forms the basis of information.

The interaction of presence and randomness and the effect of the injection of

randomness into the material world produces mutation: “mutation testifies to the mark

that randomness leaves upon presence”.87

Finally, following Baudrillard’s

understanding of the precession of simulacra, the interplay between absence and

pattern is labelled hyperreality, which exists when there is informational pattern with

83

Hayles (1999) p. 248. 84

Ibid. 85

Ibid. 86

Hayles (1999) p. 249. 87

Ibid.

45

no original, a signified without signifier. These four terms – information, materiality,

mutation, and hyperreality are the four central concepts important to the posthuman.

To further explain this schematic Hayles explores four literary texts in detail,

evidencing how each focuses on one of these four perspectives. Each story presents a

fictional world in which one of these concepts has become the principle value in the

way human beings exist and communicate. Each of these concepts can manifest as a

perspective, and these perspectives are then encoded in literature. Hayles modestly

does not demand the application of her analytical framework outside her specific

literary focus and does not investigate the possibility that these perspectives are

exhibited in other media. It is my aim to explore how these perspectives are exhibited

in contemporary multimedia performance and to demonstrate whether the shift from

presence and absence (materiality) to pattern and randomness (information) is

encoded in performance works.

As virtuality is a condition “now inhabited by millions of people” and a ‘posthuman

perspective’ is inevitable for today’s technology-saturated subject, Hayles’ succinct

explanation of ‘Virtuality” as defined by a number of clear principles is a valuable

contribution not only to media theory and cybernetics, but to all analytic disciplines

that focus on the discussion of culture and creative practice. Hayles’ schematic of the

semiotics of virtuality offers enormous potential as a framework for understanding

theatre’s relationship to the influence of digital information technologies and the

posthuman perspective. The examination of multimedia case studies throughout this

thesis is contextualised by an understanding of “Virtuality” as an interpretive

paradigm and Hayles’ semiotics of Virtuality are used as a continual point of

reference throughout the following investigation into the poetics of multimedia

performance.

If theatre practice is manifesting and problematising our current ‘condition of

Virtuality’ then it will reflect the dissolution of the boundary between information and

materiality and the emerging dominance of the dialectic of pattern/randomness. In

theatrical performance, the dialectic of presence/absence certainly continues to have

relevance as the quality of ‘liveness’ that is often seen as defining theatrical

46

performance is the derivative of material presence. The dialectic of presence/absence

has remained prominent and has been the focus of much twentieth century avant-

garde performance practice and theory. I am certainly not hypothesising the

invisibility of this dialectic, rather I want to explore the different balances and

manifestations of its relation to the realm of information.

This thesis also attempts to utilise the potential of the dialectic of pattern/randomness

as a new lens through which to holistically view the modes, means, and complex

processes of communication in multimedia performance. While information theory

may use a specific definition of ‘pattern’ in relation to data management, with

computers using patterns to manipulate and organise data, pattern and randomness are

concepts with many profound resonances. They are also terms with strong roots in

avant-garde theatrical performance, with notions of chance and repetition a feature of

Fluxus and the works of John Cage amongst others. Pattern is experiential and is

closely related to the concept of rhythm. It can accumulate diachronically and can

also spread synchronically across a depth of media, layering a present moment.

Pattern can move across many media simultaneously regardless of their materiality or

digitality, creating systems of communication; systems of intermediality, immersion,

interactivity and narrativity. At the end of his article on digital poetics Brian Lennon

suggests “the informational concepts of noise, pattern, and recombination may

(through no intention of their originators) provide new ways to read and to write

about the poetries of the past, as well as informing those of the continuous or

unacknowledged present”.88

The terms ‘pattern’ and ‘randomness’, and related

terminologies, may also provide new ways to experience and understand the poetics

of multimedia theatre.

The following chapter defines the parameters of ‘multimedia theatre’, locating this

field of practice both within a historical context and within the wider arena of

contemporary theatre practice.

88

Lennon (2000) p. 85.

47

Chapter 2

Multimedia Theatre: Defining the Field

Multimedia has been described as “the defining medium for the twenty first

century”,89

but the inferences of the term ‘multimedia’ have become many and are

often non-specific, particularly when the term is used in conjunction with ‘theatre’.

This chapter aims to define the field of multimedia theatre, and to place this field in

relation to other established areas of practice. Justification for the choice of the term

‘multimedia theatre’ (as opposed to ‘virtual theatre’) is offered, and the definitive

characteristics of the field are identified. It is argued that contemporary multimedia

theatre is not simply a reaction to new technologies but is the extension of an ongoing

dynamic that has developed throughout the twentieth century, and to illustrate this

dynamic the key elements of the multimedia theatre are delineated within a historical

context. Multimedia theatre is then positioned in relation to other relevant

contemporary fields of performance as defined by key theorists. The nature of these

fields is explicated and their relevance to the field of multimedia theatre explained.

Multimedia vs Virtual Theatre

Both multimedia theatre and virtual theatre are characterised by the performative use

of media technologies, however multimedia theatre is the preferred focus for this

study as it includes a wider variety of theatrical forms. Virtual theatre, as defined by

Gabriella Giannachi in her book Virtual Theatres: An Introduction, may be positioned

as a subset of the broader field of multimedia theatre. Giannachi defines virtual art as

where “both the work of art and the viewer are mediated”, 90

enabling the

multiplication and dispersal of the viewer’s point of view. In virtual theatre, the

performance occurs via mediation. Giannachi’s discussion focuses on ‘virtual art

forms’, where the audience encounter either a mediated virtual reality or a

89

Packer and Jordan eds. (2001) p. xiii. 90

Gabriella Giannachi (2004) Virtual Theatres: An Introduction, London and New York: Routledge,

p.4.

48

technologically altered reality (such as in the case of ‘cyborg theatre’). She analyses

the aesthetic dimensions of performative digital arts, framing virtual theatre within the

context of interactive arts practices that have developed out of fields such as video art

and early computer art. The trajectory of her discussion suggests that virtual theatre is

moving towards an “aesthetic of virtual reality”,91

where everything is simulated and

reference to the live performer has disappeared. Giannachi does not include within the

parameters of virtual theatre more traditionally ‘theatrical’ performance that, while

utilising mediated technologies within the frame of live theatre, adhere to a theatrical

dramaturgy and still maintain the ‘live’, the ‘real’ and the ‘here and now’. Nor is

virtual theatre positioned, according to Giannachi’s study, within the historical

context of experimental theatre practice.

Multimedia theatre extends focus outside the boundary of mediated production to also

include within its sphere of reference performance that occurs in real space, utilising

digital technologies alongside the live performer. Such works utilise and problematise

digital media whilst adhering to the conventions of staged theatre or live art.

Performances such as those of The Wooster group, The Builder’s Association,

Sydney-based company Version 1.0, and of multimedia dance companies such as

Dumb Type, Troika Ranch and Australian choreographer Kate Champion, not only

innovatively ‘stage’ technological media but they are part of a field of practice that

has heavily influenced the nascent domain of virtual theatre. There have been many

attractive titles attached to experimental performance practice that utilises

technological media; ‘cybertheatre’, ‘postorganic theatre’, ‘mixed media theatre’,

‘intermedial’ or ‘transmedial theatre’, as well as terms for media-based performance:

‘video performance’, ‘networked performance’, ‘multimedia installation’, ‘new media

performance’, and ‘computer theatre’. All these practices, including the field of

virtual theatre, are grouped under the rubric of ‘multimedia theatre’. While each may

connote a specific form, the concern of this study is not the distinction between these

categories of multimedia performance but the trends and poetics that are manifesting

across them.

91

Giannachi (2004) p. 123.

49

To establish whether and how the field of multimedia theatre is manifesting the

cultural condition of Virtuality and transforming as a result of digital technologies, it

is important to examine work that represents a wide cross-section of practice. The

term ‘multimedia theatre’ has been selected here for its implication that the field of

study is generally characterised by the use of media technologies within a theatrical

context or in a performative mode. As such, examples of practice discussed in the

following chapters reflect the gamut of multimedia theatre forms. As outlined in the

introduction, my understanding of multimedia is drawn from Packer and Jordan’s

articulation of multimedia as defined by the collective qualities of integration,

interactivity, hypermedia, immersion, and narrativity. While these qualities

characterise the field of multimedia technology, they are connected to, and extend,

evolutionary trends within experimental theatre practice during the last century,

suggesting that multimedia theatre is not an incidental or fortuitous phenomenon, but

is a culturally embedded creative practice.

Forms of multimedia theatre practice are not simply the direct result of the new media

they utilise and comment on, but are part of an experimental performance lineage that

has a significant historical process of development. Theatre has always experimented

with new technologies in performance and explored the nature of, and creative

potential of, the interaction of the live and the mediated. The new forms of media art

that have manifested in the early twenty-first century extend twentieth century

multimedia theatre practices. While Giannachi titles these new forms of media art

virtual theatre, she does not place these practices within a frame of theatre practice.

Many of the defining characteristics of virtual theatre have a history of development

within theatre practice, and are the contemporary manifestation of a field of theatre

that for over a century has incorporated new technologies and explored their impact

upon society.

During the nineties it became popular to refer to the ‘digital revolution’ or

‘communication revolution’ brought about through the nature and ubiquity of

computer and network technologies. It may be possible to consider practices such as

new media art, tele-performance and what Giannachi refers to as cyborg-theatre, as

both a result of, and an inherent part of, a digital communication revolution.

50

However, when framed within theatre practice the emergence of contemporary

multimedia theatre may be viewed not as a revolution but as a gradual process of

evolution. The following survey maps the development of the key characteristics that

establish the basic framework for the poetics of multimedia theatre.

Evolution of Multimedia Theatre

The multimedia theatre of the late twentieth century developed as the culmination of a

creative dynamic that gained momentum throughout the century. There were a

number of crucial transformations in the expression and perception of what

constituted theatre that together enabled the rise and progression of contemporary

multimedia theatre. The key transformations may be simplified as: the hybridisation

of traditional artistic disciplines, a greater emphasis on performative process rather

than product or object, and the development of a more active audience. These

dynamics have been further developed in contemporary multimedia theatre and form

the foundation of its poetics. Each of these characteristics is here addressed in relation

to the historical development of multimedia theatre.

Hybridisation of Disciplines

Perhaps the most prominent transformation of theatrical performance in the last

century has come through the hybridisation of traditional disciplines, and current

artists at the forefront of innovative performance are combining dance, dialogue, film

and music to present an aesthetically rich and immersive exploration of concepts

through a multiplicity of communication modes. The injection of media into theatrical

performance must be understood as relating back to the gradual hybridisation of

theatre and the interweaving of discipline boundaries. While the use of ‘multimedia’

in theatre is usually identified as a distinctly postmodern phenomenon, the notion of

interdisciplinary performance has a far longer history. Contemporary multimedia

performance may be considered as realising theories of art that, for over a century and

a half, have called for the unity of communication media in a theatre that fully utilises

the creative potential of all artistic mediums.

51

Hybridisation between artistic disciplines has manifested in theatrical performance in

two prominent ways. Within the theatrical frame, artistic disciplines and forms of

communication may be either integrated, as has been the dominant aim, or they may

be counterpointed, creating a kind of paralleling effect amongst media. The ultimate

state of integration in theatre would be the realisation of synthesis across all systems

and mediums of communication. There is one concept that has been the vanguard in

articulating the idea of synthesis across artistic forms; the Wagnerian

Gesamtkunstwerk. In the nineteenth century the German composer prophetically

envisioned the integration of traditional disciplines into a unified work with the aim

of intensifying the audience’s experiences of art.

In the history of arts integration Wagner may be the most prominent creator of his

century, however the integration of artforms has had a more extensive and largely

ignored developmental period relating back to earlier Romanticism. Thomas Jensen

Hines, in the opening chapter of his key text Collaborative Form: Studies in the

Relations of the Arts, suggests that the fixation on the Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk

has meant that many discussions of composite form “began and ended with Wagner”,

and thus it has limited discussions of collaborative form.92

Hines argues that, due to

his renowned success, Wagner received credit for envisaging the Gesamtkunstwerk

even though earlier Romantic poets and composers had celebrated such an ideal. It

was with the advent of Romanticism that “the ambition of the artists grew and the

goal of synthesis of the arts came to include all the arts”.93

While Hines reveals that the beginnings of a collaborative form may lie in the

Romantic period, there can be no denying the enormous influence of Wagner’s work.

In 1849 Wagner produced the landmark essay The Artwork of the Future, in which he

declared “Artistic Man can only fully content himself by uniting every branch of Art

into the common Artwork”.94

Wagner’s highly influential concept of the

Gesamtkunstwerk, or Total Artwork, called for a fusion or “totalising” of all arts and

this essay was arguably the first treatise in modern art to push for such comprehensive

92

Thomas Jensen Hines (1991) Collaborative Form: Studies in the Relations of the Arts, Ohio: The

Kent State University Press, p. 2. 93

Hines (1991) p. 1. 94

Richard Wagner “Outlines of the Artwork of the Future” in Randall Packer and Ken Jordan eds.

(2001) Multimedia: From Wagner To Virtual Reality, New York: W.W.Norton and Company, p. 4.

52

integration.95

He asserted that the individual disciplines of music, architecture,

poetry, dance, and painting should be united, and viewed ‘the Drama’ as the ideal

medium for this synthesis. In the ‘true’ Drama, “each separate art can only bare its

utmost secret to their common public through a mutual parleying with the other arts;

for the purpose of each separate branch of art can only be fully attained by the

reciprocal agreement and co-operation of all the branches in their common usage.”96

Wagner created the ‘music-drama’ and advocated the privileging of the dramatic text

over the ‘musical text’, for previous operas had relegated the drama to a mere pretext

for the musical score. He viewed the drama as the ‘soul’ of the artwork, and declared

that the purpose of drama is the only truly ‘realisable’ artistic purpose:

whatever deviates from it (the drama) must necessarily lose itself in the ocean

of things indefinite, unintelligible, unfree. This purpose, however, will never

be reached by any one branch of art by itself alone but only by all together,

and therefore the most universal work of art is at the same time the only real,

free, that is to say the only intelligible, work of art.97

(Wagner’s italics)

Wagner also valued the live performer as the most important medium or conveyer of

the drama, for the live performer is the vessel in which the artforms of poetry, dance,

and music are united: “It is in him, the immediate performer, that the three sister arts

(poetry, music, dance) unite in one collective operation in which the highest faculty of

each reaches its highest manifestation.”98

Wagner’s motivation to embrace the complete scope of human experience and to

reflect this in his art was continued by early twentieth century artists, who also

believed that modern experience could not be adequately expressed within the rigidity

of traditional discipline boundaries. The ideal of there being a theatre that

encompassed the audience through the synthesis of all artistic mediums, continued to

evolve. However, ensuing theories of a ‘total artwork’ digressed from the specific

dictates of the Wagnerian Gesumkunstwerk.

95

Packer and Jordan eds. (2001) p. 4. 96

Wagner in Packer and Jordan eds. (2001) p. 5. 97

Richard Wagner “The Work of Art of the Future” in George W. Brandt ed. (1998) Modern Theories

of Drama: A Selection of Writings on Drama and Theatre 1850-1990, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 11. 98

Wagner in Brandt ed. (1998) p. 8.

53

Fifty years after Wagner’s manifesto, W.B. Yeats articulated his vision of a ‘theatre

of art’ in his essay The Theatre. Yeats envisioned a theatre based on a kind of new

‘poetic’ drama that revolted against the ‘prosiness’ of naturalism and was “non-

rhetorical and informed with an awareness of mystical powers”.99

He refers to the

dominant dramatic theatre as the ‘theatre of commerce’, which in its reliance on

visual representation, is making the “costumes of the actors more and more

magnificent, that the mind might sleep in peace.”100

Yeats seemed to view a ‘poetic’

theatre as offering audiences a more engaging and imaginative experience than the

prescriptive and shallow entertainment of the drama so revered by Wagner. He

describes the ‘theatre of commerce’, which is built on the drama and spectacle, as

“the masterpiece of that movement towards externality in life and thought and art

against which the criticism of our day is learning to protest”.101

While unfortunately for Yeats, his vision was never to truly manifest in the Irish

Literary Theatre, his ideas were to strongly influence the ideas of two great theatrical

innovators Adolphe Appia and Gordon Craig. Both practitioners called for the total

artistic control of a director who was both visionary designer and practical stage-

director. While they too called for a total ‘organic’ artwork and for a synthesis of the

arts in theatre, they rejected the limitations of naturalism and the drama. Movement

was privileged as the ultimate communicator of emotion and meaning, and the

creation of space through set design and lighting was key in facilitating the stage

movement. In Appia’s later writing, as he developed his notion of the ‘living art’, he

called for the breakdown of the audience-spectator separation and the creation of a

new ‘spirit of community’.102

It was during the careers of Appia and Craig that the influence of technology and

technologised media began to directly effect theatre practice. In their early careers

electric lighting was still a novelty, and later, the advent of the cinema was to

significantly alter perceptions of synthesis and ‘totality’ in art. In 1916, a group of

revolutionaries led by the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti published the

manifesto, The Futurist Cinema in which they contrast the expressive potential of 99

Brandt ed. (1998) p. 122. 100

William Butler Yeats “The Theatre” in Brandt ed. (1998) p. 125. 101

Ibid. 102

Brandt ed. (1998) p. 145.

54

film with the inflexibility and linearity of the novel. Like Wagner, Marinetti and his

colleagues call for the synthesis of artistic forms, however it was in the cinema, not

the theatrical stage, that they saw the potential to realise their vision. They assert that

only cinema can reach the “polyexpressiveness towards which all the most modern

artistic researches are moving”103

and declare that Futurist cinema “will be painting,

architecture, sculpture, words-in-freedom, music of colours, lines, and forms, a

jumble of objects and reality thrown together at random”.104

Such an endeavour called

for the integration of technology into the arts; indeed Marinetti called for an end to all

art that would not embrace the social transformation brought about by technology in

the twentieth century. 105

Prior to making this claim Marinetti did however envision theatre as a means of

achieving ‘true synthesis’. In 1915, in collaboration with Emilio Settimelli and Bruno

Corra, he wrote the essay The Futurist Synthetic Theatre which articulates a theatre

that directly opposes the historical “passeist” theatre. The Futurist Theatre was to be

‘synthetic’, ‘atechnical’, ‘dynamic’, ‘simultaneous’, ‘autonomous’, ‘alogical’, and

‘unreal’.106

Fundamental to Marinetti’s concept of theatre was the notion of audience

participation, and it was the aim of the Futurist Synthetic Theatre to “Symphonise the

audience’s sensibility by exploring it, stirring up its laziest layers by every means

possible; eliminate the preconception of the footlights by throwing nets of sensation

between stage and audience; the stage action will invade the orchestra seats, the

audience”.107

It was the Futurist’s intention to instil in the audience a ‘dynamic

vivacity’ and force them out of the monotony of everyday life.

The theories of Yeats, Craig, Appia, and Marinetti may be viewed as reworking the

concept of artistic ‘synthesis’ articulated by Wagner, developing it to formulate new

perceptions of a ‘total artwork’ that rejects the ‘drama’ and develops audience

participation. While the ideas of these theorists have proved highly significant in the

history of experimental arts practice, their own individual practice failed to achieve

103

Marinetti, Corra, Settimelli, Ginna, Balla, and Chiti, “The Futurist Cinema” in Packer and Jordan

eds. (2001) p. 12. 104

Marinetti et al. in Packer and Jordan eds. (2001) p. 13. 105

Packer and Jordan eds. (2001) p. 11. 106

Marinetti, Settimeli and Cora, “The Futurist Synthetic Theatre” in Brandt ed. (1998) p. 177-180. 107

Marinetti et al. In Brandt ed. (1998) p. 181.

55

the visionary expectations of their manifestos. Ensuing twentieth century practice

must however acknowledge its indebtedness to these early ideas. The Futurists’ ideas

regarding the social transformation brought about by technology can be recognised as

not only influencing multimedia theatre but as shaping the works of avant-garde film

artists such as Sergei Eisenstein, D.W. Griffith, Abel Gance and Fritz Lang. Appia’s

visions of merging the audience and the spectators can be seen as prefiguring the

move towards an active audience in the work of many twentieth century theatre

practitioners. Experimental theatre practice in the second half of the twentieth century

continued the merging of artistic disciplines and forms.

Another form of the hybridisation of creative disciplines has been the counter-

pointing of artistic disciplines and media within the performance frame. John Cage, a

student of Arnold Schoenberg, produced interdisciplinary work that seldom complied

with the traditional boundaries of artistic practice. In 1952, he initiated an ‘untitled

event’ at the summer school at Black Mountain College which has proven to be a

remarkable and highly influential event in performance history. The work was a

collaboration between Cage, a musician and composer, and the painter Robert

Rauschenberg, the pianist David Tudor, the composer Jay Watts, the dancer Merce

Cunningham, and poets Mary Caroline Richards and Charles Olsen, and did not aim

for the synthesis of artistic media but rather enabled the simultaneity and

counterpointing of various modes of performance.

In her article Performance Art and Ritual: Bodies in Performance, Erika Fischer-

Lichte outlines the significance and key elements of the ‘untitled event’. Numerous

artistic forms were employed within the event; as Cage spoke about the ‘relation of

music to Zen Buddhism’, Rauschenberg played records on a gramophone and

projected slides and film on the ceiling. Cunningham danced through the audience,

Olson and Richards read their poetry and Jay Watt sat in the corner and played

different instruments. It was significant that these events/processes/performances

occurred simultaneously, and could be considered equally important, without any

mode being relegated to a supportive role. Fischer-Lichte explains that although the

56

individual arts were not linked or motivated by a central focus or goal, the various

actions were not to be perceived in isolation from one another.108

This lack of symbolic coordination between the various artforms is in contrast to the

relation of media in the Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk, in which the various forms are

not counterpointed but are integrated and driven by a single thematic purpose. Indeed,

Fisher-Lichte points out that the unrelated coexistence of media in the ‘untitled event’

closely approximated Wagner’s nightmare, “of, for example, a reading of a Goethe

novel and the performance of a Beethoven symphony taking place in an art gallery

amongst various statues”.109

The actions of the ‘untitled event’ were not causally

dictated, however the simultaneity of events meant that they could be perceived as

occurring in parallel, rather than as entirely isolated. Fischer-Lichte suggests they

were “coordinated by the ‘time-brackets’. 110

The performances were simultaneous

events unified by the theatrical frame, and the audiences’ experience.

From Object to Action

The ‘untitled event’ at Black Mountain College not only evidenced the hybridisation

of artistic disciplines but it also epitomised the shift in emphasis from product to

process and from theatre to performance. Despite the obvious disparity between the

media, Fischer-Lichte finds congruity in the style of their appearance, suggests that

the ‘union of the arts’, the dissolution of the discipline boundaries, was achieved here

because all the artistic forms were realised in a ‘performative mode’.111

The work

challenged the borders between the arts,as it

dissolved the artefact into performance. Texts were recited, music was

played, paintings were ‘painted over’ - the artefacts became the

actions…Poetry, music and the fine arts ceased to function merely as poetry,

music, or fine arts – they were simultaneously realised as performance art.

They all changed into theatre. 112

108

Erika Fischer-Lichte (1997) ‘Performance art and Ritual: Bodies in Performance’, Theatre Research

International, Vol. 22, No. 1, p. 22-23. 109

Wagner in Fisher-Lichte (1997) p. 23. 110

Ficher-Lichte (1997) p. 23. 111

Ibid. 112

Fischer-Lichte (1997) p. 25.

57

This shift of emphasis from the artefact to the action was a defining feature of the

broad field of artistic practice of the time. Looking at the dynamic of visual art in the

fifties, the nature of art was altered as the creative action was prioritised above the

created object.

This shift of focus from object to action may be considered as originating in the work

of revolutionary visual artist Marcel Duchamp whose ‘readymades’ placed emphasis

on the informing concept, denigrating the status of the object or product. Arguably the

twentieth century’s most influential artist, Duchamp exploded previous definitions of

‘art’ and set it upon the path towards postmodernism, performativity, and

intermediality. Michael Rush, whose book New Media and Late 20th

Century Art

offers a detailed historical account of postmodern artistic practice that has embraced

the incorporation of technologised media, begins his overview by clarifying that

Duchamp’s importance to the issue of art and new media is central. Rush explains,

“the type of thinking he encouraged made explorations into different media and

artistic forms seem very natural, almost expected”.113

This move in emphasis from

product to idea has proven to be one of the key transformations of artistic practice in

the twentieth century. His work was to greatly influence the artists of the 50s and 60s

in their thinking about what constituted art,114

and lay the foundations for the

experiments of artists such as Cage and Rauschenberg.

Cage’s privileging of the active performance over the static text developed into a

definitive characteristic of ensuing avant-garde performance, permanently altering the

way art was to be consumed and processed. Erika Fischer-Lichte outlines that, prior

to these events, Western dramatic theatre completely ignored the performative

function of theatre, stressing the psychological realm and motivation for the action,

plot construction and scenic arrangements.115

The genre of ‘performance’ developed

in opposition to the symbolic hierarchies engrained in a theatre reliant on the narrative

text.

113

Michael Rush (1999) New Media in Late-20th

Century Art, London: Thames and Hudson, p. 21-22. 114

Rush (1999) p. 22. 115

Fischer-Lichte (1997) p. 24.

58

Certainly since Cage’s ‘untitled event’, the term ‘performance’ has been used to

describe theatre or live-play that does not adhere to the dictates of the dramatic

theatre, and is associated with the avante-garde’s rejection of authorial dictatorship.

Janelle Reinelt, who examines the evolution and various meanings of the term

‘performance’, clarifies that the use of the term performance is associated with a

history of the avante-garde or of “anti-theatre”, taking its meaning from “a rejection

of aspects of traditional theatre practice that emphasised plot, character, and

referentiality”.116

Performance foregrounds the elements of theatre that have

traditionally been overshadowed by the narrative, exploring the substructure of

individual sign systems that in traditional theatre are unified and enslaved by the

ultimate goal of representation. Performance, elucidates Josette Feral, explores the

‘underside’ of theatre, “giving the audience a glimpse of its inside, its reverse side, its

hidden face”.117

She identifies performance as “non-representational, non-narrative

theatre”.118

This definition positions performance as an offshoot or genre of theatre, a

self-reflective mode of presentation that exists on the perimeter of theatre, challenging

its existing boundaries from within.

From Passive to Active Spectator

One of the boundaries challenged was the line between the artwork and the spectator,

who was required to assume a more active and participatory role in the creation of

meaning. The audience focus moved from intellectual understanding and emotional

engagement with the action, to a more immediate and visceral experience of the

performance and an awareness of the subjectivity of this experience. As the notion of

‘theatre-as-representation’ was displaced and the substructure of individual sign

systems liberated, the audience were able to realise the performance in real-time and

real-space. Referring to Cage’s untitled event, Fisher-Lichte explains “the spectators

did not need to search for given meanings or struggle to decipher possible messages

formulated in the performance….Thus looking on was redefined as an activity, a

doing, according to their particular patterns of perception, their associations and

116

Janelle Reinelt (2002) “The Politics of Discourse: Performativity Meets Theatricality,” Substance,

Vol. 31, Nos. 2 & 3, p. 202. 117

Josette Feral (1982) "Performance and Theatricality: The Subject Demystified." Modern Drama,

Vol. 25, No. 1, p. 170-81. 118

Feral (1982) p. 171.

59

memories as well as on the discourses in which they participated.”119

The realisation

of a performance event in real-time and space, injected the possibility of ‘chance’,

and as the responsibility for the outcome of the work shifted towards the audience, the

level of indeterminacy in the nature of the final outcome was increased.

This injection of ‘chance’ into art and the need for audience participation resulted in

the evolution of Happenings, Events and the Fluxus movement. Michael Rush

presents a thorough historical illustration of the birth of Performance Art from the

cross-fertilisation of artistic disciplines, and the development of Fluxus as an

“intermedia movement that flourished in the 1960s and inaugurated several

innovations in performance, film, and eventually video”.120

While certainly the

Performance Art of artists such as Rauschenberg, Nam June Paik, Carolee Schneeman

and Joan Jonas epitomised a hybridisation of artistic disciplines and the focus on

action over object, the shift in emphasis from the audience as passive spectator to

active participant was most explicit in the Happenings of Allan Kaprow, Claes

Oldenberg and Jim Dine. Kaprow who coined the term ‘Happening’ in the late 1950s

attempted to eliminate the distinction between the audience and performer all

together.

In his essay Untitled Guidelines for Happenings, Kaprow portrays art as a means for

enhancing our awareness of life through unexpected meaningful interaction, and calls

for the border between art and life to be as fluid as possible, even perhaps,

indistinct121

. Theatrical convention is the enemy of the Happening, and Kaprow

declares “that audiences should be eliminated entirely”, for this will allow the

complete integration of all elements – people, space, the particular materials and

character of the environment, time.122

The Happening was indeed shaped by the

actions of the participants, and took place entirely in real or experienced time as

opposed to conceptual time, completely rejecting all notions of representation that are

traditionally paramount in the theatre.

119

Fisher-Lichte (1997) p. 25. 120

Rush (1999) p. 24. 121

Allan Kaprow, “Untitled Guidelines for Happenings” in Packer and Jordan eds. (2001) Multimedia:

From Wagner to Virtual Reality, London and New York: W.W. Norton and Company, p. 280. 122

Kaprow in Packer and Jordan eds. (2001) p. 285.

60

The rejection of representation in Happenings and Fluxus suggests its importance as

inherently postdramatic, and the influence of these performance experiments reaches

into current postdramatic and multimedia theatre. Like the practices from which it has

evolved, multimedia performance is rejecting the dominance of the drama to embrace

those facets that Wagner considered utterly undesirable due to their ‘unintelligibility”;

“things indefinite, unintelligible, unfree”.123

This does not necessarily mean that such

performance lacks the notion of a driving ‘soul’, as outlined by Wagner. Rather it is

perhaps the expressive exploration of an informing concept, theme, or idea that is at

the heart of these works.

The creative dynamic in the lead-up to the postmodern mixed-media theatre of the

late twentieth century exhibited a number of fundamental shifts in focus that

dramatically altered the way art was perceived and defined. The most prominent

evolutions or mutations that occurred may be summarised as: the further integration

and hybridisation of traditional artistic forms, the shift in emphasis from product to

process, and the involvement of the audience in the creation of meaning as active

participant rather than passive spectator. These developments were the platform upon

which postmodern practitioners like Robert Wilson, Robert LePage, Peter Brook and

The Wooster Group built their work. These practitioners amalgamated such

evolutions and created a genre of theatrical performance that explored the middle-

ground in the duality of representational theatre and non-narrative performance. Such

characteristics are now further evolving as these practitioners have in turn inspired a

new generation of multimedia performance makers. The following half of this chapter

is devoted to placing multimedia theatre in relation to other key domains of

contemporary theatre practice: postdramatic theatre, virtual theatre, and new media

performance.

Postdramatic Theatre

One of the key concepts used to explain the effect of these creative dynamics and to

link different contemporary multimedia theatre practices is the ‘paradigm of

postdramatic theatre’, as outlined by Hans-Thies Lehmann. Lehmann discusses the

123

Wagner in Brandt ed. (1998) p. 11.

61

new theatre forms that have emerged since the 1960s, and argues that the one facet in

common across this landscape has been the rejection of the traditional dictates of the

drama. He argues that the “spread and then omnipresence of the media in everyday

life since the 1970s has brought with it a new multiform kind of theatrical

discourse”124

that he terms postdramatic theatre. Yet his study of postdramatic theatre

“does not aim to trace the new theatrical modes of creation to sociologically

determined causes and circumstances”.125

Lehmann’s study does not address the

specific ramifications of the spread of media upon theatre practice, and nor does the

paradigm of postdramatic theatre necessitate the use of digital media within its

domain. However, the field of postdramatic theatre is broad, and is relevant in this

discussion as many works that utilise filmic or video media alongside the live

performer whilst still maintaining a theatrical dramaturgy fall within the frame of

postdramatic theatre.

Indeed, all multimedia theatre that incorporates filmic or video imagery onstage is

almost inevitably postdramatic. Whether used to create a distancing effect, to assume

the narrative line, or to create associative layers and depth in the mise en scene, the

use of projected media within the theatrical frame inexorably disrupts the dramatic

representation of a discrete fictional dimension. In his book Postdramatic Theatre

(2006) Lehmann responds to Peter Szondi’s Theory of the Modern Drama, suggesting

that Szondi’s view is restricted by his vision of theatre as bound to the literary drama.

Lehmann argues that Szondi’s binary model of theatre as either Dramatic or Epic is

limited as it does not allow for theatre to exist without a defined fictional realm,

without representing a ‘model of the real’. Karen Jurs-Munby in her introduction to

the book clearly summarises Lehmann’s intention: “By systematically paying

attention to theatre as performance (unlike Szondi who reads drama predominantly as

literature), Lehmann can show that theatre and drama as such have drifted apart in the

second half of the twentieth century.”126

In his theoretical exploration of postdramatic

theatre, Lehmann address an extensive variety of diverse performance genres such as

physical theatre, devised performance, dance, performance art, and non-traditional re-

workings of classic texts.

124

Hans-Thies Lehmann (2006) p. 22. 125

Lehmann (2006) p. 175. 126

Jurs-Munby in Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre (2006) p. 3.

62

Lehmann also specifically explores multimedia theatre as a field within postdramatic

theatre and analyses work by practitioners such as The Wooster Group and Robert

Wilson. He offers the following typology of the types of postdramatic theatre that

involve media:

We can roughly distinguish between different modes of media use in theatre.

Either media are occasionally used without this use fundamentally defining the

theatrical conception (mere media employment); or they serve as a source of

inspiration for the theatre, its aesthetic of form without the media technology

playing a major role in the productions themselves; or they are constitutive for

certain forms of theatre (Corsetti, Wooster, Jesurun). And finally theatre and

media art can meet in the form of video installations.127

The main categories that Lehmann identifies that have most relevance to this

discussion of multimedia theatre are video installation and theatre in which media

constitutes the nature of the theatrical form. This category would include

performances that adhere to a theatrical dramaturgy whilst utilising mediated

technologies within the theatre frame, such as the work of The Builder’s Association

and Version 1.0 (both of which are addressed later in this thesis). While contemporary

examples of this category may utilise complex digital technologies, this field of

theatre dates back almost to the advent of projection technologies.

Gunter Berghaus suggests this trend of using filmic/video media onstage dates was

made prominent in the 1920s when attempts were made to “integrate actors with

filmed décor” by practitioners such as Eisenstein and Piscator.128

However he argues

that the first major theatrical work to fully utilise the gamut of electronic media was

the 1979 production of Hamlet by Wolf Vostells, which involved actors performing

alongside 120 video monitors. Berghaus describes this form of theatre, “where artists

employed video technology to create a bridge between the theatre and the mediatised

culture of the postmodern information society”, as ‘multimedia spectacle’.129

This

field of theatre blossomed in the 1980s with the work of The Wooster Group, Robert

Wilson, Dumb Type, Studio Azzurro and many others who explored the use of media

127

Lehmann (2006) p. 167-168. 128

Gunter Berghaus (2005) Avante-Garde Performance: Live Events and Electronic Technologies,

New York: Palgrave Macmillan, p. 189. 129

Ibid.

63

onstage. Berghaus suggests that such works “brought Brecht’s demand for a ‘theatre

for the scientific age’ up to date and created performances for the televisual age by

introducing elements of mass media into a conventional playhouse setting.”130

In his discussion of this form of theatre, where media is constitutive of the form,

Lehmann refers to the New York-based Wooster Group and argues that in their work,

“video technology tends to be used for the co-presence of video image and live actor,

functioning in general as the technically mediated self-referentiality of the theatre.”131

In his description of the Wooster Group’s Brace Up he illustrates how “very casually

the illusions of the theatre and the familiar but actually quite amazing equal weighting

of video presence and live presence are…highlighted”.132

This nexus of the mediated

presence and the live presence has been a key focus of multimedia theatre practice

and theory in the late twentieth century. For example, Phillip Auslander’s theoretical

writings are concerned with the essence of ‘liveness’ and demonstrate how the

integration of the live and the virtual is forcing our understanding of ‘liveness’ as the

ontology of performance into question. While Peggy Phelan argues that performance

is defined by its non-reproduceability,133

Auslander contends that liveness exists as a

result of mediatisation.

Lehmann’s position would appear to support that in general, the main function of the

media presented within multimedia performances is to self-referentially re-affirm the

‘liveness’ of the performance, and that while the live and the mediated may have

‘equal weighting’, they are fundamentally discrete. Lehmann elaborates on the nature

of the distinction between live theatre and media technologies when he explains that,

“The point of theatre, however, is a communication structure at whose heart is not the

process of a feedback of information but a different ‘way of meaning what is meant’

(Benjamin’s ‘Art des Meinins’) which ultimately includes death. Information is

outside of death, beyond the experience of time.”134

It is interesting to recognise that,

when addressed through the paradigm of Virtuality this clear distinction made by

Lehmann is irrelevant as the boundary between the live and the mediated is not

130

Ibid. 131

Lehmann (2006) p. 168. 132

Lehmann (2006) p. 169. 133

Peggy Phelan (1993) Unmarked; The Politics of Performance, London and New York: Routledge. 134

Lehmann (2006) p. 167.

64

perceived as discrete. Lehmann’s statement reaffirms the separation of materiality and

information as a binary structure, while in our ‘condition of virtuality’ as outlined by

Hayles, material objects are viewed as ‘interpenetrated by information patterns’. This

highlights that our condition of virtuality is a perception, a way of seeing the world,

one that Lehmann clearly does not ascribe to. While some multimedia theatre works

may actively resist promoting a posthuman perspective and assert the separation of

the live and the technical, the genre of multimedia theatre as a whole may include

works that establish a communication structure that involves the feedback of

information. The following chapters in this thesis articulate the ways in which such a

communication structure (the structure of multimedia), may be used as a framework

through which to assess and articulate the ways in which theatre is evolving in

relation to digital structures.

Lehmann’s adherence to the understanding that theatre requires an “aspect of shared

time-space of mortality with all its ethical and communication theoretical implications

that ultimately marks a categorical difference between theatre and technological

media”,135

is reflected in his omission of so-called virtual theatres within his typology

of modes of media use in postdramatic theatre. While such media-based performance

is undoubtedly postdramatic, he clearly does not view such works as ‘theatre’. In the

examples discussed by Lehmann of theatre that involves media as ‘constitutive’ of its

form, media is included as an element within the live theatrical performance, and the

majority of the performance does not occur in a mediated environment. This suggests

that this field of theatre does not extend to include examples of theatrical performance

such as the work of Blast Theory, which are still clearly postdramatic but involve a

large portion of the performance occurring within a virtual, mediated space.

