Writings
delicate emotions
horros / thrillers
nursery rhymes / narrative poems
- The Scholar
- Interlude I
- The Boy
- Interlude II
- The Aristocrat
- Interlude III
- The Exorcist
- Epilogue
Dramaturgy / PLAYWRIGHTing
delicate emotions
horros / thrillers
nursery rhymes / narrative poems
Dramaturgy / PLAYWRIGHTing
APPROACHING POSTDIGITAL PERFORMANCES
APPROACHING POSTDIGITAL PERFORMANCES
With two case
studies:
Blast Theory’s Karen and Al Smith’s Rare Earth Mettle
word count: 4,716 words
approximate reading time: 18-20 minutes
‘Hello? Is Anybody There?’
‘Can you hear me? Is the image alright? Good, then. I am still waiting for the others to arrive. How are you?’
‘Yes, I have changed my hair. Thank you for noticing. That is very sweet of you to say.’
‘Where are you all from? I want to know. Hi, Brazil! Lovely country, always wanted to visit. What time is it there?’
One who is familiar with today’s plethora of technologically mediated modes of communication would be able to discern the context of the above speech acts. They are from an internet live-stream, where the speaker is broadcasting their image and audio via internet-based media platform establishing an immediate conversation with hundreds of thousands of strangers from all over the world. The way people engaging in social actions are drastically changing. The distribution of media technologies enabled various new ways of performing sociality, which, argued by David Berry and Michael Dieter,[1]indicates that the way we see sociality is also changing. The connotation of social life is going through an epistemological and pragmatic shift towards mediate social life, suggesting that cyberspace and the reality have been interwoven into a multi-dimensional hybrid that is our mediated reality. Performance makers who are savvy to the change have already implemented ways of hybridising realities into their experiences to better reflect the mediatised world. This essay will investigate the hybrid nature of postdigital life and argue ways performance can reflect on this new reality by studying two performance pieces, Al Smith’s Rare Earth Mettle (2021) and Blast Theory’s Karen (2015).
Everyone who uses social media is living a hybrid life, seamlessly shapeshifting between different identities in various dimensions. One can go for a walk in the park, take a picture, post it on Instagram, and continues walking without realising that they just completed a shift from physical space to cyberspace and back. One can be having a dinner with their family while chatting on Discord without realising that they are performing two different social acts in two distinct identities. Boellstorff believes that the mass access to different virtual environments creates a multiplicity of identities that anyone can assume at any time.[2]Therefore, in today’s media-saturated society, every connected being is living a hybrid life comprising their experiences i
‘Can you hear me? Is the image alright? Good, then. I am still waiting for the others to arrive. How are you?’
‘Yes, I have changed my hair. Thank you for noticing. That is very sweet of you to say.’
‘Where are you all from? I want to know. Hi, Brazil! Lovely country, always wanted to visit. What time is it there?’
One who is familiar with today’s plethora of technologically mediated modes of communication would be able to discern the context of the above speech acts. They are from an internet live-stream, where the speaker is broadcasting their image and audio via internet-based media platform establishing an immediate conversation with hundreds of thousands of strangers from all over the world. The way people engaging in social actions are drastically changing. The distribution of media technologies enabled various new ways of performing sociality, which, argued by David Berry and Michael Dieter,[1]indicates that the way we see sociality is also changing. The connotation of social life is going through an epistemological and pragmatic shift towards mediate social life, suggesting that cyberspace and the reality have been interwoven into a multi-dimensional hybrid that is our mediated reality. Performance makers who are savvy to the change have already implemented ways of hybridising realities into their experiences to better reflect the mediatised world. This essay will investigate the hybrid nature of postdigital life and argue ways performance can reflect on this new reality by studying two performance pieces, Al Smith’s Rare Earth Mettle (2021) and Blast Theory’s Karen (2015).
A Hybrid-Reality
Everyone who uses social media is living a hybrid life, seamlessly shapeshifting between different identities in various dimensions. One can go for a walk in the park, take a picture, post it on Instagram, and continues walking without realising that they just completed a shift from physical space to cyberspace and back. One can be having a dinner with their family while chatting on Discord without realising that they are performing two different social acts in two distinct identities. Boellstorff believes that the mass access to different virtual environments creates a multiplicity of identities that anyone can assume at any time.[2]Therefore, in today’s media-saturated society, every connected being is living a hybrid life comprising their experiences i
n both the physical and the virtual.
The word hybrid indicates that the reality is a product of the two environments which are complementary to each other. When we look at a person’s media-saturated life, we cannot simply investigate their actions in physical world because that does not account for all their everyday activities. Similarly, one’s virtual life cannot be separated as an independent whole as well. Profiling based solely on one’s digital footprints and virtual body can only establish an incomplete fragment of the whole. The first generation who experienced the new frontier or virtual communities have already discussed the relationship between the real and the virtual. Howard Rheingold in his Virtual Communities believes that the virtual space possesses a liberating power to produce new models of subjectivities and thus challenge and extend the idea of identity.[3]‘Extend’ is the operative word in this sense; these new identities in virtual space are extensions to one’s physical, or organic, identity in the material world. Hence, these virtual identities, though being transmutable and intangible, is still grounded by one’s flesh body.
