Performance and Technology Practices of Virtual Embodiment and Interactivity

by Broadhurst, Susan; Machon, Josephine

• ISBN13: 9781403999078
• ISBN10: 1403999074
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-01-09
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

This original and timely collection features writings from international contributors who specialize in digital art and performance practices (including Johannes Birringer, Robert Weschler and Philip Auslander). There are few writings per se that attempt to interrogate the interaction between new technologies and performance practice. Furthermore, none have so far linked the sensuous contact that must exist between the physical and virtual, together with the resultant corporeal transformation. In certain technological practices, physicality is both transcended and ludically inscribed - the play (jouer) being all. Consequently, digital practices potentiate creative and aesthetic possibilities and demand new perceptive strategies.

Author Biography

SUSAN BROADHURST is a Writer and Practitioner in the Creative Arts. She is the Subject Leader of Drama Studies at Brunel University, UK. She is also the author of Liminal Acts: A Critical Overview of Contemporary Performance and Theory (1999) and Digital Practices: A Critical Overview of Performance and Technology (forthcoming, 2006). She is currently working on a series of collaborative practice-based research projects entitled, 'Intelligence, Interaction, Reaction and Performance', which involve introducing various interactive digital technologies into live performance.

JOSEPHINE MACHON is Programme Director for Physical Theatre, and a Lecturer in Drama and Performance Studies at St. Mary's College, University of Surrey, UK. On her topic (syn)aesthetics and performance, she has published various writings. She is in the process of writing (Syn)aesthetics - Towards a Definition of Visceral Performance (2006) and is co-authoring British Physical Theatre - Practice and Practitioners (2006). As a practitioner she has broad range of experience including her current collaborations, which explore the fusion of embodied practice and the written text within playful performance encounters. She is Sub-Editor for the on-line journal, Body, Space & Technology.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. vii
Notes on Editors	p. ix
Notes on Contributors	p. x
Introduction: Body, Space, and Technology	p. xv
Bodies Without Bodies	p. 1
Truth-Seeker's Allowance: Digitising Artaud	p. 18
Transformed Landscapes: The Choreographic Displacement of Location and Locomotion in Film	p. 31
Saira Virous: Game Choreography in Multiplayer Online Performance Spaces	p. 43
Artistic Considerations in the Use of Motion Tracking with Live Performers: A Practical Guide	p. 60
Materials vs Content in Digitally Mediated Performance	p. 78
Learning to Dance with Angelfish: Choreographic Encounters Between Virtuality and Reality	p. 85
Kinaesthetic Traces Across Material Forms: Stretching the Screen's Stage	p. 100
Sensuous Geographies and Other Installations: Interfacing the Body and Technology	p. 112
Body Waves Sound Waves: Optik Live Sound and Performance	p. 127
Intelligence, Interaction, Reaction, and Performance	p. 141
The Tissue Culture and Art Project: The Semi-Living as Agents of Irony	p. 153
Addenda, Phenomenology, Embodiment: Cyborgs and Disability Performance	p. 169
Technology as a Bridge to Audience Participation?	p. 181
Afterword: Is There Life after Liveness?	p. 194
Index	p. 199
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