My understanding of multimedia allows for the inclusion of virtual theatre i.e. theatre

that occurs in a predominantly mediated environment, by perceiving such works as

extending the framework of theatrical performance into the virtual realm. While a

definition of theatre may necessitate the presence of a live performer, multimedia

theatre recognises that some examples of virtual theatre actively challenge this

definition, specifically problematising the ‘presence’ of the live actor. As such, the

field of virtual theatre as described by Giannachi, is a significant form of

135

Ibid.

65

contemporary multimedia theatre and is an important domain in which to examine the

impact of digital structures and Virtuality on theatre practice, for in the encounter of

the live audience member and the mediated performance space we see various

degrees of connection between presence and pattern.

Virtual Theatre

Virtual theatre has moved beyond concerns of liveness and authenticity and directly

manifests the interrelation of information and materiality. It is a prominent arena for

the exploration of the semiotics of Virtuality, and many of the examples of

multimedia theatre addressed in the following chapters of this thesis, may be

considered as existing within the realm of virtual theatre. In virtual theatre, as

asserted by Gabriella Giannachi in her definitive book Virtual Theatre, performance

occurs primarily in a mediated environment. Giannachi explains, “in Virtual Art –

both the work of art and the viewer are mediated.”136

Virtual theatre is still

undoubtedly postdramatic, for “Just as the viewer is no longer entirely in one

location, they are also no longer viewing something that has a clear beginning, middle

and end…Virtual Theatre, like the reality it allows us to view, is made of fragments,

segments, of information.”137

However, virtual theatre is defined by its utilisation of

media technologies, which enables increased levels of audience involvement in the

process of creation. All the forms of virtual theatre categorised by Giannachi “share

the characteristic of being open works in which the viewer is variously participating

to the work of art from within it”.138

Virtual theatre extends the previously discussed evolution of audience participation

and hybridisation, into the new century. It is constructed through the interaction of the

audience and the artwork, allowing the audience to be present in both the real and the

virtual environments. It is this interaction that Giannachi identifies as the most

important characteristic of virtual theatre.139

It is enabled through the hybridisation of

the live (the material participant) with the virtual. Giannachi offers a typology of

Virtual Theatre forms using case studies and practical examples to dictate theoretical 136

Giannachi (2004) p. 4. 137

Giannachi (2004) p. 11. 138

Giannachi (2004) p. 4. 139

Giannachi (2004) p. 11.

66

boundaries. She classifies four main areas of virtual theatre as it moves towards an

‘Aesthetic of Virtuality’: ‘Hypertextualities’ (“forms of textualities that are rendered

through HTML”); ‘Cyborg Theatre’ (“an art form that uses cybernetics as part of its

method and practice” and that is “primarily concerned with the modification and

augmentation of the human”140

); theatre that involves the “Re-creation of Nature”

through technology; and theatre that is “Performed through the Hypersurface”.

Giannachi also outlines the potential of Virtual Reality as a platform for performance

and describes works by artists such as Jeffrey Shaw, Merce Cunningham and Lynn

Hershmann that exemplify an ‘aesthetic of virtual reality’.

In each of these categories of virtual theatre, we can see manifest the concepts

outlined in Hayles’ ‘semiotics of Virtuality’, not just the concepts of materiality and

information, but also ‘mutation’ (in ‘Cyborg Theatre’) and ‘hyperreality’ (in the ‘Re-

creation of Nature’). The poetics of these virtual theatres correlate with the four key

perspectives that Hayles describes as forming the ‘posthuman perspective’. Giannachi

explains, “Through virtual theatre, the societies of information and of flesh and blood

are temporarily merged”.141

Here we can see the breakdown of the

materiality/information opposition, and with the merging of these two realms we see

manifest the paradigm of Virtuality and the creation of a posthuman subjectivity. As

the participant engages with the artwork their existence is extended into the virtual

domain, their actions impacting upon the virtual environment and vice versa. A

posthuman perspective presumes the symbiosis of human and machine, and virtual

performance explores conditions of communication and being in a posthuman culture.

‘Virtual theatre’ may also be thought of as ‘posthuman’ or ‘postorganic’ performance.

In his article Postorganic Performance: The Appearance of Theatre in Virtual Spaces,

Causey labels theatre occuring in a technologically mediated environment

“postorganic performance” and he declares, “A ‘posthuman’ culture will create

‘postorganic’ art”.142

He addresses how the ontology of performance is altered when

it occurs in the virtual domain and argues that performance in the virtual realm

establishes “a paraperformative teletheatrical phenomenon wherein the immediacy of 140

Giannachi (2004) p. 43. 141

Giannchi (2004) p. 12. 142

Matthew Causey “Postorganic Performance: The Appearance of Theatre in Virtual Spaces” in

Marie-Laure Ryan ed. (1998) Cyberspatial Textuality, Indiana University Press, p. 186.

67

performance and the digital alterability of time, space, and subjectivity overlap and

are combined.”143

Causey utilises the term ‘postorganic’ to refer to the resulting

aesthetic events, for he sees this term as reflecting the “transition from the privileging

of presence, the authentic aura, the immediacy of the live to the exploration of issues

surrounding the circulation of representations”.144

In this article, Causey declares “performance theory fails postorganic

performance”.145

In the virtual environment, the performance is no longer a “time-

dependent disappearing act” as was once theorised for it is no longer restricted to the

non-repeatable present. Causey calls for an “expanded performance theory” that can

adequately address the phenomenon of digitally mediated performance. He claims,

“What the mediated technologies afford performance theory is the opportunity to

think against the grain of traditional performance ontology, including the claims to

“liveness”, “immediacy”, and “presence”.146

Certainly with regards to audience

experience and analysis of virtual and postorganic performance, a focus on issues of

‘liveness’ and ‘presence’ is inadequate, for these concepts are limited, belonging to

the realm of materiality. With theatre now operating in the digital realm, where

everything is mediated and experience is ‘hypermediate’, where the concepts of

‘presence and absence’ have been translated into ‘pattern and randomness’, theatre

analysis must borrow these terms from new media theory and expand both

understandings of, and ways of talking about, theatrical performance. For as Causey

articulates, “Performance, in the digital medium, has taken on the ontology of the

technological”.147

New Media Performance

All forms of virtual theatre, as articulated by Giannachi, involve viewer interaction;

“A virtual theatre is one which through virtuality is able not only to include the

viewer within the work of art but also to distribute their presence ‘globally’ in both

143

Causey (1998) p. 185. 144

Ibid. 145

Ibid. 146

Ibid. 147

Causey (1998) p. 187.

68

the real and the simulated information world.”148

As such, Giannachi does not focus

on the field of ‘video installation’, or as named here, ‘new media performance’. New

media performance does not necessitate the direct physical interactivity of the

audience and the media, and does not essentially enable the audience to modify the

work or their perspective. However, new media performance may be considered as

located on the fringe of multimedia theatre practice and may be viewed as

‘remediating’ live theatre. As such it is an important site for examining the

interrelation of the dialects of pattern/randomness and presence/absence, and

examples of new media performance are included within the following chapters as

case studies of multimedia theatre.

The phrase ‘new media performance’ covers a large terrain of practice, and includes

forms utilised by practitioners such as Blast Theory, Jeffrey Shaw, Granular

Synthesis, Company in Space, Bill Viola, Gary Hill and David Rokeby. I include

within this umbrella title, phenomena such as ‘tele-performance’, ‘video

performance’ and some examples of ‘multimedia installation’. The choice to include

multimedia installation within the field of performance is certainly contentious, as

here the spectator does necessarily perform participation in the artwork. While many

multimedia installations offer high levels of audience interactivity, enabling

participants to navigate their own journey through the work, effectively transforming

the role of the spectator into that of a performer, works such as those by Granular

Synthesis and Company in Space do not offer the audience a high degree of agency,

nor present a live performer. In the tele-performance installations of Company in

Space there are many layers of interaction between the performers and the media, for

example performers can interact with each other through a media interface and exhibit

agency over the media itself, but there is rarely the opportunity for the physical

participation of the audience.

Such works have in the past been categorised only as ‘installations’ and are not

discussed within the frame of theatre practice. However these media installations,

alongside the interactive work of Jeffrey Shaw, Rokeby, and Blast Theory, hold

relevance to a study of contemporary multimedia performance. Often in such

148

Giannachi (2004) p. 10.

69

performances the media itself self-reflexively performs whether it is presented as

‘live’ video installation (Granular Synthesis) or whether it mediates a live performer

(as in the case of tele-performance). Many multimedia installations explore similar

modes and means of communication to multimedia performance. They are often

immersive, creating a spatial environment, and are inherently postdramatic. Michael

Rush writes that the installation environment “also allows for greater participation of

the viewer in the process of ‘completing the art object’; to use Duchamp’s famous

phrase. In many installations, the viewer actually enters the artwork in a literal sense

to experience it”.149

This highlights how such installations are ‘environmental’ and

unfold not only through time as does cinema, but also through space, as in the theatre.

They are ‘open’ works; the experience of the process is emphasised and the works

demand a high level of audience interpretation.

George Quasha and Charles Stein in their article Performance Itself argue

“Performance itself is really the heart of the process of art, most especially art that

sees itself as process.…This sense of process is essentially performative”.150

This

article details the performative nature of installations by Gary Hill, and the authors

describe works such as Processual Video and Cut Pipe as ‘performative

performances’. Processual Video (1980) fulfils the inference of its title and is

described as an “exemplary instance of the performative simultaneously manifesting a

root principle and generating an actual performance piece.”151

This particular

installation involves the slow revolving of a white line around the middle of a screen

to the accompaniment of recorded spoken text. The audience receive these two

elements simultaneously and inevitable interrelate the image with the content of the

text. Quasha and Stein explain, “The meaning of work or image performs itself in the

processual interaction of video and speech, and the real location where that

performance takes place is in the viewer’s mind.” The refusal of these works to offer

a single perspective, a single channel, combined with the fact that they unfold through

time, means that they are not simply transmitting information but are creating an

individual experience for the audience. Therefore they may be considered as ‘new

media performance’ and as existing on the periphery of multimedia theatre.

149

Michael Rush (1999) p. 148. 150

George Quasha and Charles Stein “Performance Itself”, Performance Research, Vol. 7, No. 2, p. 76. 151

Ibid.

70

While multimedia installation may be related to the field of new media performance,

some argue it is beyond the terrain of ‘performance’. Gunter Berghaus states that he

does not agree with scholars who “regard video installations as performance per

se.”152

Berghaus makes the distinction between ‘video performance’ and ‘video

installation’ and outlines the latter as “a sculpted or architectural setting with

electronic actors”153

that maintains the separation of audience and stage. This

separation, he argues, creates a similarly cognitive spectatorship to that of viewing a

play, painting or sculpture. Berghaus contends:

Although multi-monitor video installations have often been described as

‘electronic theatre’ that requires the viewer to be ‘operative’ and ‘subjective’ in

the site, standing both inside and outside the installation, I would still maintain

that their interaction with the display is extremely limited. The performative

quality of a piece of sculpture (even if it fits in a whole room and contains

electronic images that introduce a time dimension in the arrangement) is

different from that of a human actor.154

This is certainly a valid and perhaps widely assumed distinction. However

performativity is a matter of degree and the boundary between the realms of

multimedia performance and multimedia installation is indistinct. Interestingly,

Berghaus concedes that “The exploration of the frontiers between theatre and fine art

is undoubtedly a task that is pertinent to avant-garde experimentation” and he states

that he has “therefore included some borderline cases, such as Paik’s Exhibition of

Music – Electronic Television” within his discussion of video performance.155

Some of these ‘borderline cases’ are in fact central to an understanding of the efficacy

of multimedia performance, for they challenge the essential division of the live and

the mediated, and force a revision of perceptions regarding the dictates of the live

theatrical experience or the performance event. In my selection of case studies I have

asserted that the multimedial aspect of some new media installations enables a higher

degree of performativity and can create ‘total’ audience experience that uniquely

incorporates both immersion and interactivity, two qualities traditionally regarded as

152

Berghaus (2005) p. 188. 153

Ibid. 154

Ibid. 155

Ibid.

71

mutually exclusive.156

German artist Wolf Vostells, who in 1958 was already creating

multimedia installation with his structural collage of a group of t.v. sets in TV De-

collages, sees multimedia installation as a ‘total event’:

Marcel Duchamp has declared readymade objects as art, and the Futurists

declared noises as art – it is an important characteristic of my efforts and those

of my colleagues to declare as art the total event, comprising

noise/object/movement/colour/& psychology – a merging of elements, so that

life (man) can be art.157

This concept of installation as artistic ‘event’ again places it within the field of theatre

and performance practice. The efficacy of the work relies on the experience of

process of time in space, rather than on the object, product or narrative. Rush argues

“It is not surprising…given the influence of Fluxus performance actions and

Happenings on the development of late twentieth century art, that ‘the theatrical’

would be embraced in multimedia installation art”.158

Both interactive and non-

interactive multimedia installation share the trends and characteristics of multimedia

performance and both are included in my use of the term ‘new media performance’.

New media performance is a fertile field for the presentation of Hayles’ ‘semiotics of

Virtuality’. The relation between materiality and information is a focus of many new

media art practitioners and a select number of relevant case studies of multimedia

installation are investigated in the following chapters.

The potential for media performance to exhibit the growing dominance of the

dialectic of pattern/randomness (materiality) over presence/absence (information) can

be seen in the prescient work Wipe Cycle (1969) produced by Frank Gillette in

collaboration with Ira Schneider. The work integrated pre-recorded information with

a live feed of the viewer’s image, including the spectator within the work itself and

allowing them to see themselves as a mediated reflection in time and space. Schneider

told critic Gene Youngblood that the most important function of the work “was to

integrate the audience into the information” with Frank Gillette adding, ‘It was an

156

Marie-Laure Ryan (2001) discusses this point in Narrative as Virtual Reality: Immersion and

Interactivity in Literature and Electronic Media, Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. 157

In Rush (1999) p. 117. 158

Rush (1999) p. 148.

72

attempt to demonstrate that you’re as much a piece of information as tomorrow

morning’s headlines”.159

The three species of contemporary theatre outlined in this chapter do not necessarily

pose discrete categories, however they have been identified here as each covering a

different platform of practice and together comprising the territory of contemporary

multimedia theatre. Virtual theatre is a prominent form of multimedia theatre, but the

terrain of multimedia theatre is not confined only to performance that occurs in the

virtual realm. Multimedia theatre also includes postdramatic theatrical works that

stage video or filmic media alongside live performers within the theatrical frame.

Indeed, definitions of postdramatic theatre offered by Lehmann suggest that all

multimedia theatre may be considered as essentially postdramatic. Though not

mentioned by either Lehmann or Giannachi, the field of ‘new media performance’,

including some installations, may be viewed as existing on the outskirts of the

multimedia theatre landscape, and examples of this form of multimedia theatre, such

as the work of Granular Synthesis, Bill Viola, and Janet Cardiff, are examined in the

following chapters.

Multimedia theatre is identified in this thesis as theatre or performance that creatively

utilises media technologies as an integral component of the overall work, with the

media significantly contributing to the content of the production. As established in

this chapter, the poetics of all forms of multimedia theatre are built on the

fundamental characteristics of hybridisation, audience participation, and the

prioritisation of the performative act over linear literary narrative, characteristics that

have evolved as trends in experimental theatre practice throughout the last half of the

twentieth century. The qualities of intermediality, immersion, interactivity, and

postnarrativity, extend these twentieth century trends. The following chapters aim to

map the manifestation of these characteristics in contemporary theatre practice and to

explore the poetics of multimedia theatre in the age of Virtuality.

159

Schneider and Gillette in Rush (1999) p. 125.

73

Chapter 3

Intermediality

In today’s world we all inhabit the intermedial – we are surrounded by

newspaper, films, television. We live in-between the arts and media –

intermediality is the modern way to experience life.160

In the previous chapter, multimedia theatre was identified as involving the use of

media technologies within a theatrical context. In this chapter the first of the four key

principles that characterise the domain of multimedia theatre will be discussed. This

chapter addresses ‘intermediality’ and through it, analyses the relationship between

live and mediated elements in multimedia theatre. The framework provided by the

notion of intermediality moves away from the theoretical polarisation of the live and

mediated and provides a lens through which to explore the patterns manifesting across

media within the theatrical frame. The ‘inter’ of intermediality implies a between

space, and the intermedial exists between previously assumed ideas of medium

specificity. It therefore extends the historical dynamic of hybridisation and cross-

disciplinary fertilisation outlined in the previous chapter. However, it can also imply a

mutual reciprocity, with two or more media coming together in conversation.

Intermediality can be both a creative and an analytic approach based on the

perception that media boundaries are fluid and recognising the potential for

interaction and exchange between the live and the mediated, without presupposing the

authenticity or authority of either mode. Most importantly, intermediality relates to a

form of audience reception enabled when communication is patterned across various

media, creating a multidimensional performance text.

In addressing the contemporary manifestations of intermediality in multimedia

performance, this chapter argues that intermediality does not simply involve the mere

inclusion of mediated elements within the frame of live theatre, but involves the

‘remediating’ of these elements as an integrated element of the performance text. To

160

Freda Chapple and Chiel Kattenbelt eds. (2006) Intermediality in Theatre and Performance,

Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi Press, p. 26.

74

make this case I firstly examine definitions of intermediality, exploring related ideas

and theoretical positions within the field. This discussion is followed by an

exploration of the concept of remediation as defined by Jay Bolter and Richard

Grusin, and the process of digital remediation is related to the practice of

intermediality in theatre.

To understand the relationship between the live and the mediated within multimedia

theatre I argue that it is necessary to avoid an analytical framework that emphasises

the opposition of the real and the virtual. The concept of intermediality does not

reinforce the disparateness or incompatibility of materiality and virtuality and it is

therefore an important framework through which to connect theatre to a ‘condition of

Virtuality’. As it combines information and materiality, the field of intermedial

performance holds enormous potential as a site for the manifestation of the perception

that materiality is being interpenetrated by informational patterns.161

Following the

discussion of definitions and theories of intermediality and remediation, the second

half of this chapter investigates two case studies, Version 1.0’s Wages of Spin and

The Builder’s Association’s Supervision. These cases illustrate how the relationship

between live and mediated elements in intermedial theatre can be understood in terms

of remediation and the related logics of immediacy and hypermediacy. They also

explore the relationship of intermedial theatre to ‘our condition of Virtuality’ and

assert the potential for a new analytic framework based on Hayle’s semiotics of

Virtuality through which to understand intermediality in multimedia theatre. Such an

approach contributes to performance discourse by providing a different vision of the

relationship between the live and the virtual, and by offering an analytical framework

that avoids reinforcing their inherent opposition. Use of Hayles’ framework provides

a new strategy through which to address the intermedial relationship between the live

and the virtual in theatre and performance.

Definitions of Intermediality

As clarified in the previous chapter, the objective of reaching a synthesis of artforms

within theatre practice has an ongoing history of development. However, a distinction

161

Hayles in Lunenfeld ed. (2000) p. 69.

75

can be made between early visions of integration in theatre, which focused on the

collaboration of artistic disciplines, and contemporary understandings of

intermediality involving the integration of media. Early steps towards the integration

of artforms within theatre taken by practitioners such as Wagner, Yeats, Appia and

Marinetti, paved the way for later visions of intermediality, establishing a precedent

for the synthesis of artistic disciplines within the theatrical frame. However,

intermediality is inherently different to the relation of the arts in the Wagnerian

Gesamtkunstwerk (discussed in Chapter 2), which may be considered ‘collaborative’

in form and not necessarily interpenetrative and therefore ‘intermedial’. Hilda

Meldrum Brown explains that the integration of artforms idealised by Wagner, “in no

way implies an obliteration of the primal characteristics of each individual

component”.162

She clarifies that Wagner’s sense of integration does not imply

“unification at the level of lowest common denominator”.163

Artforms in the

Gesamtkunstwerk are not foundationally ‘merged’ and may be considered to work ‘in

collaboration’ with one another to convey the reality of the drama.

Thomas Jensen Hines defines the field of “collaborative form” which he introduces as

“the direct result of combining two or more different arts to make composite art

works”.164

Through detailed examination of seven examples of both simple

collaborative form (only two arts involved) and complex collaborative form

(numerous artforms involved), he concludes that the area is bound by the following

template of rules:

1. Collaborative form results from the interactions of the arts.

2. There can be no primary form in collaborative art. Collaboration

subordinates each constituent art to the combined effect of the whole.

3. All collaborations create an original work.

4. The subtraction, deletion, or separation of any of the constituent arts in a

collaboration destroys the form.

5. The effects of combining the arts are never additive.165

162

Hilda Meldrum Brown (1991) Leitmotiv and Drama: Wagner, Brecht, and the Limits of ‘Epic’

Theatre, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 38. 163

Ibid. 164

Hines (1991) p. 1. 165

Hines (1991 p. 164 – 173.

76

The rules presented by Hines are applicable to any organization of more than one

artform, and so may be considered as describing the broader field of multimedia

theatre within which intermedial performance is located. Multimedia theatre is

undoubtedly ‘collaborative’ in form, yet some contemporary multimedia

performances specifically transcend demarcations of artistic disciplines. Hines’

understanding of ‘collaborative form’ involves the interaction of what he labels ‘the

arts’, by which it can be assumed that Hines is referring to artforms or disciplines

such as music, dance, drama, and cinema. His concept of ‘collaboration’ does not

challenge the self-sufficiency and definition of these artistic disciplines. By focusing

on communication in terms of ‘media’, rather than in terms of artistic disciplines or

‘artforms’, use of the term ‘intermediality’ avoids reasserting the independence and

purity of artistic disciplines as maintained by previously accepted conventions.

Intermedial theatre subsumes media, uniting both live and mediated communication

within the frame of performance. The term is used here to denote the perception that

all media and systems of communication can be non-hierarchically integrated within a

theatrical performance. In intermedial performance, the realms of the live and the

mediated develop reciprocity and are framed as complimentary and symbiotic

elements of the performance whole, creating what Meike Wagner has described as the

‘intermedial mise en scene’.166

In such instances the audience can experience a

merging of the material and the virtual, for these modes simultaneously impact upon

the audience and develop meaning only in relation to the other.

As recognised by Fluxus artist Richard Higgins in his early discussion of

intermediality, the ‘intermedium’ poses a challenge to the separation of artistic media

and embraces continuity over categorisation.167

In his 1966 treatise Intermedia,

Higgins asserts the Happening to be the ultimate intermedium, using the term

‘intermedia’ to describe work that does not strictly adhere to the ‘rules’ of an

individual artistic medium. Higgins argues forcefully against the separation of media

in art practice, as the need to enforce rigid categories does not reflect a contemporary

166

Meike Wagner uses this term in her chapter “Of Other Bodies: The Intermedial Gaze in Theatre” in

Freda Chapple and Chiel Kattenbelt eds. (2006) Intermediality in Theatre and Performance,

Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi Press, p. 129. 167

Richard Higgins “Intermedia” in Packer and Jordan eds. (2001) p. 28-32.

77

social milieu characterised by populism and classlessness.168

The ‘intermedium’,

according to Higgins does not conform to a predetermined structure or form; the

concept itself is better understood “by what it is not, rather than what it is”.169

He does

not view Art that is produced within restrictive traditional boundaries as allowing a

sense of dialogue, and he asserts that “much of the best work being produced today

seems to fall between media”.170

Theatre in its traditional form, argues Higgins, is

unable to provide ‘portability and flexibility’, and thus the Happening was produced

as the ultimate intermedium, an “uncharted land that lies between collage, music, and

the theatre”.171

In this vision, intermediality exists as the indefinite and ambiguous

space between traditionally recognised artistic media.

While Higgins’ understanding of ‘intermedia’ recognises that this form does not

adhere to previous dictates of media specific conventions, his definitions of

intermediality are still completely reliant on the perception of media ‘purity’.

Higgins’ concept of the intermedium may be summarised as ‘that which is not pure’;

indeed he states that the ‘ready-made’ or found object such as that presented by

Duchamp may be considered an intermedium, since “it was not intended to conform

to the pure media”.172

The concept of a ‘pure medium’ reinforces the inherent

ontological distinction of individual media, and this claim for the definitive mediality

of each medium is no longer considered absolute in contemporary discourse.

Peter Boenisch explains that it was the original aim of discourse on intermediality to

counter notions of ‘media-strategic purity’ in the arts. He asserts that most of those

involved in the discussion of ‘intermediality’ adhere to the formula “theatre + (other)

media = intermedial theatre”, and as such, implicitly propagate the notion of media

specificity. 173

Rather, Boenisch uses the term ‘intermedial’ to imply the fundamental

integration of communication media and his contemporary examination of

intermediality in the theatre is not concerned with the specificity or significance of

individual media. He examines Circulation Module by the Japanese group NEST and

168

Higgins in Packer and Jordan eds. (2001) p. 29. 169

Ibid. 170

Higgins in Packer and Jordan (2001) p. 28. 171

Higgins in Packer and Jordan (2001) p. 32. 172

Higgins in Packer and Jordan (2001) p. 30. 173

Boenisch (2003) p. 35.

78

highlights that, while this performance makes use of a variety of artistic media, it

foregrounds the fundamental principles to which they are all true.174

Boenisch

emphasises that

instead of working with juxtaposition, stressing the differences, friction of

interaction between allegedly separate media – as many of the pioneers of

performance art did in the wake of the infamous 1952 Black Mountain College

(Cage-Cunningham-Rauschenberg etc) event – NEST’s performance

foregrounds the common denominator of the separate sign-systems.175

In Circulation Module, no sign-system is privileged, and Boenisch asserts that there is

a “non-hierarchical, web-like interlinking of separate elements.”176

Boenisch’s

explication of intermediality in relation to NEST’s production emphasizes the patterns

occurring across media and the fundamental principles that produce cohesion.

Intermedial performance may be regarded as transcending demarcations of artistic

disciplines and media. In his essay ‘The moment of realised actuality’, Andy

Lavender examines excerpts of work by experimental multimedia companies Blast

Theory and Dumb Type and asks the pertinent question, “Can we still talk at all of

two different media – theatre and video – coming together like partners on a dance

floor in order to have their spin as separate bodies?”177

Lavender suggests that in

some contemporary performance the media “intermingle like liquids which colour

each other”.178

As colours blend to generate new colours, so too does intermedial

performance blend media to generate a new intermedial whole.

It can be determined at this stage that intermediality involves more than the mere

collaboration of media, but requires the fundamental integration and blending of

different modes of communication to create a new form of mediality. This

explanation remains somewhat imprecise, for it can be interpreted as positioning

intermediality as both a quality and a form, suggesting that intermediality is a matter

of degree. Jens Schroter clarifies the potential variations of intermediality and offers a

174

Boenisch (2003) p. 44. 175

Boenisch (2003) p. 39. 176

Ibid. 177

Andy Lavender “The moment of realised actuality” in Delgado and Svich (2002) Theatre in Crisis?:

Performance Manifestos for a New Century, Manchester: Manchester University Press, p. 187. 178

Ibid.

79

typology that clearly identifies a number of points along an axis of intermediality. He

defines four types of intermediality. 179

Firstly, synthetic intermediality refers to the

combining of two or more artforms or media into a new artform or media. The

second, formal and trans-medial intermediality, assumes that aesthetic conventions

manifest in several media. The third is transformational intermediality “which refers

to the representation of one medium within another medium”.180

And finally,

ontological intermediality is “where a medium defines its own ontology through

relating itself to another medium, and raises the issue that it is not possible to define

the specificity of a medium in isolation except through comparison with another

medium.”181

The first two forms outlined by Schroter operate at the level of

‘collaborative’ or ‘intertextual’ integration, and although ‘synthetic intermediality’

may achieve media integration, neither of these forms necessitate genuine

intermediality. However, transformational and ontological intermediality offer more

complex forms of media integration, in which the nature of mediality is perceived as

dynamic. Both these forms operate in the field of multimedia theatre, and the

relevance of Shroter’s typology to the analysis of intermediality in multimedia

performance will be referred to within the analysis of case studies later in this chapter.

Intermediality as Remediation in Theatre

Schroter’s description of intermediality as potentially involving a process of

combining two or more media into a new medium, or as involving the representation

of one medium within another medium, is consistent with definitions of ‘remediation’

offered in new media theory. Just as digitalisation translates previously established

media into a uniform format, remediating various means of communication within a

single frame, so may theatre also be thought of as translating established media into a

new form. Indeed, Brigit Wiens suggests, “maybe this is the first time in its long

history that theatre meets another hypermedium, which also synthesises a variety of

179

Schroter as quoted in Freda Chapple and Chiel Kattenbelt eds. (2006) Intermediality in Theatre and

Performance, Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi Press, p. 15-16. Original in German at

(www.theorie-der-medien.de) 180

Ibid. 181

Ibid.

80

signs”.182

As such, multimedia theatre can be recognised as achieving intermediality

through processes of remediation, and the terminology and theory of digital

remediation contribute to discourse on intermediality.

The concept of ‘digital remediation’ is essentially articulated by Jay Bolter and

Richard Grusin in their publication Remediation: Understanding New Media,

although the nature of remediation was discussed in different terms by earlier media

theorists such as McLuhan and Kittler. Bolter and Grusin define remediation as “the

formal logic by which new media refashion prior media forms”,183

and remediation

“is the defining characteristic of the new digital media”.184

Remediation does not

merely involve the content of one medium presented in another but involves a

medium itself represented within another means of mediation. It can manifest in a

range of forms that differ based on the original medium’s degree of stability.

Firstly, remediation in new media can manifest as the digitalisation of older media

objects, where old mediums are represented but are not challenged and the digital

reorganisation “does not call into question the character of a text or the status of an

image”.185

Secondly, the digital medium can totally ‘refashion’ an older medium

whilst still maintaining a certain degree of acknowledgment towards it. Here Bolter

and Grusin explain that the work “becomes a mosaic in which we are simultaneously

aware of the individual pieces and their new, inappropriate setting”.186

And finally,

the new medium can completely absorb the old medium so that there are minimal

discontinuities between the two. While this involves the total reorganisation of the

older medium, it is not completely effaced; “the new media remains dependant on the

older one in acknowledged or unacknowledged ways”.187

Like intermediality,

remediation is a matter of degree and processes of remediation in multimedia theatre

create intermediality. As remediation involves the incorporation of one medium

within another, it is inherently more complex than mere ‘collaborative’ integration

182

Birgit Wiens “Hamlet and the Virtual Stage: Herbert Fritsch’s project Hamlet-X” in Freda Chapple

and Chiel Kattenbelt eds. (2006) Intermediality in Theatre and Performance, Amsterdam and New

York: Rodopi Press. p. 24. 183

Bolter and Grusin (2000) Remediation: Understanding New Media, Cambridge MA: The MIT

Press, p. 273. 184

Bolter and Grusin (2000) p. 45. 185

Bolter and Grusin (2000) p. 46. 186

Bolter and Grusin (2000) p. 47. 187

Ibid.

81

and evidences various levels of transformational and potentially ontological

intermediality as defined by Schroter.

Bolter and Grusin assert that remediation is characterised by the two logics of

‘immediacy’ and ‘hypermediacy’, which relate to the spectator’s level of immersion

in the media content and their awareness of an object’s ‘mediatedness’.188

Immediacy

occurs when media is ‘transparent’, so that the medium disappears and the spectator

becomes closer to the object of mediation. The aim of ‘hypermediacy’ on the other

hand, is to remind the viewer of the medium and so the medium will draw attention to

itself and to its distinct form of mediation. While these two logics appear in

opposition to one another, hypermedia and transparent media are described by Bolter

and Grusin as “opposite manifestations of the same desire: the desire to get past the

limits of representation and to achieve the real”.189

As such, both immediacy and

hypermediacy may be manifest within the same work, complimenting each other in a

shared attempt for authenticity.

Media can be identified as either a hypermedium or a transparent medium, however

this distinction creates a number of paradoxes. Hypermedia blatantly remediate, and

yet they also develop a degree of immediacy through their self-justification: “With

their constant reference to other media and their contents, hypermedia ultimately

claim our attention as pure experience”.190

And despite the denial of mediation by

transparent media, they also remediate, for “although transparent technologies try to

improve on media by erasing them, they are still compelled to define themselves by

the standards of the media they are trying to erase”.191

As such, Bolter and Grusin

claim that “all current media function as remediators”.192

Multimedia theatre certainly functions as a ‘remediator’, achieving intermediality

through the colonisation of various modes of communication within the frame of the

performance. The concept of remediation as established by Bolter and Grusin has

already been recognised within discourse on intermediality as having relevance to

188

Bolter and Grusin (2000) p. 273. 189

Bolter and Grusin (2000) p. 53. 190

Bolter and Grusin (2000) p. 54. 191

Ibid. 192

Bolter and Grusin (2000) p. 55.

82

theatre. In the recently published Intermediality in Theatre and Performance edited

by Freda Chapple and Chiel Kattenbelt, a number of the included essays utilise the

language of remediation to illustrate the nature of intermediality in theatre. Like new

media, theatre is recognised as simultaneously immediate and hypermediate.

Kattenbelt argues that theatre is a hypermedium, providing other media a stage upon

which they can perform as theatrical signs.193

Yet recognising the double logic of

remediation, Kattenbelt also suggests that theatre is a transparent medium, as it

“foregrounds the corporeality of the performer and the materiality of the live

performance as an actual event, taking place in the absolute presence of the here and

now”.194

Andy Lavender also recognises that hypermediacy and immediacy can function

concurrently on the stage. Lavender addresses how the simultaneous presentation of

the screen and the stage can produce effects of immediacy and an experience that is

“deeply pleasurable” for the audience. While film may function transparently, filmic

images presented within the theatre are ‘staged’ as part of the theatrical event; “The

screen is folded into the live event and so into the phenomenal realm of theatre”.195

Within this realm of the theatre, all media including the transparent medium of film

and the transparent medium of the live human performer develop a level of

hypermediacy in their relation to one another as elements of the performance whole.

Through their staging the media are not merely simultaneous but are integrated; “The

images are not self-sufficient. What might once have been separate media are not self-

contained. They can only be decoded in relation to the mise en scene – a mise en

scene that is flamboyantly hypermedial”.196

In intermedial theatre, both live and

mediated elements are remediated to form the hypermedial performance event.

To achieve a high degree of remediation or ‘transformational intermediality’, where

previously existing media are completely absorbed into a new medium with minimal

discontinuities between the two, the live and the mediated cannot be perceived as

193

Chapple and Kattenbelt eds. (2006) p. 39. 194

Ibid. 195

Andy Lavender “Mise en scene, Hypermediacy and the Sensorium” in Freda Chapple and Chiel

Kattenbelt eds. (2006) Intermediality in Theatre and Performance, Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi

Press, p. 65. 196

Ibid.

83

mutually exclusive. Traditionally in theatre studies discourse however, the

representational nature of the mediated and the ontology of live performance have

been considered fundamentally opposed. Just as materiality and information have a

history of cultural polarisation, as explained by Hayles and discussed in Chapter 1,

the live and the mediated too have been positioned by performance theory as discrete

opposites. The polarisation of the live and the virtual within performance discourse

dates back to the debate concerning live theatre and mediatised performance, initiated

by the differing perspectives of Peggy Phelan (1993) and Phillip Auslander (1999).

While Phelan asserts the authenticity of live performance, arguing that performance is

non-reproducible, Auslander attempts to undermine this perspective through his

critique of ‘liveness’, arguing that liveness exists as a result of mediatisation. This

ongoing dialogue has established an assumed ontological distinction between the live

and the mediated within performance theory. Matthew Causey explains, “the

contemporary discourse surrounding live performance and technological reproduction

establishes an essentialised difference between the phenomena”.197

Yet the efficacy of

intermedial theatre is based on the audience’s perception of the integration and

interdependence of the live and the mediated, and theories of intermediality transcend

the live theatre versus mediatised performance debate.

For the live and the mediated to “intermingle like liquids”, as suggested by Lavender,

there must be a perceived compatibility and balance between the human body and

technological media, between the real and the virtual. However, some theorists have

argued that levels of audience engagement inherently differ between the live and the

projected action; onstage the live and the mediated can be perceived as in competition

for the audience’s attention. In 1966 actor Roberts Blossom, developed a series of

experiments he called “Filmstage” that combined projected film and live

performance. Blossom views the use of film on stage as re-presenting past

experiences as the present, and as such, combining the unconscious (recorded) with

the conscious (present).198

In his reflections on ‘Filmstage’ he illustrates the limitless

value and potential of film in theatre, likening it to “the most highly developed

imaginations” and proposing that the onstage screen, “if it has taken away tangibility,

197

Matthew Causey (1999) “The Screen Test of the Double: The uncanny performance in the space of

technology” in Theatre Journal, Vol. 51, No. 4, p. 383. 198

Roberts Blossom (1966) “On Filmstage”, Tulane Drama Review, Vol. 11, p. 70.

84

has replaced it with extraordinary powers, imitating consciousness.”199

For Blossom

and his contemporaries, the human authority paled alongside the opulence and

pervasiveness of the projected media. The performers onstage in the presence of the

enveloping film media became “but fifty-watt bulbs waiting to be screwed into their

source and to shine with the light that is perpetual (behind them, around them) but

which they can only reflect at fifty watts.”200

While Blossom’s view may be familiar, it is relatively unsophisticated in that it

regards only the simple re-presentation of filmic media within theatre. The

relationship between performer and projected media he describes is not intermedial,

for the projected media is not contingent on the live performer but exists

independently. For the media to be viewed as dominating the live performer, it must

be perceived as transparent and self-sufficient, rather than as a co-dependent element

of the hypermedial whole. In intermedial performance, no single element can

dominate the production for they are all contingent, developing meaning only in

relation to other elements. Neither can the ‘live’ and ‘mediated’ be viewed as discrete.

In his brief examination of multimedia performance, Phillip Auslander presents the

example of Poles, by ‘Pps Danse’ of Montreal and asserts that the issue provoked by

such multimedia performance is whether there is a juxtaposition of the live and the

digital. In answer to his own question he suggests the answer is no, that we now

“experience such work as a fusion, not a con-fusion, of realms, a fusion that we see as

taking the place of its raw materials.”201

Into Virtuality: Intermediality in Multimedia Theatre

It is at the location of this ‘fusion’ of the live and the digital that ‘our condition of

Virtuality’ manifests in multimedia performance. It is here that we see the ‘implosion’

of the realms of information and materiality. The location of this fusion however does

not lie within the performance frame but at the junction of performance text and

audience reception. Boenisch too identifies intermediality as an effect upon the

observer’s perception: “Drawing on the original meaning of the Greek word 199

Ibid. 200

Ibid. 201

Phillip Auslander (1999) Liveness: Performance in a Mediatised Culture, London and New York:

Routledge, p. 38.

