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The Virtual Machine: Projection in the Theatre

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New Media Dramaturgy

Part of the book series: New Dramaturgies ((ND))

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Abstract

We begin in Chapter 2 with a discussion of data projection and the ways in which it has thoroughly transformed the notion of liveness in the last two decades. New projection technologies enabled the harnessing of data-based images to create immersive, multiple, virtual stage-spaces that became increasingly easier to reproduce in inverse proportion to the disappearance of the auratic analogic image. To this end, we discuss examples of video projection in dumb type’s seminal works S/N and OR and show how projection renders the theatre space informatic and performative rather than simply illustrative. Meanwhile, analysis of works such as Ong Keng Sen’s Desdemona and Kris Verdonck’s HUMINID foreground the experience of viewing mediated artworks and proposes a form of projection as critique. Finally, consideration of Chunky Move’s Glow shows the integration of projection with the performer to create a real-time and dramaturgically transforming expression of intermediality. Overall, this chapter shows that projection in the context of new media dramaturgy is something that has its own agenda and agency and is not simply at the service of a story or characterisation.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    As Bubu says in an interview about the making of S/N: ‘while thinking about the set, the costumes for the show, the technology, music and lights, we were also thinking about HIV, what is it, what is the relationship between AIDS and sex, what is the relationship between gay and straight?’ (interview 13 December 2013).

  2. 2.

    Parts of this essay draw on and extend Grehan’s essay ‘TheatreWorks’ Desdemona: Fusing Technology and Tradition’ (2001).

  3. 3.

    Lear, presented by Theatreworks, was a Japan Asia Center Foundation production. It premiered in Tokyo in September 1997. Desdemona, a Theatreworks production, premiered at the Adelaide Festival in March 2000, and Search: Hamlet, a Theatreworks production, premiered at Elsinore, Copenhagen, August 2002.

  4. 4.

    It is important to note that while Maya Krishna Rao is trained in Kathakali she has also developed her own ‘performance language in contemporary movement performances that melds the traditional and the contemporary’ (Ong Keng Sen 2000a, 20). Kudiyattum is a sacred form of theatre usually performed in Hindu temples in Kerala, India. Margi is one of the few practitioners of this art still remaining.

  5. 5.

    This material was initially published in Grehan’s article ‘Actors, spectators and vibrant objects: Kris Verdonck’s ACTOR#1’ (2015). For an extended discussion of the work see that essay.

  6. 6.

    Bennett goes on to talk about the term ‘thing’ and about the power of releasing something from the status of object (and therefore in tension presumably with subject), to thingness, a state in which the ‘thing’ is ‘released from the tyranny of judgment’ (13) in her paper on Elka Krajewska’s ‘Salvage Art Institute’ (2014).

  7. 7.

    Bennett also draws on Lambros Malafouris and Alfred Gell to talk about the ‘fluid dynamic between “agents” and “patients” as states to be acquired in practices and not as a priori categorical positions.…The states of agent and patient [are]…ontological moments or ingredients that persons and things share’ (Bennett 2014, 14–15).

  8. 8.

    Latour defines an actant as ‘something that acts or to which activity is granted by others. It implies no special motivation of human individual actors, nor of humans in general’ (1996, 373).

  9. 9.

    This does not mean that the work becomes magically comprehensible in the combination with new media systems, just that these systems do not exist themselves independently of the human capacity to perceive their effects.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York, USA

    Peter Eckersall

  2. Murdoch University, Perth, Australia

    Helena Grehan

  3. School of the Arts & Media, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

    Edward Scheer

Authors
  1. Peter Eckersall
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  2. Helena Grehan
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  3. Edward Scheer
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References

References

  • Auslander, Philip. 2008. Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture. Abingdon and New York: Routledge.

  • Bennett, Jane. 2010. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham: Duke University Press.

  • Bennett, Jane. 2014. ‘Encounters with an Art-Thing.’ Salvage Art Institute Website. http://salvageartinstitute.org/janebennett_encounterswiththesartthing.pdf. Accessed 10 March 2016.

  • Bubu, de la Madelaine. 2013. Unpublished Interview with Peter Eckersall, Edward Scheer, Sara Jansen, and Fujii Shintaro. Kyoto, 14 December 2013.

  • Coetzee, J.M. 1973. ‘Samuel Beckett’s Lessness: An Exercise in Decomposition.’ Computers and the Humanities 7(4): 195–198.

  • Cubitt, Sean. 2015. ‘Coherent Light From Projectors to Fibre Optics.’ In Digital Light, edited by Sean Cubitt, Daniel Palmer, and Nathaniel Tkacz, 43–60. London: Open Humanities Press.

