Digital theatre

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Strictly, digital theatre is a hybrid art form, gaining strength from theatre's ability to facilitate the imagination and create human connections and digital technology's ability to extend the reach of communication and visualization. (However, the phrase is also used in a more generic sense by companies such as Evans and Sutherland to refer to their fulldome projection technology products.)

Contents

Description

Digital theatre is primarily identified by the coexistence of "live" performers and digital media in the same unbroken(1) space with a co-present audience. In addition to the necessity that its performance must be simultaneously "live" and digital, the event's secondary characteristics are that its content should retain some recognizable theatre roles (through limiting the level of interactivity) and a narrative element of spoken language or text. The four conditions of digital theatre are:

  1. It is a "live" performance placing at least some performers in the same shared physical space with an audience.(2)
  2. The performance must use digital technology as an essential part of the primary artistic event.(3)
  3. The performance contains only limited levels of interactivity,(4) in that its content is shaped primarily by the artist(s) for an audience.(5)
  4. The performance's content should contain either spoken language or text which might constitute a narrative or story, differentiating it from other events which are distinctly dance, art, or music.

"Live", digital media, interactivity, and narrative

A brief clarification of these terms in relation to digital theatre is in order. The significance of the terms "live" or "liveness" as they occur in theatre can not be over-emphasized, as it is set in opposition to digital in order to indicate the presence of both types of communication, human and computer-created. Rather than considering the real-time or temporality of events, digital theatre concerns the interactions of people (audience and actors) sharing the same physical space (in at least one location, if multiple audiences exist). In the case of mass broadcast, it is essential that this sharing of public space occurs at the site of the primary artistic event.(6) The next necessary condition for creating digital theatre is the presence of digital media in the performance. Digital media is not defined through the presence of one type of technology hardware or software configuration, but by its characteristics of being flexible, mutable, easily adapted, and able to be processed in real-time. It is the ability to change not only sound and light, but also images, video, animation, and other content into triggered, manipulated, and reconstituted data which is relayed or transmitted in relation to other impulses which defines the essential nature of the digital format. Digital information has the quality of pure computational potential, which can be seen as parallel to the potential of human imagination.

The remaining characteristics of limited interactivity and narrative or spoken word are secondary and less distinct parameters. While interactivity can apply to both the interaction between humans and machines and between humans, digital theatre is primarily concerned with the levels of interactivity occurring between audience and performers (as it is facilitated through technology).(7) It is in this type of interactivity, similar to other types of heightened audience participation,(8) that the roles of message sender and receiver can dissolve to that of equal conversers, causing theatre to dissipate into conversation. The term "interactive" refers to any mutually or reciprocally active communication, whether it be a human-human or a human-machine communication.

The criteria of having narrative content through spoken language or text as part of the theatrical event is meant not to limit the range of what is already considered standard theatre (as there are examples in the works of Samuel Beckett in which the limits of verbal expression are tested), but to differentiate between that which is digital theatre and the currently more developed fields of digital dance9 and Art Technology.(10) This is necessary because of the mutability between art forms utilizing technology. It is also meant to suggest a wide range of works including dance theatre involving technology and spoken words such as Troika Ranch's The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz (Troika Ranch, 2000), to the creation of original text-based works online by performers like the Plain Text Players or collaborations such as Art Grid's Interplay: Hallucinations, to pre-scripted works such as the classics ( A Midsummer Night's Dream , The Tempest) staged with technology at the University of Kansas and the University of Georgia.

The Participatory Virtual Theatre efforts at the Rochester Institute of Technology take a different approach by have live actors use motion capture to control avatars on a virtual stage. Audience responses are designed into the software that supports the performance. In the 2004 production, "What's the Buzz?" (17), a single node motion capture device controlled the performance of a swarm of bees. Later performances use two motion capture systems located in different buildings controlling the performance on a single virtual stage (18).

These criteria or limiting parameters are flexible enough to allow for a wide range of theatrical activities while refining the scope of events to those which most resemble the hybrid "live"/mediated form of theatre described as digital theatre. digital theatre is separated from the larger category of digital performance (as expressed in the overabundance of a variety of items including installations, dance concerts, Compact discs, robot fights and other events found in the Digital Performance Archive).