85

aisthestai, ‘to perceive’, which initially referred to more than just the beautiful and

sublime, I identify intermediality as an aisthetic act located at the very intersection of

theatricality and mediality.”202

As the audience experience the balanced, non-

hierarchical simultaneity of the live and the mediated, effects of pattern, rhythm, and

image transcend media boundaries. All active media are united within the theatrical

frame, and are simultaneously ‘staged’ and experienced as ‘real’. These different

media impact on the audience to create responses that are undeniably authentic. Peter

Boenisch clarifies this, explaining that, “for the ones who perceive, whether they are

reading books, attending theatre, or playing computer games, the perceptions created

by media, i.e. the effect on their sensorium of all the signs and symbolisations staged

and performed – are always ultimately real….they are always “authentic” in the

observer’s experience”.203

In intermedial performance, the relationship of the material and the virtual is freed

from the hierarchical framework that subordinates the virtual realm and relegates it

into a position of fabrication or copy of the real. Here both dimensions are able to

exist together as part of an immediate reality in which the material and the virtual are

intermingled. The various layers and media within the performance unite at the site of

reception and the role of the audience is not to cognitively interpret or actively decode

these signs, but to simply receive and experience their combined effect. To theorise

the practice of intermediality in multimedia theatre it is necessary to avoid adhering to

theories of performance that reinforce the binary of the material and the virtual.

Hayles’ semiotics of Virtuality provides a framework through which to address the

complex and dynamic intermingling of presence, absence, pattern and randomness

that occurs in intermedial performance. Hayles’ arrangement of the dialectics of

presence/absence and pattern/randomness as not opposed, but as complimentary and

interactive, provides a different analytical framework through which to address the

nature of embodiment, and the relationship of the live and the virtual, in multimedia

performance. This framework provides a potential basis for a new dramaturgy of

multimedia theatre that does not reinforce the materiality/information polarity that has

been a feature of performance analysis. 202

Peter Boenisch “Aesthetic Art to Aesthetic Act: Theatre, Media and Intermedial Performance” in

Freda Chapple and Chiel Kattenbelt eds. (2006) Intermediality in Theatre and Performance,

Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi Press, p. 108. 203

Boenisch in Chapple and Kattenbelt eds. (2006) p. 113.

86

The following two case studies explore the relationship of intermedial theatre to the

dialectics of presence/absence and pattern/randomness. The nature of intermediality is

also examined as manifest in both cases and discussed in terms of remediation.

Version 1.0’s Wages of Spin effectively establishes intermediality in the mise en

scene as a tool to suggest thematic meaning, creating a performance environment that

is overtly hypermedial and within which the live and the mediated are integrated. Yet

this work also problematises the boundary between the live and the mediated and

addresses the political relevance of the media simulacrum. The second study provides

a contrast, in that The Builder’s Association’s Supervision not only evidences the

fundamental integration of media within the intermedial mise en scene, but

thematically explores the perspective that material reality is being interpenetrated by

informational patterns. Both these works relate to Hayles’ framework of the semiotics

of Virtuality in different ways, responding to the cultural transition into a state of

Virtuality from different viewpoints.

Remediation and Hyperreality in Wages of Spin

The 2005 Version 1.0 production Wages of Spin at the Performance Space in Sydney

is potent political theatre that hybridises verbatim speech, electronic media, and

physical theatre to pose the question: ‘is it acceptable that Australia entered the Iraq

war based on a lie?’ The performance evidences the manipulation by government

officials and the power of the ‘spin’ that clouded the facts during Australia’s entry

into the war, blending the actual words of government officials with often

contradictory filmic imagery and statistical information as well as surreal movement

sequences and fictional text. It makes the political personal, attacking a nation more

concerned with tennis ace Mark ‘the Scud’ Philippoussis’ infidelity towards popstar

girlfriend Delta Goodrem, than with the disintegration of democracy. The performers

parody figures such as Prime Minister Howard and George Bush continually moving

in and out of various personae that never consume their identity as a performer. Their

performances are more a series of parodies or impersonations than committed

representations of character, with the performers often presenting other functions on

the stage such as stage-hands, cameramen, and interviewers. The Sydney-based

87

company Version 1.0 do not represent narrative texts but, in their words, “create

kaleidoscopic portraits of the contemporary world we inhabit”.204

As such, there is no

‘closed fictive cosmos’ separating the stage world and the audience.

The audience’s ability to interact with the mediated imagery is limited, they are

merely shown the mediated realm of information. It is from this slightly distanced

perspective that the audience are able to survey the intermedial mise en scene and

consider the various manifestations of ‘hyperreality’ that occur, both as a thematic

focus of the work and as a key element of its scenography. Hayles argues that

hyperreality occurs through the interaction of ‘pattern’ and ‘absence’.205

In Wages of

Spin, this theme is constantly raised through the contrasting of the material and the

mediated, and through the exposure of the processes of production that construct

information. While this work creates an intermedial performance space, it actually

thematises the disparity of the live and the mediatised. Corporeality is revealed as

untranslatable and information is emphasized as involving the absence of materiality.

The work illustrates the cultural perspective whereby information is perceived as

having authority over materiality, but it is highly critical of this transition and so

stresses the discrepancies and demarcation of the realms of informational pattern and

material presence: information is depicted as shaping social reality, but it is also

presented as involving a loss, an absence of material instantiation, and as such is

considered inauthentic.

The corporeality of the performers is emphasized from the outset of the work. To get

to their seating banks the audience enter and traverse a space resembling a film set in

which an act reminiscent of the torture scenes from Abu Ghraib is occurring. A

blindfolded performer dressed in standard military camouflages is slowly stepping

across a long plank of wood containing fierce upturned nails. While the action does

not actually represent the Abu Ghraib atrocities, metonymic associations are

unavoidable. The figure is guided by the instructions of another performer who offers

directions of “left, right, forward and down”. As the audience take their seats, they

realise that toward the end of the path the nails are too close together to fit a foot

between. The inevitability of agony, of the body’s destruction, is painfully visceral

204

Version 1.0, Version 1.0 Website, (www.versiononepointzero.org) accessed August 2006. 205

Hayles (1999) p. 249.

88

and the audience is confronted with the vulnerability of the material body before

them.

Image 1

This sets up a position for the audience from which to read the entire performance,

reminding the audience that what is at stake in the performance and in the issues

presented are material bodies of flesh and pain. The work also utilizes a number of

rhythmic motifs that create a sensory experience for the audience and again place

emphasis on the corporeal. The intermedial landscape utilizes image, sound,

movement and dialogue to create rhythms and resonances that rebound within the

performance space and affectively impact upon the audience. For example, there is a

recurring motif of running; at various stages throughout the performance a number of

the performers run on the spot, invoking metonymic implications of exhaustion and

endurance and literally embodying physical deterioration. The pace and rhythm of the

running contrasts with the empty sonority of the political language and offers an

affective accompaniment to the relentless casualty statistics that are projected onto the

back screen.

The work illustrates how Australia’s entry into the war in Iraq was not merely

symbolic but that the consequential death and destruction, though rarely televised, is

material. The physicality of the performers is explicitly addressed, which Lehmann

89

identifies as a key characteristic of the postdramatic. He argues, “While dramatic

theatre conceals the process of the body in the role, postdramatic theatre aims at the

public exhibition of the body, its deterioration in an act that does not allow for a clear

separation of art and reality”.206

Although the deterioration of the body is made a

focus from the outset of the production, it does not actually occur at this stage of the

performance: the danger for the body is palpable.

This opening act is being filmed and the ‘live’ transmission projected onto an

enormous screen behind the event. A level of remediation in the work is thus clarified

from the outset of the performance, as the content of one medium (live performance)

has already become the content of another and the same information is simultaneously

manifest in two material forms. The transience of the real is emphasized and the

demarcation of the live and mediated is blurred by techniques such as having the

camera intensify the threat to the body by using zoom facilities to highlight and

enhance the proximity between nail and foot. In other words, the transmission further

validates the immediacy and authenticity of the act. The image on the screen

heightens the creation of suspense and is perhaps somewhat privileged over the

human body. Its size, easy visibility and magnifying capacities fulfill our desire for

proximity and it becomes an affirmation of the event’s “liveness”; the translation of

the material into information establishes the supposed ‘truth’ of the material event.

Matthew Causey in his article, The Screen Test of the Double addresses the

phenomenon of the privileging of videated subjects. He explains,“ Rock concerts are

routinely supplemented by video projections which become the evidence of a live act.

In stadium concerts the ‘Jumbotron’ video screens are the manner in which audience

members access the liveness. He asks the question, “Does that mean that it is the split

video image sourcing from a live feed that reestablishes the status of the real?” And

comes to the conclusion that, “Yes, the video image is more real than the live

actor.”207

The mistaking of the media image for the real can be understood through the

paradigm of Baudrillardian simulation, discussed in Chapter 1. Wages of Spin

illustrates the media simulacrum through the simultaneous presentation of the real and

206

Lehmann (2006) p. 166. 207

Causey (1999) p. 387.

90

its intangible digital replacement, through pattern and absence. The passivity of the

audience’s role in the reception of media imagery is highlighted and we are forced to

reflect on the nature of the real and of the media imagery that can no longer be

considered as transmitting the real, but as manipulating the real, editing it, and

fabricating a new, authored reality. An alternate version of events is created that

resembles the real but fictionally embellishes it, and it is this simulacrum that

becomes the authoritative version, disappearing the real, for it is of course

permanently documented and widely distributed.

This work exposes the simulacra as spurious by revealing the usually unseen

mechanics of production. The audience is not only witness to the camera’s filming but

also to the ‘behind the scenes’ of the enormous editing desk, which is presented at

such an angle so as to allow the audience to see the feeds of all cameras at all times.

This focus on the processes of manufacture inhibits the possibility of becoming

mesmerized by the illusory capabilities of the filmic media and forces the audience to

maintain a critical eye to the boundary blurring and translation of materiality that is

taking place in the media production. The revealing of the mechanics of production

establishes the work as functioning ‘hypermedially’; the opacity of the medium is

made prominent as the process of remediation itself is placed at issue, and the

transformation of the live into the mediated is revealed as completely

recontextualising and reconstructing the intended referent. The presence of the

material referent does not extend into the informational context, but is replaced by

manufactured pattern.

In Wages of Spin, this mistranslation is particularly evident in a critical scene where

the audience are themselves remediated into the performance frame and are

confronted with their mediated other. Early in the work, the audience is videoed

madly applauding at the instruction of the performers, and the live feed from a boom

camera sweeping back and forth across the crowd is displayed on the screen opposite.

Later in the work the audience is confronted with their cheering mediated double

framing media footage of Prime Minister Howard’s election win. We the audience

feel cheated, in some way betrayed, furious for this misrepresentation of our actions

and intentions but like the election, it is too late and we let it happen. We are also

91

faced with the disorienting experience of identifying the self ‘outside the self’ and

recognizing the translatability of our material selves into malleable digital pattern.

This experience of identifying the self as ‘other’ proliferates within technology from

interactive computer software to a voice on the answering machine. Matthew Causey

isolates the moment in new media performance works when an actor confronts her

mediated double through the technologies of mediation. He explains, “The screens of

mediated technologies, now ubiquitous in live performance…construct the space

wherein we double ourselves and perform a witnessing of ourselves as other”.208

Causey examines how this reflects the psychoanalytic notion of the uncanny, the

disassociation of self, and presents a visual metaphor of split subjectivity.

In Wages of Spin, the audience’s experience of witnessing themselves as other

certainly evokes a sense of the uncanny. It also generates an unease, a wary mistrust,

for they are forced to acknowledge that once their Double has been permanently

captured in the realm of information, it is no longer their own and they have no

control over its apparent behaviour. They are the original material referent, and the

discrepancy between digital pattern and material presence, and the absence of

presence within the digital realm, is further emphasised. Again the focus is on the

process of the production of information and the onscreen simulations can no longer

be passively consumed without questioning the effect of this process. This inclusion

of the managed projection of the audience within the onstage action further troubles

the boundary between the onstage realm of the performers and the world of the

audience with the only potentially fictitious ‘other’ world being the hyperreal content

of the media.

The hyperreal content of the media simulacrum is a key focus of this work, with the

makers attempting to expose the dominance of its effect upon our lives and its

prominence in creating our sense of reality. Version 1.0 problematise the distancing

effect of media in relation to the accessing of war and violence, as in the American

televising of the bloodshed, the casualties are represented not as corpses but as

statistical information relayed via the detachment of the screen. The dominance of

television in shaping our reality is also emphasized as the performers repeatedly

208

Causey (1999) p. 386.

92

present caricatures of media personalities, with the audience witness to both the live

performer and the mediated representation. In one instance the performers are

involved in a ‘television interview’ and the actual sequence of events is contrasted

with the televised representation of these events. The audience is shown how

television dramatically manipulates the nuances and context of the original action

through the use of techniques such as jump-cutting between interviewees and the

editing out of text. Here we not only see how the projected media remediates the live,

but we also experience the remediation of television by theatre. This process of

remediation creates both transformational and ontological intermediality; through the

representation of the medium of television within the medium of theatre, theatre

defines its own ontology as a hypermedium.

Within the hypermedial scenography

there are continual slippages between

the images of the material production

and the translation of those images into

the world of information. While an

actor may appear before the audience

in camouflage uniform with his name

labeled on his chest, the media

translation of this material image may frame the actor with Image 2

the subheading ‘Minister for Defense’, and it is with this mediated information that

the audience identifies and builds meaning. The actor then effectively assumes the

role of the Minister for Defense and a constructed hyperreality is imposed upon, and

effectively dominates, the material mise en scene. The pattern of the information

creates a new reality that relegates the material presence of the actor to a subordinate

position. Wages of Spin depicts, and is critical of, a world in which reality is not

determined by the experience of, or witnessing of material events, but by the

information framing and translating them.

The next section will extend this reading using a different example of work that also

develops intermedial staging and explores the relationship of humans and media

technologies. However this production focuses more directly on the relationship

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between human subjectivity and information patterns, exploring the ways in which

digital communication technologies have impacted upon ideas of authenticity and

identity. The work presents digitalised scenography and places the performers in a

virtual environment, reflecting the everyday habitation of virtual spaces and the

injection of information patterns into material spaces. The following study argues that

this work remediates the aesthetic conventions of digital media to create a level of

intermediality that blurs the perceived boundary between the real and the virtual, and

suggests that this work mirrors the cultural condition of Virtuality.

Pattern, Presence and Intermediality in Supervision

Under the direction of Marianne Weems, the Builders’ Association use the integration

of contemporary technologies to extend the boundaries of live theatre. Based in New

York, the company blends text, sound, architecture, video, and stage performance to

explore the impact of technology on human presence and selfhood. The production

Supervision, created in collaboration with multimedia company dBox explores the

concept of ‘data bodies’; the versions of ourselves that exist in data space as the

collation of all the data files collected about us. Three intertwined stories of human-

computer relationships explore the diverse ways digital information technologies

record, reflect and refashion human identity. Characters in a range of social and

geographic situations interact with the world of cyberspace information, and their

social lives are both overtly and inadvertently affected in a variety of ways.

Supervision highlights how “With every cctv image, credit card swipe, email and

phone call the technological evidence of our existence grows”,209

and in our digitally

saturated environment our data-identity is often recognised as more ‘authentic’ than

the physical or subjective self.

A traveller, a Ugandan citizen of Indian descent, repeatedly enters the US on

business. In each of his scenes he must pass through a security check, and as the

checks grow more interrogative, the traveller become more frustrated and defensive.

In a keystroke the security official can access endless personal details about this

“potentially suspect” visitor and these details are presented to the audience as swirling

209

Liverpool08 Arts and Culture Website, (http://www.liverpool08.com/supervision/) accessed June

2006.

94

information patterns on a large screen that surround the figure of the traveller. There

is no escaping the computer’s constant surveillance. The traveller stands amidst

spidery lists of purchased items, assets, travel documentation and family histories, and

humour is often derived as the airport security officials believe only what is recorded

in the traveller’s passport and travel information, disregarding the person standing

before them. The patterns of information that together create his ‘data-body’, for all

practical and legal purposes, effectively displace his material presence; in fact not just

a data-body but a total data-identity.

In a middle-class Seattle household ‘John Snr.’ secretly conducts fraud via the

internet, using the identity of his young son to run up credit card debt. As his wife

Carol and son John Jnr. play in the rest of the house, he hides away on his computer

constructing a virtual identity, playing with virtual money. Yet the trails of

information he leaves behind are recorded and stored and his actions in the virtual

world of information have very real impact upon his material existence. One could

say that he ‘steals’ the identity of his child, though of course the identity is only a

constructed pattern of information particles and does not directly represent the actual

child. Interestingly however, John Jnr. is never materially present on the stage, rather

he is shown as a video image. As such, the digital information manipulated by John

Snr. is just as ‘real’ as his son; the digital information in this case is not inferior as a

‘copy’ or representation of the real, but is constructed from the same bits and bytes as

the material ‘presence’ of John Jnr.

In New York, a member of the ‘digirati’, the burgeoning generation of young

technology-obsessed professionals, communicates daily via webcam with her

grandmother in Columbia, Sri Lanka. From the other side of the world, ‘Jen’ is

organising her grandmother’s affairs, overseeing doctor’s appointments, real estate

problems, and financial arrangements. She is simultaneously building a family

history, recording and storing information, photos and important documents on her

computer. As she scans old photographs, the audience watches as the old medium of

photography is remediated by digital technology, and as the grandmother in Sri Lanka

narrates (via webcam) the memories each photograph evokes, we are reminded of

other, older ways of locating one’s identity. As the grandmother’s mind begins to

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wander and slowly fragment, we see the importance the technology plays in allowing

Jen to literally ‘keep-an-eye’ on her grandmother’s health and state of mind. At the

same time the image of the grandmother’s pixelating mind serves to remind us that

electronic systems too can cross their wires, slow their electrical impulses and create

false information; randomness can disrupt pattern.

Supervision explores different relationships between middle class humanity and

digital technologies. The work forces the issue of identity in a world in virtual transit,

and depicts how the ubiquity of computer and communication technologies in

Western society is refashioning our identity. The Orwellian omniscience of

surveillance in a digital age is presented as unlimited, its impact underestimated. In an

interview I conducted with director Marianne Weems210

she explained that the work

was created in reaction to other artworks that explore the issue of surveillance,

because “in a post 9/11, post-private culture we all know we’re under visual

surveillance”, this is not news. Rather what interested Weems was the idea of

“dataveillance, that invisible form of surveillance that’s actually much more

omnipresent at this point and much more insidiously ultimately”. For ‘dataveillance’

is “compromising our sense of identity in a way that visual surveillance never will”.

Dataveillance is depicted as having enormous potential power, as both a means of

corruption and as corrupt. Within the three stories presented we see the power of

dataveillance manifest in differing ways. We see its positive potential to unite the

distanced and enable the monitoring of those that require assistance, we see it

manipulated to both commit, and catch financial fraud, and we see its impact upon the

boundaries of personal privacy as it is implemented by governments in the name of

security.

In an introductory speech, a performer informs the audience that in our simple act of

purchasing tickets we have inadvertently volunteered information about our personal

lives. The performer declares that, based on our credit card purchases, the company

has created a statistical profile of the audience demographic. While the statistical

profile she then proceeds to offer is clearly generalised and designed for humorous

effect, this introduction implicates the audience as naïve participants in the process of

210

R. Klich, Interview with Marianne Weems, conducted at The Walker Arts Centre, Minneapolis,

Minnesota, October 16th

2005.

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data monitoring and the unknowing objects of surveillance. This also sets up a

slightly disconcerted, defensive position for the audience from which to view the rest

of the performance. As the security official questions the Ugandan commuter

regarding his travel, shopping and personal information, the audience may reflect

upon their own personal information and its easy accessibility; as the onstage screens

are covered in web-like branches of the traveller’s statistics and history, the audience

are forced to ask themselves whether their own information should be so readily

available and publicly displayed. This raises the issue of information ownership, and

begs the question, do we own our information or does information precede us?

The onstage media architecture and slick sound and lighting effects create the sense

of a world where digital technology reigns. In the presented world, digital technology

is not only depicted as vital infrastructure allowing communication and access, but it

is a fundamental part of the environment. The integration of the live performer and

the digital scenery is crucial in developing the themes of the work. In his study, the

character of John Snr. sits at his desk surrounded by swirling patterns of information

in which he appears completely immersed. Here the live performer does not appear in

contrast with the digital environment but rather they appear inherently enmeshed.

Within his world material presence has little importance as his actions in the virtual

world create an identity of their own. The scenography shows the virtual, the streams

and patterns of information, as seeping out of the computer screen and completely

encompassing his physical self. While the actor is recognisable as a material form

within the virtual environment, the patterns of information that flow over his face and

body create the effect that he is only two-dimensional, a shape and not a being. The

boundary between his body and the virtual environment seems fluid, insignificant,

and potentially permeable. The actor’s face is often amplified through a webcam

image projected on another screen, and this image is more visible than the actor

himself. These visual effects create the sense that information is leaking out of the

computer-based world and colonising the material space.

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Image 3

Large transparent screens are used both as a foreground and background, sweeping

across the stage and creating a surface for projection. Here the effects of ‘wiping’,

‘framing’ ‘panning’ and ‘zooming’ enabled by the mechanised screens remediate the

aesthetic conventions of film editing, controlling the scope and manipulating the

viewer’s perspective, creating formal or transmedial intermediality as defined by

Schroter. The audience is also presented with the theatrical remediation of virtual

reality. The three dimensional interior of the Seattle household is created purely

through digital effects and while the son is also presented as a projection, the mother

is physically present onstage. The live performer here simultaneously exists in a real

and virtual space, and the production presents the remediation of digital virtual

reality. This remediation creates an interesting level of ontological intermediality, for

while virtual reality and theatrical performance share a number of characteristics,

virtual reality necessitates the construction of an alternate space, while theatrical

performance can take place in real space. The reality of the space is emphasised in

this performance as the mechanics of the production are readily revealed.

When the audience enters the theatre the production has already begun. Sitting in

front of the stage with their backs to us are a number of computer technicians who

remain at their terminals, screens facing us, throughout the performance. While at

times during the performance there is the temptation for the audience to escape into

the mesmerising phatasmogoria of the computer-generated scenery within which the

actors perform, the visibility of the mechanics of production functions to thematise

the constructed nature of information. In Supervision, the process of manufacturing

the illusion is made visible as we can continually see the computer screens below the

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stage upon which the onstage media frameworks are programmed. Weems states,

“It’s always been a point of fascination for me to expose the means of production”

and she explains that she finds a lot of pleasure in doing so because “the technicians

are performers in this project so they (the audience) are seeing them act as part of the

ensemble”. The exposing of the technologies of production should allow the audience

to experience the work as ‘hypermediate’; the overt presentation of the technicians

reminds the viewer of the medium and emphasise the distinct nature of the media.

However in Supervision, the digital effects appear to have a life of their own,

regardless of the existence of the programmers sitting in front of the stage. For the

audience, the intricate actions of these technicians are not visible, and as they do not

draw attention to themselves, their presence is easily forgotten. What becomes

evident is the ability of the media to run independently; while the effects will initially

have been programmed by the dbox technicians, what we are shown is the

autonomous performance of the media. Weems suggests that “the media is the

protagonist of these projects [Supervision and Alladeen] and the performers really

have to deal with the media as another performer and another performative element,

rather than something that is backing them up it is something to contend with onstage

as a live element”.211

As the audience come to view the media, and not the technicians

as performers, the logic of the efficacy becomes more immediate as opposed to

hypermediate, for focus is no longer placed on the nature of the medium. If the

process of mediation is perceived as located at the level of the computer-generated

graphics, then the medium has become transparent. However, if we view the

mediation as occurring through video projection, then hypermediacy is established,

for the nature of the images as projected, as patterns on a screen, is explicit. Here we

see the double logic of remediation existing simultaneously.

Whether transparent or opaque, the computer-generated performance text cannot be

read in isolation for it only develops relevance through its conversation with the live.

Weems suggests that the media in Supervision make up half of the dialogue with the

actors performing the other half, and both are completely meaningless in isolation

from the other. The efficacy of the work lies in its utilisation of the ‘intermedial mise

211

Klich, Interview with Weems, 2005.

99

en scene’, and it is the configuration, the arrangement that generates meaning. The

organising framework relates all the elements non-hierarchically so as to produce

intermedial patterns. These patterns consist of both live and mediated elements, and

the convergence of the live and the mediated onstage reflects the thematic concerns of

the production: the interaction of information and materiality, and the cultural

perception that information is displacing materiality.

This work explores the idea that humans are not only being mediated by

communication technologies, or even simulated within media, but that they may

potentially become translated into digital pattern and replaced by their virtual

counterpart. As the traveller is accosted at airport checkpoints, his material self is

perceived as lacking credibility, while his informational version is deemed more

authentic by the security official. The character of John Jnr. is shown to have

absolutely no control over his supposedly ‘own’ data-identity, as his father constructs

a pattern of actions in the virtual world that will exist as the authoritative version of

the child’s identity. It is suggested that this ‘data-identity’ will inevitably be viewed

as valid by the authorities simply because it exists in digitalised form. When this

occurs, the child’s data-identity will have become a substitute for the material child.

At its heart, this work poses the question: are

humans more than the sum of their statistical

information? As the character of the

grandmother begins to show signs of senility, the

giant webcam image of her face slowly breaks

apart (Image 4). The pixelation of the image

Image 4 suggests that the breakdown of the machine and

the gradual interjection of randomness into the pattern of the media image may

correlate with the disintegration of the human brain and the disconnection of organic

electrical impulses. While this image may also remind us of the complexity of

preserving human connections, it also suggests that we are now truly posthuman, that

human beings now function not only through technology but as technology. Our

actions and impulses are the same as those of the digital computer, and yet computer

generated information is illustrated as holding more claim to authenticity in today’s

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society than the material, for unlike human computation, digital information is

recordable, objectively classifiable and almost permanently stored.

Both in the intermedial staging and in the dramatic content, this work foregrounds the

dialectic of pattern/randomness over that of presence/absence. Visually and

thematically it is suggested that both the material and the virtual may be viewed as

divisible into information particles, constructed from the same elementary bits. And

as these bits become bytes, and particles are pixelated, they can come to form

recognisable patterns or ‘presences’. In this instance ‘presence’ in no way relates to

material existence, for material actuality is not a concern. Rather ‘presence’ is simply

the result of human response towards the formation of constructed patterns.

‘Presence’ may be viewed as translatable, as patterns of information particles that

may be deconstructed, and reconstructed in another medium. In this sense, presence is

not limited to its traditional domain of the live, nor pattern limited to the mediated,

but instead both are perceived intermedially, and the boundary between the real and

the virtual is made obsolete.

Conclusion

Wages of Spin and Supervision utilise intermedial staging to explore the position of

the human in a virtualised world. In both works, intermediality is established through

the remediation of media such as television, cinema, and virtual reality, and the

audience simultaneously relate to the work on both an immediate and hypermediate

level. However, despite the similar approaches evident in the stage design, these two

works relate to Hayles’ framework of the semiotics of Virtuality in different ways,

illustrating opposing responses to the social and cultural shift into virtual spaces.

Wages of Spin problematises the interaction of pattern and absence, the basis of

hyperreality, exploring the political implications of this mass media induced

condition. Supervision however, reflects the perception that materiality is being

displaced by information, exploring this position both in the dramatic content and

through the scenography. So while Version 1.0 argue for the ontological disparity of

information and materiality, The Builder’s Association explore the overlap and

interchangability of these two realms. Despite their conflicting viewpoints, these

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works highlight the significance of intermedial performance as an important site for

exploring the relationship between humans and technology.

In this chapter I have argued that the concept of intermediality avoids reinforcing the

demarcation of the live and the mediated, and in both the case studies explored, the

domains of the live and the mediated are continually remediated and reconstructed

within the other. Although Wages of Spin presents an argument for the inherent

distinction of the live and the mediated, it utilises intermedial staging as a means of

reflecting the mediatisation of everyday life and to confront the audience with the

ease with which the virtual can replace the real. From their hypermedial vantage

point, the audience witness the blurring of the boundaries between the live and the

mediated within the theatrical frame. Through the general integration of otherwise

disparate elements, it is again made evident how multimedia theatre remediates the

strategies of digital multimedia, and this chapter has illustrated how intermediality

can be recognised in multimedia theatre as achievable through processes of

remediation.

Such layering and fluidity of media creates a dynamic and multidimensional text that

appeals to the audience on a visceral level. The following chapter explores that

audience experience and argues that it may be characterised by varying degrees of

cognitive and sensory immersion.

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Chapter 4

Immersion

The concept of immersion can be seen to operate in a range of art forms and has an

extensive history in theatre practice. In their overview of immersive art, Packer and

Jordan discuss examples such as the Dyonisian rituals of Greek theatre and the

Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk, which they describe as “driven by a vision of the

theatre in which the audience loses itself in the veracity of the drama, creating an

immersive experience”.212

In this vision, immersion involves a process of

disembodiment, with the audience projecting themselves into an alternate world. The

perception that immersion in theatre involves ‘losing’ oneself in the drama is limited

and disregards the potential for immersion in postdramatic theatre. To recognise the

potential for immersion in multimedia theatre, a less restrictive understanding of

immersion must be established that acknowledges the potential for immersion to

manifest in theatre as a sensory, corporeal experience.

This chapter argues against the understanding of immersion as a purely cognitive

faculty and takes Oliver Grau’s assertion that ‘staged media’ are not appropriate for

the study of immersion213

as a point of departure from which to build a wider

understanding of immersion. Grau’s position is based on his perception that theatre

does not appeal to the audience on a sensory level, and as such, his comment only

applies to dramatic theatre. Postdramatic theatre and multimedia performance are

rejecting the portrayal of a discrete fictional universe and creating physically

immersive environments that viscerally engage the participant. In this chapter I argue

that immersion in multimedia performance manifests as both a cognitive and

corporeal phenomenon, and offers an experiential process that fuses information with

materiality as the body is used to access, and is infiltrated by, digitalised text, image

and sound.

212

Packer and Jordan eds. (2001) p. xxxi. 213

Oliver Grau (2003) Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion, Cambridge MA and London: The MIT

Press, p. 14 .

103

The nature of immersion in multimedia theatre can be articulated in terms of Bolter

and Grusin’s concepts of ‘immediacy’ and ‘hypermediacy’. As discussed in the

previous chapter, these terms relate to the audience’s level of immersion and their

awareness of the process of mediation. The two modes of immediacy and

hypermediacy correspond with the two concepts of cognitive immersion and sensory

immersion, and this connection will be explored later in this discussion. This chapter

firstly clarifies the means and implications of both cognitive and sensory immersion.

The nature of immersion is then further explored in a series of case studies that

highlight different aspects of the theoretical discussion, and it is determined that an

emphasis on visceral immersion in multimedia performance is creating new modes of

reception, embodiment and contemplation.

Cognitive Immersion

Representational art aims to achieve audience immersion through the convincing

depiction of a detailed reality, and theatre has traditionally been considered a site of

immersion in terms of its capacity to create virtual reality. Marie-Laure Ryan in her

detailed examination of the poetics of immersion in digital literature, describes

immersion as “the experience through which a fictional world acquires the presence

of an autonomous, language-independent reality populated with live human

beings.”214

In proscenium arch theatre, the staged fiction creates a discrete alternate

world, and the house lights are blackened so as to help the audience forget their

physical reality and become part of the fictional realm. The audience’s ‘suspension of

disbelief’ is their mindful attempt to make the level of the staging invisible and

transport themselves emotionally into the depicted drama.

In dramatic theatre immersion has manifest as a cognitive experience, with the

audience projecting themselves into an imagined world. For the audience to achieve

belief in the fiction, they must transcend the practical limitations of their physical

presence. Elin Diamond refers to Bert States’ reflection on the moment of ‘opening’

in which the ‘lights dim’ and the process begins which “radically shifts the ground

214

Marie-Laure Ryan (2001) Narrative as Virtual Reality: Immersion and Interactivity in Literature

and Electronic Media, Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, p. 14.

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and conditions of our perception of the world”.215

This process of transportation into

another world requires the audience to forget their immediate physical location and

enter another through an active process of imagining. To be within this space, one

cannot be separated from it by the boundaries of mediation, so here the audience’s

level of immersion may manifest as the degree to which the medium of

communication fades into invisibility; the disappearance of mediation heightens the

sense of immediacy and authenticity. Oliver Grau articulates this concept when he

defines immersion as being when “a work of art and image apparatus converge, or

when the message and the medium form an almost inseparable unit”.216

This kind of cognitive immersion is reaching its artistic potential in the field of

computer-generated virtual reality (VR). Michael Rush explains that in VR, “the still

passive aspect of watching a screen is replaced by total immersion into a world whose

reality exists contemporaneously with one’s own”.217

3D worlds can be accessed via

head-mounted display so that the limitations of the interface are negligible and the

medium seemingly disappears. This form of cognitive immersion still relies on the

participant’s ‘suspension of disbelief’; while this suspension may be almost

inescapable due to the level of detail in the illusion, the participant may still remain

conscious of the fact that the fictional world will disappear when the head-piece is

removed. Though computer-generated VR may apprehend the user’s entire sensory

system to facilitate transportation into the simulated environment, the immersion is

still located in the mind; the material world is bypassed as the mind engages directly

with the realm of information.

The poetics of immersion are a key focus of media and literary theorist Marie-Laure

Ryan, who develops a history and typology of the concept I have labelled ‘cognitive

immersion’ in her book Narrative as Multimedia: Immersion and Interactivity in

Literature and Electronic Media. Ryan calls for the synthesis of immersion and

interactivity within electronic literature, and her study of this domain provides a vivid

articulation of the nature of immersion in virtual reality and other representational

215

Elin Diamond (1997) Unmaking Mimesis: Essays on Feminism and the Theatre, London and New

York: Routledge, p. 143. 216

Oliver Grau (2002) Interview – conducted in German on the Deutschlandfunk Program on

Deutschland Radio, (http://www.switch.sjsu.edu), accessed June 2003, p. 3. 217

Michael Rush (1999) New Media in Late 20th

Century Art, Singapore: Thames and Hudson, p. 208.

105

texts. She positions immersion as an ongoing ideal throughout the history of Western

art and literature, and she addresses the work of a number of scholars who have

discussed the issue of immersion at various stages throughout history under different

titles. She summarises the discourse relevant to the investigation as including,

Victor Nell’s analysis of the psychological state of being “lost in a book”; Richard

Gerrig’s concept of transportation; the possible-worlds approach to the semantics

of fictionality and its description of the phenomenology of reading fiction as an

imaginative “recentering” of the universe of possibilities around a new actual

world; Kendall Walton’s theory of fiction as a game of make-believe and his

concept of “mental stimulation”; and in an interlude, the spiritual exercise

recommended by St. Ignatius Loyola of a reading discipline involving all the

senses in the mental representation of the textual world.218

Ryan argues that these theories do not perceive immersion as a passive form of

audience engagement, as opponents of immersion in art have argued, but instead

promote immersion as requiring an active cognitive process.219

The active process

required by such forms of immersion is one of imagining, of utilising the given

elements of the text as a framework upon which to build a vision of an alternate

world. As the reader is not provided with every detail of this space, such details must

be actively conjured by the imagination.

Having established a theoretical basis for her understanding of immersion, Ryan

proceeds to develop a typology of manifestations of immersion in art. She develops

three forms of immersion – spatial, temporal, and emotional – which are specifically

associated with the narrative elements of setting, plot, and character.220

Immersion in

literature and electronic media, as suggested by Ryan, is explicitly bound to

representation, presupposing the audience’s relationship to a fictional world.221

All

the above mentioned theories of immersion are married to the idea of immersion as a

purely cognitive state involving a sense of transportation into a virtual reality. This

limitation is acknowledged by Ryan, who recognises that hers is “a fundamentally

mimetic concept of immersion” that “remains faithful to the VR experience, since the

218

Ryan (2001) p. 15. 219

Ibid. 220

Ryan (2001) p. 16. 221

Ryan (2001) p. 15.

106

purpose of VR technology is to connect the user to a simulated reality.”222

Because it

is based on a concept of representation, Ryan’s descriptions and typology of

immersion also apply to immersion in dramatic theatre. Like immersion in VR,

immersion in dramatic theatre presupposes the audience’s relationship to a fictional

universe, which in theatre is not merely imagined, but is brought into being via the

stage. The fictional world is performed, which means that it is conveyed not only

through the literary text, but also through the ‘performance text’. This dimension of

the ‘performance text’ opens up the potential for different manifestations of

immersion in theatre, immersion that is not merely cognitive, but corporeal.

Emphasis on the performance text over the literary text is the defining characteristic

of postdramatic theatre. Hans-Thies Lehmann makes the distinction between the

“linguistic text, the text of the staging and mise en scene, and the ‘performance text”,

and describes the performance text as constituted by, “The mode of relationship of the

performance to the spectators, the temporal and spatial situation, and the place and

function of the theatrical process within the social field”.223

According to Lehmann,

the performance text in postdramatic theatre “overdetermines” both the linguistic text

and the text of the mise en scene. He argues,

that posdramatic theatre is not simply a new kind of text of staging- and even

less a new type of theatre text, but rather a type of sign usage in the theatre that

turns both of these levels of theatre upside down through the structurally

changed quality of the performance text: it becomes more presence than

representation, more shared than communicated experience, more process than

product, more manifestation than signification, more energetic impulse than

information.224

When theatre becomes more presence than representation, more process than product,

the site of immersion shifts. No longer is an imaginary world established into which

the audience project themselves, but focus is placed on their immediate reality and

their physical presence within the space. The following section addresses the nature

of immersion in the performance text.

222

Ibid. 223

Hans-Thies Lehmann (2006) p. 85. 224

Ibid.

107

Sensory Immersion

Oliver Grau’s Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion presents a definition of

immersion as “characterised by diminished distance and increased emotional

involvement’.225

Grau suggests that theatre and staged media leave the observer

‘outside’ and “do not overwhelm the senses”.226

However immersion is a key

characteristic in understanding the efficacy of intermedial, postdramatic, and virtual

theatre, as well as new media installation. Grau’s argument here regards proscenium

arch theatre; in representational theatre, the audience may be separated from the

fictional world and ‘left outside’ the imagined world of the action, which is framed by

the stage and distanced from the viewer. It would seem that the inherent ‘framing’ of

theatrical performance is partly the reason for Grau’s exclusion of theatre from the

arena of immersive art.227

However, one could argue that even computer-generated

media rely on an ‘interface’ to present VR, and filmic media still require a viewing

screen that clearly frames the depicted reality.

