Prague, April 14th 2000

Speakers:

Amanda Steggell/Per Platou (Motherboard, Oslo)

Richard Castelli (Le Manége, France)

Moderator: Sally Jane Norman (Ecole supèrieure de l'image, Angouléme, France)

Theatre has always embraced a wide array of media in its attempts to aesthetically reincarnate living beings; the staging of life, of inhabited space and time, calls on the most ancient and the most recent machines alike. Today's panoply of electronic and digital media radically extends the scope of theatrical arts: networked performance, virtual sets and actors, sophisticated computer graphics and sound programming and rendering techniques, are introducing new notions of life and presence into the performing arts.

This working group will examine different projects in order to discuss current references between performing arts and new media: the strengths, the difficulties, and the new kinds of relations, which are developing between these disciplines.

* * *

The following text attempts to recapitulate and develop some of the points raised during a three-hour working group session involving approximately forty participants (numbers dwindled somewhat after a break, two hours into the session). The goal was to keep the discussion sufficiently open to maximise participation, at the same time attempting to stay on track with core issues, confronting theory and practice as far as possible. Attendees included a mix of IETM "veterans" and newcomers, from a wide range of backgrounds and at least a dozen countries (artists, researchers, production and curatorial professionals, technology developers, etc.); the working group thus incorporated diverse expectations and experience.

* * *

Amanda Steggell and Per Platou, co-directors of Motherboard, an Oslo-based performance group whose dance and music activity embraces various digital, online, and robotics media, presented a video overview of recent work. Emphasis was placed on the hybrid spaces and media involved (from gallery to theatre, from gestural art to online chat), and on the diversity of forms and formats adopted (from open-ended workshop situations to productions targeting a formal public). Steggell's and Platou's respective dancer and musician backgrounds were stressed, as was their concern with the specific constraints of digital and online experimentation, with using current technical hitches and "glitches" to aesthetic ends - e.g. learning to artistically play with and around lag times on the net. Extension of the physical confines of performance space via the net appeared as a central issue : Amanda Steggell insisted on the uncanny technical situations that arise, with their highly specific aesthetic ramifications, when distant environments and actions are integrated into a performance.

French producer Richard Castelli, known for his pioneering programming of technology-anchored performances, notably via the EXIT and VISA festivals (Crèteil, Maubeuge) first presented a Granular Synthesis video. The two Austrian artists who form this group seek to invest physical space in sensorially unprecedented ways, to achieve spectator immersion at a monumental scale. The Japanese woman's audiovisual portrait which acts as an iconic centre of their work has gradually undergone intense digital processing, to manifest facial and audio activity of inhuman speed and power. This evolution has called for considerable technical development in terms of speaker and screen systems, and audio and video control software. In the subsequent tape shown by Castelli, featuring Dumb Type's "O/A" performance in traditional theatre space, incisive choreographic technique is paralleled by digitally-controlled strobe lighting and sound, also requiring substantial technical prowess. Dumb Type employs a wide range of supports, ranging from installation through to performance.

These two presentations served as starting points for the discussion, which revolved around questions that can be regrouped and summarised as follows :

To organise a "new media" discussion as a function of technologies employed does not seem to be relevant or useful (e.g. to restrict the term "new media" to work using internet, computers, etc). We are all familiar with works which embrace a broad spectrum of media - old and "new" - and it is this mix that represents most interest. At the same time, it is precisely this mix which is proving problematic in current curatorial and production practice: growing numbers of curators are dealing with heteroclite art and cultural spaces, much new media work being simultaneously presented in gallery and museum spaces as well as in traditional theatre or performance venues. This necessitates building new kinds of artistic and professional relationships in the production process, and taking into account hybrid audience categories with distinct fields of interest and experience, possibly motivated by different sets of expectations and judging work according to different sets of criteria.

Several people insisted on the importance of recognising performance that may vividly depict or evoke our new media, technologised society without necessarily using new media to do so. Along these same lines, the distinction was drawn between technique ñ construed as instrumental technique or technics operative in the performance context ñ and technology, construed as culture and as condition. One does not necessarily require high-end techniques to represent or convey issues and attitudes pertaining to our technologised culture and social condition.

