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Strictly, digital theatre is a hybrid art form, gaining strength from
theatre Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors to present experiences of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a Stage (theatre), stage. The performe ...
's ability to facilitate the imagination and create human connections and
digital Digital usually refers to something using discrete digits, often binary digits. Businesses *Digital bank, a form of financial institution *Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) or Digital, a computer company *Digital Research (DR or DRI), a software ...
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 Evans & Sutherland is an American computer graphics firm founded in 1968 by David Evans and Ivan Sutherland. Its current products are used in digital projection environments like planetariums. Its simulation business, which it sold to Rockwell C ...
to refer to their
fulldome Fulldome refers to immersive dome-based video display environments. The dome, horizontal or tilted, is filled with real-time (interactive) or pre-rendered (linear) computer animations, live capture images, or composited environments. Although t ...
projection technology products.)


Description

Digital theatre is primarily identified by the coexistence of "live" performers and digital
media Media may refer to: Communication * Means of communication, tools and channels used to deliver information or data ** Advertising media, various media, content, buying and placement for advertising ** Interactive media, media that is inter ...
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 Across the many fields concerned with interactivity, including information science, computer science, human-computer interaction, communication, and industrial design, there is little agreement over the meaning of the term "interactivity", but ...
) and a narrative element of spoken language or text. The four conditions of digital theatre are: #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 Across the many fields concerned with interactivity, including information science, computer science, human-computer interaction, communication, and industrial design, there is little agreement over the meaning of the term "interactivity", but ...
,(4) in that its content is shaped primarily by the artist(s) for an audience.(5) #The performance's content should contain either spoken language or text which might constitute a
narrative A narrative, story, or tale is any account of a series of related events or experiences, whether non-fictional (memoir, biography, news report, documentary, travel literature, travelogue, etc.) or fictional (fairy tale, fable, legend, thriller ...
or story, differentiating it from other events which are distinctly
dance Dance is an The arts, art form, consisting of sequences of body movements with aesthetic and often Symbol, symbolic value, either improvised or purposefully selected. Dance can be categorized and described by its choreography, by its repertoir ...
,
art Art is a diverse range of cultural activity centered around ''works'' utilizing creative or imaginative talents, which are expected to evoke a worthwhile experience, generally through an expression of emotional power, conceptual ideas, tec ...
, or
music Music is the arrangement of sound to create some combination of Musical form, form, harmony, melody, rhythm, or otherwise Musical expression, expressive content. Music is generally agreed to be a cultural universal that is present in all hum ...
.


