Technology has become fully integrated into the ecologies in which we live, including our ways of making and making sense of theater, dance, and performance.
While these practices have long histories of incorporating tools and instruments in live performances, from masks, to amplification, lighting, and stagecraft, technology today can no longer be understood as a tool complementing essentially non-technological behaviors or environments. Technologies and how they are developed and used are informed by ideas, assumptions, and practices that are culturally and historically situated and have material impacts. Whether implicitly or intentionally, we are always already operating in and requiring creative and critical means of engaging with technoscientific lifeworld’s. Authors in this volume show how human-technology intersections within the performing arts reflect developments in the world at large and how artistic inquiry might contribute to or intervene in these tendencies. Together, the chapters in this volume offer a broad view that includes diverse types of performances and a range of technologies without imposing these as categories on a field that does not operate along the lines of such categorizations.
This broad view also allows us to bring together discourses and subjects that have been discussed separately in relation to different genres or aspects of performance, different types of technologies, or from the perspective of different technology-related concerns including interactivity, immersion, inter-, multi-, and transmediality, equity, futurisms, archival practices, and new dramaturgies.
Technology is now integral to theater, dance, and performance—not just a tool but part of our cultural ecology. These practices reflect broader technoscientific developments while offering creative interventions. This book examines diverse performances and technologies without imposing rigid categories.
Acknowledgements
Contributors Biography
Introduction
Chapter 1: Postdigital Performance by Matthew Causey
Chapter 2: Texts and Contexts by Sarah Bay-Cheng, Jennifer Parker-Starbuck
and David Saltz
Chapter 3: Intermediality in Theatre and Performance by Chiel Kattenbelt
Chapter 4: László Moholy-Nagys Theatre of Totality by Sue Broadhurst
Chapter 5: The Digital Double by Steve Dixon
Chapter 6: The Co-Evolution of Performance and Technology by Sally Jane
Norman
Chapter 7: Soulcraft Theorizing Black Techne in African and American Viral
Dance by Reginold A. Royston
Chapter 8: Robots on Stage in Contemporary Performance by Elizabeth Jochum
Chapter 9: Algorithmic Theater Then and Now by Annie Dorsen and Tom Seller
Chapter 10: Proscenium as Temporary Shelter by Catherine M. Cole
Chapter 11: Performing Art and Technology in Cold War America by Douglas
Eacho
Chapter 12: Performance After Automation by Nicholas Ridout
Chapter 13: Dancing and Cameras by Bill T. Jones
Chapter 14: Choreographing Technology, A Dialog with Bebe Miller
Chapter 15: Animate: XR, Bodies, and the Future of the Stage by Timothy
Thomasson and Chris Salter
Chapter 16: Body and Shado: Contingent Transformations of Light on Stage by
Katherine Graham
Chapter 17: On The Notion of Verticality in Dramaturgy by Jörgen Dahlqvist
Chapter 18: Invisible Performers: Sonic Ghosts, an Acousdramatic Approach,
and the Transformative Potential of Digital Audio Technology in Theater by
Kent Olofsson
Chapter 19: Feminist Unboxing: A Critical Approach toward Incorporating
Digital Technologies into Creative and Scholarly Work by Jessica J. Rajko
Chapter 20: PostColonial Güícharo Robots and the Complexities of
SenseMaking in Performance and Technology: A Dialog with Yanira Castro by
Norah Zuniga Shaw
Chapter 21: The Non-Linearity of Technical Production in the Performing Arts
by Ashley Ferro-Murray
Chapter 22: Headphone Theater and the Performance of Perception by Rosemary
Klich
Chapter 23: Choreoauratic Frequencies: Tuning in to Headphonic Encounters
from Aotearoa by Becca Woods
