The Performing Subject in the Space of Technology

Palgrave Studies in Performance and Technology

Series Editors: Susan Broadhurst and Josephine Machon

Books included in this cutting-edge series centre on global and embodied approaches to performance and technology. As well as focusing on digital per-formance and art, books in the series also include the theoretical and historical context relevant to these practices. The series offers fresh artistic and theoretical perspectives on this exciting and growing area of contemporary performance practice, and includes contributors from a wide range of international locations working within this varied discipline. Titles in the series will include edited col-lections and monographs on issues including (but not limited to): identity and live art; intimacy and engagement with technology; biotechnology and artistic practices; technology, architecture and performance; performance, gender and technology; and space and performance.

Titles include:

Susan Broadhurst and Josephine Machon (editors)SENSUALITIES/TEXTUALITIES AND TECHNOLOGIESWritings of the Body in 21st Century Performance

Susan Broadhurst and Josephine Machon (editors)IDENTITY, PERFORMANCE AND TECHNOLOGYPractices of Empowerment, Embodiment and Technicity

Maria Chatzichristodoulou and Rachel Zerihan (editors)INTIMACY ACROSS VISCERAL AND DIGITAL PERFORMANCE

Aneta MancewiczINTERMEDIAL SHAKESPEARES ON EUROPEAN STAGES

Kara Reilly (editor)THEATRE, PERFORMANCE AND ANALOGUE TECHNOLOGYHistorical Interfaces and Intermedialities

Piotr WoycickiPOST-CINEMATIC THEATRE AND PERFORMANCEPalgrave Studies in Performance and Technology

Palgrave Studies in Performance and TechnologySeries Standing Order ISBN 978–0–230–29362–5 Hardback 978–0–230–29363–2 Paperback(outside North America only)

You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above.

Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England

The Performing Subject in the Space of TechnologyThrough the Virtual, Towards the Real

Edited by

Matthew CauseyTrinity College Dublin, Ireland

Emma MeehanCoventry University, UK

and

Néill O’DwyerTrinity College Dublin, Ireland

Introduction, selection and editorial matter © Matthew Causey, Emma Meehan and Néill O’Dwyer 2015Individual chapters © Contributors 2015

All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission.

No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS.

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The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published 2015 byPALGRAVE MACMILLAN

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The performing subject in the space of technology : through the virtual, towards the real / Matthew Causey, Emma Meehan and Néill O’Dwyer.pages cm.—(Palgrave studies in performance and technology)

1. Technology and the arts. 2. Performing arts. 3. Performance art. I. Causey, Matthew. II. Meehan, Emma, 1981– III. O’Dwyer, Néill, 1979– NX180.T4P48 2015700.1'05—dc23 2015002381

Typeset by MPS Limited, Chennai, India.

Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2015 978-1-137-43815-7

ISBN 978-1-349-68364-2 ISBN 978-1-137-43816-4 (eBook)DOI 10.1057/9781137438164

ISBN 978-1-349-68364-2

v

Contents

List of Illustrations vii

Series Editors’ Preface ix

Acknowledgements x

Notes on Contributors xii

General Introduction: In the After-event of the Virtual 1Matthew Causey, Emma Meehan and Néill O’Dwyer

Part I Provocations: Subjectivity and Technology

Introduction to Part I 11Matthew Causey, Emma Meehan and Néill O’Dwyer

1 Into the Body of Another: Strange Couplings and Unnatural Alliances of Harlequin Coat 17Burcu Baykan

2 The Cultural Critique of Bernard Stiegler: Reflecting on the Computational Performances of Klaus Obermaier 34Néill O’Dwyer

3 The Flicker at the Threshold of Societies of Control 53Sharon Phelan

4 The Right to be Forgotten and the Image-Crimes of Digital Culture 69Matthew Causey

5 Materiality, Immateriality and the Dancing Body: The Challenge of the Inter in the Preservation of Intangible Cultural Heritage 82Sarah Whatley

6 Performing (the Subject of) Exteriority: Virtuality, M̄ım̄esis and the Gratuitous ‘One Must’ 99Riku Roihankorpi

Part II Practices: Embodied Negotiations of Art and Technology

Introduction to Part II 119Matthew Causey, Emma Meehan and Néill O’Dwyer

vi Contents

7 Not Waving but Drowning: The Affect of Random Programming on the Creation of a Digital Performance Work 125Mary Oliver

8 BrainExplode! Audiences and Agency through the Appropriation of Video-game Structures 140Dan Bergin

9 Relational Works-in-Movement Using the BodyResponse System 156Maria Coleman

10 Dancing with Dirt and Wires: Reconciling the Embodied and the Digital in Site-responsive Collaborative Practice 174Natalie Garrett Brown, Christian Kipp and Amy Voris