Grau’s omission of theatre from his examination of immersion is due to the fact that

his investigation focuses on immersion in ‘virtual art’. As such it is understandable

that the scope of his study does not include postdramatic theatre, for postdramatic

theatre disrupts the depiction of a ‘virtual’ world and cannot be categorised as ‘virtual

art’. However, this focus means that Grau’s perception of immersion, and his history

of immersive artworks, is limited only to the experience of encountering a virtual

environment. He focuses on the illusionistic capabilities of media and their ability to

transparently mediate representational fiction. The aim of such media,

is to give the viewer the strongest impression possible of being at the location

where the images are. This requires the most exact adaptation of illusionary

information to the physiological disposition of the human senses. The most

ambitious project intends to appeal not only to the eyes but to all other senses

so that the impression arises of being completely in an artificial world.228

225

Oliver Grau (2003) p. 13. 226

Grau (2003) p. 14. 227

Ibid. 228

Ibid.

108

While it does not transport the audience into an artificial world, postdramatic theatre

and performance art also place the audience in the same location as the images, and

appeal not only to the eyes, but to the entire sensory apparatus. As such, immersion in

postdramatic theatre shares some similarities with the nature of immersion in

‘ambitious’ VR projects, these similarities stemming from the shared status of theatre

and digital technologies as ‘hypermedia’.

Theatre is a ‘hypermedium’; it is a metamedium with the potential to synthesise

sensory perceptions. This essential quality of theatre makes it an important inclusion

in a history of immersive art, and postdramatic theatre continues to pioneer means of

sensory and corporeal immersion. George Landow and Paul Delaney describe the

ideal hypermedia system as “engaging all five senses”:

Hypermedia takes us even closer to the complex interrelatedness of everyday

consciousness; it extends hypertext by re-integrating our visual and auditory

faculties into textual experience, linking graphic images, sound and video to

verbal signs. Hypermedia seeks to approximate the way our waking minds

always make a synthesis of information received from all five senses.

Integrating or (re-integrating) touch, taste, and smell seems the inevitable

consummation of the hypermedia concept.229

Just as computer-based hypermedial systems offer multi-sensory synthesis, so too

theatre offers the potential for sensory saturation.

Performance and new media installation have the potential to viscerally immerse the

audience, not in an artificial world, but within the immediate, real space of the

performance. The elements of theatre can directly target the entire sensory range of

the audience, and presentational performance can immerse the audience/participant in

their spatial ‘here and now’. In postdramatic theatre, where there is no clearly

demarcated alternate reality, there is still potential for the audience to experience a

high degree of immersion, not immersion in an alternate world, but immersion in an

enhanced state of being in relation to the surrounding space and stimuli. Here the

229

George Landow and Paul Delaney “Hypertext, Hypermedia and Literary Studies: The State of the

Art” in Randall Packer and Ken Jordan eds. (2001) Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality,

London and New York: W.W. Norton and Company, p. 212.

109

concept of immersion relates to the audience’s level of sensorial stimulation at any

one moment, and their awareness of being within the present of the performance.

This distinction recognises two potential forms of audience immersion in both virtual

realities and multimedia performance. Firstly, cognitive immersion in a fictional

world may also involve sensorial engagement but is inherently based on a ‘suspension

of disbelief’. Secondly, sensory immersion enhances the participant’s perception of

their immediate ‘here and now’. The difference between these modes of engagement

can be envisaged spatially: the former involves ‘plunging into’ an alternate space,

while in the latter the artwork may be viewed as reaching outside its frame to create a

sensory experience that builds on the immediate moment, and that does not require

the forgetting of the self nor a sense of disembodiment. Cognitive immersion is an

effect established through the presence of a fictional reality, while sensory immersion

can be created through the dimension recognised by Lehmann as the ‘performance

text’. While the former requires the dislocation of materiality and involves immersion

in an imagined space founded on patterns of textual information, the latter forges the

material and virtual to create an embodied experience of pattern and presence within

real space.

Throughout the twentieth century the theatrical avant-garde has attempted to create an

immediate experience of immersion in real time and space. Bauhaus practitioner

Laszlo Maholy-Nagy called for a Theatre of Totality that collapsed the fourth-wall

and immersed the audience in the same space as the performers. He demanded

Bauhaus Theatre disrupt the idle audience: “It is time to produce a kind of stage

activity which will no longer permit the masses to be silent spectators, which will not

only excite them inwardly but will let them take hold and participate - actually allow

them to fuse with the action on the stage at the peak of cathartic ecstasy”.230

The

Happenings of the 1960s attempted the ultimate breakdown of the audience and the

performance; Allan Kaprow advised that the “line between art and life should be as

fluid, and perhaps indistinct as possible”.231

Indeed he took this integration further

when he suggested that audiences should be eliminated altogether: “All the elements 230

Laszlo Maholy-Nagy “Theatre, Circus, Variety” in Randall Packer and Ken Jordan eds. (2001)

Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality, London and New York: W.W. Norton and Company, p.

25. 231

Kaprow in Packer and Jordan eds. (2001) p. 308.

110

– people, space, the particular materials and character of the environment, time – can

in this way be integrated.”232

With the dying of distance between the audience and the

event, the greater is the degree of immersion.

This form of audience immersion does not negate interaction, as can often be the case

with cognitive immersion where audience intervention disrupts the illusion of the

autonomous fictional world. Rather, audience interaction can further enhance sensory

immersion, with the audience included in the process of the performance and

contributing to the performance text. Performance artist Marina Abramovic in some

of her early works involved the audience as instigators of the performance. In Rhythm

O (1974), Abramovic provided 72 objects including a pen, scissors, an axe, chains

and a loaded pistol, and invited the audience to use these objects on her body as they

desired. Over the six hours of the performance, the audience become the force that

acted upon her body to create the performance text. In such works, the audience are

immersed within the world of the performance, because this world inhabits the same

temporality and spatiality as their own. Though there is a specifically demarcated

performance space, there is no attempt to transport the perceptual experience of the

audience to an imagined different location. The audience’s level of immersion is

based on the degree to which they feel a part of the performance, and the intensity of

their emotional and visceral engagement.

Live art has a high potential for achieving sensory immersion, however this form of

immersion is not restricted to un-mediated performance. As mentioned in Chapter 1,

theorists such as Mark Poster are discussing the experiential nature of new media

technologies. New media installations that do not attempt the representation of an

alternate world order but instead tend toward the postdramatic, also have the potential

to create sensory experience in real time. While representational film often attempts

to transpose the viewer into the fictional world, for video artists such as Bill Viola

“the moving image becomes less about representation and instead is a medium that,

through its temporal qualities, has a connection to human consciousness and

perceptual experience”.233

So it would seem that the difference between the nature of

232

Kaprow in Packer and Jordan eds. (2001) p. 313. 233

Robin Petterd, Liquid Sensations: Evoking sensory experiences with interactive video installation

art”, (www.artschool.utas.edu.au/petterd/htdocs/central.htm) accessed October 2006.

111

immersion experienced in representational art, and the immersion experienced in non-

representational art is not determined by media boundaries. Rather the different forms

are characterised by whether the audience is immersed in real time, or projected into

an alternate time frame. This definition is admittedly somewhat indistinct for while a

participant may not be projected into a fictional universe, neither may the time and

rhythm of the work be the same as reality. For example, in postdramatic theatre

allusions may still be made to alternate historical periods, to fictional characters, or to

an inconsistent time frame. The ‘here and now’, and the virtual ‘there’, may be

envisaged as forming a dialectic axis upon which we can locate audience immersion

in various works.

Immediacy and Hypermediacy

Different forms of immersive audience engagement can also be addressed using

Bolter and Grusin’s understanding of ‘immediacy’ and ‘hypermediacy’, as outlined in

Chapter 3. Immediacy and hypermediacy relate to the audience’s awareness of an

object’s ‘mediatedness’; immediacy requires the transparency of the medium, while

the aim of ‘hypermediacy’ is to remind the viewer of the medium, and so a

hypermedium will draw attention to itself and its distinct form of mediation. There is

an interesting correlation between the modes of cognitive and sensory immersion

identified here, and the qualities of immediacy and hypermediacy as outlined by

Bolter and Grusin. While these two sets of terms are by no means interchangeable, the

language of immediacy and hypermediacy allows for the further exploration and

articulation of both cognitive and sensory immersion in multimedia theatre.

Cognitive immersion, which is based on the presence of a fictional or virtual world,

occurs as a result of the transparent mediation of content. Sensory immersion on the

other hand, is enabled via hypermediacy. Bolter and Grusin explain the different

effects of transparent media and hypermedia: “Transparent digital applications seek to

get to the real by bravely denying the fact of mediation; digital hypermedia seek the

real by multiplying mediation so as to create a feeling of fullness, a satiety of

experience, which can be taken as reality.”234

In dramatic theatre, as in digital media,

234

Bolter and Grusin (2000) p. 53.

112

transparent mediation enables the audience to suspend disbelief and become

cognitively immersed in the virtual environment. Alternatively, an emphasis on the

specific form of mediation, which in theatre is the dimension of the performance text,

enables sensory stimulation and a ‘satiety of experience’.

Cognitive immersion creates ‘immediacy’, and manifests as immersion in the

mediated fiction. Sensory immersion is consistent with ‘hypermediacy’ and involves

immersion in the media itself, the performance text. However sensory immersion

certainly does not negate immediacy. Hypermedia, whilst anti-illusionary, still evoke

immediate reactions and authentic emotional response. Bolter and Grusin articulate

this concept in relation to Modern painting, arguing that,

By diminishing or denying painting’s representational function, they [Modernist

painters] sought to achieve an immediacy of presentation not available to

traditional painting, where immediacy had been achieved by concealing signs

of mediation… Although the real and the representational are separated in

modern art, modern art is not therefore less immediate. Modern painting

achieves immediacy not by denying its mediation but acknowledging it.235

Multimedia theatre, as inherently postdramatic, also acknowledges the circumstances

of its own mediation and aims to achieve an immediacy of presentation. Elements of

staging are not designed to represent an alternate reality, but are used to shape a

certain experience of the immediate space and time of the performance. As such,

sensory immersion manifests as a simultaneously immediate, and hypermediate

experience. The potential for the simultaneity of immediacy and hypermediacy is

recognised by Bolter and Grusin. While these two logics are clearly divergent,

hypermedia and transparent media are described by Bolter and Grusin as “opposite

manifestations of the same desire: the desire to get past the limits of representation

and to achieve the real.”236

As such, one form of mediation does not preclude the

other, and both may exist within the same work in a combined attempt at stimulating

authentic experience.

One example of where both immediacy and hypermediacy simultaneously exist

within the same work is in the Cave Automative Virtual Environment (CAVE).

235

Bolter and Grusin (2000) p. 58. 236

Bolter and Grusin (2000) p. 53.

113

Initially designed by media artist Daniel Sandin and engineer Thomas DeFanti, the

CAVE projects a virtual environment onto the walls, floor and ceiling of a small room

of about three cubic meters. Packer and Jordan explain that the immersive experience

of the CAVE was designed as an allusion to Plato’s cave; “its multiple screens and

surround-sound audio evoke the metaphor of a shadowy representation of reality,

suggesting how perception is always filtered through the mind’s veil of illusion.”237

The space is simultaneously real and virtual and the participant experiences

immediate immersion whilst remaining aware of the distinct nature of the medium.

The actual architecture is overlayed by a virtual texture, so that the audience is

physically immersed inside the work. As this ‘architexture’ is primarily virtual, the

audience can potentially suspend disbelief and become cognitively transported into an

alternate space, whilst physically remaining immersed in the ‘here and now’: “the

CAVE immersant does not experience dislocation and disembodiment, but rather is

viscerally aware of his or her physical presence “on stage” amid the animated imager

and orchestrated sound”.238

Immersion cannot be measured within the design of the work, or in the intention of

the creator, but is a subjective experience that can be measured only by the

participant. It is a form of awareness in the eye of the beholder, the degree of which

reflects the intensity of their cognitive, emotional and sensory connection to both the

content and form of an artwork. The following three case studies examine the nature

of the immersive experience in relation to four very different examples of multimedia

performance. The first study examines audience immersion within the gallery space,

addressing two installational works that heighten the audience’s perception of their

immediate environment. Bill Viola’s Five Angels for the Millennium is a new media

installation that uses digital imagery to thematically explore the idea of immersion

and create a space that saturates the senses. Janet Cardiff’s sound installation Forty

Part Motet uses different means of creating an immersive experience that is

simultaneously cognitive and sensory. The second study examines Granular

Synthesis’s Modell 5, an audio-visual installation that involves elements of live

mixing. The nature of the audience experience is explored in detail and the various

levels of immersion identified. The work is also discussed in terms of its relation to a

237

Packer and Jordan eds. (2001) p. 287. 238

Ibid.

114

‘posthuman perspective’, both through its use of distorted imagery and through

audience embodiment. Finally, immersion in a ‘mixed-reality’ is explored in an

examination of Blast Theory’s Desert Rain, which also combines all previously

mentioned modes of audience immersion.

Immersion in the Gallery – Bill Viola and Janet Cardiff

Five Angels for the Millennium

A pioneer in the field of film and video art, Bill Viola uses sound and image to

explore universal themes of birth, death, memory and the unconscious. As a child of

ten Viola had a near death-by-drowning experience and images of submergence and

water, often employed in religious symbolism on both a ritual level (Christianity) and

metaphysical level (Hinduism), are repeated in many of his works, such as The

Passing (1991), Nantes Triptych (1992), Deserts (1994), Stations (1994), The

Messenger (1994), The Crossing (1996) and Five Angels for the Millennium (2001).

These works depict the slow dynamic of immersion and emergence, of birth, death

and reawakening, of climax and renewal, of resurrection. For Viola, birth and death

“are mysteries in the truest sense of the word, not meant to be solved, but experienced

and inhabited”.239

In Five Angels for the Millennium (2001) five individual video sequences show

figures descending and ascending through water. The room and corridor are pitch

black and the five large-scale projections are dispersed throughout the space. Ambient

music washes throughout the room, building into a rumble, and finally climaxing as a

figure on one of the screens bursts through the water surface, not diving but

ascending, leaving behind a trail of bubbles. The films evoke the Angels of the

Passages: Creation, Birth, Fire, the Departure, and the Rise, and utilise Viola’s

trademark effect of extreme slow motion to manipulate the passage of time.

In Birth a figure shoots up through the water surface through the frame in a cold aqua

light. Ascending presents a figure bathed in blue light, face down as though drowned,

239

Tate online, “Tate Modern Gallery-Past exhibitions-level 5-Nude/Action/Body”

(www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/nudeactionbody/) accessed August 2006.

115

but the water surface is beneath him and his body is aimed down towards it. In

Creation, the water surface is vertical as though we are looking down into a pool, and

a figure with outstretched arms evokes an image of crucifixion. Departing shows a

figure floating into view, rushing through a swirl of bubbles and through the water’s

surface. And in Fire, an eery blood-red glow backlights the outstretched figure. The

line of the water surface forms a mirror so that it is impossible to tell which way is up

and which is down. The figures hang suspended so close to the surface that

perspective is obscured and the angle of the audience’s viewpoint is ambiguous.

Image 5

Ascending Birth

Creation Departing

Fire

There is no linear narrative and the space depicted in the imagery is not governed by

familiar universal laws such as gravity and the progression of time. The ‘angels’ are

simultaneously human, and inhuman. Tiffany Sutton comments “that, since they are

116

called “angels”, these figures are, in fact, symbols, but of what? They are rendered

nearly tangible, more than symbolic paintings can make them, anyway, for here they

loom before one, life-sized, moving, and audible.”240

The sensuality and totality of the

figures’ immersion is emphasised and the audience identify with their physicality. As

such, the audience experience is one of immediacy. Yet there is also hypermediacy,

for the unnatural colours and texture of the films, and the manipulation of temporality

via editing effects, remain prominent and draw attention to the specific nature of the

mediation.

The spatial arrangement of the work facilitates both the audience’s visceral

immersion and their empathetic, immediate experience of the figures’ immersion. The

darkened gallery space is dominated by the largess of the imagery, and the fluctuating

colour and flickering light patterns create a heightened awareness of the immediate

environment. Sutton explains,

In the darkened gallery, unlike a movie theatre, one becomes aware of the 360

degree moving arc of one’s eyes, then head, then body, contemplating the

relations between the projections; and it is difficult not to be aware of one’s body,

softly illuminated, in relation to the life-sized angle projections before one.

Without question, one contemplates these figures and the work’s meaning with

proprioceptive awareness.241

Sound washes over the body like the liquid; this immediate sensation heightens the

audience’s awareness of their own corporeality. Like undulating, sparkling waters, the

sound ripples through the space, punctuated by escaping air pockets, by drips and the

chirping of insects. The low-frequency soundscape slowly builds through sonic

layering, until it reaches crescendo at the same moment a figure leaps whale-like from

the bubbling water. Once the spectator has succumbed to the rate and rhythm of the

images, then they too are caught in the sensations of surprise, ecstasy and renewal; we

experience the waves, the pull and push, and the final projection.

While the climaxes occur seemingly at random, rhythm accumulates and time seems

to slow. The effective use of pitch and punctuation combined with the hyper-slow 240

Tiffany Sutton (2005) “Immersive Contemplation in Video Art Environments”, Contemporary

Aesthetics, (www.contemporaryaesthetics.org/newvolume/pages/article.php?articleID=288) accessed

July 2006. 241

Ibid.

117

motion of the filmic imagery, encapsulates the viewer in another time zone,

immersing them in a space of “liquid architecture” (Novak) constructed of rhythm

and flow. Lucinda Ward explains, “Viola insists on substantial investments of time:

only by adjusting his or her schedule to the pace and subtlety of the works will the

viewer share the power and complexity that is human emotion – in intimacy and

silence, and on a far grander stage.”242

As the viewer’s inner rhythms and pace slowly

adjust, their breathing slows and they are immersed in near-frozen time: Enchanted.

Sensory immersion is perhaps intensified by the viewer’s lack of agency, and the

work requires the audience’s complete submission to the aura of the imagery.

Zsuzsanna Soboslay writes “There is no sense of the possibility of our making a

contribution to the image, no way we can intervene and assist…we are left merely to

‘share’ or not in the experience of what is presented”.243

To ‘share in the experience

of what is presented’, is to share the immersion of the figures. The audience are able

to identify with this immersion and so engage with the work on an immediate level,

and yet they are not required to forget their physical self and cognitively engage with

an alternate world. Rather, the hypermediate work viscerally immerses the audience

in real space, heightening their corporeal awareness through sensory stimulation.

Robin Petterd, in his discussion of his new media project Liquid Sensations, describes

the heightened corporeal awareness experienced through immersion in water:

when entering water the body seems to meld into the substance surrounding

it…Swimming is not an activity where the surroundings disappear, it is an

activity where the environment is the focus, the corporeal sensations of it all-

encompassing. It is also an environment in which swimmers are isolated and

alone. They are unable to communicate normally and are separated from people

outside the water and other swimmers in the water.244

It is this same interaction between the environment of the artwork, and the body of the

audience member, that creates the efficacy of Five Angels for the Millennium. When

submerged in water we are both in control of our movements and at the mercy of the

water, and the viewers of this installation are required to negotiate this same balance

242

Lucinda Ward (2005) Bill Viola, (www.nga.gov.au/viola/) accessed August 2006. 243

Zsuzsanna Soboslay (2005) “On moving and being moved”, RealTime, No. 69,

(www.realtimearts.net/rt69/soboslay.html), accessed August 2006. 244

Petterd (www.artschool.utas.edu.au).

118

of control, as they are both active and passive within the space. They are both

immediately immersed, and hypermediately aware of their immersion.

The imagery of five submerged and swimming bodies provides a visual illustration of

the various passages and conditions of perception associated with sensory immersion.

The figures’ immersion, while complete, remains dynamic. The videos emphasise the

idea of immersion as movement through a viscose environment. This world

apprehends the senses entirely, altering them, assaulting them. The figures are

suspended, floating as the water buoys them up and washes over them. Movement

into further immersion is achieved through the increase of depth. At a certain point,

immersion must reach its extreme and result in either the drowning of the body as it is

claimed by the liquid world, or the emergence of the body from the water. This idea

of ‘emergence’ is at the heart of Viola’s work. The ‘angels’ are continually passing

through the film of the water surface, entering and exiting the other realm. They are

bound in these cycles of entrance and emergence. Implicitly suggested is the idea of

transition, the process of altering states, with immersion being the osmotic movement

from one state to another.

As the films do not show the figures in a static place of departure, or place of arrival,

it is the process of transition that is emphasised. We see the process of potential

transformation that occurs as one ‘passes through’ something; the allusion to the

process of purification associated with water immersion is apparent. The saturation of

the senses offers the potential to experience a kind of transcendence, where one is

both immersed in the material world whilst simultaneously exceeding it. Like the

figures in the films, the audience too may potentially emerge from their immersion

having experienced some kind of transformation. Immersive multimedia works offer

a kind of sensory bath, in which the audience are utterly submerged and are at the

mercy of the pace and rhythm of the work. Sensory perception and immersion

become a conduit to self-awareness, clarity and knowledge.

The gallery installation discussed in the following also creates an immersive

experience that is simultaneously cognitive and sensory, and also provides the

audience with a transformational experience via immersion. However this example

119

creates immersion not through visual imagery, but solely through the use of digital

sound. Ensuing discussion addresses the particular manifestation of immersion

experienced in music, and explores the construction of space that can be evoked

through sound.

40 Part Motet

Janet Cardiff’s new media installation 40 Part Motet remediates the live performer

and exhibits the simultaneous existence of both immediacy and hypermediacy. In this

work however the human performer is reformed not as a visible pattern, but as an

aural presence. 40 Part Motet is on display in the reinstalled contemporary galleries at

the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York where it exists in its own separate

room. Around the periphery of the room, forty individual 6 foot high speakers face

inward, surrounding the spectator from every angle. From these speakers come forty

individual voices performing the breathtakingly beautiful “Spem in Alium” composed

by Thomas Tallis during the 16th

century. It is a magnificently ethereal Renaissance

arrangement and its harmonies resonate around the walls of the spacious room

creating an immersive sound chamber that expands the space and encompasses the

listener.

Cardiff recorded the Salisbury Cathedral Choir

performing in Sussex, England, with each chorister’s

voice individually recorded onto a separate track and

then played back through a separate speaker. The

Image 6 spectators may enter the space at anytime, though the

work is looped and so has a ‘beginning’ and ‘end’. At the beginning of the work we

hear the choir members chatting and warming up their voices as they prepare for their

performance. The speakers are all arranged at ear-height and as the spectator moves

from one to the other they hear the individual hums and whispers of each chorister.

Then suddenly and loudly the singing begins, and is shockingly majestic.

It is so overwhelming, so sublime that the spectator may find themself momentarily

frozen and in need of a seat.

120

On sitting, the spectator is able to experience all the reverberation and resonance of a

cathedral hall packed into the room around them. All forty individual voices are

aimed straight at the centrally positioned spectators and surround them completely.

While Tallis’ polyphony is magical, there is an almost threatening intensity as if the

choir is closing in towards the middle of the space. But the work is created in such a

way that at times certain voices are quiet, so that the body of sound moves in waves

through the room, pushing out the boundary of the space and thickening the air. Justin

Davidson suggests that “One way to experience the 14 minute piece is to plant

yourself on the bench at the centre of the room and let those motley points of vocal

tone resolve into a luminous, reverberant cloud.”245

If you move around the room the

various levels of counterpoint playfully sparkle and pulse as you move past.

Davidson illustrates, “the motet changes hue with each step. It’s like inhabiting a

kaleidoscope.”246

The experience of the work becomes just as much an experience of

spatial immersion as sound. Robin Petterd states that “Hearing is a tactile sense and

sounds are spatial”.247

He quotes Sean Cubitt who, when discussing sound design for

the moving image states “Sound is physical: it can only be heard. It occupies, and in

occupying it creates spaces…skin produces and receives sound; it is the intimacy of

body on body”.248

In 40 Part Motet the sound becomes syrupy and creates a

proprioceptive relation between the body and the room.

However, if the spectator tunes out of the overall composition and listens instead to

the individual speakers, a somewhat different experience is available. The balance of

harmony breaks down as individual voices become dominant and each is revealed as

possessing an individual identity. The voices begin to form a kind of spectral

presence. Placing your head near a speaker creates the eery sensation that you are

close to the face of the singer; you hear their breath and feel the effort of their

projection. The digital music becomes more than sound quality and as the media

becomes more transparent, the song is convincingly human, the product of human

voice and persona. As the spectator is less aware of the mediation, the singer is

245

Justin Davidson, Alex Ross : The Rest is Noise

(http://www.therestisnoise.com/2006/01/spem_in_moma_re.html) accessed November 2006. 246

Davidson (www.therestisnoise.com). 247

Petterd (http://www.artschool.utas.edu.au/). 248

Cubitt in Petterd (http://www.artschool.utas.edu.au/).

121

endowed with an immediate presence and a sense of intimacy develops. This creates

an almost uncanny experience, for there is no evidence of this presence and the

spectator is communing with a large, black speaker. The technology here is not

hidden but is made prominent. The role of the speakers as technologies of mediation

is explicit and to this effect the work develops a level of hypermediacy.

Yet immersion in the music is inescapable. The tides of sound ebb and flow

throughout the room and create a fluid framework that dissolves and coagulates as

one moves through it. While music by its very nature is always mediated, the

immediacy of sound is undeniable. That the mediation here is recorded and replayed

makes the music no less immersive or immediate. And with your eyes closed, there is

no evidence of technological mediation. It brings to light issues of authorship; can we

really attribute this work as Cardiff’s creation, or are we listening to the recorded

mastery of Tallis as we would any other recording played on a domestic surround-

sound system. If the music is viewed as defining the frame of the work, and the work

is mediated by the speakers, then this work of art is immediate and persuasively real.

Mediated by the staged event however, the work is clearly constructed and artificially

produced; it is hypermediate. Andy Lavender, in his discussion of filmic imagery

within the theatrical frame, suggests that the mediated imagery is not self-sufficient

but “contingent upon other frameworks – notably the live event, the moment of

performance, the three dimensional scenic space and the theatrical gaze”.249

In 40

Part Motet, the music content is contingent on its existence within the framework of

its mediation and its presentation within the space. While the music may be mediated,

and this mediation may be mostly transparent, the music also exists in the time-space

continuum of the performance. Here the media itself is ‘staged’.

The effect of this staging is to create a space in which a fictional world and material

reality exist simultaneously; the audience is sensorily immersed in real space, and are

also cognitively projected into an imaginary world. On one level, the audience

experience spatial immersion within the soundscape. On a more imaginative level,

they experience the presence of the choir; the realm of the original subject, the

249

Andy Lavender, “Mise en scene, Hypermediacy and the Sensorium” in Freda Chapple and Chiel

Kattenbelt eds. (2006) Intermediality In Theatre and Performance, Amsterdam and New York:

Rodopi, p. 57.

122

referent that was recorded and is being mediated. There is also the potential for the

audience to cognitively access the original renaissance context; the style of the music

has ritualistic incantations and the music kindles the aura of a cathedral interior. This

work uses both immediacy and hypermediacy to allow the audience to experience

immersion on many levels. The audience is simultaneously immersed in the virtual

realm of the fiction, and aurally, spatially and corporeally immersed in the immediate

present. The use of digital technology does not efface the initial medium of the live

performer that is here remediated. Rather, the work conjures ghost-like presences that

co-habit the space alongside the audience.

Modell 5

Granular Synthesis’s Modell 5 was initially created between 1994 and 1996, and

embodies what Arthur Kroker has called ‘the flesh-eating nineties’. It both explores

and manifests the concept of the ‘posthuman perspective’. The work premiered in

Australia as part of the 2004 Melbourne Festival. The 45 minute work was

constructed and performed within its own small square room inside the Australian

Centre for the Moving Image, and as audiences were required to attend at given times

(two performances per night), the work was presented as a performance, rather than a

gallery installation. Utilising the ‘hot’ medium of the projection screen, the work does

not offer the audience the agency to interact with the work. Rather, it holds the

spectator hostage, drowning their senses in a wash of audio-visual effects.

Having received earplugs and health warnings regarding the

level of noise and strobe effects, the audience enter into the

room and are seated on the floor facing a wall covered by

four adjoining projection screens. Accompanied by an

incredibly loud industrial-techno sound score, which pulses

through the floor and walls, video images of performance

artist Akemi Takeya’s head are manipulated, becoming

violently distorted as they inhumanly tremor and convulse. Image 7

123

The pace and noise slowly builds and the work creates a visceral and unusually

disturbing experience for the audience. The scale of the imagery and the invasive,

frenetic rhythms envelop the senses of the audience, immersing them in the

immediate space of the work, with the “entire spatial-acoustic setting devised to

disjoint the viewer’s perception of time and self, to confront them with their physical

limits.”250

The work develops into a kind of extreme sensory symphony composed

from the rhythms and repetition of human sounds made inhuman. The rhythms in the

soundscape correspond with the patterns of movement in the images, so that sound

and image seem to merge as they enter the brain at maximum velocity.

Behind the audience is an enormous mixing/editing desk, at which a human figure

mixes the live sound score. While this figure may be considered a live performer he

remains hidden, a mere element of the backstage or ‘behind the scenes’ organization.

At no stage does he draw attention to himself and he remains a means of production,

with the media itself functioning as the main performer. Yet the knowledge that this

work is being produced in ‘real time’ makes the audience aware of the work as more

than a mere static installation. Indeed the work is not an ‘installation’ per se, as it does

not exist as an independent structure within a gallery space. The audience enter into

the space as group, as they would do a live theatre work, and take their seats awaiting

the beginning of the ‘performance’.

While the work does not conform to the recognisable conventions of a live

performance, live action does take place through the live mixing of elements. It is this

aspect of the work that positions it within the field of ‘performance’, and this work

should be considered as ‘performative’, as ‘new media performance’, rather than

installation or visual art. Contemporary understandings of performance are based

around the immediacy of the act. In Unmasked: The Politics of Performance, Peggy

Phelan explores the characteristics of ‘performance’ as a species of contemporary art,

and suggests that the ontology of performance is incapable of being reproduced.

Performance by its definitive nature as ‘live’ cannot be reproduced or re-experienced

250

Birgit Richard (2004) “Immersion in the Resonance Chamber, and Blinding: On the Craving of

Images in the Work of Granular Synthesis”, essay accompanying the DVD Granular Synthesis:

Immersive Works, produced by ZKM Centre for Art and Media, Karlsruhe.

124

in exact form and context. Indeed, Phelan asserts that performance’s being is

dependent on its ‘disappearance’; “it becomes itself through disappearance”.251

Performance is a celebration of that which is non-reproducible, its power and value

lies in that which is transient, intuitive, experiential. Phelan posits, “Without a copy,

live performance plunges into visibility – in a maniacally charged present – and

disappears into memory, into the realm of invisibility and the unconscious where it

eludes regulation and control.”252

Phelan’s assertion that theatre stands apart

ontologically due to its status as ‘live’ has become a point of contention in recent

discourse, and Auslander has definitively undermined the notion that mediatised

representation is less real, or less ‘live’, than live performance. However, Modell 5 is

a simultaneously live and mediatised performance and works to satisfy both Phelan’s

and Auslander’s requirements of ‘live’ performance.

Modell 5 too revolves around the act and while its content is preserved in digital

form, its presentation is indubitably live. Many versions of the same work exist and

the information particles that form the basis of the work are of course, permanently

stored as digital code. But as Birgit Richard explains, “After being organised in time

cells (grains), the data is stored on parallel, autonomous levels. The resultant modular

image system allows the data to be continuously re-organised and/or recomposed.”253

As such, the work cannot be experienced by the same audience in “exact form and

context” and while the digital content of the work will never ‘disappear’, the audience

certainly experience the work as being “transient, intuitive, and experiential”. The

work does not aim at conveying meaning, but creates meaning as it acts upon the

audience to produce an immediate experience in “a maniacally charged present” .254

As such, the media itself is the key performer, following the text designed by the

scriptwriters with a certain degree of flexibility, incorporating the deviation of

variables and levels of improvisation.

251

Phelan (1993) p. 146. 252

Phelan (1993) p. 148. 253

Richard (2004) 254

Phelan (1993) p. 148.

125

Remediation, Immediacy and Hypermediacy

Birgit Richard suggests that “Granular Synthesis present us with the character of the

technical image, and its special significance for the representation of the human”.255

In experiencing Modell 5, there is an initial temptation to interpret the presented

images as representations of a real or ‘live’ human body. While the audience do not

see the live dancer, they may perhaps incorrectly assume its existence. There is the

potential to misrecognise the image, not as real, but as pertaining to the real, as

inferring the existence of an original real that is being represented. Media theorist

Frederick Kittler, in reference to the bodies deployed by early silent films, states

“Every one of them is the shadow of the body of the one filmed, or in short, his

Double.”256

He describes the image of the body in film as “celluloid ghosts of the

actor’s bodies.”257

In Modell 5 the presented images cannot be considered a ‘double’ -

a representation of a tangible referent as in filmic media, and yet neither are the

figurative images entirely computer-generated either. They are representational filmic

images that have been ‘remediated’, held captive by their digital coloniser. Through

its meddling with the structure of the representational image, the ability of the digital

media to augment the simulation of reality, and so create new realities, becomes

apparent.

The media in this work always retains a degree of opacity. As such, the work is

primarily ‘hypermediate’. The existence of the frame is unavoidably recognisable at

all times. The digital mediation of the images is overt, and a key element is the acting

of the digital medium upon the representational image. ‘Granular synthesis’ is a

technique derived from the principles of sound design and is applied in this work to

the fat grains of single video frames.258

Jeffrey Shaw explains:

The digital domain allows Granular Synthesis to denature and deconstruct image

and sound components, and bring them into a space of abstraction where they can

undergo shared algorithmic procedures. These algorithmic procedures are also

conceptual formulations that Granular Synthesis apply to fusions of image and

255

Richard (2004) 256

Frederick Kittler (1997) Literature, Media and Information Systems, intro. by John Johnston,

Amsterdam: Overseas Publishers Association, p. 93. 257

Kittler (1997) p. 96. 258

Granular Synthesis, Modell 5, (www.granularsynthesis.info/start/nsl?goto=modell%205) accessed

January 2007.

126

sound elements in order to alchemically renature and thus convert them back into

lucid and persuasive fields of meaningful representation.259

This work highlights the impact of digitalisation on representational imagery and

explores the ramifications of this in relation to the representation of human bodies.

The distinct nature of the mediation is prominent, however the audience actually

experience the work with a high degree of immediacy. As our senses are bombarded,

that which we experience through the senses is made immediate, and the media

becomes transparent. Granular Synthesis permeate the viewer’s sensorium with

sound, image, vibration and an awareness of other bodies in the room. Richard

explains that in Modell 5, “Physical reactions are unavoidable, and make their

performances and installations a ‘dreadful’ experience wholly in keeping with

Burke’s notion of ‘negative delight’. This disconnection from the everyday is like

being taken hostage in a vibrating color-space(ship).”260

As I smelt the sweaty bodies

squashed into the small, hot room beside me, the smell became associated with the

images of a woman in the throws of agony, or indeed ecstasy, and my senses of sight

and smell merged.

Performing Posthuman Perspective

Although the digital performer’s disembodied head exists as a simulation, as a

manipulated configuration of information particles with no reference to the real, the

work still plays on the possible significance of human presence as it explores the

remediation of the live performer in digital media. It may be apparent to the audience

that it is not a ‘real’ body, merely a projection, but the familiarity of its humanness

and the immediacy of the immersion blurs the realms of the live and mediated. The

work illustrates a vision of the human body within the space of technology, and

utilises extreme sensory immersion so as to facilitate an experience of posthuman

embodiment.

259

Jeffrey Shaw (2004) “Preface to the dvd Granular Synthesis: Immersive Works, produced by ZKM

Centre for Art and Media, Karlsruhe. 260

Richard (2004)

127

On an immediate level, the work functions to produce the ‘hyperreal’. The hyperreal

is created when the mediated, virtual or simulated are perceived as the real:

“simulation of the real produces the hyperreal”.261

The images of the human face

presented in Modell 5 are not representative; the repetition of the image and its two-

dimensionality force its artificiality. However, the audience experience a degree of

identification and even empathy as they recognise the ‘humanness’ of the image. It

can be traumatising to witness images one identifies as human and connects with on a

human level ‘behaving’ in a way that is utterly non-human. The face gradually

transforms, mutates, and the exotically beautiful woman becomes alien. The

confusion of reality and virtuality creates a haze of hyperreality when the

‘mediatedness’ of the images fades into invisibility.

The image is clearly familiar and I react to it accordingly. As I watch the image of a

female torso violently contort, I experience deep physiological response as my body

involuntarily reacts empathetically to the image of a human body in pain. This sense

of the image as a body in pain is enhanced by the intensity and pitch of the

accompanying soundscape, which creates a kind of repeated scream. It was a

disturbing experience and on one level I interpreted the imagery as illustrating the

frailty of being human in a technically controlled world, exploring the perceived

domination of the organic by the artificial.

While the form of the work is digital and the distinct nature of this form is

emphasised, the content of the work is indubitably the human body. Here we

encounter the total deconstruction and reconstruction of the live performer, and while

the figure is clearly no longer live, the efficacy of the work relies on the fact that it

retains a degree of familiarity as an expressive body. Modell 5 not only see the

remediation of the medium of the live performer, but it reconstructs the rhythmic

movement we associate with live dance.262

Instead of the dance being controlled by

bodily impulses, where the human body is the site of expression and the medium of

communication, in this form of dance the body is almost immobile, it is trapped and

261

Nick Stevenson (2002) p. 166. 262

This is even more evident in Granular Synthesis’ We Want God Now (1995) in which the torso of

male dancer Michael Ashcroft is filmed dancing within a ‘coffin-like’ square box. The creators

sampled ten seconds from the original seven minutes of film and resynthesised these moments into a

60 minute work.

128

forced into movement by the authors of its digital manipulation. It becomes a

contorted puppet, a “bastard mixture of the performer and the artists”.263

The body

itself is presented as helplessly slow, almost static. It has limited potential, stuck in a

base world of materiality, a vessel to be restructured, manipulated, accelerated.

Despite its impossibly inhuman movements and actions, it never really develops a life

of its own as a digital body, but seems as a body trapped, oppressed. Though its

separation from material reality is made prominent, it never fully becomes a virtual

body performing a virtual dance, but remains a semi-representational image of the

dematerialised body.