Access to equipment

To what extent is new media in performance dependent on and limited by access to equipment, i.e. access to new tools, and to collaborators competent to use these tools? To what extent is prior experimentation with new media a prerequisite for performers, and to what extent can they dispense with this by simply integrating new tools into their work, thereby privileging the actual performance as a rare or even sole moment of integration?

Performances by Dumb Type result from prolonged periods of trial and experimentation with a given set of tools, in conditions Castelli seeks to optimise across a residency programme. He mentioned the difficulties involved convincing theatre production structures of the need for artistsí residencies, particularly when such residencies are presented as periods of open experimentation, i.e. without a guarantee of providing a new production at the outset (a production being understood as a finished, labeled, consumer-ready product). On the contrary, periods of in-depth experimentation tend to lead to the elaboration of constantly evolving "prototypes", less readily appropriated, thus backed, by producers and sponsors.

In contrast to the residency approach sought for Dumb Type's technical development, the Japanese Nest group, described by Steggell and Platou, keeps its use of technical equipment strictly limited to the actual moment of performance: the artists painstakingly elaborate their work through precision "walk-throughs", minutely timing and pacing use of tools they ultimately implement in a make-or-break, one-and-only performance situation. In this case, economic imperatives have fostered a radical relationship to new media in performance, and clearly impact the type of involvement with technology.

The two latter examples raise the question of how much, whether, and for whom, it can be artistically useful to preconceive the specific contributions and constraints of tools in the performance process. Familiarisation with a mock-up situation which acquaints performers with unforeseeable technical constraints may prove theatrically valuable. At the other extreme, certain types of or approaches to artistic experimentation depend on prolonged trials with the media they employ; in some cases, new artistic visions can only stem from familiarity with, thus apprehension of, the creative potentialities of new tools.

The creation of structures to facilitate access to equipment was discussed at length, this in turn triggering a series of questions : should such structures operate as neutral, "black box" institutions, ensuring thoroughfare for a maximum number of artists? Alternatively, should structures granting equipment access be designed to meet the specific demands of pre-existing artists' projects, i.e. technically evolve in tune with and as a function of artists' needs?

Producers equipping black box type structures run the risk of blindly catering for hypothetical needs which fail to correspond to reality, while actual needs go unattended. On the other hand, being continually dependent on ad hoc ressources also poses problems. Different kinds of structures are geared towards different requirements and situations, and should be complementary if their aims and activities are sufficiently well identified. Institutions wishing to instigate a productive, multipurpose working environment through new media initiation and training programmes, may reasonably strive to create and maintain ìstandardî technical facilities (high or low end, according to budgets). More specialised facilities geared for artists with clearly predefined goals and technical experience can theoretically complement the former. It is less a matter of rigidly laying down appropriate policies and strategies for investing in new media, than of better identifying and networking existing structures apt to host different kinds of new media experimentation.

Openness to cross-disciplinary research is a key prerequisite for performers seeking to explore new media, the more so in that numerous laboratories and workshops have arisen via visual arts communities, notably through performance and installation practice developed by artists working outside traditional theatre (considerable digital media activity is also encountered amongst musicians). Many such laboratories and workshops are today keen to integrate performance skills, which can provide a valuable sounding board for experiments involving "real-time" technologies. Once again, more efficient networking of existing structures could substantially bolster performance work grounded in and/or inspired by new media.

Related to the previous issue was the question of levels or thresholds of technical fluency: how far should familiarity with, and mastery of new media be a prerequisite when defining access to new tools? Although to a certain extent the turn of the millenium marks a kind of "generation gap" with regard to computer and internet culture, in that emerging generations steadily show readier integration of digital media, demands for technical fluency will logically continue to rise in an environment which is increasingly challenging technologically. As in the historical process of alphabetisation, skills today considered rare and exemplary, but which are likely to boil down to basic literacy in tomorrowís ICT world, will be gradually replaced by new rare and exemplary skills, placing technological literacy and mastery at different levels.

In the performance context, then, this raises the question of where to set the technical competence threshold for the artist. Is it acceptable for artists to subcontract tasks requiring technical expertise, or are there ethical and aesthetic grounds for insisting on the their having close control of the entire technical process engaged by their work? How far should we tolerate - and how can we aesthetically appreciate - use of "new media" by artists devoid of experience and competence in this area? Is the ability to "turn on the computer" (to technically configure the artistic environment, vamp up the software, calibrate sensors, etc.), a condition to be laid down for artists working with new media?