11 Jeanette Doyle: Fifteen Days and Factory Direct at the Andy Warhol Museum: The Relationship between the ‘Immaterial’, ‘Dematerial’ and ‘Material’ in Contemporary Art Practice 187Jeanette Doyle

12 Inscribing Work and Process: The Ontological Implications of Virtual Scoring Practices for Dance 202Hetty Blades

13 Traces and Artefacts of Physical Intelligence 220Scott deLahunta

Index 232

vii

List of Illustrations

Cover: Detail of the installation Harlequin Coat Bioreactor, Sk-interfaces exhibition at FACT, Liverpool (also cover image). Credit: ORLAN, FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology)

1.1 Biopsy, Harlequin Coat, Perth University, Australia. Credit: ORLAN, FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology) 19

1.2 Harlequin Coat, Bioreactor, Sk-interfaces exhibition at FACT, Liverpool. Credit: ORLAN, FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology) 21

1.3 Petri dishes, Harlequin Coat. Credit: ORLAN, FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology) 21

2.1 Apparition, Jump. Credit: Klaus Obermaier, photographic still from the live performance 38

2.2 Apparition, Text. Credit: Klaus Obermaier, photographic still from the live performance 39

5.1 VISITOR/Vermilion Lake (2011 installation: mixed media, computer game environment, 5.1 channel sound – James Taylor Gallery). Credit: Gibson/Martelli, photograph David Surman 89

5.2 VISITOR/Vermilion Lake (2011 installation: mixed media, computer game environment, 5.1 channel sound – Towner Art Gallery). Credit: Gibson/Martelli 90

5.3 Falling Upwards (2013), virtual environment, Oculus Rift VR headset. Credit: Gibson/Martelli 91

7.1 Mary Oliver, wind-up swimmer. Credit: Mary Oliver 131

7.2 Mary Oliver, screenshot from live performance. Credit: Mary Oliver 135

9.1 Goitse! performance. Credit: Maria Coleman/Jenny Brady/the LAB, Dublin City Council 157

9.2 Goitse! audience interaction. Credit: Maria Coleman/Jenny Brady/the LAB, Dublin City Council 158

viii List of Illustrations

11.1 Jeanette Doyle: Fifteen Days @ The Warhol. Performance documentation. Credit: Jeanette Doyle 195

11.2 Ansaldo Waterpainting I. Credit: Jeanette Doyle 198

11.3 Ansaldo Waterpainting II. Credit: Jeanette Doyle 199

12.1 Screenshot from Using the Sky. Credit: Motion Bank, The Forsythe Company 209

13.1 Screenshots from William Forsythe’s CD-ROM Improvisation Technologies: A Tool for the Analytical Dance Eye. Credit: William Forsythe, Nik Haffner, Christian Ziegler, Volker Kuchelmeister, Yvonne Mohr, Astrid Sommer, ZKM/Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, Karlsruhe, Deutsches Tanzarchiv Köln/SK Stiftung Kultur 222

13.2 The left and right screens of the Choreographic Language Agent. Credit: OpenEnded Group & Wayne McGregor|Random Dance 225

13.3 Cueing system in One Flat Thing, reproduced. Credit: Synchronous Objects Project, The Ohio State University and The Forsythe Company 227

13.4 Form flow. Credit: Synchronous Objects Project, The Ohio State University and The Forsythe Company 228

13.5 Counterpoint tool. Credit: Synchronous Objects Project, The Ohio State University and The Forsythe Company 229

ix

Series Editors’ Preface

Susan Broadhurst was invited to be Series Editor of Palgrave Studies in Performance and Technology in 2009 and she invited Josephine Machon to be co-editor soon afterwards. Performance and techno-logical resources, combined in various forms, constitute an increasingly popular area of artistic practice. In a relatively short time a prolifera-tion of new technological applications have infiltrated and irrevocably altered everyday life. The consequences of this might not be unprob-lematic, but the ambitions of performance practitioners have been extended by the availability of such resources. The remit of this impor-tant series is to acknowledge the progressive and diverse approaches to various performances and artworks employing technology in their practices. The series was launched in 2010 at the Digital Resources Arts and Humanities Conference, hosted by Broadhurst and held at Brunel University, London. Books included in this cutting-edge series centre on embodied approaches to performance and technology globally. As well as focusing on digital performance and art, books in the series also include the theoretical and historical context relevant to these practices. The series offers fresh artistic and theoretical perspectives on this exciting and growing area of contemporary performance and arts practice, and includes contributors working within this varied discipline from a wide range of international locations. Titles in the series will include edited collections and monographs on issues including (but not limited to): identity and live art; intimacy and engagement with tech-nology; biotechnology and artistic practices; technology, architecture and performance; performance, gender and technology; and space and performance.