History

In the early 1980s, video, satellites, fax machines, and other communications equipment began to be used as methods of creating art and performance. The groups Fluxus and John Cage were among the early leaders in expanding what was considered art, technology, and performance. With the adaptation of personal computers in the 1980s, new possibilities for creating performance communications was born. Artists like Sherrie Rabinowitz and Kit Galloway began to transition from earlier, more costly experiments with satellite transmission to experiments with the developing internet. Online communities such as The Well and interactive writing offered new models for artistic creativity. With the 'Dot Com' boom of the 1990s, telematic artists including Roy Ascott began to develop greater significance as theatre groups like George Coates Performance Works and Gertrude Stein Repertory Theatre established partnerships with software and hardware companies encouraged by the technology boom. In Australia in the early 1990s, Julie Martin's Virtual Reality Theatre presented works at the Sydney Opera House, featuring the first hybrid human digital avatars, in 1996 "A Midsummer Nights Dream featured Augmented Reality Stage sets designed and produced by her company. Researchers such as Claudio Pinanhez at MIT, David Saltz of The Interactive Performance Laboratory at the University of Georgia, and Mark Reaney head of the Virtual Reality Theatre Lab at the University of Kansas, as well as significant dance technology partnerships (including Riverbed and Riverbed's work with Merce Cunningham) led to an unprecedented expansion in the use of digital technology in creating media-rich performances (including the use of motion capture, 3D stereoscopic animation, and virtual reality as in The Virtual Theatricality Lab's production of The Skriker at Henry Ford Community College under the direction of Dr. George Popovich. Another example is the sense:less project by Stenslie/Mork/Watz/Pendry using virtual actors that users would engage with inside a VR environment. The project was shown at ELECTRA, Henie Onstad Art Center, Norway, DEAF 1996 in Rotterdam and the Fifth Istanbul Biennial (1997).

Early use of mechanical and projection devices for theatrical entertainments have a long history tracing back to mechanicals of ancient Greece and medieval magic lanterns. But the most significant precursors of digital theatre can be seen in the works of the early 20th century. It is in the ideas of artists including Edward Gordon Craig, Erwin Piscator (and to a limited degree Bertolt Brecht in their joint work on Epic Theatre), Josef Svoboda, and the Bauhaus and Futurists movements that we can see the strongest connections between today's use of digital media and live actors, and earlier, experimental theatrical use of non-human actors, broadcast technology, and filmic projections.

The presence of these theatrical progenitors using analog media, such as filmic projection, provides a bridge between Theatre and many of today's vast array of computer-art-performance-communication experiments. These past examples of theatre artists integrating their modern technology with theatre strengthens the argument that theatrical entertainment does not have to be either purist involving only "live" actors on stage, or be consumed by the dominant televisual mass media, but can gain from the strengths of both types of communication.

Other terminology

Digital theatre does not exist in a vacuum but in relation to other terminology. It is a type of Digital Performance and may accommodate many types of "live"/mediated theatre including "VR Theatre"(11) and "Computer Theatre",(12) both of which involve specific types of computer media, "live" performers, story/words, and limited levels of interactivity. However, terms such as "Desktop Theatre",(13) using animated computer avatars in online chat-rooms without co-present audiences falls outside digital theatre into the larger category of digital performance. Likewise, digital dance may fall outside the parameters of digital theatre, if it does not contain elements of story or spoken words.

"Cyberformance" can be included within this definition of Digital theatre, where it includes a proximal audience: "Cyberformance can be created and presented entirely online, for a distributed online audience who participate via internet-connected computers anywhere in the world, or it can be presented to a proximal audience (such as in a physical theatre or gallery venue) with some or all of the performers appearing via the internet; or it can be a hybrid of the two approaches, with both remote and proximal audiences and/or performers."