"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 Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors to present experiences of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a Stage (theatre), stage. The performe ...
can not be over-emphasized, as it is set in opposition to
digital Digital usually refers to something using discrete digits, often binary digits. Businesses *Digital bank, a form of financial institution *Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) or Digital, a computer company *Digital Research (DR or DRI), a software ...
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 In mass communication, digital media is any media (communication), communication media that operates in conjunction with various encoded machine-readable data formats. Digital content can be created, viewed, distributed, modified, listened to, an ...
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 Video is an Electronics, electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving picture, moving image, visual Media (communication), media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, whi ...
,
animation Animation is a filmmaking technique whereby still images are manipulated to create moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Animati ...
, 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 Across the many fields concerned with interactivity, including information science, computer science, human-computer interaction, communication, and industrial design, there is little agreement over the meaning of the term "interactivity", but ...
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 Across the many fields concerned with interactivity, including information science, computer science, human-computer interaction, communication, and industrial design, there is little agreement over the meaning of the term "interactivity", but mo ...
" refers to any mutually or reciprocally active communication, whether it be a human-human or a human-machine communication. The criteria of having
narrative A narrative, story, or tale is any account of a series of related events or experiences, whether non-fictional (memoir, biography, news report, documentary, travel literature, travelogue, etc.) or fictional (fairy tale, fable, legend, thriller ...
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 Samuel Barclay Beckett (; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish writer of novels, plays, short stories, and poems. Writing in both English and French, his literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal, and Tragicomedy, tra ...
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 ''A Midsummer Night's Dream'' is a Comedy (drama), comedy play written by William Shakespeare in about 1595 or 1596. The play is set in Athens, and consists of several subplots that revolve around the marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta. One s ...
'', ''
The Tempest ''The Tempest'' is a Shakespeare's plays, play by William Shakespeare, probably written in 1610–1611, and thought to be one of the last plays that he wrote alone. After the first scene, which takes place on a ship at sea during a tempest, th ...
)'' staged with technology at the
University of Kansas The University of Kansas (KU) is a public research university with its main campus in Lawrence, Kansas, United States. Two branch campuses are in the Kansas City metropolitan area on the Kansas side: the university's medical school and hospital ...
and the
University of Georgia The University of Georgia (UGA or Georgia) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university with its main campus in Athens, Georgia, United States. Chartered in 1785, it is the oldest public university in th ...
. 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 disc The compact disc (CD) is a Digital media, digital optical disc data storage format co-developed by Philips and Sony to store and play digital audio recordings. It employs the Compact Disc Digital Audio (CD-DA) standard and was capable of hol ...
s, 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 Fluxus was an international, interdisciplinary community of artists, composers, designers, and poets during the 1960s and 1970s who engaged in experimental performance art, art performances which emphasized the artistic process over the finishe ...
and
John Cage John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and Extended technique, non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one ...
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 The Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, normally shortened to The WELL or The Well, is a virtual community founded in 1985. It is one of the oldest continuously operating virtual communities. By 1993 it had 7,000 members, a staff of 12, and gross annu ...
and interactive writing offered new models for artistic creativity. With the 'Dot Com' boom of the 1990s, telematic artists including
Roy Ascott Roy Ascott FRSA (born 26 October 1934) is a British artist, who works with cybernetics and telematics on an art he calls technoetics by focusing on the impact of digital and telecommunications networks on consciousness. Since the 1960s, 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 The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and sc ...
, 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 The University of Kansas (KU) is a public research university with its main campus in Lawrence, Kansas, United States. Two branch campuses are in the Kansas City metropolitan area on the Kansas side: the university's medical school and hospital ...
, as well as significant dance technology partnerships (including Riverbed and Riverbed's work with
Merce Cunningham Mercier Philip "Merce" Cunningham (April 16, 1919 – July 26, 2009) was an American dancer and choreographer who was at the forefront of American modern dance for more than 50 years. He frequently collaborated with artists of other discipl ...
) led to an unprecedented expansion in the use of digital technology in creating media-rich performances (including the use of
motion capture Motion capture (sometimes referred as mocap or mo-cap, for short) is the process of recording high-resolution motion (physics), movement of objects or people into a computer system. It is used in Military science, military, entertainment, sports ...
, 3D stereoscopic animation, and
virtual reality Virtual reality (VR) is a Simulation, simulated experience that employs 3D near-eye displays and pose tracking to give the user an immersive feel of a virtual world. Applications of virtual reality include entertainment (particularly video gam ...
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 th
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 Ancient Greece () was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity (), that comprised a loose collection of culturally and linguistically r ...
and medieval
magic lantern The magic lantern, also known by its Latin name , is an early type of image projector that uses pictures—paintings, prints, or photographs—on transparent plates (usually made of glass), one or more lens (optics), lenses, and a light source. ...
s. 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 Edward Henry Gordon CraigSome sources give "Henry Edward Gordon Craig". (born Edward Godwin; 16 January 1872 – 29 July 1966), sometimes known as Gordon Craig, was an English modernist theatre practitioner; he worked as an actor, director an ...
,
Erwin Piscator Erwin Friedrich Maximilian Piscator (17 December 1893 – 30 March 1966) was a German theatre director and Theatrical producer, producer. Along with Bertolt Brecht, he was the foremost exponent of epic theatre, a form that emphasizes the socio- ...
(and to a limited degree
Bertolt Brecht Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known as Bertolt Brecht and Bert Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a p ...
in their joint work on
Epic Theatre Epic theatre () is a theatrical movement that arose in the early to mid-20th century from the theories and practice of a number of theatre practitioners who responded to the political climate of the time through the creation of new political ...
),
Josef Svoboda Josef Svoboda (10 May 1920 – 8 April 2002) was a Czech artist and scenic designer. He was a production designer and director, known for Amadey (1984), Laterna Magika: Puzzles (1996) and Laterna Magika: Trap (1999). Education Svoboda was ...
, and the
Bauhaus The Staatliches Bauhaus (), commonly known as the , was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined Decorative arts, crafts and the fine arts.Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn., ...
and
Futurists Futurists (also known as futurologists, prospectivists, foresight practitioners and horizon scanners) are people whose specialty or interest is futures studies or futurology or the attempt to systematically explore predictions and possibilities ...
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 Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors to present experiences of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a Stage (theatre), stage. The performe ...
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 Mass media include the diverse arrays of media that reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit information electronically via media such as films, radio, recorded music, or television. Digital media comprises b ...
, 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 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 ...
" 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