Susan BroadhurstJosephine Machon

x

Acknowledgements

This book emerged from the Dancing with Fire symposium, developed in partnership between the Arts Technology Research Lab (ATRL) at Trinity College Dublin, the Digital Arts and Humanities (DAH) PhD programme and Dublin Dance Festival.

We would like to acknowledge the support of the DAH programme, and in particular the support of Jo D’arcy and Poul Holm for funding the initial symposium and some of the costs towards the production of the book. The DAH programme combines the strengths of seven institute partners; National University of Ireland, Galway, National University of Ireland, Maynooth, Royal Irish Academy, Trinity College Dublin, University College Cork, Queen’s University Belfast and University of Ulster. The DAH progamme is funded under the HEA PRTLI5 initiative and co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund.

We also want to highlight the contribution of ATRL at the School of Drama, Film and Music, Trinity College Dublin for hosting the sympo-sium, as well as providing facilities and staff time towards the develop-ment of the book project. We would like to thank the staff at the School of Drama, Film and Music, ATRL doctoral researchers and others who helped us at the symposium and through the course of the development of the book. Thanks to Melissa Sihra for her initial, generous advice in developing the edited collection.

We would like to thank Dublin Dance Festival’s artistic director Julia Carruthers in programming the symposium as part of the festival, which helped to give it additional international profile and therefore attracting a range of excellent contributions. We would also like to thank the staff at the festival who supported the administration of the event.

Paula Kennedy and Peter Cary have been extremely helpful in sup-porting the development of the book and we would like to thank them for helping to produce the publication and always being available to respond to our questions.

Professor Sarah Whatley, director of The Centre for Dance Research at Coventry University, has offered support through mentoring, and the provision of research time dedicated to the completion of the book.

We would also like to thank those who have allowed us to publish images which are vital to the book: ORLAN, Klaus Obermaier, Gibson/Martelli, Maria Coleman, Jeanette Doyle, The Forsythe Company,

Acknowledgements xi

Wayne McGregor, and others who have contributed to the creation of those images.

Finally, we wish to acknowledge those who have offered us rights to publish versions of previously published works:

Sarah Whatley: This chapter is an extended version of an essay prepared for the ECLAP conference 2013, Porto, Portugal and published in P Nesi and R Santucci (eds) (2013); Information Technologies for Performing Arts, Media Access, and Entertainment; Springer, Berlin Heidelberg, ISBN: 978-3-642-40049-0 under the title ‘The Challenge of the Inter in the Preservation of Cultural Heritage: The Intangibility of the Material and Immaterial Dancing Body in Performance’.

Riku Roihankorpi: This chapter contains reworked sections of an essay titled ‘Performing Exteriority: An Essay on Virtuality and Mimesis in Spatial and Agential Contexts’ and published online by the DREX project in May 2012 at the Centre for Practise as Research in Theatre, The University of Tampere. See: http://t7.uta.fi/drex/DREX/11_TextsAndPublicationsEn_files/7_Roihankorpi.pdf, last accessed 5 August 2014.

Scott deLahunta: A version of this essay was first published as ‘Traces of Physical Intelligence’, (2011), in: Gestalt der Bewegung. Ed. Zinsmeister, A. ( JOVIS verlag: Stuttgart Academy of Art and Design), pp. 94–113.

xii

Notes on Contributors

Burcu Baykan holds a BFA in Graphic Design, and an MA in Media and Cultural Studies. Having previously worked as a graphic designer in the advertising field for three years, she also instructed as an adjunct faculty in the Visual Communication Design Departments in both Istanbul Bilgi University and Kadir Has University. Currently she is undertaking a PhD in Digital Arts and Humanities at Trinity College Dublin and pursing a philosophical investigation of multidisciplinary body-oriented art practices. Specifically, she is interested in new forms of collaboration and intersections between art–science–technology and the broader critical theory and the philosophical context which frame them.

Dan Bergin received his PhD from Trinity College Dublin, in the School of Drama, Film and Music, where he researched the interaction between computer gaming and other contemporary art forms. He holds a BA from Trinity College Dublin in Drama and Theatre Studies, in which his primary focus was performance technology. His interests include digital culture, networked performance, puppetry and virtual environments. An avid practitioner, Dan was a founding director of the arts festival 10 Days In Dublin. He is also an active theatre director and a producer for the video-games industry.