In visual culture, especially the fashion world, ‘identity’ is an important aspect. Fred Davis in his book Fashion, Culture, and Identity raises a question of nature in regard to the statements people make with their all kinds of visual and olfactory accessories.[4]They serve as clarifications and enhancements to whom one really is in a sense of one’s own definition. Virtual environments, arguably, offer a similar opportunity to clarify and amplify. Take the action of registering for example, a new online identity is generated when one joins a virtual community, names one’s avatar and fills in all kinds of information; this avatar works as the extension of and is operated by one’s flesh self in this particular virtual space.
The distribution of home-owned virtual reality equipment such as Oculus further enhanced the phenomenon. VRChat was created by Gaham Gaylor and Jesse oudrey and launched on 1 February 2017; it is an online virtual space where users create avatars and interact with each other. Polish developer and publisher CD Projekt RED released an action role-playing video game Cyberpunk 2077 depicting a future where the almost every social function relies on the support of technology and the virtual and the reality becomes one. It cannot be denied that the conjunction between the sphere of the virtual and the world of the real is inevitable. Meanwhile, with the popularisation of the phenomenon as a result of the success of related-themed movies such as The Matrix seriesor Ready Player One (2018), the discussion of the state of reality we are living in has been pushed to a new high.
The more mediatised our society is, the more integrated virtual and reality becomes. As a result, it bleeds into every aspect of people’s lives: real-life conversations can easily be about online interventions and vice versa. On top of it all, the mode of thinking changes, because the society has been ‘familiarised and embedded in electronic communications and virtual representations,’ as Matthew Causey put in his definition of a postdigital culture.[5]This familiarisation and embeddedness not only shows in our functional acts such as making payments or posting pictures online but also, and more thoroughly, our behavioural conditions. Taking pictures has been connected to posting and sharing online. The way of gaining popularity is equated with views and likes online. Human networking is often done with internet powered tools. Moreover, this bleeding is bilateral. Online chatting moving to real-person meetup is considered a normal way of social engagement. Online shopping platform such as eBay and Amazon will have marketing boards set up in all corners of the city. Such prevalence of media technology presence in everyday life cannot and will not be ignored by contemporary artists. Many pairs of keen eyes have spotted this phenomenon and started to address it, especially since the turn of the century. English artist and writer Tim Etchells in his Certain Fragments (1999) describes technology as something that cannot be ignored, ‘you have to think about technology, you have to use it, because in the end it is in your blood. Technology will move in and speak through you, like it or not. Best not to ignore.’ More and more theatre companies and performance makers share a similar opinion and are starting to address this phenomenon and its subsequent problems., Builders’ Association[6]has made performance pieces that discuss people’s online privacy. Interactive experience makers Blast Theory[7]employed technological devices such as smartphones in their performance. Netflix’s Black Mirror: Bandersnatch[8]incorporated user choice and techno-texts writing into filmmaking. Emerging artists start to question and challenge the changing modalities of social interaction.
David Berry and his colleagues observed this rising philosophy of approaching arts and life and published their report in 2012, New Aesthetic, New Anxieties.[9]They started from the world of design and spotted an increasing trend or design concept that was closely tied up with the internet culture; Berry and his team furthered their research in media art, performances, and arts in general. According to their observation, there is an emerging episteme of digital hegemony, meaning computation has become the major methodology for any kind of operation and, concurrently, media technology takes the crown of the primary way for contemporary humans to engage the world. They named it the ‘new aesthetics’ and its subsequent problems ‘new anxieties.’
Essentially, the new aesthetics is born out of the necessity of portraying the world the way we experience it: virtual and physical bleeding into each other. The society we live in is embedded with media and technology usage, and the internet culture is deeply embedded in our day-to-day life. The distinction between the real, the virtual, the organic, the simulated seems to be dissolving, and hence, postdigital, as a term, entered the scholarship.
As with other newly born terminologies, there are many versions of definition, each slightly varied with others. Matthew Causey is an American film and theatre maker as well as an academic on relative matters. He views these types of performances that challenge and address the changing mode of living ‘postdigital,’ whose words are quoted in the section above. In conversant with other scholar’s takes on this matter, he contributed his own version of a postdigital model which does not denote the meaning that the so-called digital era has ended but a recognition that we are precisely living in a highly digitalised world. He compares the prefix ‘post’ in postdigital with the one in posthumanism and defines it as ‘a recognition of the overdetermined relations, circulations, and exchanges of those phenomena within the current condition.’[10]In this sense, a postdigital world is not only a world entangled with media, machine, and the internet but also a world where people are revaluating the concepts of humans and society through their negotiation with the daily usage of digital technologies.