See also

Notes

  1. Space not divided by visible solid interfaces such as walls, glass screens, or other visible barriers which perceptually divide the audience from the playing space making two (or more) rooms rather than a continuous place including both stage and audience.
  2. It is suggested that a minimal audience of two or more is needed to keep a performance from being a conversation or art piece. If additional online or mediated audiences exist, only one site need have a co-present audience/performer situation.
  3. Digital technology may be used to create, manipulate or influence content. However, the use of technology for transmission or archiving does not constitute a performance of digital theatre.
  4. Interactivity is more than choices on a navigation menu, low levels of participation or getting a desired response to a request. Sheizaf Rafaeli defines it as existing in the relay of a message, in which the third or subsequent message refers back to the first. "Formally stated, interactivity is an expression of the extent that in a given series of communication exchanges, any third (or later) transmission (or message) is related to the degree to which previous exchanges referred to even earlier transmissions" (Sheizaf Rafaeli, "Interactivity, From New Media to Communication [ dead link ]," pages 110-34 in Advanced Communicational Science: Merging Mass and Interpersonal Processes, ed. Robert P. Hawkins, John M. Wiemann, and Suzanne Pingree [Newbury Park: Sage Publications, 1988] 111).
  5. Though some of the content may be formed or manipulated by both groups, the flow of information is primarily from message creator or sender to receiver, thus maintaining the roles of author/performer and audience (rather than dissolving those roles into equal participants in a conversation). This also excludes gaming or VR environments in which the (usually isolated) participant is the director of the action which his actions drive.
  6. While TV studio audiences may feel that they are at a public "live" performance, these performances are often edited and remixed for the benefit of their intended primary audience, the home audiences which are viewing the mass broadcast in private. Broadcasts of "Great Performances" by PBS and other theatrical events broadcast into private homes, give the TV viewers the sense that they are secondary viewers of a primary "live" event. In addition, archival or real-time web-casts which do not generate feedback influencing the "live" performances are not within the range of digital theatre. In each case, a visible interface such as TV or monitor screen, like a camera frames and interprets the original event for the viewers.
  7. An example of this is the case of internet chat which becomes the main text of be read or physically interpreted by performers on stage. Online input including content and directions can also have an effect of influencing "live" performance beyond the ability of "live" co-present audiences.
  8. E.g. happenings.
  9. Such as the stunning visual media dance concerts like Ghostcatching, by Merce Cunningham and Riverbed, accessible online via the revamped/migrated Digital Performance Archive [ permanent dead link ] and Merce Cunningham Dance ; cf. Isabel C. Valverde, "Catching Ghosts in Ghostcatching: Choreographing Gender and Race in Riverbed/Bill T. Jones' Virtual Dance," accessible in a pdf version from Extensions: The Online Journal of Embodied Teaching .
  10. Such as Telematic Dreaming, by Paul Sermon, in which distant participants shared a bed through mixing projected video streams; see "Telematic Dreaming - Statement."
  11. Mark Reaney, head of the Virtual Reality Theatre Lab at the University of Kansas, investigates the use of virtual reality ("and related technologies") in theatre. "VR Theatre" is one form or subset of digital theatre focusing on utilizing virtual reality immersion in mutual concession with traditional theatre practices (actors, directors, plays, a theatre environment). The group uses image projection and stereoscopic sets as their primary area of digital investigation.
  12. Another example of digital theatre is Computer Theatre, as defined by Claudio S. Pinhanez in his work 'Computer Theatre (in which he also gives the definition of "hyper-actor" as an actor whose expressive capabilities are extended through the use of technologies). "Computer Theatre, in my view, is about providing means to enhance the artistic possibilities and experiences of professional and amateur actors, or of audiences clearly engaged in a representational role in a performance" (Computer Theater [Cambridge: Perceptual Computing Group -- MIT Media Laboratory, 1996] (forthcoming in a revised ed.); Pinhanez also sees this technology being explored more through dance than theatre. His writing and his productions of I/IT suggest that Computer Theatre is digital theatre.
  13. On the far end of the spectrum, outside of the parameters of digital theatre, are what are called Desktop Theater and Virtual Theatre. These are digital performances or media events which are created and presented on computers utilizing intelligent agents or synthetic characters, called avatars. Often these are interactive computer programs or online conversations. Without human actors, or group audiences, these works are computer multimedia interfaces allowing a user to play at the roles of theatre rather than being theatre. Virtual Theatre is defined by the Virtual Theatre Project at Stanford on their website as a project which "aims to provide a multimedia environment in which user can play all of the creative roles associated with producing and performing plays and stories in an improvisational theatre company."
  14. For more information, see Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality, ed. Randall Packer and Ken Jordan; Telepresence and Bio Art, by Eduardo Kac; and Virtual Theatres: An Introduction, by Gabriella Giannachi (London and New York: Routledge, 2004).
  15. Media, in this sense, indicates the broadcast and projection of film, video, images and other content which can, but need not be digitized. These elements are often seen as additions to traditional forms of theatre even before the use of computers to process them. The addition of computers to process visual, aural and other data allows for greater flexibility in translating visual and other information into impulses which can interact with each other and their environments in real-time. Media is also distinguished from mass media, by which primarily means TV broadcast, Film, and other communications resources owned by multi-national media corporations. Mass media is that section of the media specifically conceived and designed to reach a very large audience (typically at least as large as the majority of the population of a nation state). It refers primarily to television, film, internet, and various news/entertainment corporations and their subsidiaries.
  16. Here the use of quotations signals a familiarity with the issues of mediation vs. real-time events as expressed by Phillip Auslander, yet choosing to use the term in its earlier meaning, indicating co-present human audience and actors in the same shared breathing space unrestrained by a physical barrier or perceived interface. This earlier meaning is still in standard use by digital media performers to signify the simultaneous presence of the human and the technological other. It is possible also to use the term (a)live to indicate co-presence.
  17. Geigel, J. and Schweppe, M., What's the Buzz?: A Theatrical Performance in Virtual Space, in Advancing Computing and Information Sciences, Reznik, L., ed., Cary Graphics Arts Press, Rochester, NY, 2005, pp. 109–116.
  18. Schweppe, M. and Geigel, J., 2009. "Teaching Graphics in the Context of Theatre", Eurographics 2009 Educators Program (Munich, Germany, March 30-April 1, 2009)