Hetty Blades is a PhD student at the Centre for Dance Research (C-DaRE), Coventry University. She graduated from Laban with a BA in 2007, before completing an MA in Dance Studies at Roehampton in 2010. Her PhD research is concerned with the way in which digital technology impacts on dance ontology. She is particularly interested in modes of digital documentation and their relationship to dance works and perfor-mances. Hetty works as a part-time visiting lecturer at a number of UK institutions, and has published papers in Postgraduate Journal of Aesthetics (2011, 2013), Conversations Across the Field of Dance Studies (2012), Motio (2015) and American Society of Aesthetics Graduate E-Journal (2015).

Matthew Causey is Associate Professor in Drama, the Director of Arts Technology Research Laboratory and Fellow of Trinity College Dublin. He received his BFA (California Institute of the Arts), MA (NYU) and

Notes on Contributors xiii

PhD (Stanford) before taking up a post as assistant professor at Georgia Tech. He is author of Theatre and Performance in Digital Culture: From Simulation to Embeddedness (2009) and Performance, Identity, and the Neo-Political Subject (2013) co-edited with Fintan Walsh.

Maria Coleman is a new-media artist, musician and researcher based in Co. Donegal. Recent work has involved a set of new-media tools dubbed the Body Response System (BRS). Movement within this interactive environment launches audiovisual responses. Since 2004 she has been using various versions of the BRS to collaborate with performers (actors, dancers, musicians) and audience members to co-create improvised, multidisciplinary, participative performances. She has a BA in Fine Art Sculpture from LSAD, an M.Phil. in Music and Media Technology from TCD and is currently working on a practice/research PhD at the DIT. Her work has been supported by Limerick City Council, Donegal County Council and Dublin City Council and she won the arts@DIT award in 2010. Her writing has been published in Crossings eJournal of Art and Technology (2006) and has won the ARTStap Title Award (2012). She performs with a bilingual indie-rock band called ‘Wee Small Gods’ and is currently Music and Cultural Officer in Ionad Naomh Pádraig, a Donegal Gaeltacht Community venue.

Scott deLahunta has worked as writer, researcher and organiser on a range of international projects bringing performing arts with a focus on choreography into conjunction with other disciplines and practices. He is currently Senior Research Fellow in partnership with Coventry University (UK) and Deakin University (AUS) and Director of Motion Bank/The Forsythe Company. www.sdela.dds.nl.

Jeanette Doyle has exhibited in ‘Factory Direct’, The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, 2012; ‘Jeanette Doyle: Fifteen Days’ @ The Andy Warhol Museum (solo), 2011; ‘Invisible Stranger/ unsichtbare Fremde’, Tamtam8 Artspace, Berlin, 2010; The 2009 798 Beijing Biennale; Something Out of Nothing, The Invisible Dog, New York; MIGUEL AMADO PRESENTS, ISPC, New York; ‘Preview 09’ White Box, New York. And in 2008 ‘The Promised Land’, The Project Room for New Media, Chelsea Art Museum, New York ‘Power, Shape’, Bridge Art Center, Beijing; The Garden of Delights/2008, Yeosu Art Festival; ‘tough’, mother’s tankstation, Dublin (solo). Art in the Lifeworld, Dublin; ‘Critical Mass’, HYCAC (Huang Yan Contemporary Art Center), Beijing; ‘Spectacular’ Mexico City.

xiv Notes on Contributors

enter & inhabit

Amy Voris is a dance artist based in Manchester. Her practice is process-oriented and collaborative. She works with photographer Christian Kipp, composer James Buchanan, lighting designer Cath Cullinane and is a co-founder of the enter inhabit, L219 and aMigAeNterpRiseS projects. She has taught in higher education for over a decade and recently completed training in Integrative Bodywork and Movement Therapy with Linda Hartley. She is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Chichester. www.amyvoris.com. Christian Kipp is a photographer based in Essex. He splits his time between working on his own in the natural landscape and collaborating with a variety of dance artists. He is interested in the ways that these two areas feed and reflect each other. For Christian, photography feels like a way of connecting more strongly with nature and people. www.christiankipp.com. Natalie Garrett Brown is Principal Lecturer in Dance at Coventry University, UK, She is associate editor of the Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices and Vice Chair of Dance HE. She is a founding member of enter & inhabit, a collaborative site-responsive project, and the Corporeal Knowing Network, an exchange between theatre and dance artists and scholars interested in embodied writing practices and processes. Natalie undertook her Somatic Movement Educators Training in Body-Mind Centering with Embody Move Association, UK. Her research interests are theoretically situated within feminist understandings of embodied subjectivity and are focused on the ways in which Somatic practices inform performance making, creativity and writing. She recently co-convened the Dance & Somatics Conference at Coventry University with Professor Sarah Whatley. Publications include a chapter contribu-tion entitled ‘The Inter-subjective body’, in Ways of Being a Body: Body and Performance, edited by Sandra Reeve (2013).