The work presents visceral exploration of the place of the body in the ‘posthuman’

age. Hayles explains, “the posthuman view thinks of the body as the original

prosthesis we all learn to manipulate, so that extending or replacing the body with

other prosthesis becomes a continuation of a process that began before we were

born”.264

In Modell 5, the body is presented as something to be used. It is remote

controlled and is involuntarily made to dance to the tune of another. The manipulation

of this will-less, expressionless body functions to dehumanise the physical. It

confronts us with an image of dis-embodiment, and places at issue the body as the

locus of humanity. Again the experience makes visible the posthuman perspective,

which “privileges informational pattern over material instantiation, so that

embodiment in a biological substrate is seen as an accident of history rather than an

inevitability of life”.265

Here the body becomes neither absent nor present for it is

reconstituted into a boundless form that exists outside the realm of physicality.

The significance of this performance lies in the fact that the audience too are forced to

experience a certain degree of dislocation from the material realm. The work invades

our senses, assaulting and penetrating like electricity, until we too feel a separation

from the material time and space of our physicality. It renders us frozen, mesmerised.

By saturating and blinding, and so by inhibiting rational cognitive process, the

invasive work traps us in such a way that we are aware of our own trance-like

immobility. The body has no agency to contend with such an assault and so is made

263

Richard (2004) 264

Hayles (1999 p. 3. 265

Hayles (1999) p. 2.

129

inactive. It is held captive, captivated. Sound and lightwaves of intense frequency aim

straight at the brain and (to a degree) we experience dematerialisation. And yet the

work functions as hypnotic rather than numbing, and the space moves from being

perhaps initially oppressive, to enabling a kind of transcendence. The body is not

killed off, merely rendered redundant.

The experience of immersion in this pool of high velocity pattern and rhythm may be

akin to that of ritualistic trance. Participants may experience catharsis, a kind of

purification. Jeffrey Shaw suggests that “The often seemingly aggressive audiovisual

installations shake the viewer out of the stupor of habitual consumption and, in the

best traditions of the avante-garde, bring about an unusual, even shocking, level of

experiential intensity”.266

On leaving the work we re-enter the human world, we re-

emerge from the digitally driven ritualistic trance, having explored and experienced

posthuman perspective. Where the patterns of information impregnated and dissolved

our material identity, we experienced ourselves as a form of cyborg.

Desert Rain and the ‘Desert of the Real’: Composite Reality and Spatial

Immersion.

The production Desert Rain by the British multimedia theatre company Blast Theory,

produced in collaboration with Nottingham University’s “Mixed Reality Laboratory”,

originally premiered in 1999 and is based on the events of the first Gulf War. It

explores the implications of society’s reliance on the technologies of representation to

access the real and offers a disturbing engagement with understandings of warfare in

contemporary society. The key inspiration for the work was Baudrillard’s assertion

that the Gulf War did not actually take place as it was a virtual event. The company

cite Paul Patton’s observations (about Baudrillard’s speculations) that “while

televisual information claims to provide immediate access to real events, in fact what

it does is produce information that stands in for the real...As consumers of mass

media, we never experience the bare material event but only the informational coating

which renders it ‘sticky and unintelligible’ like the oil-soaked sea bird.”267

Desert

266

Jeffrey Shaw (2004) 267

Blast Theory Website, Desert Rain, (www.blastthoery.co.uk/bt/work_desertrain.html) accessed

November 2005.

130

Rain, state Blast Theory, is designed to examine the significance of the simulacra “in

informing our view of the relationship of the real to the virtual…especially in its

assertion that the virtual has a daily presence in our lives.”268

In Desert Rain, the

audience is immersed in both the physical and mediated dimensions with the agency

to interact with both, and as such the work facilitates both cognitive and sensory

immersion.

The work is part game, part installation, part performance and constructs a series of

immersive hyperrealities which the audience are invited to navigate. Six audience

members at a time are sent on a mission in a virtual world. They enter individual

consoles, and, standing on a moveable footplate, navigate through a world of deserts,

motels and underground bunkers that is projected onto a wall of water. After

successfully navigating the virtual world, participants are led through the wall of

water spray, into a large hanger, over a giant sand dune, and into the final room of the

production where imagery depicting a generic hotel room is projected on the blank

walls. In this hotel room, each audience member enters a card into a terminal and

watches a video presentation by their target from the previous virtual world on a

television screen. The targets, two soldiers, a journalist, a peaceworker, an actor, and

a tourist have each been affected by the Gulf war in some way. They talk about their

relationship to the events, their proximity to them and how 'real' it felt. On leaving,

the participants collect their belongings and, at a later point, discover a small box

concealed in their coat or bag containing approximately 100,000 grains of sand and a

quotation from Colin Powell in which he states that the number of Iraqis killed “is not

a number that interests him”.

Image 8

Desert Rain focuses on political events that for most people, certainly most

Australians, were accessed only through the mass media image. The issue at the heart

268

Ibid.

131

of Desert Rain is the new ways in which the simulated and the real are blurred and,

“in particular, the role of the mass media in distorting our appraisal of the world

beyond our own personal experience.”269

In Desert Rain the audience members are

immersed in a composite reality, constructed of both real and virtual elements. They

are given the agency to engage with the simulated world and with the mediatised

version of others within this space. Within the first world projected onto the wall of

water spray, the immediately real (the live performers, the wall of water, and the

participants) is merged with the virtual to explore the questionable ‘realness’ of

historical events.

In Desert Rain the audience immersion creates a fusion of the real and the virtual, for

both frameworks form a part of the inhabited space. The virtual world is projected

onto something tangible and permeable in the wall of water. The participants are able

to communicate with each other through headphones and mouthpieces and these real

voices blend into the virtual environment, though all voices are of course ‘digitalised’

and so work as another element in the overall hypermedia system. In the final room of

the production, projected imagery on the walls makes the space look like a real hotel

room, though it is an illusion; the material space in which we are located develops

familiarity only through the mediated information. This becomes significant when the

characters on the video appear to be sitting in the same hotel room that is projected

around us. Hypermediacy is established as we become aware of our assumption that

the video is transmitting the real, re-presenting a real space, real people, when in

reality the video content is perhaps just as much a constructed illusion as the hotel

room we are standing in.

Overall however, Blast Theory create a world of illusion and do not readily reveal the

mechanics of production. The work is primarily immediate, and this illusory world

created does bear some resemblance to the symbolic realm presented through

classical mimesis. The process of transportation into another world is manifest in

Desert Rain but it differs from classical mimesis, as the virtual worlds of the digital

projections do not represent an alternate time-frame but offer an openly structured

space to be experienced in the immediate temporality of the audience. In Desert Rain,

269

Ibid.

132

by creating the world of illusion out of both real and virtual elements the audience’s

experience of the world is grounded in real-time, intrinsically focused on the

absorption of the now.

The participant’s body is perhaps the main surface on which the performance is

manifest, for it is the participant’s disorientation that occurs as a result of the

corporeal experience of two planes simultaneously which creates the blurring of the

boundary between the real and the virtual. While the virtual world exists only as

information, the participant is physically connected to it through the moveable

footplate and the headphones that become mediated extensions of their physical

boundary. The virtual reality impacts upon the participants as though ‘real’, creating

physical and emotional reactions. Giannachi summarises, “The participants were

taken through a journey, from the real to the virtual and then back again, only to find

out that what appeared as virtual could in fact be real and hence also leave a real trace

(of sand) in the viewer’s lives. Likewise, what appeared to be real was mainly

performed and thus, in other words, simulated.’270

Blast Theory creates facilitative space shared by the performers and audience in

which the processes of the production take place in real-time. Within this space, the

live and the mediated, the real and the virtual are not clearly demarcated and although

the contrast of the real and the fictional has thematic significance within the works,

the works remain inherently intermedial for this thematic significance is distributed

across all available communication systems and is visually, aurally, and viscerally

received by the audience. The organization of communication systems promotes non-

hierarchical contiguity and although traditional text is utilised to different degrees, it

is but one of many elements within the overall intermedial system and only develops

significance in relation to other media and modes of communication. Indeed, meaning

is derived on an individual basis, through engagement with the textual and physical

landscape.

This landscape utilizes image, sound, movement and dialogue to create rhythms and

resonances that rebound within the performance space and affectively impact upon

270

Giannachi (2004) p. 119.

133

the audience as they navigate their way through the space. In the projected virtual

world the natural rhythm of the falling rain contrasts with computer-generated sound

rhythms to create a layered soundscape that is both natural and artificial, immersing

the audience in the composite reality. This rhythmic immersion is continued

through the use of colour and the patterns of light that surround the isolated audience

member, firstly coming through the rain curtain and

then projected onto it, creating science-fiction

atmosphere that enhances the sense of space as being

immediately real and potentially ‘other’. The repetition

of images and statistics develop more fractured

rhythms, mirroring the fractured landscape of the

virtual Iraq and confronting the audience with

fragments of war.

Image 9

These devices are of course operating upon the audience’s entire sensorium. In these

examples of intermedial performance, all modes of communication, both live and

mediated, are together invoking rhythm, repetition, movement and stillness to involve

the audience in the co-creation of meaning and create immediate immersion. Within

the performance space there is no demarcation between those elements that are ‘real’

and those that are ‘virtual’ and the facilitators utilize both real and the fictional

components to a sensory journey in real-time. The live and the mediated are fused,

received simultaneously as merged elements of a larger whole. They are connected

through the audience’s experience, and it is this experience that is the focus of the

works addressed. The spectators are continually reminded of their own presence, and

the power of these works rests with the capacity of the spectator to live in, live

through, and experience the work, rather than simply witness a performance.

Reflection

As immersion is a subjective process it is difficult to generalise as to the nature of

immersive experience. While all immersion must be considered spatial, it is more

than mere topographical navigation. While immersion may involve empathy and

emotion, it is more than mere escapism. Immersion is primarily a state of sensory

134

saturation, yet it is more than physical bombardment. In the works discussed here,

immersion is both embodied and mindful.

Tiffany Sutton, in her discussion of what she calls ‘video environments’, suggests the

existence of an “immersive mode of contemplation”; the video environment “gives

rise to a form of contemplation – one involving immersion—that is, if not unique to

this genre, certainly demonstrated by it”.271

She suggests this form of contemplation is

enabled when video art is placed in the context of the ‘museum effect’, so that the

everyday is made unfamiliar and experienced as separate and special. In describing

this immersive mode of thought she claims:

we find what Descartes could not have considered, contemplation without

bodily dissociation, contemplation that is possible only in an immersive state;

immersion, again, not in the sense of drowning out the senses in pure thought

about thought… nor in the sense of looking at something through something

else…but rather in the sense of being inside the chamber of the camera obscura

experiencing the ontological difference between the image on the far wall and

all else that the chamber contains, including one’s bodily self.272

In works such as Bill Viola’s video installations and Janet Cardiff’s sound

installations the audience can experience, as Sutton describes, contemplation through

embodied reception. In Viola’s video installation, the audience’s sense of being

‘within’ the work is not achieved through a process of mental projection whereby the

disembodied mind escapes into the world of the imagery, but through the recognition

that the video imagery unfolds as a phenomenon within the real world. The gallery

space becomes ‘like the chamber of the camera obscura’ within which the audience

experience a sense of being in a “proximal relation”273

to the image, and are

conscious of their physical relationship to the space around them. Through their

encounter with the immateriality of the image, the audience are prompted to

contemplate the ontology of the body and the subjectivity of their sensory awareness.

Contemplation evoked by these works is an immersive, embodied process of intuitive

reflection.

271

Tiffany Sutton (2005) “Immersive Contemplation in Video Art Environments”, Contemporary

Aesthetics, (www.contemporaryaesthetics.org/newvolume/pages/article.php?articleID=288) accessed

July 2006. 272

Ibid. 273

Stephanie Springgay (2002) p. 34. (Discussed in Chapter 1)

135

As more is both demanded and offered by the artwork, such as with the sensory

bombardment of the audience in Modell 5, the audience are no longer allowed mere

contemplation and instead experience a kind of oppressive immersion which may or

may not lead to contemplation, but that offers a reflexive experience that jolts the

viewer out of familiar modes of reception and spectatorship. The facilitation of

immersion treads a fine ethical line between efficacy and tyranny, and all immersion

plays with dynamics of control, for immersion is a totality. Yet it may be argued that

such viscerally immersive works are no less ethical than the monologic drama, which

aims to capture the mind in an illusion and pre-determines meaning.

The four examples of multimedia performance examined in this chapter illustrate how

immersion in multimedia theatre, and postdramatic theatre generally, can be

addressed in terms of cognitive and sensory engagement, and in relation to

immediacy and hypermediacy. In these works, the modes of hypermediacy and

immediacy are simultaneously evoked to create sensory immersion in real time and

space. Sensory immersion is a state of being in which one develops an awareness of

the self through proximinal experience of the other, osmotically absorbing and

intuitively responding whilst simultaneously reflecting on this process. The embodied

reception initiated by these works presents an ideal model for the relationship of

humans to technology and digital media, where information does not subjugate

materiality, but where the synthesis of body and mind, of presence and pattern,

produces new modes of awareness, creativity, and contemplation.

The following chapter further explores the human relationship to technological

stimuli through an examination of ‘interactivity’ in multimedia theatre. The different

relationships of humans and technology within art and performance are addressed,

and the implications of a ‘posthuman’ perspective in relation to interactivity are

explored. While the term ‘interactive’ refers to the feedback loop between human user

and machine, it may also have wider application when used to describe modes of

audience engagement in theatre practice. The next chapter identifies various forms of

interactivity currently manifesting in theatre and new media performance, and offers a

typology of specific modes of active spectatorship in contemporary multimedia

performance.

136

Chapter 5

Interactivity

Like the term ‘multimedia’, the descriptive ‘interactive’ is one of the cultural

keywords of the times, used ubiquitously as proof of the calibre and edginess of an

artwork, product, or program. The term ‘interactive’ suggests various manifestations

of connection and activity, and most commonly relates to the cybernetic feedback

loop between human and machine. However, as Lev Manovich states, the concept of

interactivity is “too broad to be really useful”.274

This chapter explores various

valences of the term ‘interactivity’ in relation to aesthetic practice and identifies

specific modes of active spectatorship manifesting in contemporary multimedia

performance. While interaction is an inherent ingredient of everyday social

functioning, this exploration will specifically address the nature of interactivity within

examples of aesthetically framed performance. Interaction in cultural performance is

not addressed here, however it may be possible that the modes of interactivity

identified are applicable outside the artistic field.

Multimedia theatre is presenting various manifestations of, and reactions to, forms of

interactivity. While ‘interactive’ does not have a commonly agreed upon definition in

relation to theatre and performance, an understanding of its potential implications will

assist discussions of audience reception in contemporary multimedia performance.

Though the wide application of the term has rendered it somewhat problematic for

precise use in theatre discourse, the existence of interactivity can be recognised as a

matter of degree and a more specific understanding of these various modes and

degrees of interactivity would enable the term to be used more productively.

In this chapter I argue that despite traditionally being a medium of immersion,

contemporary theatre is exploring the impact of interactive technologies within

society and utilising these technologies to facilitate audience interactivity. New

274

Manovich (2001) p. 55.

137

media’s capacity for interactivity is providing theatre practitioners fresh opportunities

to include the audience in the process of creation and empower them with the ability

to direct their own experience of the action. Throughout experimental twentieth

century art and performance, spectators have been required to actively participate in

the collaborative process of producing symbolic meaning, as outlined in Chapter 2.

Interactivity offers the audience the power not only to interpret the artwork but,

individually or collectively, to change, navigate, negotiate and in different ways re-

create the artwork.

Human/machine Interaction: A Posthuman Perspective

Though roots of the verb ‘interact’ lie in the discourses of education and group

psychology,275

the term ‘interactivity’ has come to imply various manifestations of

connection and activity in the relationship of human and machine. The relation of

humans to technology has long been an ongoing concern for experimental art and

performance. It emerges now as the primary concern of the ‘posthuman’ perspective,

which this thesis has argued is central to the understanding of multimedia theatre in

contemporary society. Hayles characterises the posthuman point of view as

constructing the human being so that it can be ‘seamlessly articulated’ with intelligent

technology. Technology becomes a prosthetic extension of the human body and

interactivity between human and machine reaches its ultimate manifestation where

separate activity ceases to exist and is replaced by co-activity. This form of human-

computer co-operation may be viewed as one extreme on a gradient of interactivity, a

gradient that runs from one-sided action where an agent manipulates a passive

object/text, to the fully realised co-activity of two or more autonomous agents.

The posthuman perspective as articulated by Hayles suggests a mindset, while the

term interactive refers to the actual physical connection between human and

technology. In the form of human-machine connection envisioned by the posthuman

perspective, the interface is perceived not as a border but as a membrane through

which information passes osmotically. The ‘inter’ of interactivity, like that of

‘intermediality’ discussed earlier, need not merely refer to the quality of being

275

P. David Marshall (2004) New Media Cultures, London: Arnold Publishers, p. 14.

138

‘between’ but can also imply ‘mutuality’ and ‘reciprocity’. Here interactivity can be

perceived as the mutual or reciprocal action of two or more things that work together

and have an effect upon each other.

While most technologies do not currently enable posthuman embodiment to the

degree envisaged by Hayles, interactive technologies are now relatively commonplace

and the promises of digitalisation offer increasingly complex forms of human-

machine engagement. The ubiquity of interactive systems is creating a number of

possibilities and concerns. On the one hand, interactivity is viewed as empowering the

user, endowing them with a greater degree of control over their consumption and

participation in mediated communication. On the other hand, this culture of

interactivity is seen as potentially disempowering the user, subjecting them to

institutional and corporate control and subordinating material reality to the realm of

information.

There are also valid concerns that the cybernetic feedback loop between human and

computer enables the potential for constant surveillance and so may function to

corrupt personal privacy. P. David Marshall in his discussion of the politics of

interactivity explains “The culture of new media means living in this cybernetic world

of control or, at least, the potential for control”.276

While digital technologies may

seem liberating, they are highly structured and “bring us into pre-existing patterns”

and this tension, argues Marshall, is the “anxiety that besets contemporary

experience”.277

Whether viewed from a technologically determinist perspective or

from a more cynical perspective, interactivity is already an important facet of

everyday western experience which necessarily impacts on cultural media such as

theatre and especially multimedia theatre.278

The next part of this chapter outlines

previous and existing manifestations of interactivity within theatre practice generally,

providing context for the ensuing discussion of interactivity in the specific area of

multimedia theatre.

276

Marshall (2004) p. 19. 277

Marshal (2004) p. 21. 278

Edward Scheer, following Martin Singer, defines ‘new cultural media’ as being “images, stories,

rituals, performances and strands of contemporary visual culture that reflect the emergent trends and

concerns of the 21st Century” (2006)

(http://media.arts.unsw.edu.au/current/courses/MEFT4000/meft_hons.pdf) accessed January 2007.

139

Theatre and Interactivity

In relation to theatre practice, the term ‘interactive’ has come to develop two

particular usages. Firstly, interactivity can be used to indicate interplay between

actors and technical media. Motion-capture technologies enable performers to interact

with media programs to choreograph a performative text composed of sound or image

responses, using their own movement to instigate computer-based reactions. The

actor’s use of interactive technologies can also be incorporated within traditional

proscenium arch theatre, such as in the works of the Gertrude Stein Company or in

the experimental works at the University of Georgia’s Interactive Performance

Laboratory (IPL). IPL spearhead David Saltz defines ‘interactive media’ as “sounds

and images stored, and in many cases created, on a computer, which the computer

produces in response to a live performer’s actions”279

and he utilises such

technologies, activated by the performer, to provide effects within the mise en scene.

Here the audience remain physically passive, with the use of interactive technologies

designed to enhance the stage scenography and create a more dynamic visual and

audio display.

These practices certainly utilise interactive technologies and so may be grouped under

the rubric ‘interactive multimedia performance’. However, this area of practice is not

what this chapter will recognise as implied by use of the phrase ‘interactive

performance’. The term ‘interactivity’ in relation to theatre practice is more

commonly, and historically, recognised as regarding the relationship between the

audience and the performance, and it is the participation of the audience and the

varying degrees of activity and interactivity they experience that is the focus of this

chapter. This understanding of interactivity in theatre reflects the perception held in

new media studies that interactivity occurs between a user and a responsive medium.

That theatre can be viewed as a ‘medium’ or ‘hypermedium’ has been well

established.280

This chapter focuses on the relationship between the participant and

the medium of theatre.

279

David Z Saltz (2001) “Live Media: Interactive Technology and Theatre”, Theatre Topics, Vol. 11,

No. 2, p. 107. 280

This is argued by Peter Boenisch, Chiel Kattenbelt, and Brigit Wiens in Freda Chapple and Chiel

Kattenbelt eds. (2006) Intermediality in Theatre and Performance, Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi

Press.

140

As I have already suggested, interactivity is a matter of degree, and a broad

understanding of what qualifies as ‘interaction’ allows for the recognition of various

modes of interactive audience engagement operating within theatre practice, both

traditionally and in the contemporary field. Marie-Laure Ryan outlines the

significance of audience interaction in theatre history as an inspiration and initial

foundation for the development of interactivity in electronic forms. She argues that in

order to recognise the importance of theatre to a history of interactivity, the concept

of interactivity must be interpreted both literally and figuratively. A figurative

interpretation, according to Ryan, “describes the collaboration between the reader and

text in the production of meaning….- reading is never a passive experience”.281

Ryan

is referring here to the literary text, but the same can apply to the text in theatre; on

the most fundamental level of their engagement in the theatre, the reader will interpret

and collaborate with the represented script.

In theatre, the reader will also be constantly interpreting the performance text and

collaborating with the performers to build a unique theatrical experience. David Saltz,

comments that “Live performance is inherently interactive. The spontaneous give-

and-take between performers and spectators, and among a group of sensitive

performers, is integral to theatre’s appeal as an art form, both in the most highly

stylised genres of theatre and in ‘realistic’ theatre”.282

The rapport that occurs

between audience and performer in the theatre may be considered as located along the

weaker end on a scale of interactivity. For this kind of mutual experience to occur,

there needs to be recognition of the audience’s presence within the theatre; for there

to be reciprocal ‘give and take’ as suggested by Saltz, the audience cannot be hidden

in the dark behind the fourth wall.

Acknowledgment of the audience and the degree of figurative interactivity generated

is largely effected by the construction of space within the theatre. The proscenium

arch was designed to frame the world of the performers as separate from the real, and

to enhance audience immersion in the fiction. The traditional stage design of Greek

tragedy however, is perceived by Ryan as offering a compromise between

281

Ryan (2001) p. 16. 282

Saltz (2001) p. 107.

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interactivity and immersion. While there is separation between the stage space and the

audience, the “architecture acknowledges the presence of the audience, thus

establishing a spirit of communion between actors and spectators”.283

The existence

of the chorus in Greek tragedy also reconciles interactivity and immersion as it

provides, “A simulation of interactivity, the vicarious participation of the audience

through the chorus is the only way to acknowledge the spectator’s voice and

presence”.284

Ryan asserts that a similar compromise between immersion and

interactivity existed in the open-air productions of medieval mystery plays on the

parvis of a cathedral, and in the stage design of Elizabethan theatre. In these

examples, the architecture recognises that the audience play a role in the performance.

Then, in the seventeenth century, “the balance of the two modes of participation was

broken in favour of the immersive pole.”285

The 20th

Century has seen a revival of staging techniques and experimental theatrical

forms designed to enhance the active engagement of the audience. Brecht created

anti-immersive theatre that utilised techniques such as the interruption of play, songs,

minimalist scenography with signs instead of props, and an acting style that required

actors to step out of character. Interestingly, Ryan places minimal emphasis on

Brechtian theatre, as it does not marry immersion in a fictional universe with the

interaction of the audience, but instead maintains a clear separation of the imaginary

world and the real. She argues, “if an actual dialogue takes place between the actors

and the audience – an event that rarely happens but that would be very much in the

spirit of Brechtian aesthetics – this means not that spectators step into the play but

rather that actors step out of their roles to engage in a critical discussion”.286

Ryan’s

scope here is clearly limited by her adherence to a vision of theatre as

representational, however her argument makes clear that Brechtian theatre does in

practice evoke various levels of passivity and activity in the audience. On the one

hand, Brecht attempted to distance the spectator from the stage world rather than

fostering participation. However on the other hand, his intention to demand the

audience’s critical analysis of the political and social reality reflected in the text,

suggests a high degree of cognitive interaction between the audience and the text. 283

Ryan (2001) p. 298. 284

Ryan (2001) p. 297. 285

Ryan (2001) p. 299. 286

Ryan (2001) p. 302.

142

As Ryan is searching for an ideal symbiosis of immersion and interactivity, she does

not champion Brechtian alienation but is instead inspired by Artaud’s proposal to

return theatre to ritual, for it “promises to reconcile immersion and interactivity

through a trancelike involvement of the audience.”287

Artaud perceived the ritual

aspect of performance as creating a visceral audience experience, and by focusing on

the body of the spectator as at the centre of the theatrical ritual, he envisaged creating

a painful yet healing experience that involved both the body and the mind. Ryan

explains that Artaud’s idea of placing the spectators in the centre of the stage

architecture, which operates around them, influenced avant-garde theatre from the

1950s through to the 1970s, particularly in the works of John Cage and Arianne

Mnouchkine.

If we interpret ‘interactivity’ figuratively, non-naturalistic theatre has always provided

an interactive audience experience. However in most examples, little literal

interaction has taken place. Ryan writes, “Artaud’s theatre of cruelty resorts to a

vicarious interactivity, as did Greek drama before it. It is through a communion,

almost a transubstantiating identification, of the spectators with the actors that the

performance exercises its ritual purpose of a ‘reconciliation with Becoming’.”288

In

these examples, there is minimal direct interaction, and the performers and spectators

remain in their respective roles. The alternative to ‘vicarious interactivity’, according

to Ryan, is “to coach the audience into taking part in a disciplined action, so that

literally there will be no spectators, and the play will be staged for the benefit of its

own participants.”289

It is in such examples of disciplined group action that literal

interactivity has manifested in twentieth century theatre practice.

There has been an ongoing, if underground, dynamic throughout the last century that

has encouraged interactive spectatorship and attempted to close the gap between the

spectators and the performers, realised in experimental forms such as Grotowski’s

‘paratheatrical’ events and Brecht’s Lehstrucke. The ‘happenings’ of Allan Kaprow

and his colleagues also created disciplined group action that dissolved the boundary

287

Ibid. 288

Ryan (2001) p. 304. 289

Ryan (2001) p. 305.

143

between artwork and audience, sacrificing cohesive ‘meaning’ and embracing chance

and spontaneity. In his Untitled Guidelines for Happenings Kaprow writes that the

audience should be eliminated and theatrical convention rejected. To achieve this he

suggests, “that all persons involved in a Happening be willing and committed

participants who have a clear idea what they are to do. This is simply accomplished

by writing out the scenario or score for all and discussing it thoroughly with them

before hand.”290

As such, there is still a loose script that is followed, and the creation

of the Happening is like putting on a play without an audience, and with untrained

actors. If a Happening occurs in a public space there will inevitably be passers-by

who stop to passively observe, but Kaprow argues that such people “are not theatre

goers” but an “authentic part of the environment.”291

Another practitioner to successfully achieve the literal convergence of spectator and

performer was Augusto Boal, whose Theatre of the Oppressed was driven by social

and political subversion. Writing in his Poetics of the Oppressed Boal declares,

The spectator is less than a man and it is necessary to humanise him, to restore

him to his capacity for action in all its fullness. He too must be a subject, an

actor on an equal plane with those generally accepted as actors, who must also

be spectators. All these experiments of a people’s theatre have the same objective

– the liberation of the spectator, on whom the theatre has imposed finished

visions of the world.292

Boal’s ‘people’s theatre’ encouraged the spectator to participate through asking

questions and through direct dialogue. His concept of Forum Theatre involved the

audience in the creative process with the use of improvisational games and problem

solving exercises that were intended to go on to effect real life events. Boal attempted

to abolish theatrical rituals that necessitated the passivity and distance of the

audience. His Invisible Theatre involved spectators unknowingly, so that they were

not ‘spectators’ at all but ‘spect-actors’, participants in a real event. In Invisible

Theatre “only the theatre exists, without its old worn-out patterns. The theatrical

290

Kaprow in Packer and Jordan eds. (2001) p. 313. 291

Kaprow in Packer and Jordan eds. (2001) p. 314. 292

Augusto Boal “Poetics of the Oppressed” in George W. Brandt ed. (1998) Modern Theories of

Drama, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 260.

144

energy is completely liberated, and the impact produced by this free theatre is much

more powerful and lasting.”293

While Boal’s Invisible Theatre and Kaprow’s Happenings certainly eliminate the

barrier between spectator and performative action, it is difficult to consider

unintentional audience participation as manifesting a high degree of interactivity.

Kaprow acknowledges that the happening can involve people who are “engaged

unwittingly with a performer in some planned action: a butcher will sell certain meats

to a customer-performer without realising that he is a part of a piece having to do with

purchasing, cooking, and eating meat.”294

Like the unwitting contributor to a work of

Invisible Theatre, this participant does not have control of the medium (in this case,

the performance script) and so cannot be regarded as making creative decisions

towards the unfolding of events. This raises the question of whether a participant’s

intentions are important when considering the concept of interactivity, and suggests

that a participant needs a certain degree of understanding of, and control over, the

medium of communication to creatively assert agency and develop meaningful

interaction. These questions will be addressed in the following sections of this

chapter, which explore the requirements of interactivity and its potential

manifestations in multimedia theatre.

Openings: ‘Active’ and ‘Interactive’

As mentioned in Chapter 2, one of the key transitions in twentieth century theatre

came as works developed a more ‘open’ structure, which involved the gradual

incorporation of the audience within the frame of the artwork and encouraged active

spectatorship. As Fischer-Lichte suggests, “looking on was redefined as an

activity”295

as art demanded the audience engage their faculties of thought and

interpretation to become a co-creator in the production of meaning. ‘Active’ in this

sense is used to contrast with the assumption of the audience as passive recipient of

signs and messages. The level of an audience’s ‘activeness’ is determined by the

degree to which the artistic form is left ‘open’ to collaborative engagement. The

293

Ibid. 294

Kaprow in Packer and Jordan eds. (2001) p. 314. 295

Fisher-Lichte (1997) p. 25.

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understanding of an ‘open form’ has been definitively articulated by Umberto Eco,

and was briefly outlined in Chapter 1 of this thesis. The ‘open work’ appeals “to the

initiative of the individual performer, and hence, offer themselves not as finite works

but as ‘open’ works, which are brought to their conclusion by the performer at the

same time as he experiences them on an aesthetic plane”.296

The ‘openness’ of a work may reflect the ‘openness’ of the communicating medium.

Just as some narrative works are structured to enable more active audience

participation, so some media are inherently structured to enable more audience

involvement. McLuhan introduces the concept of ‘hot media’ and ‘cool media’,

suggesting a gauge along which the openness of a medium may be located. A hot

medium transmits a high degree of information and allows for very limited audience

participation, while a cooler medium is more open, having a greater capacity for

audience involvement and presenting less informational content. On the other hand,

McLuhan outlines,

speech is a cool medium of low definition, because so little is given and so

much has to be filled in by the listener. On the other hand, hot media do not

leave so much to be filled in or completed by the audience. Hot media are,

therefore, low in participation, and cool media are high in participation or

completion by the audience.297

While the telephone and to a degree, television, are examples of cool mediums,

McLuhan argues that cinema is a hot medium; that film is authoritarian in that it

requires the film creator to transport viewers into a fictional world and dictates the

interpretation of meaning.298

While Eco’s ‘open work’ refers to the content of

communication, McLuhan refers to the technical format of the medium. While the

content of film varies, the actual medium of the projection screen disallows physical

audience participation. In filmic media, audience engagement can only occur as a

reaction to the content structure. Alternatively, the computer is perhaps the ultimate

cool medium, requiring a high degree of physical audience involvement. Indeed,

combining both versions of ‘openness’ offered in the cooler mediums of the telephone

and the television, the computer allows for many levels of audience interaction. While

296

Eco (1989) p. 3. 297

McLuhan in Nick Stevenson (2002) p. 123. 298

McLuhan in Stevenson (2002) p. 124.

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the telephone only enables user-user interaction, and the television only allows user-

medium or user-message interaction, new digital mediums offer the potential for all

three modes of interactivity.

Cool mediums allow the audience a degree of agency over the communication

medium and its content. It is this quality of ‘agency’ that establishes the difference

between ‘active’ and ‘interactive’ audiences. Janet Murray, whose book Hamlet on

the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace (2000) explores the narrative

possibilities of digital environments and discusses the dramatic complexities of

participatory stories, defines ‘agency’ as the “power to take meaningful action and see

the result of our decisions and choices”.299

Murray discusses the interactive potential

of ‘multiform stories’, which present the consumer with numerous and often

contradictory alternatives for action. In these ‘interactive’ narratives, Murray explains

that the consumer is required to assume a more active role and participate in the

creative process, not merely as an active interpreter of understanding as in Eco’s

‘open-work’, but as an instigator and a director of the action.300

So agency is manifest as the degree to which an audience member can ‘instigate and

direct the action’. While agency is enabled by a medium, it must also be intentionally

enacted. Marie-Laure Ryan, outlines the possibility of a scale of interactivity based on

the user’s degree of intention. Following Soke Dinkla she explains that the bottom of

the scale is occupied by a type of ‘reactive’ interaction, in which the user does not

deliberately engage with the work but the work responds to their presence in some

way: “An artwork may, for instance, react to the amount of noise in the room and

display different images depending on whether the visitors are quiet or speaking.”301

The next step higher on a scale of interactivity based on intention involves the

user/audience randomly selecting an option from among a number of alternatives. At

this level, the user is unable to predict the consequence of their actions and while their

actions are intentional, their selection is random, such as the random clicking on links

in hypertext. The “fullest” type of interactivity according to Ryan, occurs when “the

299

Janet Murray (2000) Hamlet on the Holodeck; The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace, Cambridge

MA: MIT Press, p. 126. 300

Murray (2000) p. 38. 301

Ryan (2001) p. 205.

147

user’s involvement is a productive action that leaves a durable mark on the textual

world, either by adding objects to its landscape or by writing its history”.302

A definition of interactivity that places emphasis on the level of audience agency

enacted, as opposed to the structuring of the medium, recognises the significance of

human action as the inherent central component in the interactive system. While a

medium may offer the potential for agency, the user must have an intention, a

commitment to participate in the creation of the interactive system. Nonetheless, in

each of the levels of interactivity as described by Ryan, it is the openness of the text

that enables audience agency, and it is clear that for an audience member to be able to

perform choice and participate in the building of the work on a textual level, the

medium must be configured in such a way as to accommodate user interaction. To

achieve the ‘fullest kind of interaction’ as described by Ryan, a user should not only

be able to select from a limited range of choices but to create textual components

using their own creativity and initiative. Such activity would also require the user to

have both knowledge of and skill with the medium in question, so that their creativity

is not restricted by limited usability of the interface.

Ryan’s fullest type of interactivity still only involves one-way action which triggers a

programmed response. Indeed, it can be argued that the new media user merely

manipulates a reactive medium and does not engage in a process of genuine

interaction. A ‘fuller’ interaction than that envisioned by Ryan, would involve the

mutual creativity and agency of both parties involved. Raymond Williams suggested

in 1974 that the interactivity offered by so-called ‘interactive technologies’ is merely

reaction: “…we have to distinguish between reactive and interactive technology.

Nearly all equipment that is being currently developed is reactive: the range of

choices, both in detail and in scope, is pre-set”.303

While computer users may feel

they are utilising agency over the communication media, computers may be

considered merely ‘reactive’ as their actions are prescribed by a set of programmed

rules. As such it may perhaps be naive to refer to any technology as being truly

interactive as Williams suggests, for until technology has the ability to exhibit

creativity, to think, it will always be reactive, programmed and manipulated by a

302

Ibid. 303

Raymond Williams (1974) Television: Technology and Cultural Form, London: Fontana, p. 139.

148

human user. Phillip Auslander concurs with Williams regarding the speciousness of

interactivity in new media, stating “Any system that asks you basically to make

choices from a menu is reactive, not truly interactive. When the menu is large enough,

we have the illusion of interactivity, in which our input has a structural impact on the

system itself, but it is an illusion.”304

That is not to say however that the illusion of interactivity cannot be rewarding, and if

interactivity is viewed as based on human intention rather than media structures then

the illusion of interactivity, and interactivity, are one and the same. Despite the fact

that the ‘reactions’ of a new media text to human intervention are programmed, an

automated response will still evoke a spontaneous reaction from a user who is

unaware of the coded script, and the potential shape and sequence of the resulting text

may seem limitless. Marshall highlights this argument by referring to the example of

a human versus computer chess game, in which an almost infinite variation of moves

and strategies can develop. He explains what this analogy suggests is “that structures

can produce endless combinations of directions that are not completely determined by

the designers of new media.”305

While new media technologies are geared towards

enabling choice, the available options are eventually limited. However, as will be

further discussed in relation to practical examples later in the chapter, the difference

between ‘reactive’ and ‘interactive’ to a participant is often minimal and, as this

chapter recognises that interaction is a matter of degree, both response-based activity

and more complex interactivity will be regarded as constituting forms of interactivity.

It is possible to assert at this stage that there are various modes of audience activity

potentially operating in contemporary multimedia performance. Stemming from a

work’s degree of openness, audiences are invited to actively partake in processes of

cognitive interpretation. This initial mental activity can then be extended into various

modes of physical audience inclusion, which may involve reactive one-way

interaction, or a more sophisticated interactivity between creative agents. The

following sections of this chapter will further explore these different modes of active

304

Phillip Auslander (2005) After Liveness: An e-interview, Performance Paradigm: A Journal of

Performance and Contemporary Culture, Iss. 1, (www.performanceparadigm.net/issue1.shtml)

accessed June 2006. 305

Marshall (2004) p. 24.

149

audience involvement, presenting them as a tentative typology of forms of

interactivity in multimedia theatre.

Interpretive Engagement

As mentioned, the notion of an ‘active’ audience is not a recent concept. Nor is it to

be understood as implying only physical action, but may also be recognised as

implicating psychological action. Lev Manovich suggests that ‘psychological

interaction’ involves the “processes of filling-in, hypothesis formation, recall, and

identification, which are required for us to comprehend any text or image at all”.306

Art is inherently ambiguous. As Auslander states, “Audiences always engage actively

and critically with what they’re watching, even when that activity is not

externalised”.307

Individual readings and resultant understandings of artworks differ

as different strategies are applied in the process of ‘decoding’ an artwork. This

process of decoding requires the audience to engage their imaginative, intellectual and

sensorial faculties to personally complete that which has been left open or unfinished

within the work.