For Per Platou, productive new media collaborations can only arise amongst artists with predefined converging goals, and sufficiently familiar with each other's areas and levels of expertise to avoid archaic oppositions of "artists" versus "techies". With respect to his own work, Platou queries the usefulness of being plunged into an anonymous, initiation-type workshop situation, requiring painstaking configuration and adaptation labour in order to attain an operational level equivalent to a well-tuned home studio. Indeed, a workshop of this kind, where unacquainted participants must go through rituals of encounter and attempt to define common goals, may be counter-productive for artists urgently needing adapted, hands-on, turn-key configurations for testing specific ideas and works.

Another tricky question to do with evolving levels of technical expectations, which are inextricably tied up with technical development, concerned the creative exploitation - or subversion - of the constraints inherent to new media (cf. supra, Motherboard's use of internet lag times to aesthetic ends). It seems unrealistic to dismiss such behaviour as transient, pending technological improvements, since precisely this kind of creative deviance has animated and accompanied thousands of years of technological development. Playing with the fragile "cutting edge" of a technique seems to be an intrinsic feature of much artistic practice. Hence, though the advent of broad-band networks with powerful live streaming capacities will doubtless alter our apprehension of networked time and immediacy, it can reasonably be assumed that these (momentarily) optimal transmission facilities will in turn usher in a whole host of idiosyncratic features, to be duly tapped by artists.

Reflection on the changed status of contemporary performance practice, with respect to traditional theatre aesthetics, was brought into the arena of discussion on several occasions, notably by Norwegian theorist Knut Ove Arntzen. Novel performance experiments were described as often tending towards experiential, as opposed to representational art forms, as lending themselves increasingly to participatory, interactive experience promoting overlap and dissolution of the actor/spectator distinction, rather than upholding this cleavage as in traditional theater. Arntzen referred to old theatre models as being concerned with story telling, with narration and enactment designed to procure observer interest and enjoyment, whereas much contemporary performance is concerned with immersing and involving the public, with offering a primarily sensible as opposed to an intelligible environment. Thus, it would seem to be important to set discussion about new media and performance in a broader sociocultural perspective, taking into account the emergence of recent activities like raves and clubbing, which use digital audiovisual techniques to build synthetic environments in order to generate new forms of collective experience. These comments revealed interesting connections between our session and the previous day's "Club Culture" working group.

By way of conclusion, and to indulge in some personal musings, it is interesting to try and project visions of tomorrow's theatre: over the next few decades, as we become increasingly surrounded by and interlaced with "invisible computers", intelligent architectures, and smart clothes - in short, by a highly technologised, responsive environment - how are current demands for interactivity and experiential aesthetics likely to evolve? Will we be savouring Hamlet's soliloquy as a timeless moment borne intact across the centuries thanks to the inspired crafting of character through words? Will it stand out as a piece of happily obdurate genius in the onslaught of interactive, algorithmically generative, mutant, more or less theatrical phenomena? Will the sacrificial force of the actor, the one who dares stand aloof from the crowd, again transfix and terrorise us as in the ancient days of theatre? Perhaps these archaic performing arts will exert a new hold over us, by sheer weight of contrast with an environment steeped in interactive techniques. Or perhaps, more likely, the two extremes will continue to coexist as they have always done in human history : the art of the mountebank alongside the artifice of the theatrical engineer.

Sally Jane Norman

Angouléme, April 4th, 2000

Moderators note:

Based on sporadic notes, as opposed to a formal transcript, this account deals with items of discussion that particularly struck the moderator; other interpretations may differ considerably from mine, offered simply as one subjective version amongst many. Debate was lively, opinions often being expressed quite forcefully (including frustration voiced by certain IETM habituès with respect to issues they felt had already been dealt with in previous years). Many thanks all who were present for their generous, energetic insights, and apologies in advance to those who may not go along with this reading of events (but please contribute your own!). Any excesses are to be put down to the giddying effects of discussing performance and new media on a spring afternoon in the heart of the ancient, haunted city of Prague.