Emma Meehan is a Research Fellow at Coventry University’s Centre for Dance Research. She received her BA and PhD from the Drama Department, Trinity College Dublin, where she taught part-time on the BA and MA programmes. She also worked as the administrator for the Arts Technology Research Lab at Trinity College. Her current project involves revisiting the archives of Dublin Contemporary Dance Theatre to develop new creative work, funded by the Arts Council of Ireland. Articles include: ‘The Autobiographical Body’, in Ways of Being a Body: Body and Performance edited by Sandra Reeve (2013), ‘Visuality, Discipline and Somatic Practices: The Maya Lila Performances of Joan Davis’, in The Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices (Vol. 2, No. 2, 2010),

‘Mobility and Improvisation: The Flâneur in Maya Lila’, in Capturing Composition: Improvisation in Dance Research and Practice, edited by Sheila Creevey and Catherine Foley (2011), amongst others. She is also a co-convenor of the Performance as Research Working Group at the International Federation for Theatre Research and editorial assistant for the Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices.

Néill O’Dwyer is an artist, PhD candidate and practice-based researcher at the Arts Technology Research Lab (ATRL), in the Department of Film and Drama, at Trinity College Dublin. He is a part-time member of staff in the Department of Visual Culture at the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) where he supervises undergraduate theses. He is a member of the international Digital Studies Network initiated by the Institute of Research and Innovation (IRI), at the Pompidou Centre, and he is an associate researcher of GradCAM (Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media). Néill completed his joint honours undergrad in Visual Communications and History of Art, at NCAD, in 2001 and graduated from the MSc in Digital Media at Trinity College, in 2008. His ongoing research at the ATRL investigates contingent artistic possibilities offered by processes of symbiosis during human–computer interaction, how one can inform the other and why this is useful in broader sociopoliti-cal contexts.

Mary Oliver is a performance artist and the Head of Media at Manchester Metropolitan University. She previously held the post of Reader in Performance at the University of Salford. She is particularly interested in the relationship of the live and the recorded ‘virtual’ per-former and to date has written and performed ten interactive works in which the live performer performs with a digital partner. Future work will continue to develop the activity of screen writing within the live performance setting and in addition several completely screen-based projects are planned.

Sharon Phelan is a PhD candidate on the Digital Arts and Humanities programme at Trinity College Dublin. Based at the Arts Technology Research Lab, Sharon’s areas of interest are experimental music, video and sound art. Her practice-based research focuses on the physics, lin-guistics, ethics and politics of the voice in contemporary art and music. Prior to joining the ATRL, Sharon was a curator at Monster Truck Gallery, Dublin. She received her M.Phil. in Music and Media Technologies from Trinity College Dublin (2010) and her BA in Fine Art Media and History of Art from the National College of Art and Design (2008).

Notes on Contributors xv

Riku Roihankorpi is a Senior Lecturer in Theatre and Drama Research and Media Culture in the School of Communication, Media and Theatre, University of Tampere, Finland. His recent research projects DREX and VIMMA have focused on new conceptions of spatiality and performativity from the viewpoints of technological performance, thea-tre theory and performance capture (PeCap) environments.

Sarah Whatley, Professor of Dance, is Director of the Centre for Dance Research (C-DaRE), Coventry University. Her research is primarily focused on the interface between dance and new technologies, dance analysis, somatic dance practice and pedagogy, and inclusive dance practices. Her research is funded by the AHRC, JISC, Leverhulme Trust, PALATINE and the Cultural Olympiad. She led the AHRC-funded Siobhan Davies archive project and collaborated with the University of Surrey to create the Digital Dance Archives portal. She has pub-lished widely on her research, is Editor of the Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices and is on the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Screendance. She is a member of the International Education Workgroup for The Forsythe Company’s Motion Bank project and is Academic Advisor: Digital Environment for The Routledge Digital Performance Archive. Her research into dance and disability is the focus of her current AHRC-funded project, which is a collaboration with aca-demic lawyers and explores the relationship between dance, disability and the law.

xvi Notes on Contributors

1

Now that the shock of the virtual and the rise of our avatars and digital doubles has subsided towards a new normal of computational interfer-ence in all areas of life, it is an advantageous moment to reflect on the passage through the virtual and back to the real. As we live within a technologically immersed world, there is a desire and need to return to what can be perceived as real. However, we propose that this entails accepting that the virtual is part of the real, or, more correctly, that we live in the era of the ‘biovirtual’ which encompasses both together. In this book, we attempt to reflect on the aftermath of these shifts encoun-tered in the maturing of a digital culture in areas of critical theory and artistic practices. Our primary frames of reference are: performance as cultural phenomenon; as a critical methodology; and as an aesthetic concern. The book contains practice-led research analyses of dance, theatre and live art, philosophical reading s regarding the work of art and technology, and performance studies investigations of the subject in the space of technology. The subtitle of our collection, Through the Virtual, Towards the Real, indicates the historical moment we wish to explore, the ‘after-event’ of the digital, when the awareness that con-temporary subjectivity is one that dwells within both the virtual and the real, each existing without dominion over the other, but are rather entwined and collaborative.