  • dumb type. 1995. S/N. Kyoto: dumb type.

  • Fujimoto Takayuki. 2013. Unpublished Interview with Peter Eckersall, Edward Scheer, Sara Jansen, and Fujii Shintaro. Kyoto, 15 December 2013.

  • Glickman, Stephanie. 2006. ‘Review – Chunky Move’s Glow’. The Herald Sun Newspaper. 5 September 2006.

  • Grehan, Helena. 2001. ‘TheatreWorks’ Desdemona: Fusing Technology and Tradition.’ TDR: The Dralma Review 45(3): 113–125.

  • Grehan, Helena. 2004. ‘Questioning the Relationship Between Consumption and Exchange: TheatreWorks’ Flying Circus Project, December 2000.’ Positions East Asia Cultures Critique 12(2): 565–586.

  • Grehan, Helena. 2015. ‘Actors, Spectators and Vibrant Objects: Kris Verdonck’s ACTOR#1.’ TDR: The Drama Review 59(3): 132–139.

  • Hansen, Mark. 2006. New Philosophy for New Media. Cambridge, MA and London: The MIT Press.

  • Haraway, Donna. 1991. Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. London and New York: Routledge.

  • Latour, Bruno. 1996. ‘Actor Network Theory: A Few Clarifications Plus More Than a Few Complications.’ Soziale Welt 47(4): 369–381.

  • Low, Kee Hong. 2000. Desdemona Rehearsal. Fort Canning Park, Singapore, 25 February.

  • Ngui, Matthew. 2000. ‘Processing Dessy.’ In Desdemona Program Notes. Telstra Adelaide Festival Program: 11.

  • Obarzanek, Gideon. 2010. ‘Glow.’ Dance Week Festival. http://dwf.danceweekfestival.com/93/glow/ Accessed April 2010

  • Ong, Keng Sen. 2000a. ‘Ong Keng Sen: Biography.’ Desdemona Program Notes. Telstra Adelaide Festival Program: 13.

  • Ong, Keng Sen. 2000b. Unpublished Interview with Helena Grehan and Jenny de Reuck. Adelaide, 17 March 2000.

  • Performing Arts Network Japan. 2009. ‘Takayuki Fujimoto Profile.’ Performing Arts Network Japan, 31 July 2009. Japan Foundation. http://www.jpf.go.jp/mcjp. Accessed 22 February 2016.

  • Rao, Maya Krishna. 2000. ‘Maya Krishna Rao: Biography.’ In Desdemona Program Notes. Telstra Adelaide Festival Program: 20.

  • Salter, Chris. 2010. Entangled: Technology and the Transformation of Performance. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

  • Takatani Shiro. 2013. Unpublished Interview with Peter Eckersall, Edward Scheer, Sara Jansen, and Fujii Shintaro. Kyoto, 15 December 2013.

  • Tan, Marcus, and Cheng Chye. 2012. Acoustic Interculturalism: Listening to Performance. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

  • Van Baarle, Kristof, Christel Stalpaert, and Kris Verdonck. 2013. ‘Virtual Dramaturgy: Finding Liberty in the Virtual Machine.’ Performance Research 18(5): 54–62.

  • Van Kerkhoven, Marianne. 2011. ‘Kris Verdonck: EXHIBITION #1.’ Exhibition Catalog. Hasselt, Belgium: Z33 Huis voor Actuele Kunst 24. http://issuu.com/z33be/docs/krisverdonck-exhibition1-minicatalog. Accessed 15 March 2015.

  • Van Kerkhoven, Marianne. n.d. a. ‘M, a Reflection.’ A Two Dogs Company. http://www.atwodogscompany.org/en/projects/item/146-m-a-reflection-en. Accessed 20 March 2016.

  • Verdonck, Kris. n.d. ‘Kris Verdonck.’ A Two Dogs Company. www.atwodogscompany.org/en/kris-verdonck. Accessed 28 September.

  • Verdonck, Kris. 2014. Unpublished Interview with Peter Eckersall and Edward Scheer. Sydney, 4 August 2014.

  • Yong, Li Lan. 2004. ‘Ong Keng Sen’s Desdemona, ‘Ugliness, and the Intercultural Performative.’ Theatre Journal 56(2): 251–273.

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Eckersall, P., Grehan, H., Scheer, E. (2017). The Virtual Machine: Projection in the Theatre. In: New Media Dramaturgy. New Dramaturgies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55604-2_2

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