Related Research Articles

Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms, such as writing, audio, images, animations, or video, into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to traditional mass media, such as printed material or audio recordings, which feature little to no interaction between users. Popular examples of multimedia include video podcasts, audio slideshows, and animated videos. Multimedia also contains the principles and application of effective interactive communication, such as the building blocks of software, hardware, and other technologies. The five main building blocks of multimedia are text, image, audio, video, and animation. The first building block of multimedia is the image, which dates back 15,000 to 10,000 B.C. with concrete evidence found in the Lascaux caves in France. The second building block of multimedia is writing, which was first scribed in stone or on clay tablets and was mostly about three things. Property, conquest, and religion. Writing was soon abstracted from visual images into symbols that represented the sounds we make with our mouths. Thanks to the Egyptians, writing was evolved and transferred from stone to Papyrus. A cheaper but more fragile canvas derived from strips of the papyrus root grown on the Nile River.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Interactive art</span> Creative works that involve viewer input

Interactive art is a form of art that involves the spectator in a way that allows the art to achieve its purpose. Some interactive art installations achieve this by letting the observer walk through, over or around them; others ask the artist or the spectators to become part of the artwork in some way.

Sound design is the art and practice of creating soundtracks for a variety of needs. It involves specifying, acquiring or creating auditory elements using audio production techniques and tools. It is employed in a variety of disciplines including filmmaking, television production, video game development, theatre, sound recording and reproduction, live performance, sound art, post-production, radio, new media and musical instrument development. Sound design commonly involves performing and editing of previously composed or recorded audio, such as sound effects and dialogue for the purposes of the medium, but it can also involve creating sounds from scratch through synthesizers. A sound designer is one who practices sound design.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mixed reality</span> Merging of real and virtual worlds to produce new environments

Mixed reality (MR) is a term used to describe the merging of a real-world environment and a computer-generated one. Physical and virtual objects may co-exist in mixed reality environments and interact in real time.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Interactive media</span> Digital media which make use of moving images, animations, videos and audio

Interactive media normally refers to products and services on digital computer-based systems which respond to the user's actions by presenting content such as text, moving image, animation, video and audio. Since its early conception, various forms of interactive media have emerged with impacts on educational and commercial markets. With the rise of decision-driven media, concerns surround the impacts of cybersecurity and societal distraction.

Digital puppetry is the manipulation and performance of digitally animated 2D or 3D figures and objects in a virtual environment that are rendered in real-time by computers. It is most commonly used in filmmaking and television production but has also been used in interactive theme park attractions and live theatre.

Stephen Robert Dixon is a British actor and academic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">VJing</span> Broad designation for realtime visual performance

VJing is a broad designation for realtime visual performance. Characteristics of VJing are the creation or manipulation of imagery in realtime through technological mediation and for an audience, in synchronization to music. VJing often takes place at events such as concerts, nightclubs, music festivals and sometimes in combination with other performative arts. This results in a live multimedia performance that can include music, actors and dancers. The term VJing became popular in its association with MTV's Video Jockey but its origins date back to the New York club scene of the 1970s. In both situations VJing is the manipulation or selection of visuals, the same way DJing is a selection and manipulation of audio.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Immersion (virtual reality)</span> Perception of being physically present in a non-physical world

Immersion into virtual reality (VR) is the perception of being physically present in a non-physical world. The perception is created by surrounding the user of the VR system in images, sound or other stimuli that provide an engrossing total environment.