Recent discussions and practices of performance and technology

Theatre and performance artists and scholars have for some time now reflected on the impact of new technologies on the bodies and cogni-tive faculties of the performer, the audience and computational societies

General Introduction: In the After-event of the VirtualMatthew Causey, Emma Meehan and Néill O’Dwyer

2 In the After-event of the Virtual

at large. Performance-makers and theorists have highlighted the need to examine issues surrounding human–computer interfaces, the tech-nological redeployment of bodies, objects and spaces, and their new temporal and spatial organisation within digital cultures.1 From the spectacles of Las Vegas to solo performances on YouTube, the use of advanced scenic technologies and digital media in commercial theatre, performance art and the online performances of the self is so embedded in society that technologies appear not so new anymore. Likewise, the audiences within digital culture are transforming as well as negotiating virtual online identities and presence(s) in the ‘material world’, partici-pating in digital consumerism and engaging in the surveillance society. The future arrived rather suddenly it seems.

Historically, two main theoretical strands are relevant and central to the process of thinking through the relationship between subject and technology. The first is an anthropological approach which explores the challenges to identity and subjectivity within virtual spaces or screened representations. Secondly, a subjective turn, which redefines technology as a phenomenon fundamentally intertwined with mankind, and not an other space of possibilities. Similarly, an alteration has taken place in the direction of studies and practices of performance and technology, from an interest in virtual life to issues of embodiment, and from an emphasis on screen representations towards corporeal experience.

A range of recent books in the field demonstrates the widespread interest in ‘sensual’ or ‘haptic’ technologies.2 Included in this category is Entangled: Technology and the Transformation of Performance by Chris Salter (2010) in which he argues that digital performance is currently concerned with the tactile perception of the physical body, objects that it engages with and spaces that enclose it. Identity, Performance and Technology: Practices of Empowerment, Embodiment and Technicity (2012), edited by Susan Broadhurst and Josephine Machon, also explores the lived experience of identity in ‘a world where digital advances leads to complex and fractured representations’ (4). Another collection by the same editors, Performance and Technology: Practices of Virtual Embodiment and Interactivity (2011), explores the ways in which technology ‘morphs and extends the performing body, thus engendering an altered corporeal experience’, by considering areas such as ‘embodied interface design’ and the ‘democratisation of theatrical experience’ through the use of technology (xvi–xviii). Intimacy Across Visceral and Digital Performance (2012), by Maria Chatzichristodoulou (Maria X) and Rachel Zerihan, further explores the body–technology interrelationship. Within their

Matthew Causey, Emma Meehan and Néill O’Dwyer 3

volume the editors propose the idea of ‘visceral technologies’, which facilitate the convergence of digital technologies and performance as a phenomenon that introduces private experiences into the public realm, for example in one-to-one performances or solo interactions with technology. Under these auspices, personal sensation and interac-tion therefore become the fabric of public performance, ‘responding to the social and the political, through the force of its personal affect’ (4). Overall, the concerns now seem, more or less, to have passed through the virtual towards the real of affect, intimacy and ‘sensual technolo-gies’ in an interconnected experience for performers and spectators in new media performance, as a space of haptic stimulation, heightened awareness, sensitivity and physical empathy. Nonetheless, what is at stake – in these explorations of bodily, affective and lived engagements with technology – are issues of empowerment and disempowerment, the changing boundaries of ‘self’, ideas of embodiment in a digital world, and the fluid and mutating experience of intersubjectivity nego-tiated through the interchange between bodies and technologies.