Chapter 24: The Spectatorial Body in Multimedia Performance: The London
International Festival of Theatre (Lift) 2010 by Jennifer Parker-Starbuck
Chapter 25: But How Will They Know Its Live? Anonymous Ensembles Virtual
Performances by Jessica Del Vecchio and Eammon Farrell
Chapter 26: The Digital Double as a Choreographic Technique: The Splitting
Magic on Screens by Suparna Banerjee
Chapter 27: Dramaturgy of Technological Absence: Tim Crouchs Truths a Dog
Must to Kennel by Seda Ilter
Chapter 28: The Cyborg-Apparatus Continuum. or, how the question concerning
technology has twisted and turned by Kristof van Baarle
Chapter 29: Access, Performance, Technology: Engaging with the Omissions of a
Past Creative Self by Alice Sheppard
Chapter 30: Utterances of Global Futurisms by Bhumi B Patel
Chapter 31: Performing Telepresence: Technology and Coloniality in Choy Ka
Fais Postcolonial Spirits (2021) by Evelyn Wan
Chapter 32: The Ear That Speaks by Eddie Paterson and Lara Stevens
Chapter 33: Critical Techno-dramaturgy: Mobilizing Embodied Perception of the
HumanTechnology Relationship in Performance by Stephen Fernandez
Chapter 34: The Theatricality of Mindar, Kdai-ji Temples Android Buddhist
Priest by Yuji Sone
Chapter 35: Technologies of Community: Digital Portraits in Black Dance by
Thomas F. Defrantz
Chapter 36: Cultural Dreams of Datafied Bodies: Motion Capture as a
Technological Imaginary by Laura Karreman
Chapter 37: In the Halfight: Phenomenological Approaches to Complex
Technological Systems by Susan Kozel
Chapter 38: Landing and Dispersing at the Same Time: Embodied Awareness in
Virtual and Physical Spaces by Ruth Gibson and Jenny Roche
Chapter 39: Attending to the Dandelions: Social Movement Building through
Participatory Arts Practice by Lyndsey Vader
Chapter 40: Black Haptics by Andre M. Zachery
Chapter 41: Performance as an act of Generosity: Sharing Aboriginal Stories
through Drone Dramaturgy in Moombaki by Christina Chau and Helena Grehan
Chapter 42: Technopoetics of Togetherness: Live Performance before the End of
the World by Marcela A. Fuentes
Chapter 43: The Politics of Performance and Technology in South Africa Jay
Pather in dialog with Norah Zuniga Shaw and with contributions from Dr. Ketu
Katrak
Chapter 44: Addenda, Phenomenology, Embodiment: Cyborgs and Disability
Performance by Petra Kuppers
Chapter 45: Blast Theorys Karen: Reharnessing the New Digital Specificities
of a Hyperindustrial World by Neill O'Dwyer
Chapter 46: A Bed of Ones Own: (In)Voluntary Choices of Disengagement in
Digital Performance Environments by Eirini Nedelkopoulou
Chapter 47: The Sublime Grandeur of Inconsequential Death by Kate Ladenheim
Chapter 48: Performing Counterhistory: The Ghostly Archives of Summer of Soul
by Gabriela Trigo-McIntyre
Chapter 49: Archives of Care by Gesel R. Mason, Rebecca Salzer, and Carlson
H. Coogler
Chapter 50: Critical Multimedia Editions for Theater Research by Miguel
Escobar Varela
Chapter 51: Evolving Practices of Choreographic Transmission for the Screen
and Beyond by Shannon Cuykendall
Chapter 52: Playing at Performance: Dance Games and Intimate Media by Kiri
Miller
Chapter 53: Steps by Paul Kaiser
Chapter 54: Just Moves?: Motion Extraction, Machine Learning, and the
Generative Derivative in Dance By Harmony Bench
Chapter 55: TikTok and Short-Form Screendance Before and After COVID by
Alexandra Harlig and Harmony Bench with Crystal Abidin, Trevor Boffone, Kelly
Bowker, Colette Eloi, Pamela Krayenbuhl and Chuyun Oh
Chapter 56: Data Drama: How Machine Audiences Reprogram Theater by Sarah
Bay-Cheng with contributions from Mariel Marshall and Daniela Rosu
Index
Maaike Bleeker is a Professor of Performance, Science and Technology in the Department of Media and Culture Studies at Utrecht University and Director of the Research Institute for Cultural Inquiry.
Norah Zuniga Shaw is Professor and Director for Dance and Technology at the Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design (ACCAD) and Department of Dance at The Ohio State University.