Cyberformance refers to live theatrical performances in which remote participants are enabled to work together in real time through the medium of the internet, employing technologies such as chat applications or purpose-built, multiuser, real-time collaborative software. Cyberformance is also known as online performance, networked performance, telematic performance, and digital theatre; there is as yet no consensus on which term should be preferred, but cyberformance has the advantage of compactness. For example, it is commonly employed by users of the UpStage platform to designate a special type of Performance art activity taking place in a cyber-artistic environment.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Video design</span> Creative field of stagecraft

Video design or projection design is a creative field of stagecraft. It is concerned with the creation and integration of film, motion graphics and live camera feed into the fields of theatre, opera, dance, fashion shows, concerts and other live events. Video design has only recently gained recognition as a separate creative field. For instance, United Scenic Artists' Local 829, the union representing designers and scenic artists in the US entertainment industry, only added the Global Projection Designer membership category in 2007. Prior to this, the responsibilities of video design would often be taken on by a scenic designer or lighting designer. A person who practices the art of video design is often known as a Video Designer. However, naming conventions vary worldwide, so practitioners may also be credited as Projection Designer, "Media Designer", Cinematographer or Video Director. As a relatively new field of stagecraft, practitioners create their own definitions, rules and techniques.

Digital Live Art is the intersection of Live Art, Computing and Human Computer Interaction (HCI). It is used to describe live performance which is computer mediated - an orchestrated, temporal witnessed event occurring for any length of time and in any place using technological means. Digital Live Art borrows the methods, tools and theories from HCI to help inform and analyze the design and evaluation of Digital Live Art experiences.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Computer-generated imagery</span> Application of computer graphics to create or contribute to images

Computer-generated imagery (CGI) is a specific-technology or application of computer graphics for creating or improving images in art, printed media, simulators, videos and video games. These images are either static or dynamic. CGI both refers to 2D computer graphics and 3D computer graphics with the purpose of designing characters, virtual worlds, or scenes and special effects. The application of CGI for creating/improving animations is called computer animation, or CGI animation.

Digital Performance refers to the use of computers as an interface between a creator, consumer of images, and sounds in a wide range of artistic applications. It is performance that incorporates and integrates computer technologies and techniques. Performers can incorporate multimedia into any type of production whether it is live on a theatre stage, or in the street. Anything as small as video recordings or a visual image classifies the production as multimedia. When the key role in a performance is the technologies, it is considered a digital performance. This can be as simple as making projections on a screen for a live audience or as complex as planning and putting on a show online.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Projection mapping</span> Using software to guide the placement of light displays on objects

Projection mapping, similar to video mapping and spatial augmented reality, is a projection technique used to turn objects, often irregularly shaped, into display surfaces for video projection. The objects may be complex industrial landscapes, such as buildings, small indoor objects, or theatrical stages. Using specialized software, a two- or three-dimensional object is spatially mapped on the virtual program which mimics the real environment it is to be projected on. The software can then interact with a projector to fit any desired image onto the surface of that object. The technique is used by artists and advertisers who can add extra dimensions, optical illusions, and notions of movement onto previously static objects. The video is commonly combined with or triggered by audio to create an audiovisual narrative. In recent years the technique has also been widely used in the context of cultural heritage, as it has proved to be an excellent edutainment tool.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Annie Abrahams</span> Dutch artist

Annie Abrahams is a Dutch performance artist specialising in video installations and internet based performances, often deriving from collective writings and collective interaction. Born and raised in Hilvarenbeek in the Netherlands, she migrated to and settled in France in 1987. Her performance work challenges and questions the limitations and possibilities of online communication and collaboration. Abrahams describes her body of work as "an aesthetics of trust and attention." Studying biology became an inspiration for her future line of work. "When studying biology I had to observe a colony of monkeys in a zoo. I found this very interesting because I learned something about human communities by watching the apes. In a certain way I watch the internet with the same appetite and interest. I consider it to be a universe where I can observe some aspects of human attitudes and behaviour without interfering."

Flavia Sparacino is an American-based space maker and scientist. She is currently CEO/Founder of Sensing Places, a MIT Media Lab spinoff that specializes in immersive space design and technology.

Immersive theater differentiates itself from traditional theater by removing the stage and immersing audiences within the performance itself. Often, this is accomplished by using a specific location (site-specific), allowing audiences to converse with the actors and interact with their surroundings (interactive), thereby breaking the fourth wall.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Freckled Sky</span>

Freckled Sky is a multimedia company that specializes in performances and events with digital special effects which include projection mappings. Freckled Sky was founded in Chicago in 2015 and gained popularity competing in America's Got Talent show where their team demonstrated the world's first interactive performance with a digital mapping on water. Since then, the company participated in a number of notable business, theater, and music events.