The bio-virtual and the post-human

The earlier questions regarding the anxiety surrounding the reality of the virtual and the more recent concerns for a solipsistic return to the body are complicated further, because digital culture has developed into a bio-virtual environment in which the categories of the biological and the virtual no longer stand as separate situations. The bio-virtual is struc-tured so that the ontological categories of the biological and the virtual are linked and superimposed upon each other to exist as part of a lived, embodied experience. We see this phenomenon represented in perfor-mance and technology from the development of video-assisted theatre in which the live and the videated remain discrete and autonomous practices (Wooster Group et al.) towards hybrid performance practices that appear on stage (bio) and online (virtual) simultaneously (Blast Theory et al.). The coalescing of the virtual and the real is a component of what Rosi Braidotti has termed the post-human predicament, which,

is such as to force a displacement of the lines of demarcation between structural differences, or ontological categories, for instance between the organic and the inorganic, the born and the manufactured, flesh and metal, electronic circuits and organic nervous systems. (Braidotti 2013, 89)

4 In the After-event of the Virtual

If we are to understand the post-human as a subject position within the condition of the bio-virtual that affords the individual the opportu-nity to forward models of identity that are monistic (in which object, animal, inorganic matter, earth and human are conceived and organ-ised with equanimity), post-anthropomorphic and transsexual, what we consider to be the parameters of theatre and performance requires redefining. The future of what post-human bio-virtual performance might be is unknown and, to a certain degree, outside the remit of this book. But it is obvious that what will be involved is an engagement with technology which far exceeds our current understanding of the capacity for integrating our being in and through technological spaces, while modifying ourselves and others (be they animal, environmental or technological). Nonetheless, our current position may be as Žižek (1997, 131) has termed it, that of ‘vanishing mediators’ still working through a split subjectivity of the virtual and the real, not yet fully post-human, but no longer human.

Virtuality provides an alternative space for avatar bodies, globally net-worked communities and unrestricted access to vast fields of informa-tion, but, at the same time, there is also an outpouring of virtuality into lived, material space. Catalysed by the rapidly evolving phenomenon of embedded technologies and modified bodies, along with an increas-ing ubiquity of sensing and video-surveillance technologies, many performance-makers are now grappling with the idea of technology’s recession into lived space. Technology in performance is now organised as a responsive interlocutor interacting with enhanced or biometrically quantised bodies. Intermedial performances, with the use of sensors and human–computer interfaces, proffer themselves as bio-metric labo-ratories where corporeal experiments are performed, challenging what it means to have a body or to be in a space and how we understand the role of the audience in this process.

The interaction between the biological and virtual, the bio-virtual, raises questions about agency in technology-based performance. Importantly, this is not just that which is brought about by the per-forming artist, but of equal significance is the agency of the computer system and the immanent and unique live qualities that it brings to the stage: those of non-human matter. Of course, there is ongoing negotia-tion between bodies, technologies, digital traces and virtual commu-nications. Technology performing as a responsive and active partner is designed through digital performance systems that maintain the potential for real-time, reactive generation of the audiovisual content. DeLahunta (2005) cites that in Klaus Obermaier’s pioneering interactive

Matthew Causey, Emma Meehan and Néill O’Dwyer 5

performance, Apparition, ‘the goal was to create an interactive system that is much more than simply an extension of the performer, but is a potential performing partner’. Such a paradigm calls for new choices to be made at the meeting between human and machine entities, between human and non-human worlds. But, at this meeting point (if we can still assume any boundaries) we wonder what is it we can know (epis-temically), how might we act (ethically), and what shall we do with all of this useless beauty (aesthetically).

The theatre of the vanishing mediator

A primary supposition of this volume is that digital performance – specifically practices that include technology as a semi-autonomous collaborator where digital environments are elevated to the status of symbiotic performance partner – uniquely engages the tactile perception of the physical body, the objects that it encounters, and the spaces that enclose it. Technol ogically engaged performance and culture is an obvi-ous forum to investigate the transitional spaces of bio-virtual interac-tion, and the resulting agency occupied by the non-human, automaton computer systems of software. The concerns of these practices and theo-ries are how the subjects of digital cultures learn to negotiate, manage and engage the space of technology, be it for power and violence, art and love, and/or politics and economics. What are the new choices to be made at the intersection between human and machine entities? At the crux of this debate is the dialectical relationship between the physi-cal and non-physical self, and thus the role of the (dis)embodied self in its experiential engagement with the world.

Underlying and superseding the aesthetics of new technologies, whose seductiveness is both engaging and troublesome, are the ethics and politics of the emergence of biometric and surveillance technolo-gies in the various spaces of digital culture, raising questions relating to their economic, social and militaristic uses. The impact of surveil-lance systems is complicated by the individual’s complicity in their operation through the offering of personal data via social media and various electronic communications and transactions. The situation is further exacerbated by embedded technologies that cross the barriers of skin and biology through genetic engineering and modifications of the earth, animal and human. While the cross-fertilisation of art and science is undoubtedly an exciting and dynamic area to work in, there remain serious ethical and political considerations to be harboured in the process. The questions raised by practices of biometric monitoring,

6 In the After-event of the Virtual

ubiquitous surveillance and the slippage of computation into the very fabric of life – a hitherto inconceivable notion – now has an impact at sub-molecular and genetic levels, leaving abyssal, but surmount-able, gaps in ethical systems. The pressures exerted by computational technology on the taxonomic schema of existence result in the increas-ing obfuscation of boundary demarcation between public and private realms. The body, often considered to be the last refuge for the concept of privacy, is continually and progressively made vulnerable with the increasingly invasive technologies of information procurement in a paradigm of techno-corporeal colonisation. Thus considered, how does contemporary art respond to its shifting position within digital cultures?

