FMP Essay

25/5/2008

Jak Osborne
Design for Digital Media Year 2
Leeds College of Art and Design

What Does Digital Media Mean For The World Of Performance Arts? – A study of the emerging digital trends, politics and social connotations.

In this essay I will be looking at the emerging digital performance arts and discussing how they’ve changed since their birth, where they are likely to lead and also the social and artistic implications of the digital performance era. I will start the essay by looking at the origins of digital theatre that I grew up with, followed by a look at the earliest forms of the more contrived digital theatre. My conclusion will be based on my own views with reference to material I have read.

When I was about 14 I was introduced to the online phenomenon of “Ultima Online”. A massively multiplayer, persistent, online world in which a large but tight knit community of players ranging in age, religion, ethnicity and nationality collected together to live out their online persona’s in the fantasy world of Ultima. Key to the success of this game was the ease in which players could impact upon the online world in which their characters lived, a trend taken on by the ever more advancing computer games of today. Due as well to the community nature of the game it was frequent to find players, game administrators and developers cooperating together to create online performances for the enjoyment of whoever wanted to join in. This was my first encounter with the world of digital performance. At the time of course I merely joined in happily, entirely unaware that what I was partaking in was in no way any less a form of art than any community theatre group putting on a show for the public. Due to the fact people’s true identities (or rather personalities) were kept to the most part secret, their online characters and persona’s taking over, players were able to interact and express themselves a lot more freely than they might have otherwise allowed themselves in the physical world. Given this freedom to express oneself without risk of ridicule meant that while the interaction between online avatars to the casual onlooker might appear staler than a ‘real’ performance, in actuality a lot of what was being seen was the true nature of people brought forth, much like live action role play. LARP (Live Action Role Play) is based on much the same principle as the computer game, only lacking in its digital component. It is still hard to argue that ‘LARP’ is anything but a largely unscripted theatre performance consisting of sets, fictional characters, costume and even in some cases latex ears.

“Personas are honed like characters for the new theatrical confessional box, where, like postmodern performance artists, individuals explore their autobiographies and enact intimate dialogues with their inner selves. Seduced by the apparent intimacy and privacy of this most public of space, they confess all online and reveal secrets to strangers that they have never told their closest friends. The World Wide Web is a site of therapeutic catharsis-overload, and it constitutes the largest theatre in the world, offering everyone fifteen megabytes of fame.” – Steve Dixon[1]

Theatre and performance have taken to the digital age as keenly as most other forms of expression have, such as writing in the form of blogging, DIY movies with YouTube for global publishing and creative discussion using forums are just few examples. Harnessing the power of digital media to create whole new approaches in performance arts allows for a new wave of interesting techniques and genre’s to spring up. Some of the oldest digital performance took place in MUD online gaming. MUD stands for Multi User Dungeon, Domain or Dimension and consists of a online text based fantasy world in which role play is used to create an online quest realm reminiscent (in most, but not all cases by far) of Tolkien’s fantasy worlds, populated by elves, goblins and the like. MUD performances were at their most basic level the game itself, by playing it you are performing as a character that isn’t yourself. You are the actor and the game is your stage, other players become your co-actors and anything else is simply a prop. The same is said for almost all games.

“The digital double projects itself online and on stage to take numerous forms, from the textual characterizations of role playing MUDs and MOOs to the graphical avatars of the virtual worlds; from the theatrical depictions of cyborgic alter-egos to the parthenogenic creations of artists’ substitute-selves in the form of anthropomorphic robots.” [2]– Steve Dixon

During my travels I came across, as most students do, the Wikipedia page relating to my essay topic. On this stub page it listed the 4 conditions for digital theatre, I think I might contest some of the points made.

The four conditions of digital theatre according to Wikipedia.org are:

1. It is a “live” performance placing at least some performers in the same shared physical space with an audience.
2. The performance must use digital technology as an essential part of the primary artistic event.
3. The performance contains only limited levels of interactivity, in that its content is shaped primarily by the artist(s) for an audience.
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.

John Reaves writes:
“In the digital world you cannot distinguish different disciplines by the physical nature of the media or by which work is created.... Theatre has always been an integrative, collaborative art which potentially (and sometimes actually) includes all art: music, dance, painting, sculpture, etc. Why not be aggressive in the tumultuous context of the Digital Revolution? Why not claim all interactive art in the name of theatre?”[3]

The art of performance within video games has only ever gained in momentum since it’s early days, and recently there have been many artists and groups springing up to use computer gaming as a platform for political means. A group called Velvet Strike, coordinated by Anne-Marie Schleiner, aims at using the game Counter Strike (a first person shooter created by the group Valve which has become one of the most played games of all time) to peaceably demonstrate against violence inherent in modern society. The game features player versus player combat where-by two teams square off to one another in a reasonably realistic setting. Velvet Strike members will enter online matches, refuse to play and instead spray anti war slogans onto the walls of the virtual play maps. While Velvet Strike is seen as a mostly harmless there are other groups with a lot more bite behind their intensions. ‘Night of Bush Capturing’ is the game created by the so called Al-Qaeda propaganda group ‘The Global Islamic Media Front’, supposedly based in the UK, and features a crudely designed first person shooter that hands you the task of hunting down and shooting George Bush and Tony Blair. While it’s clear that games are an effective tool for the spreading of political ideals, it is actually the US Military that make greatest use of these tactics by funding the development of many anti terrorist and pro US war games, even fully funding the creation of a US Military boot camp game aimed at increasing military recruits.

Looking further back, and at more academically accepted digital performances, in 1976 Jeffrey Kleiser’s and Diana Walczac’s show, “Fever”, was a landmark performance using 3D glasses to show 13 films projected over the top of musicians and dancers. While this theatre was highly anticipated at the time, it gained little popularity with critics who often questioned the merger of theatre’s ‘purity’ with virtual components. However, the beginning of the digital performance experimentation started with many groups following suite and trying their hardest to make the digital performance work. One of the groups noted best for its involvement in the digital revolution was the New York based group Troika Ranch, founded by Mark Coniglio. The performances merged digital arts as 3D glasses projections over live actors and musicians to create truly unique spectacle that felt, unlike a lot of attempts prior, that the digital aspects actually complimented the rest of the performance instead of becoming a gimmick of the show, and thus drawing away from the true content.

There are enough groups, individuals and organizations out there creating digital theatre, performance and interactive arts that I could continue to list them forever. The fact of the matter is; Digital theatre is an integral part of our society already. It has been around for decades now, and although its shaky start, will continue to evolve and reinvent itself for as far as anyone can predict.

In conclusion; while digital media will play an important role in the definition of theatre in the future, it is important not to forget that machinery and technology itself is not enough. Technology is merely a bridge to be crossed, and in art performance can only play a back seat to true content and meaning.

Bibliography:

DIXON, S. 2007. Digital Performance. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press

SHULAM, R. 2000. The Power Of Political Art – The 1930’s Literary Left Reconsidered. London: The University of North Carolina Press

HILL & PARIS, L & H. 2004. The Guerilla Guide to Performance Art – How to Make A Living as an Artist. Ebbw Vale: Continuum

LUNENFELD, P(ed). 1999. The Digital Dialectic: New Essays on New Media. London: The MIT Press

KENNARD, P. 2000. Dispatches from an Unofficial War Artist. Hampshire: Lund Humphries

RAIMES, J. 2006. The Digital Canvas. Sussex: ILEX