All art and performance may be considered open to a certain extent, allowing

different degrees of audience inference. For example, poetry and literature rely on the

reader drawing associations from words and ideas, and the invocation of personal

resonances and affect. Painting often extends outside its frame as a viewer will make

symbolic connections and thematic associations between both representative and

abstracted images. Modern media such as film also demand the cognitive engagement

of the audience, as Manovich illustrates:

Beginning in the 1920s, new narrative techniques such as film montage forced

audiences to bridge quickly the mental gaps between unrelated images. Film

cinematography actively guided the viewer to switch from one part of a frame to

another. The new representational style of semi-abstraction…required the viewer

to reconstruct represented objects from a bare minimum – a contour, a few

patches of colour, shadows cast by the objects not represented directly.308

306

Manovich (2001) p. 57. 307

Auslander (2005) 308

Manovich (2001) p. 56.

150

The psychological action of ‘completing’ the incomplete text with the intention of

gleaning meaning is a process of active interpretation. The type of ‘filling in the gaps’

and symbolic ascription described above may be understood as constituting

‘interpretive engagement’. The concept of ‘interpretation’ describes the psychological

processes of associating and symbolically relating otherwise disparate aspects,

processes mostly associated with the experience of representative art or semi-

abstracted representation. Interpretation involves selecting objects and aspects of

interest from all those presented in a text or performance, and ordering them so as to

create meaning on an individual level. The audience make logical connections

between various components of an artwork, for example: where character motivations

and plot are created in the mind of the audience as they make rational associations

between presented story fragments; or where a series of seemingly unrelated activities

are occurring simultaneously on the stage and the audience interpret these acts as

linked by their thematic significance or by a narrative plot.

Navigation

Another form of audience activity created in multimedia theatre that can often provide

the basis for more sophisticated forms of interaction, is established when the

boundary between the space of the performance and the exterior space of the audience

becomes fluid. An audience member’s affective or interpretive engagement with a

work will be altered by their physical relationship with the object, performance

environment or performers. The most basic example of an audience manipulating this

physical relationship occurs when they are invited to conduct their own navigation of

the object or environment, individually controlling their speed and path through or

around the work. Therefore, navigation is the second form of audience activity

presented in this typology of forms of interaction in multimedia theatre.

Navigation suggests movement through space, and the viewer’s degree of control

over their navigation will depend on the space they are invited to traverse. For

example, a statue or sculpture in a public garden allows the viewer to navigate the

space around the object, controlling their perspective of the work by altering their

speed and proximity to it. If the garden becomes the artwork, rather than the statue,

151

the audience has actually entered into the work and are intimately navigating its

interior space. Following this example, if the viewer is allowed to touch the sculpture,

the space between the viewer and the object has dissolved, however the viewer’s

sensory exploration of the object may still be regarded as ‘navigation’. They are

navigating the spatial surface of the object, exploring its shape and texture. This

example highlights how visual perspective is not a necessary precondition of

navigation, and as long as there is movement through space, there is navigation. Of

course, for the relationship of the viewer to remain purely navigational they must not

impact upon the work itself. If the work reacts to the viewer’s presence in any way

then an interactive relationship between the viewer and the work is established.

Navigation only offers agency to the audience in the form of control over movement

and direction.

Many performance art and new media installations are based on a model of the

museum or gallery ‘exhibit’, allowing the audience to negotiate their physical

relationship to the work and hence construct their visual perspective. Multi-screen

video installations such as those originally created by Nam June Paik and more

recently by artists such as Gary Hill and Bill Viola do not allow audiences to control

that which is being projected, but they do enable the viewer to direct their own path of

spatial navigation. In Viola’s installation Stations (1994), images of bodies suspended

in and moving through water are projected onto vertical screens that reflect the image

down onto other perpendicular pieces of granite lying beneath each screen. The

position of the spectator in the surrounding space will dramatically alter their

perception as their focus moves between single screens, and the screens as a unified

work.

This type of physical navigation is also reflected in computer-generated

environments. For example, in computer-gaming the user can enter an artificial

environment or ‘world’ through which they are able to direct their path of navigation

using certain technological tools. These environments may or may not be reactive,

however in some cases the virtual environment exists primarily as a display for

navigation or as an arena within which user-to-user interaction can occur. Examples

of such navigable virtual environments include virtual museums and online galleries

152

as well as some more basic ‘chase-based’ computer games. These examples offer a

virtual space that allows the user to control their perspective, speed and navigational

path.

An example of diegetic navigation is presented in the new media cinematic

installation Eavesdrop (2004) created by Jeffrey Shaw and David Pledger, where the

audience enter into a space surrounded by a 360 degree film screen. An individual

user stands on a podium consul and is able to direct the path of the projection, so that

they effectively navigate the world presented on the screen. As different characters

come into the path of navigation, the user is able to ‘zoom’ into the interior mind of

the character to view their private images and thoughts. As the audience watch the

creative process of the user navigation, the user becomes a captain of the journey

undertaken by all viewers. Their behaviour and the continual choices they make in

their navigation of the work become a performance. This point is further explored in

the case study of Eavesdrop presented in Chapter 6.

The navigation of virtual environments adds an extra element of viewer activity, for

the user must physically manipulate technological tools that facilitate navigation (the

podium in Eavesdrop, the keyboard or joystick in computer-based worlds). Other than

in the specific case of head-mounted VR displays, there is distance between the user

and the navigable world, and the navigation is mediated through the use of

technology. This raises the question of whether clicking a button to open a virtual

door or pushing a joystick to ‘zoom in’ constitutes a physically interactive

relationship. As the programme reacts to the commands of the user, the user may

experience a sense of interactivity. Regardless, this process of audience engagement

is inherently navigational. In fact, navigation is the primary basis of most viewer-to-

computer relationships, as it describes the process of ‘usership’. While it does not

relate to the act of programming, nearly all receivership of online information and

interaction with virtual environments is inherently navigational.

The action of hyperlinking through cyberspace may also be viewed as a navigational

process. The information being accessed already exists in network structures awaiting

user access. It is a kind of ‘blind navigation’ where the user cannot see the

153

consequences of selection prior to making a choice. The links in a hypertext exist

independently of the users’ actions, and the user may select any number of paths

through given information, ignoring some possible avenues and weaving their way

relatively blindly through other maze-like paths. Lev Manovich explains that, “the

very principle of hyperlinking, which forms the basis of interactive media, objectifies

the process of association, often taken to be central to human thinking”.309

While this

may be evident to a degree, it should also be acknowledged that the range of options

offered by the list of programmed links will inevitably be limited.

While the basic principle of the hypertext is navigation there is clearly also an added

degree of audience interaction. As soon as the agent, object or environment responds

to the presence of the user, an interactive relationship is established. Despite the fact

that the object or environment may not have agency of its own with which to directly

influence the user, as soon as it reacts to the user’s influence interaction is established,

for even a passive reaction on behalf of the environment will reciprocally still effect

the user by offering a different image, new information, or alternate perspective.

Interactivity: Response-based Interaction

As soon as the audience has the agency to alter the work or elicit a reaction to their

assertions, the relationship between the viewer and the work can be classified as

interactive. However, as evidenced, there are different degrees and modes of

interactivity. The term ‘response-based interaction’ can be used to describe

interaction where the audience has agency, and engage in a process of action-reaction

with a responsive environment, object or agent. As the ‘reactor’ does not itself have

agency, its reactions are either completely passive, as in the case of a malleable object

or environment, or are pre-programmed, such as interactive new media artworks.

Unlike hot media such as film, media capable of responsive interaction enable the

user to fully participate in the creation of media content and to control the direction

and pace of their engagement with the presented information. Marshall explains,

309

Manovich (2001) p. 61.

154

In new media such as the web, the individual is asked to choose the link and

thereby be part of the process of making his media form. This may seem minor,

but the changed relationship to media is very significant and has repercussions

throughout all cultural industries and into the wider dimensions of contemporary

culture. This action of choosing from a menu of choices, the very tactile

dimension of clicking on a mouse, shifts our default media consumption from that

provided for us to one that is fabricated by us.310

New media culture positions the user as an active participant, and in this

empowerment lies the pleasure of interaction. New media users are co-producers of

the mediated text.

Many examples of ‘interactive’ contemporary art and performance function via

responsive interaction, and this form of communication is not necessarily limited to

the domain of new media. An example of response-based interaction is articulated in

Ross Gibson’s vision of the ‘changescape’, which describes a model of environmental

art. Gibson defines ‘changescapes’ as

aesthetic systems that are built purposefully to intensify our experience and to

enhance our understanding of the complex dynamics that are at play when our

natural, social and psychological domains commingle and alter each other in this

world so full of mutability.311

A changescape is dynamic and immersive. It is an aesthetic space designed to awaken

sense perception and an awareness of the “paradoxically unstable ‘status’ of the

world”.312

An example utilised by Gibson to explain this concept is that of the

aquarium. Within the aquarium a complex system of natural forces is at work, which

are influenced and manipulated by the spectator in order to achieve a desired

aesthetic.

Gibson’s notion of the changescape may be compared with Murphie’s concept of

‘interactive ecologies’. Murphie looks at the ecological works of John Cage who

“moved towards the use of natural environment, socius and technology as equal

310

Marshall (2004) p. 25. 311

Ross Gibson (2005) "Changescapes" in Suzie Attiwill, Gini Lee, Dr Jill Franz eds. IDEA Journal

2005, (http://www.idea-edu.com/alt_content/pdf/2005/Professor_Ross_Gibson.pdf) accesssed August

2006, p. 200. 312

Gibson (2005) p. 203.

155

points in a general field of sensation”.313

Cage based his work within a natural

environment which opened the work out to contingency, for the performer was

collaborating with an environment over which they did not have complete control.

Murphie highlights how in such works the individual becomes part of the chance

operations that form the structure of the engagement, rather than a substitute for them.

The notion of ‘response interaction’ is perhaps a little simplistic when applied to a

natural environment, for one could argue that nature has its own systematic agency

and is active, not merely reactive. Hence the expectation of contingency in Cage’s

environmental works. The changescape is an aesthetic concept with the nature of the

term clearly implying the alterability of the landscape. The changescaper has a dual

role as both the sculpture and spectator. As Murphie suggests with regards to the

‘interactive ecology’, it is a becoming.314

Gibson and Murphie’s discussion of these

interactive landscapes illustrate that response-based interaction, though not the most

complex manifestation of interactivity, can still form a creative system, in which the

text is constantly evolving.

Gibson offers David Rokeby as one of the ‘canniest’ practitioners working with

‘changescapes’. Rokeby attempts to develop a better understanding of complexity

through artistic interaction, with the actions of the participant “bringing new elements

into the componentry” and the artwork “always becoming something other than it was

a moment ago”.315

Rokeby’s works are certainly a pertinent example of responsive

interaction and create an extremely intimate relationship between the work and

viewer. Indeed the work’s progression is contingent on both the active and passive

physical involvement of the spectator, and the boundary between the viewer and the

work is dissolved.

In Rokeby’s work Silicon Remembers Carbon, which was first presented in 1993-5

and redesigned in 2000 incorporating newer technology, a large video image is

projected downwards onto a bed of sand which forms the floor of the installation.

Using real-time computer technology, the projection is affected by the reflection of

313

Andrew Murphie (2001) “Vibrations in the Air: Performance and Interactive Technics”,

Performance Paradigm: A Journal of Performance and Contemporary Culture, Iss. 1

(www.performanceparadigm.net/issue1.shtml) accessed July 2006. 314

Murphie (2005) 315

Gibson (2005) p. 204.

156

the viewers as they look down on it, with the layers of computer-generated imagery

merging with the real shadows and reflections being cast to create ‘live virtual

shadow’. Rokeby describes the installation as “some sort of fake reflecting pool, an

inversion of Narcissus’s experience. Whereas Narcissus’s tragedy is that he cannot

recognise himself in his reflection, the visitors to the space would find themselves

identifying with shadows and distorted reflections that had only circumstantial

relation to them.”316

The viewer’s presence triggers reactions in the receptive surface

and as the viewer alters the work, they co-create the media content.

Another interesting example of a responsive artwork that follows the blue print of the

‘interactive environment’ was presented at the 2005 National Sculpture Prize at the

National Gallery in Canberra. Floribots (a play on

‘flowerpots’) by Geoffrey Drake-Brockman presents

128 computer-controlled robot origami flowers that

cover 35 meters of gallery space and react as a

collective organism to the movements of the viewers.

Each mechanical flower is able to telescopically ‘grow’

up to a metre high and fold out from its original bud-

state into an open bloom, then shrink and retract into its

dormant state. The behaviour of the flowerbed senses

and reflects the behaviour and movement of the viewer, Image 10

flowing from chaotic movement to organised wave-like patterns, with the ‘hive mind’

of the Floribot controlling the transition between these states.317

The artist has created

a work that sets up an extremely intimate relationship with the viewer. Rokeby

defines interaction as the means by which “the artist contrives a situation which

reflects the consequences of our actions or decisions back to us”318

and this process is

very clearly exhibited in the Floribot artwork. The Floribots function only in response

to the actions of the viewer; once the viewer has become familiar with the

programmed responses of the Floribot-bed they are able to choreograph complex

316

David Rokeby, “Installations: Silicon Remembers Carbon”, David Rokeby Homepage,

(http://homepage.mac.com/davidrokeby/src.html) accessed June 2006. 317

National Gallery of Australia Homepage, National Scupture Prize and Exhibition 2005,

(http://www.nga.gov.au/Exhibition/SculpturePrize05/Detail.cfm?IRN=139758&BioArtistIRN=15919

&MnuID=1) accessed May 2006. 318

Rokeby in Gibson (2005) p. 205.

157

movement sequences. It becomes a performance, and as the viewer learns the rules of

engagement and their skill level increases, their level of creative interaction becomes

more sophisticated.

The field of ‘interactive drama’ also offers another more complicated mode of

responsive interaction. The web-based drama, as articulated by Janet Murray’s

description of the ‘cyberdrama’, varies in its level of openness and has the possibility

of offering ‘complex’ interaction in the form of human-human (or character to

character) interaction. However Christy Dena states in her article Elements of

‘interactive drama’: Behind the Virtual Curtain of ‘Jupiter Green’ that, “Although

there are works that react to the input of users, none of them have outcomes that are

not pre-scripted in some sense”.319

This of course restricts interaction to a process of

user action - computer reaction, and hence is not ‘complex’ interaction but response-

based.

In the interactive drama Jupiter Green discussed by Dena, the audience spy on five

characters as they go about their melodramatic everyday lives in an apartment block

called “Jupiter Green”. The user activity is limited to navigation of the diegetic

environment with occasional hyperlinking to access information enclosed within the

space, such as clicking to ‘unlock’ and enter into a character’s personal diary. There

are also occasional instances of responsive interaction that occur when for example, a

user can email a character in the drama and receive a reply. Dena describes how this

process inadvertently encouraged her to believe that her actions could influence the

plot of the drama, and she describes the frustration of realising that “none of what was

said had any influence on the characters and plot”.320

The emailed responses are

effectively pre-scripted, providing generic ‘answers’ to the user’s specific questions.

There is certainly the possibility for a narrative to develop between characters and for

the users to collaboratively produce a story. However, most current hypertext-based

interactive dramas do not produce collaboratively authored stories. Dena refers to

Joseph Tabbi who highlights this difference: “Hypertext readers might enrich the 319

Christy Dena (2005) “Elements of ‘interactive drama’: Behind the Virtual Curtain of Jupiter Green,

Performance Paradigm: A Journal of Performance and Contemporary Culture, Iss. 1,

(www.performanceparadigm.net/issue1.shtml) accessed July 2006. 320

Ibid.

158

work by contributing to it new content, but as yet their activity is for the most part

limited to making choices about how to operate the text-selecting narrative

pathways…”321

This description forces us back to the activity of ‘navigation’ and the

issue of whether hypertext navigation can be considered ‘interactive’.

Similarly to web-based interactive dramas, live interactive dramas offer viewers the

opportunity to navigate through a diegetic environment and witness an unfolding

narrative. Phillip Auslander addresses the ‘interactive plays’ Tamara and Tony ‘n’

Tina’s Wedding in which the audience are able to interact with the characters as they

dine and dance together.322

However the interaction is limited by the prescripted

narrative and, in the words of Barry Wexler the Californian producer of Tamara, “It’s

like staying at the Hilton, everything is exactly the same no matter, where you are”.323

Auslander actually uses these examples to evidence his case that live performance can

be mass-produced. Interactive dramas, whether live or web-based, appear to offer a

combination of navigation and responsive interaction. They do not often

accommodate ‘complex interaction’ which would require the characters to freely

converse with the users, with both groups of participants endowed with the agency to

both ask and answer questions.

Interactivity: Complex Interaction

Packer and Jordan offer their definition of ‘interactivity’ as “the ability of the user to

manipulate and affect her experience of media directly, and to communicate with

others through media”.324

This definition suggests two versions of interactivity; user

to media interaction, and user to user interaction through media. The former offers

audiences the possibility of affective or interpretive engagement, navigation, and

responsive interaction. The latter offers the possibility of ‘complex interaction’.

Complex interaction requires the real-time and mutual activity of both agents. Within

the relationship, both parties have agency and the ability to assert creative

intelligence. Ross Gibson, referencing Paul Cilliers, describes complexity as 321

Tabbi in Christy Dena (2005) 322

Phillip Auslander (1999) p. 47. 323

Wexler in Auslander (1999) p. 47. 324

Packer and Jordan (2001) p. xxx.

159

“definitively dynamic and relationally intricate”.325

To know it you must experience

it, to “be with its changes through time, to feel its shifts whilst also being attuned to

the historically determined tendencies and feedback patterns of stimuli and responses

that organise it systematically”.326

Gibson uses the notion of complexity to describe

the system of the changescape, he argues that the ecology of the changescape is a

‘complex system’. This is certainly possible however I have not considered the

‘changescape’ as presenting an example of ‘complex interaction’ for I view the

relationship of the human individual to the changescape as one of continual

authorship, with the landscape as text. The landscape itself exerts no agency over the

actions of the viewer, though of course there are other natural forces that may

influence the status and arrangement of landscape. Cilliers explains complex systems

as having “to grapple with a changing environment…To cope with these demands the

system must have two capabilities; it must be able to store information concerning the

environment for future use; and it must be able to adapt…when necessary”.327

In

processes of complex interaction, both parties themselves can be recognised as

‘complex systems’, and the relationship forged between them is ‘definitively dynamic

and relationally intricate’.

Performances that involve complex interaction occur within a frame that defines the

particular circumstances of interaction. The interaction is limited, or perhaps guided,

by rules that form the parameters of the artwork and provide a foundation for

interaction. This may involve a type of narrative premise, with the interaction

occurring between characters, and/or a

specifically designed environment. For example,

the installation at the Whitney Museum in 1992 in

which Guillermo Gomez-Pena and Coco Fusco

performed the characters of Two Undiscovered

Amerindian primitives put on display in a cage,

Image 11 offered the potential of complex interaction

between viewers and the characters. There were a number of narrative restrictions that

shaped interaction within the work, such as the characters, the environment of the

325

Cilliers in Gibson (2005) p. 202. 326

Ibid. 327

Ibid.

160

museum-like display, and the dramatic conventions that were employed such as the

audience being invited to ask for an ‘authentic dance’, a souvenir photo or a story in

the character’s fictional native language of ‘Guatinaui’. However the possibility for

complex interaction was always a tension within the relationship between the

audience and the performers. Because the characters had a certain degree of agency

over their actions and reactions, they were always an unpredictable force and the

work became most exciting when instances of interaction were provoked, for example

in the interactions that took place during the taking of souvenir photos. The

interactivity here was highly performative; the spectators were also being watched

and were integral in determining the shape and dynamic of the performance. The

work evolved in real time and was co-authored by both the audience and performers.

Although the interaction was often response-based, for example when ‘set pieces’

were performed, response was never static, with spontaneous action and reactions

from both parties creating a complex level of human-to-human interaction.

Complex interaction is perhaps most often found within computer-generated

environments that allow for human-to-human interaction via media. Of course this

type of interaction may still be considered ‘live’ performance as it occurs in real-time

between real people, but the actual location of interactive connection is within a

virtual environment. The theatre and multimedia company Blast Theory create works

that require the audience to engage in processes of complex interaction. Works such

as Desert Rain (1998) and Can You See Me Now? (2001) present a virtual world

which the audience navigate through the use of computer controls, and in which they

communicate with other participants who appear as avatars. The production Desert

Rain, addressed in Chapter 3, systematically employs all modes of audience activity

discussed in this chapter.

An unusual example of human-to-human interaction occurs in Stelarc’s Movatar

(2000), in which the participant utilises remote access technology to access

mechanical controls that manipulate Stelarc’s body, effectively choreographing his

movements. While this work undoubtedly develops in real time and the participant is

endowed with agency to direct the performance, they are still interacting with the

technology itself and not with the live performer. In Movatar, Stelarc is devoid of all

161

agency, and so despite this work involving two human beings interacting via

technology, the agency is one-sided. Stelarc’s responsive action is forced and the

participant merely interacts with the program that triggers his movement. Here even

more onus is placed on the audience to ‘perform’ and become co-creators in the

artwork. If they do not exert agency and manipulate Stelarc’s body then the

performance does not take place. Indeed, as Stelarc renders himself helpless he

effectively hands the mantle of the ‘performer’ to the users in control of the process.

By my definitions computers do not have the capacity to engage in pure complex

interaction, for their actions are all reactions, the result of programmed algorithms. Of

course though there are works that appear to complicate the understanding of complex

interaction as a purely human capability. One of these confusions occurs in the case

of Stelarc’s Prosthetic Head (2003). The animated, automated head is designed with

human behaviourisms such as facial expressions, nods, tilts, turns and changing eye

‘contact’, and is able to hold a conversation with a human participant. The head

demonstrates agency and personality, however its actions are of course responsive,

the result of embedded algorithms that generate certain behaviours in reaction to the

movements and questions of the participant. This

scenario brings us back to Turing’s Chinese Room

hypothetical, which poses the question, is the appearance

of intelligence and the existence of intelligence one and

the same? And if the participant believes in the agency

and complexity of the agent, does it effectively have

agency and complexity? These questions have been at the

heart of discourse on artificial intelligence Image 12

since it was first imagined in science fiction novels, and are to be explored, but not

answered, in contemporary multimedia theatre. However it would appear to be the

case that true interactivity resides in the uniquely human-to-human give-and-take. Or

alternatively, perhaps the level and nature of interaction should be recognised as

subjective, as determined by the participant based on whether they are able to suspend

their disbelief to experience two-way intelligent interaction.

162

Interactivity in Blast Theory’s Can You See Me Now?

Can You See Me Now? explores the ubiquitous presence of the virtual in our everyday

lives as a result of media technologies, self-reflexively presenting the real and the

virtual to address conditions of communication and posthuman existence in

virtualised society. I had the opportunity to participate online in the Cambridge,

England version of the work in April 2005 and in person at the May You Live in

Interesting Times Media Festival in Cardiff, Wales in October 2005. Participant

interaction is integral to the work and evolves from the familiar format of an escape-

based computer game. Though unlike a traditional computer game, this game is

played in both the real and virtual realms, and many forms of interaction are possible

with individual differentiation of experience.

From various locations around the world, participants access an online virtual

environment constructed to replicate the actual streets of a selected city. Before

accessing the virtual environment a loose narrative framework is established that

requires players to answer the question: “Is there someone you haven’t seen for a long

time that you still think of?” At first this questions seems superfluous, but it

introduces the concepts of absence and presence as key themes to be explored

throughout the work. Blast Theory explain: “this person - absent in place and time -

seems irrelevant to the subsequent game play; only at the point that the player is

caught or “seen” by a runner do they hear the name mentioned again as part of the

live audio feed”.328

As they navigate the virtual city they are chased by members of the Blast Theory

team who appear as avatars but are actually using GPS tracking devices to track the

participant around the streets of the real city. The online players must avoid the

runners; if a runner gets within five meters of an online player, the player is “seen”

and out of the game. When this occurs, the runner takes a digital photo of the real

space where the participant was “seen” and this photo is displayed on the webpage.

The online participants have certain tools at their disposal in the virtual world. The

328

Blast Theory, Can You See Me Now?, (www.blasttheory.co.uk/bt/work_cysmn.html) accessed

August 2006.

163

speed at which they can move through the virtual space is alterable though with a

fixed maximum speed. They can access a city map view, and can see themselves

represented in the form of a running avatar as if through the eyes of other participants.

Participants are also able to see the avatars of other players and runners, and can

choose to exchange typed messages with them. This can evolve into the building of

camaraderie between the participants, which can be further explored through the

strategies and proxemics employed over time. Online players are also able to hear the

continual communication between the runners via their walkie-talkies as a live audio

stream.

Image 13: the online interface

In most computer games or virtual realities, the participant exists in two dimensions:

as a body in the real world, and as an avatar in the computer-generated virtual reality.

The doubling of reality in Can You See Me Now? places the participant in three

different locations simultaneously. They exist as a body in front of the computer, as a

constructed identity in the online gaming world, and then are also represented by the

locative technology of the runners as a blip, a disembodied entity moving through the

streets of the city. With every participant existing in three spatialities, there is

potential for interactivity to occur on many levels.

Firstly, agency is exercised on a basic level through spatial navigation. To

successfully engage with the work the audience must utilise the tools provided to

164

navigate the computer system and the virtual world, controlling their own speed and

path through the work. Here the participant interacts with the medium, determining

the specific nature of its mediation and testing the limitations of their agency. This

audience experience builds over time as the rules of engagement are gradually learned

and participation with the technology becomes more skilled. When technology

enables human-to-human communication, the interactive connection is of course still

between human and information via the interface. The technology extends the

capabilities of the human participants, and the communication of two or more

participants via the technological extensions means that a two-way flow of

information is created that is not predetermined and is definitively dynamic.

Can You See Me Now? presents a navigable virtual world that becomes a platform for

participants to communicate with other individuals via the technology. The various

relationships established within the work, between all the runners, between the

runners and the gamers, and between the gamers themselves, each involve complex

interaction. The interaction functions on many

levels; the gamers can communicate with each

other and with the runners via typed text, the

runners are constantly speaking to each other

on walkie-talkies, their conversation audible

to the gamers, and then there is the spatial relationship Image 14

between all the players, who appear as avatars on the map of the virtual city. This

‘physical’ engagement between runners and gamers is a play of proxemics, a

performance of chasing, hiding, teasing, testing, eluding and eventual capture. All

parties have agency over their direction and movement and their use of spoken (or

typed) word. The interactivity is essentially human-to-human via media, but for the

participants, the experience of interactivity often blurs the demarcation of the real and

the virtual, of the human and the computer-generated. For the most part, the

participants’ interaction is limited to their immediate experience of the media

interface, and the realms of the real and the virtual, the human and the media, are

seemingly compressed into a single realm accessed via the computer, a realm of

information.

165

However the work is more dimensional than a standard computer game where human-

to-human interaction occurs in a virtual environment, for here the space is both real

and virtual; it is a hybrid space. The fact that online players are able to hear the

continual communication between the runners via a live audio stream creates a sense

that they are eavesdropping on the privacy of the runner’s strategizing. It also serves

to emphasise the representative nature of the avatars, highlighting that they relate to a

physical referent. Runners discuss the reactions of other people on the streets and are

heard crossing traffic and dodging crowds. Players become aware that they are

themselves located within the material environment inhabited by the runners; they

overhear the mention of a certain landmark or street in the runners’ conversation that

coincides with the virtual representation they are viewing. It is this affirmation of the

reality of the space that adds a fourth dimension to the virtual gaming environment.

The players not only exist as a virtual entity but as an informational entity elsewhere

in the real world, and actions in either one of these realms translate into consequences

in the other.

As the technology enables the participant to exist as an informational entity that has a

physical location in the material world, the participant is constructed as posthuman,

i.e as Hayles’ “material-informational entity, whose boundaries undergo continuous

construction and reconstruction”.329

Within the parameters of the game, the

participant’s actions in the virtual world have very real physical effects on the

presence of others, and as users invest themselves within the technology, they become

enmeshed in a system that enables them to move beyond the limitations of the

interface and to impact upon material reality in new ways. The subjectivity

experienced by the user is no longer a discrete ‘body’, but a composite configuration.

In an interview with Gabriella Giannachi, Stelarc argues that technology “allows us to

extrude and extend, extrude our awareness and extend our physical operations and the

Internet becomes the medium through which the body can do this”.330

In Can You See

Me Now?, the internet not only extends the ‘body’ of the participant into virtual

reality, but also extends their ‘presence’ in the real world. Stelarc suggests that the

posthuman realm

329

Hayles (1999) p. 3. 330

Stelarc in Giannachi (2004) p. 61.

166

may not simply be in the realm of the body or the machine but the realm of

intelligent and operational images on the Internet. Perhaps connected to a host

body, these viral images may be able to express a physical effect and so the idea

of a virtual and actual interface.331

Can You See Me Now? brings this vision of the posthuman realm into existence,

exploring the juncture of the virtual and the material with participants hosting an

online image that produces physical effect.

From Presence to Pattern

The distribution of embodiment in Can You See Me Now? illuminates how the

conceptual dialectic of ‘presence’ and ‘absence’ associated with the physical is

inadequate to describe the posthuman interactivity of information and materiality. The

doubling of the physical reality in Can You See Me Now? simultaneously locates the

existence of the participant in three spaces: in the physical body before the computer

interface; within the online virtual reality as a constructed identity (an extension of

the self in which the physical is absent); and they are also represented via the locative

technology of the runners as an informational entity moving through the city streets.

Each participant exists as a virtual representation, that is, as physically absent, in both

the real and virtual dimension.

In the virtual world we may consider the physical self as being absent, and in the real

world we recognise the physical self as present, however when the virtual self is no

longer limited to the virtual world but becomes a functioning double, spatially located

in material reality, the participant simultaneously exists in the real world as both a

physical body and as an informational pattern. Here the physical cannot be regarded

as absent, but rather as ‘other’, for the user’s pattern exists alongside their physical

body in the real world, illustrating how materiality can be “interpenetrated by

information patterns” (Hayles). In Can You See Me Now?, the participant exists in a

hybrid space as neither ‘present’ nor ‘absent’ but as simultaneously both (or indeed,

neither). Peggy Phelan argues that in performance the body is metonymic of

presence,332

however in Can You See Me Now? the concept of presence becomes

331

Stelarc in Giannachi (2004) p. 62. 332

Phelan (1993) p. 150.

167

disassociated from the body. When this occurs, the distinction of presence and

absence can no longer be identified and they become obsolete concepts.

Can You See Me Now? illustrates how the perceived multiplication of existence

across different media spaces results in a convergence of pattern and presence. When

the boundary of the physical ‘self’ becomes viewed as permeable and the self exists

as an “informational/material entity”, information and materiality can no longer be

perceived as discrete arenas. The work plays with the slippages between pattern and

presence and exploits our confusion between the two, confronting us with our

tendency to attribute presence to pattern. We are shown the transition from presence

to pattern, the process whereby the representational image of the body loses

connection to the physical referent when it enters into the virtual realm, where image

becomes pattern to be re-patterned and mutated by randomness. To reflect upon the

nature of embodiment in Can You See Me Now? we must, as Hayles suggests, think

beyond the opposition that previously associated presence with truth and absence with

simulation. For when the body is perceived as capable of being “seamlessly

articulated with intelligent technology”, it exists between absence and presence,

reconstituted as an expandable form that exists outside the perceived limits of

materiality.

Access, Audience and Community

Can You See Me Now? focuses on how interactivity is becoming culturally embedded

in everyday modes and means of communication. The ubiquity of networked

technologies such as mobile phones, internet and GPS is evolving our sense of

privacy and proximity, and in this work we see technology used to locate and track, to

chase, to connect and to eavesdrop. Involvement in the work makes prominent the

issue of “access”, which Hayles contends is a key concern in determining the impact

of the cultural transition into a condition of Virtuality. As society moves into a

condition of virtuality, “possession seriates into access”.333

Hayles explains, “Access

has already become a focal point for questions about how information as a

333

Hayles in Lunenfeld ed. (2000) p. 78.

168

commodity is going to be integrated into existing capitalist structures”.334

Interactivity

refers to the process whereby users access information and so an awareness of

different modes of interaction is integral to an understanding of how humans engage

with a virtual culture. The interactive capabilities of new media as highlighted in Can

You See Me Now? reflect some of the wider concerns regarding the shift into a culture

of interactivity, such as how consumer access should be controlled, how interactivity

alters our sense of subjectivity, and what happens to the status of the authored work

when access to it is unlimited and free.

In the field of multimedia theatre practice, the most prominent impact of interactive

access upon traditional conventions is the challenge posed to previously held ideas of

‘audience’. Complex interaction potentially dissolves the concept of ‘audience’

altogether. New media theorist Clay Shirky in his influential essay Communities,

Audiences, and Scales suggests that new media users function as either members of

an “audience” or of a “community”. The difference between these two modes of

engagement in a media environment is that, “though both are held together in some

way by communication, an audience is typified by a one-way relationship between

sender and receiver, and by the disconnection of its members from one another – a

one-to-many pattern”.335

Alternatively, in a community there is not a one-way flow of

information; Shirky explains, in a community “People typically send and receive

messages, and the members of a community are connected to one another, not just to

some central outlet – a many-to-many pattern”.336

Though Shirky argues for the

inherent opposition of audience and community, Can You See Me Now? positions its

participants as members of both an audience and a community.

The participants are drawn together into a community, yet there is still a separation

between the ‘audience’ and the group of ‘live performers’. Blast Theory also clearly

act as ‘facilitators’; the online participant is lead through specific paths of information

and images both prior to and immediately after the game, and during the game the

runners act as ‘hosts’ for the networked participants, restricting the number of

334

Ibid. 335

Clay Shirky (2002) “Communities, Audiences, and Scale”, Clay Shirky's Writings About the

Internet: Networks, Economics, and Culture, (www.shirky.com/writings/community_scale.html)

accessed November 2006. 336

Ibid.

169

participants allowed and determining the length of their involvement. However unlike

the format of an audience, there is a two way flow of information between the groups;

the actions of individuals in either group affect the choices of individuals in the other.

What is in fact established is two groups that can each be identified as forming a

separate community.

These two groups, of runners and online players, functions not only as ‘communities’

but as ‘teams’ who are required to strategise against one another with the aim of out-

manoeuvring their opponents. The scenario of the ‘game’ appears to be a significant

framework for enabling complex interaction. Other Blast Theory works such as

Desert Rain (1998) (discussed in Chapter 3) and Uncle Roy All Around You (2003),

facilitate competitive gaming situations that utilise either portable locating

technologies or a virtual gaming world. The importance of the video or computer

game as social network, and the function of multi-user domains as performative,

community-centred social spaces have been well articulated. The format of the

‘game’ may also hold potential as a framework upon which to build interactive

performances that do not have to rely on networking technologies. Indeed, theatre

practitioners such as Brecht, Grotowski, and particularly Boal, have experimented

with game-like scenarios as a means of involving the spectator and creating a sense of

community-based interaction. ‘Interactive’ theatre need not necessarily involve the

use of digital media. However, the use of network technology is enabling theatre

practitioners to access new communal spaces for performance, to extend the number

of participants involved in a work, and establish new formats for involving the

spectator in the creative process.

Conclusion: the limits of interactivity

While interactivity is an important concept for determining the efficacy of

contemporary performance and the nature of audience experience, it has perhaps not

yet manifested its full potential within the realm of multimedia theatre. Johannes

Birringer reminds us that, despite the rapid advance of creative technologies, “The

world has not become a better, more democratic place, participatory design is rare,

and interactive art has not necessarily made the ‘user’ a co-author nor allowed the

170

user-player the kind of active role and freedom of expression that is implied in an

interactive exchange involving autonomous development.”337

Certainly, the

interactive works discussed in this chapter do not allow the participant complete

freedom of expression. However this chapter has argued that interactivity is a matter

of degree, and that there are various forms of interactivity operating within the field

of contemporary multimedia performance that each offer a different experience.

While interactivity may only reach its ‘fullest’ form when participants collaborate

with equal agency and have complete freedom of expression to create a text, I argue

that there are numerous capacities in which the audience can be involved within the

artwork. The role of the spectator is never passive, and audience interpretation will

always have bearing on the significance of an artwork or performance. Forms of

interactivity, such as navigation, response-based interactivity, and complex

interactivity, each set up a different relationship between the user and the medium.

While overuse of the term interactivity had previously rendered it too broad for

meaningful application in relation to theatre practice, this chapter has attempted to

rectify that situation by offering specific terms drawn from media discourse, and

presenting a typology of forms of audience engagement, to assist clarification of the

various modes of audience activity manifesting in multimedia theatre.

337

Johannes Birringer, “Saira Virous: Game Choreography in Multiplayer Online Performance Spaces”

in Broadhurst and Machon eds. (2006) Performance and Technology: Practices of Virtual Embodiment

and Activity, New York: Palgrave, p. 47.

171

Chapter 6

Narrativity and the Postnarrative Text

in Performance

Intermediality, immersion, and interactivity as outlined in the previous chapters,

disrupt the conventions of narrative-based theatre. Theatre has long been traditionally

defined in relation to its adherence to a fictional narrative, its representation of a

dramatic text, placing it in opposition to the field of ‘performance’ which rejects

narrative and is non-representational.338

However, an underlying premise of this

chapter is that multimedia theatre lies neither in the domain of representational theatre

nor in that of non-narrative performance, but can be interpreted as ‘postnarrative

theatre’. This premise is derived from Hans-Thies Lehmann’s argument that the ‘turn

to performance’ in theatre practice has born a ‘postdramatic theatre’. Lehmann’s

argument offers, among other things, an historical overview of the movement in

theatre away from the representation of a dramatic text.

This chapter builds on the foundations laid by Lehmann, but attempts to offer a more

specific articulation of the impact of new media technologies on the performed text,

and to explore the specific structures and strategies that define the nature of the text

within multimedia theatre. While the term ‘drama’ refers to a particular narrative

form associated with literary and theatrical representation, ‘narrative’ relates to a

wider field of social and artistic practice, and narratological discourse spans many

creative disciplines. The usage of the term ‘narrative’, as opposed to ‘drama’, enables

the assessment of aesthetic strategies across media, and conclusions formed here

regarding the nature of the postnarrative text may be generally relatable to a variety of

media forms.