Provocations and practices

Our volume is organised in two parts. Part I is titled ‘Provocations: Subjectivity and Technology’, and examines subjectivity within digital culture, historically significant works of performance and technology, as well as performative cultural phenomena. Part II is titled ‘Practices: Embodied Negotiations of Art and Technology’ and includes contribu-tions from artist-scholars whose practice-based research in performance and technology is presented. The Performing Subject in the Space of Technology provides a broad spectrum of analytical theories, from the subtle, experiential levels of perception in embodied performance to the aesthetics of dialectical materialism and their sociohistoric significance. Notions of embodiment and aesthetic debates bleed into the spheres of politics and ethics throughout the book.

Our volume analyses a wide range of activities, from bioart to Internet child pornography, gaming and social networking technologies to the use of motion-tracking in developing choreography and documenta-tion. The contributors to The Performing Subject in the Space of Technology draw from diverse perspectives in dance, theatre, performance, film and music studies, digital arts and culture. In line with recent scholarly developments, practice-based research is an important methodology and shared approach for many of the authors as they engage with issues of writing from within practice and offer a unique analysis of the experi-ence of creating new works. At the same time, some of the contributing authors explore the themes of the book through the approach of what can be described as a ‘research-based practice’ by analysing the work of other performance practitioners, utilising contemporary performance philosophy to consider the primary issues of concern. Due to the mobil-ity of identities in our current globalised culture, it would be difficult to

Matthew Causey, Emma Meehan and Néill O’Dwyer 7

associate the perspectives within this volume primarily with location. This is due to the fact that many of the authors in this book have inhab-ited various different continents for scholarly or artistic work, but also the mobile nature of contemporary digital identities where spaces and bodies exist virtually and/or multi-locationally. However, putting this notion aside, it would be fair to identify the contributors as broadly coming from or being currently based in Europe and America, including Ireland, the UK, Finland, Germany, Turkey (which traverses into Asia), and several parts of North America.

We open this book with these broad questions: What new models of subjectivity, potential control systems, abuses of the vulnerable, oppor-tunities for the event of art to happen, arise in an Internet-saturated, post-human, bio-virtual context? How can we understand, resist, engage or transgress these new situations through performance and technology? What are the scientific, political, ideological, aesthetic and social conditions that are shaping contemporary performance-making, where technologies become active partners, not only in the creative process, but in the performance itself? How do we begin to allow a degree of autonomy to the technological collaborators of digital perfor-mance? How do we begin to consolidate the language of the body and the language of the machine?

Notes

1. Although it is difficult to find any contemporary scholar or artist in the field of performance, dance and theatre studies who does not, more or less, take an accounting of digital culture we suggest, for further research, consulting the writings of Philip Auslander, Susan Broadhurst, Johannes Birringer, Matthew Causey, Steve Dixon, Gabriella Giannachi and Chris Salter. Notable practi-tioners in the field include Johannes Birringer, The Building Society, Blast Theory, Chucky Moves, Klaus Obermeier and The Wooster Group.

2. The term ‘sensual technologies’ throughout this introduction is borrowed from ‘Sensual Technologies: Collaborative Practices of Interdisciplinarity’, Digital Resources for the Humanities and Arts conference, Brunel University, 2010.

References

Braidotti, R. (2013) The Posthuman. Cambridge: Polity Press.Broadhurst, S. and Machon, J. (eds) (2011) Performance and Technology: Practices of

Virtual Embodiment and Interactivity. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. —— (eds) (2012) Identity, Performance and Technology: Practices of Empowerment,

Embodiment and Technicity. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

8 In the After-event of the Virtual

Chatzichristodoulou, M. and Zerihan, M. (2012) Intimacy Across Visceral and Digital Performance. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

deLahunta, S. (2005) ‘Klaus Obermaier: Apparition – Background’, www.exile.at/apparition/background.html [accessed 1 April 2015].

Salter, C. (2010) Entangled: Technology and the Transformation of Performance. Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press.

Žižek, S. (1997) The Plague of Fantasies. London: Verso.

Part IProvocations: Subjectivity and Technology