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PARIP 2005

International Conference | 29 June - 03 July 2005

Lavender: Andy | UK

 

Hypermediacy in contemporary theatre: process and production

Presenters

Gregg Fisher, Central School of Speech and Drama (sound designer)

Andy Lavender, Central School of Speech and Drama (director)

Dan Rebellato, Royal Holloway, University of London (writer)

Ayse Tashkiran, Central School of Speech and Drama (movement director)

Context

Our presentation relates to a practice-as-research project, Here’s What I Did with My Body One Day, that manifested in a production at the Pleasance Theatre, London, 7-31 October 2004.

The project was developed through a phased process including two R&D laboratories, each with a showing at its conclusion, and the preparation of a recorded reading and digital storyboard. It had a long gestation period.

Research context

In their book Remediation: Understanding New Media (Cambridge Massachussetts and London: MIT Press, 1999) Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin argue that immediacy in visual culture – a direct and apparently unmediated contact with the spectator – frequently goes hand-in-hand with hypermediacy – an awareness of the constructed nature of the artwork and the presence of the media in play.

Hypermediacy is itself expressed through simultaneity: two or more sources, images, systems and effects in play at the same time in a shared ecosystem.

One of our concerns in developing Here’s What I Did with My Body One Day was with the simultaneous cooexistence, the mutual play, of what might appear to be two distinct media – the screen and the stage. We wanted to examine the ways in which their very co-relation produces effects of immediacy that are deeply and pleasurably involving for spectators. Here’s What I Did with My Body One Day was a vehicle for several areas of research that relate to this larger issue, as instanced by the questions below.

  • What artistic opportunities, challenges and production textures follow from a specific team-based approach to (hypermedial) content creation?
  • Multiplicity and the multimedia performance space

 

Digital images

  • How might digital images relate to embodied performance and scenography in a hypermedial environment?

Movement

  • What opportunities are offered by a multidimensional movement score (including formal dance, spasm, characterisation, the rhythm of exits and entrances, the presence of the camera)?

 

Sound and music

  • What opportunities are offered by the interplay of live and pre-recorded voice, sound and music in a performance environment that exploits qualities of liveness?

Writing

  • What sort of writing is effective for a hypermedial production process?
  • What are the phenomenal effects, in production, of a multidimensional stage?

Presentation

Our presentation features archive materials from the rehearsal process and the production, along with virtual presence and live mediation. It maps a process, a production and a set of implications in terms of hypermedial performance practice. It reflects on the following:

  • a process for collaborative theatre-making
  • a production process for hypermedial performance
  • immediacy in a hypermedial environment
  • some implications regarding the notion of practice as research

WORKSHOP

Hypermediacy and contemporary theatre

Workshop leaders

Gregg Fisher, Central School of Speech and Drama (sound designer)

Andy Lavender, Central School of Speech and Drama (director)

Ayse Tashkiran, Central School of Speech and Drama (movement director)

Workshop

Our 3-hour workshop focuses on the use of live video and mediated sound in performance (process, integration, effect). It draws on explorations undertaken during our work on Here’s What I Did with My Body One Day (the project is the subject of our presentation elsewhere in the conference).

We focus in particular on effects of hypermediacy and simultaneity, in order to examine some principles outlined by Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin in their book Remediation: Understanding New Media (Cambridge Massachussetts and London: MIT Press, 1999). Bolter and Grusin suggest that

[i]n digital technology […] hypermediacy expresses itself as multiplicity. [… It] offers a heterogeneous space, in which representation is conceived of not as a window on to the world, but rather as “windowed” itself – with windows that open on to other representations of other media. […] In every manifestation, hypermediacy makes us aware of the medium or media and (in sometimes subtle and sometimes obvious ways) reminds us of our desire for immediacy (33-34).

The workshop will result in one or more micro-performances intended to incarnate some of the characteristics and effects of hypermedial performance.

 

 

 

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


    
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