338

See Josette Feral (1982) “Performance and Theatricality: The Subject Demystified”, Modern

Drama, Vol. 25, No. 1, p. 177.

172

The ‘postnarrative text’ refers to an aesthetic process whereby narrative is not dictated

by an authored script but by one in which the audience’s innate tendency to

narrativise experience is stimulated and encouraged. This chapter maps the

characteristics of the postnarrative encounter within the site of contemporary

multimedia theatre, and explores the potential of the postnarrative as both reflecting

and symptomatic of cultural ways of knowing and interpreting the world. Narrative

construction reflects the cultural paradigm in which it is created, and this chapter will

conclude by connecting the postnarrative text to the cultural condition of Virtuality.

The postnarrative text may be understood as manifesting and playing with various

levels of narrativity, which Packer and Jordan define as the “aesthetic and formal

strategies that derive from the above concepts [integration, interactivity, hypermedia,

and immersion], which result in non-linear story forms and media presentation.”.339

While narrative has been viewed by structuralist narratology as a universal framework

capable of transcending media, the concept of ‘narrativity’ acknowledges the

performative aspect of narrative construction. Narrativity views the existence of

narrative within a medium as a matter of degree, the extent of which is determined by

the individual viewer and not by authorial intent. While conservative definitions of

narrative describe a rigid patterning of information that does not allow for the

slightest element of randomness, the intermedial, immersive, and interactive

capabilities of multimedia theatre introduce elements of randomness into the narrative

field through audience engagement. Postnarrative texts are formed through processes

of audience interaction and cannot be dismissed as ‘non-narrative’, for they may

utilise such inherent elements of narrative as story, plot, and temporal progression.

However the postnarrative text rearranges the traditional design of these narrative

elements to create new means and modes of communication.

This chapter explores the nature of the postnarrative text in relation to the new media

performance Eavesdrop, examining the structure, design, and audience experience of

the narrative components offered in this work. This work would not usually be

considered ‘theatre’ per se, but as will be discussed, there are many levels of

performativity operating within the work. Eavesdrop does not actually provide its

339

Packer and Jordan eds. (2002) p. xxxv.

173

participants a high degree of agency, and its significance to the field of multimedia

theatre is more as an indicator of future possibilities, rather than as the vanguard of a

field. Its limitations can be frustrating for the user, as they do not have agency to alter

the content of the work, merely to influence the sequence of its presentation, and the

audience remain largely passive in their engagement with the mise en scene.

However, the ability of the participant to direct their focus on the cinematic screen

and the potential for creativity that this interactivity offers, make this work an

interesting case study through which to illustrate the concept of the postnarrative text.

A clear understanding of narrative conventions will assist in formulating a definition

of the postnarrative text, if only as a basis for comparison, so before articulating a

vision of ‘postnarrativity’, this chapter briefly summarises the definitions and

requirements of traditional narrative. To address specific manifestations of the

postnarrative text in new media works such as Eavesdrop, this chapter also examines

narrative structures within digital multimedia, utilising the language and definitions

offered by new media theorists such as Landow and Manovich. Extending this

discussion, the nature of the postnarrative text as composed of poetic devices is

explored, and a subsequent analytical framework through which to articulate the

experience of postnarrativity is offered. To conclude, this chapter illustrates the

relationship of a postnarrative perspective to the dialectics of presence/absence and

pattern/randomness, and determines its significance as a cultural phenomenon.

Narrativity of New media Performance – Eavesdrop

The new media installation ‘Eavesdrop’ (2004) was created by Jeffrey Shaw of the I-

Cinema Centre for Interactive Research and David Pledger, founding artistic director

and producer of the Melbourne based, multifaceted company Not Yet It’s Difficult

(NYID), and was presented at the 2004 Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney Festivals.

The work presents a 360-degree cinematic landscape that invites the user to explore

the scene before them from a podium-like console. The user stands in the middle of

the circular screen on a movable mechanical platform and uses a nintendo-like set of

buttons to manipulate the focus of the projection before them.

174

On screen, ten characters are positioned at six tables within what appears to be a

jazzclub staged within a theatre. At each table a small narrative vignette is performed,

with the characters sharing intimate conversations that form a nine-minute loop. A

band continuously plays soothing background music, and as an audience member uses

the console to focus on a particular conversation, the background music fades and

they are able to eavesdrop on the private dialogue of the characters. The audience’s

role is both director and detective as they piece together the interwoven stories.

Described as “part game, part real-time film-making, part spectator sport, part

magical realism”,340

Eavesdrop opens up the borders of the cinema screen and allows

users to navigate their own path through the multi-narrative, multi-layered, theatrical

terrain.

The setting of the club appears to function as a type of purgatory, as the characters all

explore certain moral, spiritual, and psychological conditions. Director David Pledger

explains, “Really the stories are about a middle-class Australia in purgatory which is

basically how I see the country at the moment. I see it as in a kind of limbo.”341

Some

characters have clearly been in the purgatorial club a long time, for their gestures and

comments depict a comfortable familiarity with the environment, while other

characters are only just arriving. Each character’s conversation reveals a moral

dilemma: A woman discusses her attempts to find identity

through cosmetic surgery (see Image 15); an old couple

discuss their preferred method of suicide; a middle-aged man

suffers the pangs of unrequited love; a radio broadcaster

interviews an activist about ethics, choice, and revolution; a

young man tries to convince his girlfriend to leave their small

town suburb for the promise of the city; while two other young Image 15

men drink, smoke, and mourn their lost potential. Shaw describes the work as a

“multi-narrative mediation of psychological states in and around the theme of moral

inertia”.342

340

Not Yet It’s Difficult, Company website, (www.notyet.com.au) accessed August, 2006. 341

David Pledger, (2005) “On Eavesdrop and New Media” Interview with Rosie Klich, Performance

Paradigm Journal, Iss. 1 (http://www.performanceparadigm.net/issue1.shtml) accessed July 2006. 342

Jeffrey Shaw, Eavesdrop, i-Cinema Centre for Interactive Cinema Research – website,

(http://www.icinema.unsw.edu.au/projects/prj_eavesdrop.html) accessed July 2006.

175

As the user moves in to eavesdrop on the conversations they discover they are able to

‘zoom’ into the interior landscape of the characters and view their private thoughts.

As they zoom in, the participant is able to access the third dimension of the imagery

and give the image physical depth. Inside each character is an image or story

depicting a repressed emotional state that reveals a hidden agenda behind the surface

appearance. The audience assumes the role of an investigator, searching for links and

unifying themes. There appears to be no overt connection between the characters

other than their patronage of the club and their questionable morality, and yet through

their choice of focus, the participant appears to connect the characters as their

navigation structures the linear sequencing of events.

Though the work has a high degree of narrativity, it cannot be understood as

presenting a central dramatic narrative. The characters at each table are joined in

space and time, and yet their dialogues remain separate filmic episodes that unfold

simultaneously. This is highlighted by the existence of a ‘waiter’ character, who

appears in some capacity within each story, topping up wine glasses, seating

customers or hovering in the background. The waiter creates a unifying presence that

visually ties the stories together, yet at times he is simultaneously present in a number

of scenes, making evident the separate filming of each story vignette. This doubling

of the actor ruptures any sense of illusion, confirming that the scene presented is not a

representation of reality but a highly manufactured collage of separate units.

Emphasis is placed on the specific nature of the mediation, which is revealed as

obscuring the transparent and immediate representation of the actor’s performance

and as functioning hypermediately.

The depiction of the club is not naturalistic, but is clearly a contrived stage-setting

within what appears to be a theatre. Behind the band are rows and rows of seats, as if

the band are onstage playing to an empty theatre. Drop-curtains and exit-doors behind

some of the tables suggest a ‘backstage’ area. The lighting is highly theatrical, with

down-lights and spots rather than the enhanced naturalistic lighting of film, and the

general effect is very much one of theatrical ‘staging’. Although the work is described

by Shaw and producer Martin Thiele as “cinematic” and as multi-linear narrative

“film”, the work projects a strong sense of ‘theatre on film’, of mediatised theatre.

176

Manovich contends that the genre of cinema “works hard to erase any traces of its

own production process, including any indication that the images, which we see could

have been constructed rather than recorded. It denies that the reality it shows often

does not exist outside of the film image”.343

The content projected on the screen in

Eavesdrop alludes to the process of theatrical staging, and the work does not present

itself as cinema but as an intermedial artwork, drawing on the traditions of both

cinema and theatre.

However, unlike theatre and cinema, here the audience physically direct their focus

and determine the shape of the story. The user guides the focus of the camera, as if

they are themselves the director of the film, editing the stock footage through

processes of zooming, jumping, sweeping and panning. The user is presented with a

plot from which they are invited to develop their own unique story. David Pledger

explains that the work,

is designed for people to go in at different points and make their own story. You

are a detective, and you are putting together a story and trying to find out who is

related to whom. The way that you negotiate this is absolutely individual and

unique, and no-one else can do it the way that you do. Moreover, when you get on

the machine it is at a certain point where somebody has left off, so there is no

beginning and no end even though it loops.344

The individual determines their tempo and pace, creating their own unique rhythm as

they make narrative links to form a postnarrative text. As the participant in Eavesdrop

manipulates the interface to navigate a path through the paradigm of images, selecting

some footage and omitting or scanning over the rest, the user performs their

narrativisation of the environment.

Like the computer user, the Eavesdrop participant’s process of engagement is a

continual performance of choice and identity. However unlike the computer user who

usually performs via media or in isolation, the Eavesdrop user performs to fellow

participants. While only one person is able to interact with the work at a time, the rest

of the audience are able to stand within the space behind the user-console and observe

343

Lev Manovich, “What is Digital Cinema?” in Lunenfeld ed. (2000) The Digital Dialectic: New

Essays on New Media, Cambridge MA and London: The MIT Press, p. 178. 344

Pledger (2005)

177

the actions of the user. From their pedestal, the user mediates the database of images

for the other participants, and as these participants group together behind the user and

await their turn in the driving seat, they are able to observe, assess, and compare the

individual performances of each user.

Image 16

The work enables a sense of shared experience akin to the theatre. Pledger argues that

“The relationships between the person who is using the machine and the people who

are both waiting to use the machine or watching what somebody else makes of it is in

fact where the theatrical elements of it [the work] are”.345

He contends that a lot of media artworks cannot be experienced in a communal

environment, with the interface enabling only individual interaction. In such works,

argues Pledger,

You put a headpiece on and you interact with it, and people watch you but they

do not understand what you are doing because it doesn’t manifest. Whereas in

Eavesdrop it manifests for everybody to see; you’re turning it, you make a choice

that you like that person and you zoom in on them; that conversation is boring

you but you think that person’s interesting so you turn and go inside their head

and then all of a sudden you’re in there for five minutes and people are saying

‘C’mon, get a move on’. So that is indeed the performance of the work.346

Eavesdrop is designed so that with each participant’s individual interaction comes a

unique performance of the work, and spectators who observe a number of interactions

are able to view different versions of the work over time. The work offers an interface

to an array of potential story sequences, and each user performs a new arrangement of

the narrative elements.

345

Pledger (2005) 346

Pledger (2005)

178

Eavesdrop plays with the ingredients of narrative such as character, language and

setting to create a unique text, the form of which is re-constructed with each user’s

interaction. While the participants in Eavesdrop cannot alter the causal relationship

between presented story elements, they temporally arrange the presentation of these

elements in real-time, individually interpreting connections between story elements as

they progress. The inner time of the fiction unfolds in parallel with the ‘external’ time

of the participants’ journey. Though the constructed internal space is virtual, there are

no discrepancies such as lapses or jumps to indicate that the time of the virtual world

is not in accordance with ‘external’ time. If the work is observed over a period of time

the eventual repetition of the conversations and of the single piece of music played by

the band, emphasises the temporality of the work as ‘looped’. However, the constant

movement of the navigation means that, though the individual episodes may be

looped and therefore without temporal progression, the sequence of their showing is

never the same. As the user interacts with the work, and in doing so, mediates it for

the other participants, the performance text unfolds in real-time as the user follows

their own pace, whim and intuition. With every new user-interaction, a new text is

created, with a new rhythm, a new tempo, and a different sequencing of events. In this

way the text is not pre-scripted but rather develops through a process of interaction.

While there are elements of narrative such as plot, story kernels, and characterisation

within the textual content, the form of the text tends towards postnarrative fluidity.

Before determining the nature of the postnarrative text in multimedia theatre, it is

important to firstly clarify the foundations of narratological discourse. Conventional

narrative has maintained the same fundamental properties across many disciplines,

and traditional definitions of narrative offered by narratologists have essentially

agreed that narrative typically exhibits inherent qualities. Before any meaningful

investigation of multimedia theatre’s development of new narrative structures can be

made, an understanding of what constitutes ‘narrative’ must be consolidated to

provide a contextual point of departure and a platform for comparison.

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Traditional Narrative: Elements and Definitions

‘Narrative’ is often confused with ‘story’ or ‘plot’, which are components of the

narrative whole. Perhaps the most widely cited definition of narrative is that by

Gerald Prince, who contends that narrative is “the representation of at least two real

or fictive events in a time sequence, neither of which presupposes or entails the

other”.347

Prince’s definition of narrative is accommodating enough to include within

its parameters non-script based, non-representational and time-based work. However,

many theorists argue that the mere temporal connection of elements is too weak to

predicate narrative. For example, Brian Richardson in his article Recent Concepts of

Narrative and the Narratives of Narrative Theory (2000) asserts that “causal ties are

necessary to produce the work’s narrative status, without them, it is merely a

suggestive montage”.348

The temporal connection of events characterises the domain

of the narrative story, while the causal connection of events forms the narrative plot.

Story and plot are elements of narrative, and though the postnarrative text does not

adhere to the traditional organization of story and plot presented in the narrative text,

it rearranges these elements, and so they remain important concepts in understanding

postnarrativity.

‘Story’ is described by Seymour Chatman in his influential structuralist work, Story

and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film (1978), as the ‘what’ of

narrative (as opposed to the ‘why’); it is the chronological progression of all the

events depicted in the narrative. 349

This description suggests that the story events are

not inherently linked but are only connected through their temporal presentation; they

are yet to be related. Relating these events is the prime function of ‘plot’.

Traditionally, plot has been considered as the causal arrangement of the basic story

incidents. Peter Brook’s Reading for Plot (1984) provides an explanation of plot as

the organising principle of narrative: “the design and intention of narrative, what

shapes a story and gives it a certain direction or intent of meaning”.350

The exposition

347

Gerald Prince (1982) Narratology: The Form and Functioning of Narrative, Berlin, New York and

Amsterdam: Mouton Publishers, p. 4. 348

Brian Richardson (2000) Recent Concepts of Narrative and the Narratives of Narrative Fiction

(http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m2342/2_34) accessed April 2002, p. 9. 349

Seymour Chatman (1978) Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film, Ithaca:

Cornell University Press. 350

Peter Brook (1984) Reading for the Plot, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p.xi.

180

of plot is a defining characteristic of traditional narrative, and it is at the level of plot

(or lack thereof) that the distinction between narrative and non-narrative has been

traditionally made.

Chatman regards narratives that lack causal entailment (ie narrative that treats all

choices and possible actions as equally valid) as ‘anti-narratives’ because “what they

call into question is precisely narrative logic, that one thing leads to another”.351

However, such absolute demarcation of narrative and non-narrative is overly

simplistic and has been challenged by contemporary narrative discourse which now

recognises qualities such as ‘narrativity’ and the ‘open text’, and acknowledges that

labels such as ‘anti-narrative’ fail to recognise the complexity of contemporary

narrative (or postnarrative) expression. Particularly within the field of poststructural

and performance-based narrative theory, adherence to a definition of narrative as

linear has been increasingly questioned and a wider definition of narrative embraced,

a definition that includes within its scope narrative that is non-linear and/or open-

ended. The issue of linearity versus non-linearity introduces the concept of

temporality, which is a key element in defining narrative form and a central site in

which to locate the transition from narrative to postnarrative expression. Time is also

a significant aspect in understanding the efficacy of multimedia performance, and the

notion of multimedia performance as a time-based artform is important to

understanding its place in the cultural moment.

Narrative both constructs and transcends time and is understood by theorists such as

Paul Ricouer, as being the only single framework for perceiving and understanding

time that humans can comprehend. For the purpose of narrative analysis, time may be

conceived as manifest in two mutually existing forms. Firstly, time may be

understood as a metaphysical entity, an objective reality within which we exist.

Secondly, time is the human’s subjective consciousness of experience, the awareness

and measurement of movement, change, and succession. For while ordinary

experience seems to take place within time, the only awareness of this external time

we have is the experience itself. This fact of course complicates the demarcation of

the two realms of metaphysical and subjective time for any comprehension of the

351

Chatman (1978) p. 56.

181

metaphysical is in essence a subjective construction, however the distinction between

metaphysical and subjective time is important to narrative conventions. Narratives

with a logically constructed plot exist as a temporal framework; a representation of

metaphysical time within which all the events of the story occur. Postnarrative texts

lack this temporal dimension. They do not attempt to represent metaphysical time but

emphasise and manipulate the subjective experience of temporal movement and

stasis.

Ricouer suggests that narrative time has two dimensions, which are both in

themselves, a shared ‘public’ time. Firstly, there is the time common to the characters,

as ‘time woven in common by their interaction’.352

This time is an ‘internal’ time, it is

the time of the narrative chronotope. 353

However, narrative also has a relation to an

‘external public time’, the time of the reader or audience. This duality is also

reflected in the Structuralists’ division of ‘story’ and ‘narrative discourse’, which

distinguishes the story events from the nature and structure of their telling. Both the

story and discourse have their own temporality, which are consistent with Ricouer’s

concepts of ‘internal’ and ‘external’ time. The manifestation of time in the

postnarrative text alters the traditional relationship of external and internal duration,

as will be addressed in the following arguments. In postdramatic multimedia texts,

external time is rendered in place of internal time, and the real and fictional are

merged within the shared time of the performance.

In his discussion of time in postdramatic theatre, Lehmann states,

Theatre is familiar with the time dimension of the staging peculiar to it. While the

text gives the reader the choice to read faster or slower, to repeat or to pause, in

theatre the specific time of the performance with its particular rhythm and its

individual dramaturgy (tempo of action and speech, duration, pauses and

silences, etc.) belongs to the ‘work’.354

352

Ricouer in Richardson (2002) p. 41. 353

Bakhtin refers to the metaphysical relationship of time and space at the foundation of fictional

narratives as the narrative’s ‘chronotope’. He posits that each genre or type of novel is formed by an

intrinsic relationship of time and space that informs and shapes the narrative action. Bakhtin’s

‘chronotope’ is similar to Paul Ricouer’s concept of plot. Ricouer describes plot as “the intelligible

whole that governs a succession of events in any story”. A plot, he states, places us at the crossroads of

temporality and narrativity. See Bakthin in Richardson (2002) p. 22. 354

Lehmann (2006) p. 153.

182

It is this time dimension of the staging, of the performance text, that is emphasised

and manipulated in postdramatic multimedia performance. Time becomes an opaque,

almost physical presence and the experience of a sense of time passing is integral to

the efficacy of such works. In Eavesdrop, the internal time is fixed in a kind of

continual, looped present, while the speed, duration, and rhythm of the user’s

navigation manipulates awareness of external time, functioning to thematise the

concept and subjectivity of time itself.

Postdramatic multimedia theatre has progressed beyond the dictates of traditional

narrative, presenting open-structured, dynamic, interactive performance texts.

However, I will argue that such ‘postnarrative’ texts may be considered as playing

with the building blocks of traditional narrative such as story, plot, sequence and

progression, dispersing these elements, emphasising some and diminishing others, to

create poetic patterns that allow the audience higher levels of active engagement.

Contemporary Approaches: Postructuralism and Narrativity

Two key transitions that have paved the way for the recognition and theorisation of

the ‘postnarrative text’ are: the move from structuralist to poststructuralist

narratology; and the acknowledgement of notions of ‘narrativity’ within narrative

studies. While neither of these theoretical developments is sufficient to effectively

articulate the nature of narrative, or narrativity, in multimedia theatre and new media

performance, they together provide a basis from which to construct a theory of

postnarrativity. The concept of the postnarrative text defined in this chapter attempts

to build on, and so displace, these previous approaches to understanding the nature of

narrative in non-representational art, literature and performance.

While structuralist narratology has rejected the relevance of non-representational

works to narrative theory, labelling them ‘non-narrative’ or ‘anti-narrative’,

contemporary narrative discourse recognises that the dismissal of such works fails to

acknowledge the potential complexity of narrative expression. Poststructuralist

narrative theory abandons classical narratological frameworks, arguing that analysis

should not concentrate on the text as object, but examine narrative as a site of

183

interaction. The recognition that narrative may be formed through a process of

collaboration is crucial to understanding the nature of narrativity in postdramatic

multimedia performance such as Eavesdrop, which is formed through interactive

engagement and fluidly develops over time.

The concept of the postnarrative text builds on the poststructuralist’s perception of

narrative as a ‘site of performance’. Marie Maclean in her book Narrative as

Performance: The Baudelairean Experiment (1988), focuses not on the structure of

narrative, but on the “teller-hearer nexus inherent in all narrative”.355

In this view, the

text is not a fixed object but is ‘performed’ and consequently subject to variation,

making every performance unique. Ian Reid in his work Narrative Exchanges (1992)

pays tribute to Maclean’s ideas, expanding the notion of narrative as an interaction

and forging a relationship between the disciplines of narrative theory and exchange

theory. He argues that “Narrative theory, for its part, needs to proceed beyond the

early narratological agenda to investigate more fully not only the pragmatics of story

telling as a relationship between communicants but also the textual devices that work

against any fixed framework of exchange”.356

His book brings those two areas of

theory into a mutually critical engagement.

The perception of narrative as produced through interaction recognises the

‘interpretive engagement’357

inherent to all artistic exchange. While interactivity is of

central importance to the narrative effect of all theatrical performance, it is of

particular significance to the understanding of narrative (or postnarrative) effects in

multimedia works such as Eavesdrop, for such works are not only interactive on an

interpretive level, but are physically interactive. Here the reader’s performance of the

narrative is made overt. In Eavesdrop, the audience is able to intervene in narrative

progression, introducing unpredictability and chance at the level of narrative

discourse (the showing of events) and denying a “fixed framework of exchange”. The

spontaneous reactions and thought processes of the participant are externalised as

they interact with the textual devices, and the notion of causal linearity within the text

is undermined. Maclean’s definition of narrative as performance, as interaction, is an

355

Marie Maclean (1988) Narrative as Performance, London: Routledge, p. 2. 356

Ian Reid (1992) Narrative Exchanges, London & New York: Routledge, p. 3. 357

This term was introduced and defined in Chapter 5.

184

important basis upon which to build a theoretical understanding of the disruption of

narrative linearity that occurs in physically interactive new media performance.

In relation to interactive media, the term ‘non-linear’ has often been used to describe

the temporality of narrative structure. However this term is somewhat simplistic when

applied to multimedia theatre or new media performance, as it still supposes a highly

structured arrangement of story elements. ‘Non-linear’ narrative disrupts the linear

presentation of the event sequence, often in a highly formulaic pattern, for example,

when the story events are depicted in their reverse temporal order. Contemporary

multimedia theatre is experimenting with the elements of narrative in a much less

formulaic capacity. Another interpretation of the term ‘non-linear’ may infer a level

of stasis, of fixedness, placing the work ‘outside’ time as is the case traditionally with

visual art objects. This is also problematic as the progression of time is integral in the

creation of accumulative, thematic meaning in multimedia performance. The audience

still experiences a sense of linearity based on the progression of real time; there is

movement and the work ‘flows’.

Multimedia theatre can be more accurately understood as exhibiting a degree of

‘narrativity’. H. Porter Abbott attempts to define the vexed issue of ‘narrativity’ as

“the degree to which one feels that a story is being told or performed”358

; his

understanding of narrativity as a matter of degree recognises that the measurement of

this degree is subjective.359

Such ambiguity suggests that performance that is non-

literary, non-representational, and non-closure-oriented should not simply be

dismissed as ‘non-narrative’ or ‘anti-narrative’, as there is still narrativity and such

performance can be viewed as utilising the elements of narrative in unconventional

ways.

The notion of narrativity plays a significant role in developing a theory of the

postnarrative text. For if narrativity is considered a matter of degree then all texts,

from formally structured realist representation to the fully abstracted performance

event, may be recognised as relevant to a discussion of narrativity; such examples can

358

H. Porter Abbott (2002) The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative, Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, p. 193. 359

Abbott (2002) p. 22.

185

be positioned along a scale of narrativity. Perceived in this way, narrative can no

longer be viewed as a discrete structure but as one extreme end of a gradient. Once

narrative has lost its status as a structure, and has instead become a subjective quality,

then a ‘postnarrative’ perspective has been embraced.

The Postnarrative Text

Cybernetics and literary theorist Marie-Laure Ryan argues that an appropriate

approach to deal with narrative in a variety of media “consists of viewing narrativity

as a cognitive frame into which readers process texts, authors shape materials, and the

human mind categorises experiential data”.360

Like McLean’s positioning of the

narrative as ‘interaction’, this view suggests narrative should not be viewed as an

inherent structure of the text, but as a subjectively formed by the reader. As Ryan

explains, this perspective “legitimates the attempt to seek underlying narrative

patterns in texts that do not present themselves as a narrative act and do not exhibit

the surface features of narration, such as lyric poetry or certain forms of postmodern

fiction.”361

The argument here recognises that the attempt to seek “underlying patterns in texts

that do not present themselves as a narrative act” is an innate human tendency.

Theorists such as Ryan suggest that human beings tend to narrativise experience,

seeking relationality and cohesion between events that may on the surface seem

unconnected. Narrative then is itself a means of articulating experience and

perception, and in order to make sense of their existence, human beings tend to

compress facets of real life or fictions into an organised pattern. Thomas Postlewait

explains, “We are condemned not simply to time but, much more interestingly, to

making sense in various ways of our consciousness of time, our consciousness of

history. Narrative gives shape to our understanding”.362

The ability to understand

360

Marie-Laure Ryan “Cyberage Narratology: Computers, Metaphor, and Narrative” in David Herman

ed. (1999) Narratologies: New Perspectives on Narrative Analysis, Columbus: Ohio State University

Press, p. 117. 361

Ryan in Herman ed. (1999) p. 118. 362

Thomas Postlewait, ‘History, Hermeneutics, and Narrativity’, Janelle G. Reinelt and Joseph R.

Roach eds. (2002) Critical Theory and Performance, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

186

and interpret narrative is developed from a young age.363

Through continual exposure

to different narratives over time, we acquire what David Herman recognises as an

“experiential repertoire”,364

and develop an inbuilt understanding of narrative

language. It is this inbuilt narrative language that enables audiences and readers to

piece together fragmented and textual elements and experience meaning from their

connection.

However, with the enculturation of what Jean-Francois Lyotard coined ‘the

postmodern condition’, the struggle to make sense of existence is recast as the need to

account for the multiplicity of perceived realities. In The Postmodern Condition; A

Report on Knowledge, Lyotard explores the shifting nature of knowledge in a

technologically-driven society that has developed throughout the second half of the

twentieth century, and declares, “the grand narrative has lost its credibility, regardless

of what mode of unification it uses”.365

Today, the human being encounters the world

without imposed referential frameworks, but through interaction with the world,

develop their own emergent localised stories (Lyotard’s petit recits).

Twenty-first century technology-saturated youth predominantly process their

environment in fragments, living in a permanently extended ‘poly-present’, seeking

the experientially engaging, the interactive, the hyperreal. Janet Murray asserts,

“They take the powerful sensory presence and participatory formats of digital media

for granted. They are impatient to see what is next”.366

In this hyperreal environment,

the informing linearity and monologism of traditional narrative is often abandoned or

at least transformed. The western consumer’s experiential repertoire is slowly

expanding as meaning is found in fragmented, fractured and chaotic realities, and the

‘narrative language within’367

is redefined. While the tendency to seek pattern and

relate otherwise random elements is an innate function of the human mind, the

‘narrative language within’ may be considered as continually updating itself and

363

Two-year-olds have been recorded constructing and relating narratives, which contain critical

situation, complication, and resolution. See Crago in Marie Maclean (1988) p. 2. 364

David Herman (1997) ‘Scripts, Sequences, and Stories: Elements of a Postclassical Narratology’,

PMLA Publication of the Modern Language Association of America, Vol. 112, No. 5, p. 1047. 365

Lyotard in Reid (1992) p. 166. 366

Murray (2000) p. 10. 367

The term is used by Roland Barthes (1977) ‘Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives’,

Image Music Text, trans. Stephen Heath, New York: Hill & Wang, p. 101.

187

reflecting a cultural shift into a condition of Virtuality. Perhaps the ‘narrative

language within us’ has now evolved into a postnarrative language, that no longer

projects causal structure but seeks pattern, producing thematic rather than narrative

cohesion.

The term ‘postnarrative’ builds on the poststructural understanding of narrative as

brought into being through the interaction of text and viewer, and assumes that the

location of the narrative resides in the cognitive processes of the viewer. The

postnarrative text may be recognised in terms of ‘narrativity’, the degree of which is

subjectively determined by the viewer based on the extent to which they interpret

patterns within the elements of the presented work. The postnarrative text ‘happens’

as the audience seek ‘underlying patterns’, and rebuild the basic blocks of narrative to

create paths of personal association and thematic significance.

It is my contention that the term ‘postnarrative’ should not be viewed as implying a

break from traditional narrative models, but as recognising the evolution of such

models into new forms. I argue that contemporary multimedia theatre cannot be

termed non-narrative, for while multimedia theatre certainly moves away from

traditional narrative representation, neither does it completely reject narrative.

Lyotard, in his Note on the Meaning of ‘Post-’ suggests the prefix ‘post’ may be used

to indicate “something like a conversion: a new direction from the previous one” and

to imply a sense of simple succession.368

In this sense, ‘post’ is used here not to imply

a break or contrast between narrative and postnarrative forms, but to suggest a

conversion from one mode of communication into a revised, successive mode. The

postnarrative is not simply ‘non-narrative’ or ‘anti-narrative’ as conceived by

structuralists such as Chatman; it is the reworking of narrative, the reformulation and

successor of narrative. It is the extreme extension of Eco’s ‘open work’ and should be

understood not as an entity or object, but as a description of creative interaction that

denies the prescription of meaning presented in representational and narrative-based

art. The postnarrative text, rather than presenting an authoritative temporal structure

368

Lyotard in Thomas Docherty ed. (1993) Postmodernism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

p. 48.

188

that dictates the relation of all the events depicted, develops form through process as

the audience shape the content.

Postnarrative texts rework elements of traditional narrative such as story, plot,

sequence and temporality, and draw on the audience’s tendency to narrativise their

experience. For example, in the case of interactive new media performance where the

audience is invited to navigate a virtual environment or hypertext, a clearly

constructed framework (plot) is presented but the specific sequence of events that the

audience experience (story) is left open. Alternatively, theatre may utilise intermedial

staging to present a sequence of events (story) without causally associating these

events within a logical framework (plot). In this instance the audience is invited to

connect these events through the interpretation of underlying patterns, and in doing so

they develop their own ‘plot’.

Both these examples also challenge the relationship between ‘internal’ and ‘external’

time that exists in the presentation of traditional narrative. In postnarrative

performance, the demarcation of ‘internal’ and ‘external’ worlds within the work is

eroded, and it is only the dimension of the ‘performance time’, of ‘external’ or ‘public

time’, that exists. The hypermediality of multimedia performance, which reminds the

viewer of the medium and its distinct form of mediation, often results in the ‘passing

of time’ itself becoming a thematic focus. The dynamic arrangement of the performed

actions may be designed so as to manipulate and play with the audience’s perception

of external time, for example, devices such as repetition, patterns of emphasis, tempo,

duration, and rhythm are devices of time, and so manipulate the subjective perception

of time passing. Hypermediality lends the audience a certain distance from the text

and so enables them a greater awareness of the textual devices that play upon their

experience of temporality.

The postnarrative text is therefore always in a process of becoming, and should not be

considered an artefact but an experience. It is most prominent when a work is

physically interactive, however a work does not have to offer the audience agency to

qualify as postnarrative, for as discussed in the previous chapter, interaction is a

matter of degree. In intermedial staging that disregards the causal sequencing of

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events, the audience’s interpretive engagement with the elements of performance may

also form a ‘postnarrative’ text. Combinations of staged elements can create a

stimulating environment that encourages the audience to experience the relationships

between the potential micro-narratives and engage with poetic devices. While in

physically interactive works the postnarrative text is created externally through the

physical intervention of the audience in the work, in the ‘intermedial mise en scene’

the creation of the text remains an internal process.

While live performance may certainly produce postnarrative texts, new media

performance enables a high degree of audience interactivity, offering the audience the

agency to direct their navigation of the production and physically engage with the

textual content. There have already been a number of publications addressing the

nature of narrative presentation in new media, some of the most notable being Marie-

Laure Ryan’s expansive body of work including the books Avatars of Story:

Narrative Modes in Old and New Media (2006) and Narrative as Virtual Reality:

Immersion and Interactivity in Literature and Electronic Media (2001), Janet

Murray’s Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace (2000),

George Landow’s Hypertext 2.0 (1997) and even perhaps Lev Manovich’s The

Language of New Media (2001). The next section of this chapter does not intend to

retread this established terrain, but rather selectively addresses the relevant elements

of this discourse that may inform the discussion of narrativity in multimedia theatre,

and assists in providing a language through which to address the characteristics of the

postnarrative text in performance.

New media and Narrative: Contemporary Discourse

The interactive capabilities of new media enable the creation of postnarrative texts

that develop through the participant’s navigation of a virtual environment or fictional

framework. Here the computer-based virtuality offers the equivalent of a ‘plot’; it

offers an expanse of potential event sequences through which any number of alternate

paths can be navigated. As they click on an option or navigate forward, the participant

creates their own specific chain of event from the interwoven array of possibilities

offered within the frame. The participants structure the information as they access it,

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interpreting the ‘narrativity’ of the given text and forging new story patterns. Some

forms of new media art that enable such creative processes are online multi-user

dramas, hypertexts, computer-generated virtual realities and interactive new media

installations such as Eavesdrop.

One of the most informative explanations of the possibility for the audience’s active

participation in the online multi-user drama is offered in Janet Murray’s Hamlet on

the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace (2000), which explores the

narrative possibilities of digital environments and discusses the dramatic complexities

of what she labels ‘participatory stories’. Her views are based on the notion that the

combination of text, video, and navigable space suggest “that a computer-based

microworld need not be mathematical but could be shaped as a dynamic fictional

universe with characters and events”.369

Murray, referring to the computer mediated

navigable world, suggests that we do not traditionally expect to experience agency

within a narrative environment.370

However, in digital contexts such as ‘multi-user

domains’ and activities such as ‘live-action role playing’, Murray highlights how

narrative can be constructed in a digital reality with the consumers of the narrative

actively participating in the creation of story, experiencing both complete immersion

in the fiction and a strong sense of agency.371

Murray refers to the ‘multiform story’, which describes a dramatic narrative that

presents a single plotline in numerous versions that in our everyday experience would

be mutually exclusive.372

Multiform stories give simultaneous form to a multiplicity

of contradictory possibilities. When the writer develops the story to present numerous

alternatives, Murray explains that the consumer is required to assume a more active

role and participate in the creative process, not merely as an active interpreter of

understanding as in Eco’s ‘open-work’, but as an instigator and a director of the

action in digital environments.373

The ‘multi-form’ story is different to the interactive

drama, in that it works with more of a ‘choose your own ending’ framework, with

participants hyperlinking from one story event to another. Ideally, the ‘interactive

369

Murray (2000) p. 6. 370

Murray (2000) p.126. 371

Murray (2000) p. 147-153. 372

Murray (2000) p. 30. 373

Murray (2000) p. 38.

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drama’ involves more online role-playing, with participants free to create new story

events in collaboration with other online players. However, as discussed in the

previous chapter, the interactive drama is not necessarily as open to participant

contribution as its name would suggest. In the online drama Jupiter Green, as

outlined by Dena, users are rarely given the opportunity to enact agency over the

dramatic content or influence the direction of the narrative. Interactive drama may

also however evolve within the format of a ‘multi-user domain’ and so enable a far

higher degree of audience agency with the potential for ‘complex interaction’

(outlined in Chapter 5). In both the multi-form story and the interactive drama,

participants interact with a scenario or environment (a plot) to generate an individual

event sequence (story) and a unique text is produced.

Many interactive narratives rely on the general format of the hypertext. Digital

literature, multiform stories and interactive dramas at some point require the

participant to select a ‘link’ and click to access new information. The hypertext opens

up the traditional narrative framework, enabling participants to negotiate a variety of

story sequences and determine the pace and direction of their navigation. As they do

so, they collaborate with the narrativity of the offered environment/text to produce an

individualised work. As Peter Lunenfeld articulates, “One of the most often noted

qualities of hypertext is the way it offers a never ending variety of ways through

material”.374

As I argued in Chapter 5, it is a mistake to perceive hypertext as offering

‘never ending variety’ for its options are inevitably limited. However, the hypertext

model of organising and accessing information has greatly influenced the creation,

and discussion, of interactive narrative.

The implications of the proliferation of hypertext for the future of narrative have been

discussed by contemporary new media theorists such as George Landow. Lev

Manovich however, distinctively extends this focus by addressing the significance of

the hypertext narrative as a reflection of cultural perceptions and understandings of

the world. He suggests that the acceptance of hyperlinking in the 1980s “can be

correlated with contemporary culture’s suspicion of all hierarchies, and preference for

the aesthetics of collage in which radically different sources are brought together

374

Lunenfeld (2000) p. 14.

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within a singular cultural object”.375

Building on Manovich’s assertion, it follows that

postnarrative texts may also reflect contemporary cultural perceptions, as will be

explored in the final section of this chapter.

Referring to the computer interface, Manovich suggests that the organization of data

provides distinct models of the world.376

While narrative has dominated the modern

era as the primary form of cultural expression, presenting a model of the world built

on causal order, Manovich argues that the advent of new media has displaced the

dominance of the narrative model with that of the ‘database’. As such, the model of

the database develops importance in understanding the organization of textual

elements in postnarrative performance, particularly in interactive multimedia works

such as Eavesdrop. Manovich declares that the database and the narrative are natural

enemies, as traditional literary narrative orders information in a sequence of cause and

effect, while the database “represents the world as a list of items, and it refuses to

order this list”.377

However, new media can provide a platform that connects narrative

and database strategies. In new media, narrative is the creation of the interface to a

database, so that the ‘user’ of the new media narrative is really “traversing a database,

following links between its records as established by the database’s creator”.378

Manovich uses the semiological concepts of syntagm and paradigm to further

illustrate the relation of narrative and the database. In traditional narrative the

syntagm (the specific combination of signs) is explicitly available to the consumer,

while the paradigm (the group of possible signs from which the specific sign is

selected) remains implicit. New media however, reverse this relationship: the

“database (the paradigm) is given material existence, while narrative (the syntagm) is

dematerialised”.379

As such, the narrative is a subjective, transient construct while the

database is a material depository from which an endless number of narratives can be

created.