* Digital performance *
History of theatre The history of theatre charts the development of theatre over the past 2,500 years. While performative elements are present in every society, it is customary to acknowledge a distinction between theatre as an art form and entertainment, and ' ...
*
Stage terminology Stage, stages, or staging may refer to: Arts and media Acting * Stage (theatre), a space for the performance of theatrical productions * Theatre, a branch of the performing arts, often referred to as "the stage" * '' The Stage'', a weekly Bri ...
*
Theatre of Digital Art The Theatre of Digital Art (ToDA) is an exhibition space for digital art and a venue for digital theatre located at Souk Madinat in Jumeirah, Dubai, United Arab Emirates. ToDA was announced in 2019, providing a 1,800 m2 immersive art space, with s ...
(ToDA), Duabi, UAE


Notes

#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. #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. #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. #Interactivity is more than choices on a navigation menu, low levels of participation or getting a desired response to a request.
Sheizaf Rafaeli Sheizaf Rafaeli (; born June 7, 1955) is an Israeli researcher, scholar of computer-mediated communication and newspaper columnist. He is professor and dean at the School of Management (Graduate School of Business Administration) Haifa GSB, Univer ...
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
" pages 110-34 in ''Advanced Communicational Science: Merging Mass and Interpersonal Processes'', ed. Robert P. Hawkins, John M. Wiemann, and Suzanne Pingree ewbury Park: Sage Publications, 1988111). #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. #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. #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. #E.g.
happenings A happening is a performance, event, or situation art, usually as performance art. The term was first used by Allan Kaprow in 1959 to describe a range of art-related events. History Origins Allan Kaprow first coined the term "happening" in t ...
. #Such as the stunning visual media dance concerts like ''Ghostcatching'', by Merce Cunningham and Riverbed, accessible online via the revamped/migrated Digital Performance Archive

{dead link, date=January 2018 , bot=InternetArchiveBot , fix-attempted=yes '' 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
'. #Such as ''Telematic Dreaming'', by Paul Sermon, in which distant participants shared a bed through mixing projected video streams; se
"Telematic Dreaming - Statement."
#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. #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'' ambridge: 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. #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." #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). #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. #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. #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. #Schweppe, M. and Geigel, J., 2009. "Teaching Graphics in the Context of Theatre", Eurographics 2009 Educators Program (Munich, Germany, March 30-April 1, 2009)


External links


Digital Performance Archive
hosted b



* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20090305131908/http://www.merce.org/ Merce Cunningham Dance
Catching Ghosts in Ghostcatching

Troika Ranch
Theatre Digital art Performing arts