Manovich’s use of semiological terminology reconceptualizes traditional notions of

‘plot’ and ‘story’, with the terms ‘syntagm’ and ‘paradigm’ providing a more apt

375

Manovich (2001) p. 76. 376

Manovich (2001) p. 57. 377

Manovich (2001) p. 225. 378

Manovich (2001) p. 227. 379

Manovich (2001) p. 231.

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description of the informational structures in new media. His understanding of new

media as reversing the relationship of syntagm and paradigm presented in literary or

dramatic narrative is helpful in articulating the structure of the postnarrative text in

interactive performance. Computer-based interactivity offers the participant a

database of information accessed via an interface from which they construct a specific

combination of signs. The interactive artwork offers a potential selection of what

Chatman calls ‘kernels’ and Barthes calls ‘nuclei’ (events that constitute the story),

which are then ordered into temporal sequence by the user’s process of selective

navigation. Manovich explains that, the interactive computer interface makes explicit

the “paradigmatic dimension” and relies on the user intervention to organise the

syntagmic set. He compares this process to the construction of a sentence in a natural

language: “Just as a language user constructs a sentence by choosing each successive

word from a paradigm of other possible words, a new media user creates a sequence

of screens by clicking on this or that icon at each screen.”380

The significance of the model described by Manovich to understanding the form of

the postnarrative text in multimedia performance is clearly highlighted in the case of

Eavesdrop. Eavesdrop presents the participant with a database or paradigm of story

elements, images and textual components for the participant to navigate. As the

participant traces a path through the available material, passing over some elements to

focus on other, they compose the syntagm. Here the database (paradigm) is given

material existence, while the narrative (syntagm) is brought into material existence by

the individual participant. As the audience navigate the aesthetic environment they

externalise their ‘innate tendency to narratise experience’ and perform their

narratisation of the textual stimulus.

While Manovich’s narrative/database dialectic provides a framework that can be used

to articulate the formal structure of the postnarrative text, the process whereby the

individual’s experience of interpreting the significance of the presented content is

more dynamic, more subtle. The order of the ‘story’ events in new media works such

as Eavesdrop is inherently alterable and as such, the significance of each event

cannot, as in traditional narrative, be recognised as producing meaning in relation to

380

Manovich (2001) p. 232.

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its position within a temporal and causal structure. While the textual devices or ‘lexia’

(Barthes’ term for a grouping of signs within a text) contribute to the narrative

‘whole’, the non-hierarchical ordering of lexia means that the progression of events in

the story cannot be viewed as moving forward from a beginning towards an end.

Rather what evolves in postdramatic multimedia theatre and the posnarrative text is a

spatial extension of the temporal present, in which causal logic and temporal

progression are dismissed. The essence of the postnarrative work being a space is

captured beautifully by Pierre Levy in his description of the status of the relationship

between artist and recipient in “The Art and Architecture of Cyberspace”. He

explains,

Rather than distribute a message to recipients who are outside the process of

creation and invited to give meaning to a work of art belatedly, the artist now

attempts to construct an environment, a system of communication and production,

a collective event that implies its recipients, transforms interpreters into actors,

enables interpretation to enter the loop with collective action.381

He suggests that such an arrangement is prefigured by the ‘open work’, but contends

that the open work is inevitably “trapped in the hermeneutic paradigm”, inviting the

audience to fill in the gaps left open in the narrative. Rather he refers to what he labels

“the art of implication” which he suggests is not a ‘work’ of art at all, but instead,

“places us within a creative cycle, a living environment of which we are always

already the coauthors.”382

The move towards the construction of an environment, rather than a metaphysical

temporal framework, is evident in Eavesdrop, which creates both a real and virtual

immersive space that participants are invited to inhabit. Within this environment

process is brought to the forefront and meaning is generated through organic process

and spontaneous creative involvement with objects and devices within the space.

Hans-Thies Lehmann argues that this extension of the spatial dimension within

postdramatic theatre manifests Kristeva’s dimension of the ‘semiotic’ and can be

understood as attempting a “restitution of chora: of a space and speech/discourse 381

Pierre Levy “The Art and Architecture of Cyberspace” in Randall Packer and Ken Jordan eds.

(2001) Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality, London and New York: W.W. Norton and

Company, p. 375. 382

Levy in Packer and Jordan eds. (2001) p. 375.

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without telos, hierarchy and causality, without fixable meaning and unity…”.383

It is

Lehmann’s contention that theatre is transforming into a “chora-ography: the

deconstruction of a discourse oriented towards meaning and the invention of a space

that eludes the laws of telos and unity.”384

The ‘chora’, explains Lehmann, “exists in

language as its ‘poetry’.”385

This dimension of the poetic is a prominent aspect of the

efficacy of postnarrative text.

Poetics and Postnarrativity

The postnarrative text, as earlier suggested is an experiential process rather than an

artefact, and this experience is one of both creation and interpretation. To articulate

and analyse this experience, it may be pertinent to focus on the efficacy of the

embedded poetic devices, rather than on the traditional components of narrative.

Poetic devices are only brought into effect through encounter; unlike notions such as

character and plot, which are designed to have the appearance of an autonomous,

universal existence, poetic devices are designed to illicit creative, subjective response.

To understand the process whereby the individual participant encounters the content

of a multimedia work, and develops associations between the various audio-visual

lexia, it is possible to think not in narratological terms, but in terms of poetic

operations. The following section suggests that the process of interpreting texts that

privilege the spatial dimension and present a non-hierarchical organization of events,

moves beyond formal narrative structures and is produced by poetic strategies on a

micro-level. To examine such a process, it is more productive not to think in terms of

narrative ingredients but rather to adopt a framework of poetics.

In an analysis of the postnarrative text it is perhaps relevant to return to the notion of

theatre as ‘scenic poem’ and consider the performance text in terms of the poetic

operations at play. The connection between the language of theatre and poetry was

originally promoted by symbolists such as Maeterlinck, who declared that “theatre

has to be above all a poem”386

and is a concept revisited by Lehmann in his

description of the postdramatic mise en scene. He describes the web of composition in 383

Lehmann (2006) p. 146. 384

Ibid. 385

Ibid. 386

Maeterlinck in Lehmann (2006) p. 59.

196

Jan Lauwer’s work as a “new kind of aesthetic alchemy, in which all staging means to

join into a poetic language”.387

Lehmann contends that “such formations/processes

situated in-between poetry, theatre and installation are best characterised as a scenic

poem. Like a poet, the director composes fields of association between words, sounds,

bodies, movement, light and objects”.388

Eavesdrop can certainly be characterized as

‘situated in between poetry, theatre and installation’. Like the theatrical ‘scenic

poem’, Eavesdrop emphasizes the spatial dimension, albeit virtual, and promotes non-

hierarchical contiguity.

Poetry, as opposed to narrative, may provide an analytical framework through which

to understand the postnarrative text. Samuel R. Delany suggests that there are two

‘metaphors’ that “contest for primacy in describing the humanities’ encounter with

itself and the world”.389

The first views the world as a series of linear, systematic

narratives. The second suppressed metaphor sees the world as a series of poems.

Delany explains that while this latter metaphor has never been dominant, neither has

it ever been completely suppressed, and there are certain historical periods when this

model has been more overtly evident: “In the 1890s, again in the 1920s, and arguable

in the 1960s, this marginal model moved forward in the general consciousness, and

commanded more intelligent attention than it has at other times”.390

Just as 'free-verse' or 'open-form'391

poetry emphasizes natural flow and rhythm

without prescriptive structure, so too does the navigation of cyberspace and virtual

space in works such as Eavesdrop create a fluid and unscripted pattern of language

and lexia. There are a small number of prominent new media theorists such as Marcus

Novak and George Landow who assert poetry to be an apt model for articulating the

arrangement of language and communication in virtual spaces. Marcos Novak in his

essay Liquid Architecture in Cyberspace addresses the realm of cyberspace as

constructed from the fluid language of poetry. He perceives cyberspace as the “habitat

387

Lehmann (2006) p. 183. 388

Ibid. 389

Samuel R. Delany “Remarks on Narrative and Technology, or Poetry and Truth” in Aronowitz et al.

eds (1996) Technoscience and Cyberculture. New York and London: Routledge, p. 261. 390

Delany in Aronowitz et al. (1996) p. 262. 391

For details of free-verse and open-form poetry see Marjorie Perloff (1998) After Free Verse: The

New Non-Linear Poetries, (http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/authors/perloff/free.html) accessed January

2007.

197

of the imagination, a habitat for the imagination. Cyberspace is the place where

conscious dreaming meets subconscious dreaming, a landscape of rational magic”.392

Novak declares “cyberspace is poetry inhabited….By push and pull we navigate

through a space of meaning that is sensitive to the most minute variations in

articulation. Poetry is liquid language”.393

George Landow in his analysis of hypertext also looks at the potential of viewing this

digital environment as a poetic rather than a narrative form. He explains, “the link, the

element that hypertext adds to writing, bridges gaps between text – bits of text-and

thereby produces effects similar to analogy, metaphor, and other forms of thought,

other figures, that we take to define poetry and poetic thought”.394

It is in terms of

these ‘poetic effects’, ‘forms of thought’, ‘figures’ that we can explore the fluidity of

cyberspace. Novak argues that it is only in terms of these ‘operations’ that we can

understand the fascination of cyberspace:

Tools of poets: image and rhythm, meter and accent, alliteration and rhyme,

tautology, simile..…As difficult as it may sound, it is with operations such as these

that we need to contend in cyberspace. Nothing less can suffice.395

It is in terms of these poetic devices that we can understand the efficacy of the

postnarrative text. In Eavesdrop, such poetic operations are engaging the audience’s

entire sensorium. As the participant navigates the virtual space, they draw

associations between images, sounds, words, movement, and light. In their dynamic

encounter, the participant engages with nuance, metaphor, antithesis and inflection.

As they journey through the environment, the postnarrative text is punctuated by

rhythm, repetition, tempo, enjambment, tension and caesura. If cyberspace is ‘poetry

inhabited’ as Novak suggests, then I would argue that interactive new media

performance is ‘poetry performed’.

The postnarrative text created in interactive works such as Eavesdrop can be accessed

and examined through the analytical tools of poetry that look to understand the effects

392

Marcus Novak “Liquid Architectures in Cyberspace” in Packer and Jordan eds. (2001) Multimedia:

From Wagner To Virtual Reality, New York: W.W.Norton and Company, p. 274. 393

Novak in Packer and Jordan eds. (2001) p. 277. 394

George Landow (1997) Hypertext 2.0, Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, p. 21. 395

Novak in Packer and Jordan eds. (2001) p. 277.

198

of rhythm and resonance, rather than through narrative structure. When the grand

design of an overarching narrative has been rejected, and focus placed on the small

intricacies, relations and nuances of different elements, meaning is generated through

the accumulation of momentary effects. Postnarrative works present a conglomerate

of potential micro-narratives embedded in the elements of the performance that are

experienced and processed in the participant’s encounter with the environment. These

elements are not presented within a temporal frame, and are not related in terms of

causality. Postnarrative performance presents the audience with a space, either a live

space or a staged virtuality, that triggers the audience’s susceptibility to develop

associations and narrativise experience.

Presence, Pattern and The Postnarrative Text

This chapter has positioned the phenomenon of the postnarrative text within a

historical and theoretical context so as to elucidate its definitive qualities and build a

language through which to articulate the nature of narrativity in new media

performance. While developing as part of an ongoing dynamic, the postnarrative text

is inextricably connected to the changing cultural climate and contemporary society’s

move into virtual spaces. This chapter further argues that the dynamism and fluidity

of the postnarrative text is symptomatic of cultural perceptions; narrative construction

reflects the cultural paradigm in which it is produced, and the performance of the

postnarrative text in multimedia theatre presents a model of the world as perceived

through the lens of Virtuality.

While classic narrative presents a rational model of the world founded on supposedly

objective truths, and the hypertext or non-linear narrative reflects a networked, non-

hierarchical model of the world (as illustrated by Manovich), the postnarrative text

embraces contingency and organic process, reflecting a model of a world in which

materiality has been destabilised and infiltrated by the flow of information. The

postnarrative text is not ‘structured’ per se, but alternatively, its poetry is ‘contained’

within the specifications of the work. Rather then assuming an authored design that

places each moment within a rigid architecture, it anticipates a certain randomness or

lack of form from which pattern evolves through intervention and interpretation. It is

199

in this capacity that the postnarrative text is reflective of the general premise of our

cultural condition of Virtuality as defined by Hayles, in which the material world is

perceived as being displaced and interpenetrated by the pattern and randomness of

information. While admittedly narrative cannot be regarded as a material entity, it

represents the material world, reflecting its rules of causality and temporality. In the

shift from narrative to postnarrative, the logocentric hierarchy of the narrative reality

becomes interpenetrated by elements of randomness and outside intervention: an

illustration of the cultural shift into a condition of Virtuality, in which the fabric of

materiality is perceived as fluidly interwoven with informational pattern.

The move from narrative to postnarrative production reflects the cultural move into a

condition of Virtuality in which the dialectic of pattern/randomness is made

prominent over the dialectic of presence/absence. As earlier outlined, the focus of

twentieth century narrative discourse has moved from narrative, to non-linear

narrative, to recognising the evolution of something beyond these terms. This

progression reflects the trajectory of theoretical perspectives within cultural studies:

Hayles describes how twentieth century cultural philosophy has moved from a

commitment to presence, to an exploration of absence, then to the recognition of a

condition that can no longer be articulated in these terms.

Hayles outlines how the framework of presence/absence as conceptualised by Jacques

Derrida allies presence with Logos and a stable origin that grounds signification and

gives meaning to the teleology of history. This metaphysics of presence, argues

Hayles, “front-loaded meaning into the system”:396

meaning was certain because a

definite origin existed. Deconstruction undermined this perspective, questioning the

ability of systems to confirm their own origin and therefore placing the contingent

process of signification in doubt. Absence displaced and prefigured presence, and

meaning became destabilised. Hayles recognises the importance of the shift from

presence to absence in twentieth century thought, but emphasises that this focus is

still located within the framework of the presence/absence dialectic. One can only

recognise ‘lack’ if that which is presumed absent is first conceptualised as a presence:

“Just as the metaphysics of presence required an originary plenitude to articulate a

396

Hayles (1999) p. 285.

200

stable self, deconstruction required a metaphysics of presence to articulate the

destabilisation of that self”.397

As an alternative to the presence/absence paradigm, Hayles asserts that in the

dialectic of pattern and randomness:

meaning is not front-loaded into the system, and the origin does not act to ground

signification. As we have seen for multiagent simulations, complexity evolves

from highly recursive processes being applied to simple rules. Rather than

proceeding along a trajectory toward a known end, such systems evolve toward

an open future marked by contingency and unpredictability. Meaning is not

guaranteed by a coherent origin; rather, it is made possible (but not inevitable)

by the blind force of evolution finding workable solutions within given

parameters.398

Traditional linear narrative manifests a metaphysics of presence, it “front loads

meaning into the system”. In narrative, meaning is guaranteed because it stems from a

stable authorial origin and is generated through a teleological system. Within

narratology, deconstructionist thinking was paralleled by a move to acknowledge

non-linearity and reject the previously uncontested dictates of causality and

logocentrism. However, just as Derrida’s absence, lack and desire relate to ‘non-

presence’ and so prefigure the concept of presence, so too the concept of non-linear

narrative relies on an initial understanding of linearity. Non-linear narrative disrupts

the chronological presentation of story events, but as its existence relies on the

rejection and lack of a paradigmatic structure, its definition is inherently reliant on an

initial knowledge of that structure. Non-linear narrative still occurs within a general

framework of narrative linearity.

A postnarrative perspective recognises that ‘meaning’ is not given but is developed,

and performed, through the accumulation of momentary encounters. The process

whereby a user engages with an immersive, interactive, or intermedial performance

creates a complex system that moves, as Hayles says, “toward an open future marked

by contingency and unpredictability”. This system, this ‘creative cycle’ (Levy),

evolves organically within the parameters of its frame to form the postnarrative text.

The concept of the postnarrative text avoids reinforcing previous understandings of

397

Ibid. 398

Ibid.

201

the process of meaning creation in theatre as defined by a pre-structured, scripted

transference of information. Rather it encompasses a field of communication where

structure is evolutionary, change enabled, the participants have agency, and a

complex system of interactive negotiation is established. It describes the ever-

emerging text of Gibson’s “changescapes” and Murphie’s “interactive ecologies”,

discussed in Chapter 5. It describes the evolution of spontaneous play in Can You See

Me Now?, and the collaborative, improvised text of Desert Rain. It relates to the

experience of pattern and rhythm in Five Angels for the Millennium, and the process

of synaesthetic immersion in Modell 5. It also finally articulates the processes of

navigation and play that characterise audience interaction in Eavesdrop. The concept

of the postnarrative text is key to understanding the experience of multimedia

performance for it explains the impact of intermediality, immersion and interactivity

on the audience’s engagement with the text, and connects these manifestations in the

field of multimedia theatre to contemporary cultural perceptions in a society of

Virtuality.

202

Conclusion

This thesis has identified an ‘aesthetic of multimedia’ as defined by the characteristics

of intermediality, immersion, interactivity, and postnarrativity, and has applied these

characteristics as a framework through which to examine the modes and means of

communication in contemporary multimedia theatre practice. Theatre does not

progress in isolation, and both theatre and new media are actively remediating each

other in innovative ways. The manifestation of an aesthetic of multimedia in theatre

may be recognised as reflecting the ubiquity of digital technologies and the impact of

digitalisation upon strategies of communication. This research has adapted elements

of new media theory to the field of theatre analysis with the aim of providing a

language through which to articulate the poetics of new theatrical forms and to

rethink preceding practices. This thesis has also positioned multimedia theatre within

the context of a wider cultural shift into a ‘condition of Virtuality’. The following are

reflections on the findings of this research.

Theatre and the Caesura of the Digital Age

Digital discourse and the modes of communication spawned by new media are

influencing and impacting upon the trajectory of experimental theatre practice. This

thesis has mapped modes of audience engagement and textual structures that form the

poetics of multimedia theatre as influenced by, and reflective of, digital culture. It has

addressed theatre practice through a framework derived from media theory, and has

identified ways in which the modes and means of communication in theatre practice

may be articulated in terms of the language and characteristics associated with digital

media. This study has further identified a number of qualities that characterise

multimedia theatre generally. These qualities may be framed as locating key

transformations within the medium of theatre.

203

Traditionally, proscenium arch theatre has been widely understood as: a discrete

medium of representation married to traditional narrative; and a medium for cognitive

immersion that demands a high degree of audience passivity. As this thesis has

illustrated, contemporary theatre can now be recognised as:

- A ‘hypermedium’ that remediates;

- A means of physical, sensual immersion;

- A medium that offers various levels of interactivity;

- A post narrative medium.

These changes specifically relate to the impact of technology on theatre and the

injection of digital media into the field of theatre practice.

While these characteristics of multimedia theatre have evolved in light of the caesura

of the digital age, the field of multimedia theatre should not be dismissed as a being

the temporary result of theatre’s reaction to a culturally competitive medium of

communication. As Chapter 2 highlighted, multimedia theatre practice has a long

history of development throughout experimental twentieth century practice, and

contemporary theatre practice and discourse has evolved from the “new multiform

kind of theatrical discourse” established after the 1960s identified by Lehmann. 399

The growth of the area of multimedia theatre has been evolutionary, reflecting

gradual transitions within the cultural climate.

At each stage within its history of development, experimental multimedia theatre has

exhibited an aesthetic influenced by the current technological media. As we move

into a ‘condition of Virtuality’, theatre is embracing a digital aesthetic defined by

Lunenfeld as an “aesthetic of unfinish”. To celebrate the unfinished is “to laud

process rather than goal – to open up a third thing that is not a resolution, but rather a

state of suspension”,400

and as theatre manifests a digital aesthetic it is opening its

form to mutability and reformation. Characteristics of intermediality, immersion,

interactivity and postnarrativity are not rigid textual structures but the result of

negotiation between the participant and the configuration of elements within the

399

Lehmann (2006) p. 22. 400

Lunenfeld (2000) p. 8.

204

work. Theatre is exploring “liquid architectures” (Novak) and flexible composition,

and is embracing an aesthetic that offers constant process in its product. Multimedia

theatre productions offer themselves as unfinished, with the threads of meaning yet to

be woven and the shape of the form yet to be drawn. It falls to the empowered

spectator to enter into a conversation with the work and in doing so, complete it,

forming a continually evolving complex system.

Although it is still in process, two key sites emerge as essential topographies of the

debate regarding the convergence of multimedia and performance in theatre practice:

the body and the virtual. It is in the form of these two modalities that the dimensions

of materiality and information are specifically manifest in theatre practice. The

following comments address each of these sites in turn, drawing some general

conclusions regarding the nature and treatment of the body and the virtual in

multimedia theatre as suggested by the examples of practice discussed in this thesis.

1. Corporeality

The live performer has previously been perceived as defining the ontology of theatre.

However, with performance increasingly assimilating multimedia technologies and

artists progressively exploring telematic performance spaces, there is a growing threat

to the position of the performer as defining the essence of theatre as a medium. Tori

Haring-Smith posits that the current attention to media spectacle is distracting theatre

“from its essential task of bringing a live human actor together with a live human

spectator to explore issues of common concern”.401

The live performer has previously

been viewed as defining theatre, their physicality the ultimate means of expression.

The corporeality of the actor has been the site of purity in performance, and the body

the essential medium of communication within the hypermedium of theatre.

However, as this body is being remediated, re-located and reframed, the corporeal

dimension in multimedia theatre is being transferred from the body of the performer

to the body of the spectator. The distinction between a material performer, a mediated

401

Tori Haring-Smith “On the death of theatre: A call to action” in Maria Delgado and Caridad Svich

eds. (2002) Theatre in Crisis?: Performance Manifestos for a New Century, Manchester: Manchester

University Press, p. 100.

205

performer, and a digitally constituted virtual performer, is becoming less vital, as the

perception of these media as separate and ontologically discrete channels is waning.

Rather, with multimedia theatre embracing an ‘aesthetic of unfinish’ (Lunenfeld), and

demanding the sensual engagement of the audience, the performance occurs not at the

site of its transmission, but at the site of its reception. This reception is an embodied

reception, engaging a mode of audience participation that is less cognitive and more

holistic.

As articulated in Chapter 1, the dominance of the ‘visual’ as the primary basis for

establishing knowledge and perception in mediatised society asserts a separation of

mind and body that has led to the diminution of other modes of awareness. However,

as envisaged by McLuhan, we are now moving away from an “age of the visual and

into the aural and tactile”.402

In multimedia theatre, knowledge and perception are

developed not only via the visual, but also through sound, smell and touch. Springgay

asserts that knowledge through touch can be understood not only through the

modality of physical contact, but also through the “a sense of being in a proximinal

relation with something”403

. It is through both of these modalities that multimedia

theatre practice is addressing the corporeality of the spectator, and promoting

embodied reception as a means of experiencing knowledge and awareness. The

spectator is being actively implicated in the process of performance through various

modes of sensory engagement and means of interaction.

It is also through this sense of ‘being in a proximal relation with something’ that the

participant in multimedia theatre is experiencing the notion of posthuman

embodiment. Multimedia theatre is positioning the spectator’s body in relation to

informational pattern to confront the perceived boundaries between these domains;

the audience’s experience of the virtual via the technical problematises the parameters

of their own sense of ‘presence’. At the same time, multimedia theatre often also

places the audience in a proximal relation to both the presence of the live performer

and the potentially live, but not a-live, virtual performer. By presenting these two

entities alongside one another theatre forces a comparison of the different, or perhaps

indeed similar, ways in which participants connect with the material and the virtual.

402

McLuhan in Stephanie Springgay (2002) p. 36. 403

Springgay (2002) p. 34.

206

While most multimedia theatre is not perforating the boundary and merging man with

machine, it is problematising perceptions regarding the body and enabling the

experience of new forms of embodiment and subjectivity.

2. Virtuality

Giannachi has discussed virtual theatre as moving towards an aesthetic of virtual

reality, but the field of multimedia theatre as a whole is not. For virtual reality is

perceived as an alternate space; one may talk of ‘entering’ virtual reality and it

requires the suspension of disbelief in order to be fully realised. The majority of

multimedia theatre practice discussed within this thesis does not construct an alternate

space/time that requires the suspension of disbelief for participants to fully engage

with the work, but rather, overlays patterns onto the actual environment inhabited by

the participant. Virtual reality requires the participant to experience a strong sense of

‘immediacy’, while multimedia theatre is primarily functioning to create

‘hypermediacy’.

While this trend is clearly evident in works such as Wages of Spin, 40 Part Motet and

Modell 5, all the works discussed in this thesis conform to this tendency to a certain

degree. Even in cinematic new media performance such as Eavesdrop, the participant

does not transport into another world, but is continuously panning across the surface

of a virtual world from a distance, and the nature of the audience interaction functions

to emphasise the single dimensionality of the screen. While users can ‘zoom’ in to the

view the ‘interior landscapes’ of the presented characters, this serves to highlight the

opacity of the medium and the nature of the work as hypermedial, as able to link

separate media elements to one another.404

The user navigates the imagery, piecing

together the various components as they create the postnarrative text. In Blast

Theory’s Can You See Me Now?, which involves the participant navigating a virtual

space accessed online, the constructed space is not a fully realised virtual reality

requiring the suspension of disbelief, for it exactly corresponds to a real city and the

participants are effectively tracing a map of an actual physical space. It is the

404

Packer and Jordan eds. (2001) p. xxxv.

207

connection between the virtual map and the real space it represents that produces the

efficacy of Can You See Me Now?.

While this thesis has addressed the quality of ‘immersion’ as a key characteristic of

contemporary multimedia theatre, this quality does not tend to manifest in multimedia

theatre as immersion in a virtual world. ‘Immersion in a virtual world’ may imply

either the cognitive transposition of the self into a purely fictional space constructed

upon the architecture of language, or the transposition of the self into a computer-

generated space built on the architecture of digital code. Immersion in a virtual reality

involves an imagined sense of changing ones actual physical location into a different

location, about exchanging real space for virtual space. Immersive multimedia works

are not ‘moving towards an aesthetic of Virtual Reality’, but are embellishing the

experience of actual reality, of ‘being’ in an enhanced immediate present. While some

of the examples of immersive multimedia performance addressed in this thesis allude

to potential ‘other’ spaces, the participant in these works is not required to suspend

disbelief and forget their physical location. Rather, their sensual perceptions may be

stimulated so as to experience an awareness of immersion within the ‘architexture’ of

their physical location.

This resistance of multimedia theatre practice towards an aesthetic of virtual reality

may be mistakenly interpreted as reflecting a rejection of the preconditions of

Virtuality as a cultural condition. While the move from presence to pattern may not

be absolute within multimedia theatre, theatre is undoubtedly responding to a

condition of Virtuality by exploring the convergence of materiality and information.

The move from presence to pattern in theatre practice, is the move of theatre into

virtual spaces. However, as suggested, multimedia theatre is displaying a marked

resistance to the disembodied virtual, and is using an exploration of the perception

“that materiality is being interpenetrated by information pattern” to revisit the concept

of presence. Multimedia theatre on the whole is not rejecting materiality in favour of

the virtual, for this would reinforce the information/materiality binary. Rather,

multimedia theatre is manifesting the fundamental principle of our condition of

Virtuality; that information and material are not perceived as discrete concepts.

208

Multimedia theatre is playing with the in-between, the slippages, and is creating

spaces in which the material and virtual realm converge.

The general trends of multimedia theatre practice addressed in this thesis indicate that

the cultural transition into a state of Virtuality is not manifesting in theatre through

the replacement of presence and absence with pattern and randomness. Hayles

explains that “the technologies of virtual reality, with their potential for full-bodied

mediation … foreground pattern and randomness and make presence and absence

seem irrelevant.”405

Presence and absence are not yet irrelevant in multimedia theatre,

and theatre is not emulating technologies of virtual reality. Multimedia theatre is not

moving towards ‘an aesthetic of virtual reality’ but is creating spaces in which both

material presence and informational patterns are placed in proxemic relations to one

another, creating what Lev Manovich has labelled “augmented space”. 406

Augmented

space is “physical space overlaid with dynamically changing information”407

so as to

create a new kind of physical space. Manovich derived the term ‘augmented space’

from the term ‘augmented reality’ although the two concepts are usually placed in

opposition to one another: “In the case of VR, the user works on a virtual simulation,

in the case of AR, she works on actual things in actual space. Because of this, a

typical VR system presents a user with a virtual space that has nothing to do with that

user’s immediate physical space; while, in contrast, a typical AR system adds

information that is directly related to the user’s immediate physical space”.408

Instead of transporting the participant into an alternate virtual space, most of the

examples of theatre discussed in this thesis project patterns of information, imagery

and sound, into material space to create a layered environment. Alternatively,

technologies are used within the selected works to mechanically intervene in physical

reality, such as in Stelarc’s cyborg-performances. All these works utilise digital media

to create augmented spaces that reflect, and comment upon, the manifestation of a

cultural condition of Virtuality, in which informational patterns interpenetrate

materiality. In the Builder’s Association’s Supervision, the script addresses how

405

Hayles (1999) p. 26. 406

Lev Manovich (2002, updated 2005) The Poetics of Augmented Space,

(http://www.manovich.com/DOCS/Augmented_2005.doc) accessed November 2006. 407

Ibid. 408

Ibid.

209

communication technologies augment reality, and we see the creation of an

augmented space on stage in the ‘intermedial mise en scene’. Blast Theory’s Desert

Rain projects a map of a warzone onto a wall of water, and Can You See Me Now?

uses locative devices to manipulate the movements of performers within real space.

The works of Bill Viola and Janet Cardiff overlay the immediate space of the

participant with sound and images that stimulate sensory immersion and create the

sense that actual space has been embellished. And in Version 1.0’s Wages of Spin, the

live projection of the onstage performers on the background screen affects the

perception and perspective of the immediate space.

Multimedia theatre is acting as a forum for attitudes and reactions to a cultural

condition of Virtuality to play out. The examples of practice addressed within this

thesis, both through the subject matter and in the demands of the form, forefront the

ways in which digital technologies are affecting everyday modes and means of

communication. One of the defining characteristics of multimedia is that it functions

‘hypermediately’, making the viewer aware of the workings of the opaque medium as

it ‘remediates’ other media. As multimedia theatre functions within an aesthetic of

multimedia, manifesting the qualities of intermediality, immersion, interactivity, and

postnarrativity, it too functions hypermediately, drawing attention to its specific form

of mediation and revealing the stakes of its construction. By remediating digital

technologies, multimedia theatre is enabling participants to view from a hypermedial

vantage point the augmentation of reality by technological intervention.

Limitations of this Research

This thesis explores a subject inextricably bound to the status of technology. New

technologies are constantly appearing and being placed as tools in the hands of theatre

practitioners. As such, multimedia theatre practice is a continually evolving field of

potentiality. It is for this reason that this thesis has focused on the prominent

characteristics and underlying preconditions that shape the way audiences engage

with multimedia theatre, rather than on the specific capabilities of the individual

technologies within the work. However, this may at times have meant that distinct

qualities of specific technologies used within the presented examples of multimedia

210

theatre, such as the capabilities of GPS tracking devices and motion capture

technologies, have not been thoroughly articulated. While this thesis has focused on

the poetics of audience engagement and the ways in which these poetics relate to an

aesthetic of the digital, more detailed research on how these individual technologies

(such as GPS and motion capture) disseminate ‘presence’ within performance, could

greatly extend the boundaries of this project.

It should also be recognised that this investigation into the poetics of multimedia

theatre, whilst drawing on media theory to elucidate current trends, positions

multimedia theatre within a historical context of theatre practice generally. Many of

the forms of multimedia theatre discussed within this thesis may also be recognised

within a context of creative media practice or computer art. Analytical exploration of

this practice from within another field of discourse may offer an alternate articulation

of the poetics of multimedia theatre, and would perhaps place greater emphasis on the

specific nature of the technologies utilised. The fact that multimedia theatre has been

addressed from within the paradigm of theatre studies, rather than media studies, has

also influenced the trajectory of the research.

In addition, and specifically to limit the scope of research, the subject of study was

approached primarily from the perspective of the culturally positioned spectator,

rather than performer or practitioner. The field of multimedia theatre was surveyed

from the position of critic, observer and participant, and commentary was not overly

influenced by the underlying intentions of the creators. Prior awareness of the

performers’ aims may have been considered, but they were not a significant point of

interest in this dissertation. The observations made regarding specific productions

were impartial, however one must recognise the subjective nature of experience in

relation to performance, and descriptions of experience within this thesis are the

author’s only, and may not equate with the perceptions of other participants. The

descriptions of case studies have, however, aimed to focus on the generalisable

demands of the production upon the spectator, rather than just the hermeneutic or

phenomenological experience of the individual.

211

The parameters of the field of study were outlined in Chapter 2; this research was

specifically limited to theatre or performance that creatively utilised media

technologies as an integral component of the overall work, with the media content

significantly contributing to the content of the production. As such, the effects of the

digitalisation of technologies within mainstream dramatic theatre, where technologies

are utilised for conventional lighting and stage effects, were not addressed here.

Indeed, if one were to extend the definition of multimedia theatre to include all

theatre that utilised digital technology in some capacity, then it would be a far wider

area of study, for theatre has always been multimedial in its use of technologies as a

tool for scenography. This area has however been addressed by Christopher Baugh’s

recent book, Theatre, Performance and Technology (2006). This thesis has not

attempted to determine the effect of new technologies upon the field of theatre

generally, nor identify the manifestation of our condition of Virtuality within theatre

practice. Rather, this thesis identifies these influences upon the field of multimedia

theatre only, and has not attempted to generalise regarding theatre in its entirety.

Further Questions from this Research

Some of the key contributions offered in this thesis warrant further examination and

application. Definitions given here regarding forms of immersion and interaction may

be deemed applicable outside the arena of multimedia theatre, and may contribute to a

discussion of not only other theatrical forms, but potentially of other creative, social,

and cultural practices. For example, the different forms of interactivity identified and

detailed in this thesis may relate to discussions of interactive cinema, interactive

television and advertising and strategies of interactivity with the devising process of

collaborative theatre. The idea of a ‘poetic’ form as an analytical tool, explored in

Chapter 6, also has the potential to be used as a pedagogical tool and as a tool in the

creative process, and the concept of ‘postnarrative’ generally can be linked not only to

narratology and theatre discourse, but may also extend into arenas such as media,

film, sociology and cultural studies. The notion of ‘intermediality’ is a phenomenon

that can be addressed from many angles and from within many discourses, and

extensive research is currently being undertaken in this area by groups such as The

Centre for Research in Intermediality at the University of Montreal, and the

212

Intermediality in Theatre Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre

Research.

Another area beyond the scope of this thesis but which requires more extensive study

is the manifestation of ‘presence’ within digitally augmented spaces. While in virtual

space, presence translates into pattern, presence remains a key area of interest within

the augmented spaces of multimedia theatre practice. Indeed, some networked-

performance and new-media performance are utilising the move into a state of pattern

and randomness as a means of revisiting perceptions of presence and absence. Hayles

has recognised that, as we move into a condition of Virtuality in which the dialectic of

pattern/randomness is perceived as developing prominence over the dialectic of

presence/absence, it “would be a mistake to think that the presence/absence dialectic

no longer has explanatory power”.409

The extent of the explanatory power of the

presence/absence dialectic could be further examined within digitally augmented

spaces.

Such research is currently being undertaken by a combined task force from the

University of Exeter, University of Stanford and University College London that has

embarked on a research project titled Performing Presence: From the Live to the

Simulated. The project runs from October 2005 until June 2010 and examines the

various manifestation, extensions, and simulations of ‘presence’ in digitalised

performance:

The Presence Project aims to combine expertise from performance and drama

theory and practice, anthropological archaeology, and computer science to

investigate means by which “presence” is achieved in live and mediated

performance and simulated environments. The project aims to explore how

exchanges or practices, concepts and methodologies between academic

disciplines and between live, mediated and simulated performance may deepen

an understanding of the performance of presence.410

The findings of such a project will undoubtedly extend the analysis and discussions

undertaken in this thesis on a more significant scale, and address many of the

409

Hayles (1999) p. 247. 410

The Presence Project, (http://presence.stanford.edu) accessed February 2007.

213

questions regarding the relation of presence and pattern raised by this study of

multimedia theatre.

The role of theory in the field of multimedia theatre is evolutionary; both digital

multimedia and experimental theatre practice are in a permutative state of

development and flux and as such, theoretical discourse in this field is evolving at a

rapid pace. The aim of this investigation has been to contribute to this evolution of the

understanding of the emerging elements and forms of multimedia theatre, and to act

as a prompt, toolbox and platform for further research in this rapidly developing area

of contemporary theatre.

214

List of Images

Image 1: Wages of Spin, source: The Sydney Morning Herald,

(http://www.smh.com.au/news/arts-reviews/the-wages-of-

spin/2006/08/07/1154802788996.html).

Image 2: Wages of Spin, source: The Program-Reviews,

(http://www.theprogram.net.au/media/reviews/22437.jpg).

Image 3: Supervision, source: The Builders Association (www.superv.org).

Image 4: Supervision, source: The Builders Association (www.superv.org).

Image 5: Five Angels for the Millennium, source: Bill Viola,

(http://www.billviola.com/bibliogr.htm).

Image 6: 40 Part Motet, Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-

dyn/content/article/2005/12/06/AR2005120601697.html)

Image 7: Modell 5, source : Nueral.It : Hacktivism, E-Music, New Media Art

(http://www.neural.it/nnews/granularsynthesisremixesforsinglescreen.htm)

Image 8: Desert Rain, source: eRENA :Electronic Arenas for Culture, Art, Performance

and Entertainment, (http://www.erena.kth.se/desert.html).

Image 9: Desert Rain, source: Communications Research Group at Nottingham University,

(http://www.crg.cs.nott.ac.uk/events/rain/early-pics.html).

Image 10: Floribots, source: The Canberra Review

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