German theatre scholar Hans-Thies Lehmann published his ground-breaking work Postdramatic Theatre in 1999, offering the result of his decades of observation of the evolution of contemporary theatre. He considers the shift from text-based drama, especially seen in experimental theatre, partially enabled by the development of technology, a product of artists’ attempt to reflect the world in a more authentic sense.[11]In this sense, postdigital theatre or postdigital performance is of a similar nature; artists are responding to the changing modalities. These modality changes are products of the hybrid our society has become. As argued above, our real life and virtual life are interwoven and entangled, therefore, performance aiming to reflect modern life will inevitably address the phenomenon, either by actively adopting multi-modalities in the work itself or by portraying people shifting between various modes of interaction. Matthew understands these works as ‘thinking digitally.’
Artists or performance makers think digitally in their postdigital work to better understand the nature of our current society and reflect on the problems thus made. There are many ways to think digitally, and this essay will examine two methodologies, through technological interfaces and through contextual references, and two concomitant approaches, centrifugal and centripetal.
The first methodology of using various technological interfaces, specifically multi-media, is the most obvious way of making postdigital performances. It focuses more on the design, direct, and presentation aspects of a performance, often seen employing the use of screens, projections, and other types of media interfaces. Some of the aforementioned companies and performance groups such as Builders’ Association are famous for this type of method. For example, Elements of Oz (2016) cleverly incorporates the augmented reality technology [12]in their live performance where the audience can experience two dimensions simultaneously, one through flesh eyes and one through the camera on their technological devices.[13]
The second methodology is contextual references; it refers to a subtler way of dealing with the hybrid nature of our world. For instance, by having a character interacting with another character via phone/vid-call, making references of internet culture in the dialogue, or even including technological devices in the staging, performance makers are enhancing the embeddedness of technology our life is. These contextual references are often so subtle that contemporary scholarships sometimes overlook this type of performances or simply deem them ‘conventional.’ However, one may argue that it is precisely because these contextual references are not made salient that they in actuality accredit the fact that these modes of interaction have been normalised in our social life.
Based on these two methodologies of thinking digitally, this essay will also propose two approaches when adopting these methods of performance making, namely centrifugal and centripetal.
Centrifugal force is an inertial or pseudo force, occurs apparently in a circling or rotating frame, described as an outward going force.[14]Conversely, centripetal force is one whose direction is always inward and towards the centre point of the rotating frame. To put it another way, centrifugal force describes the process of a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree dissemination from a fixated point whilst centripetal force pulls, collects and gathers. One offers the same point of departure, and the other the same destination.
As discussed in the second section of this essay, hybrid as it is our society, in the relationship between the virtual and the real, the organic and the inorganic, there are still status of primary and secondary; the virtual is the extension of the real. Admittedly, the status quo is constantly challenged by the development of technology, and, in response, by various products and arts alike. Artists like Stefan Kaegi[15]have produced works that questioned the difference between simulation and reality; Technological companies such as Meta[16]are strenuously pushing the boundary of the virtual, exploring the possibility of it being an alternative reality. However, it cannot be disputed that, in the current state, the virtual cannot exist outside the physical. The virtual or the digital is built on data which are stored in physical servers made up with tangible materials. As long as this remains unchanged, the reality will continue to be the primary role whereas the virtual the secondary, however hybridised the society may be. Therefore, the reality or the physical world will always be the destination.
The following two sections are two case studies, respectively of Blast Theory’s Karen and Al Smith’ s Rare Earth Mettle. The former is technologically mediated, and the latter is text-based theatre. The case studies will analyse how these two works represent the aforementioned two methodologies of postdigital performance and how the centrifugal and centripetal approaches are reflected in the dramaturgical process.
Blast Theory was founded in 1991; since their establishment, they have been releasing award-winning innovative works, both live and media-based, addressing various social and political issues raised by the advancement of technology. In the past decade, they grew to have their eyes on technological devices, especially portable ones like smartphones and tablets whose pervasion has forever changed our social dynamic. Lead by artists, Nick Tandavanitj, Matt dams, and Ju Row Farr, Blast Theory has been studying the influence on performance portable technological devices have and exploring the potential of a ‘socially and politically transformative’ communicative framework.[17]As per their mythos, their works exemplify the hybrid nature of postdigital society, oftentimes blurring the boundaries between the performing space and the real-life space, between the virtual and the physical.
In 2015, they launched their genre-bending mobile app, Karen, a life-coaching app that presents itself with episodes of recordings simulating one-on-one video-call sessions with the fictional character, Karen, whom the user gradually discovers to be unstable, volatile, and unprofessional. The story, or rather, the non-story of Karen is gamified and comprises of psychological evaluating questions disguised as a life-coaching questionnaire. As the story progresses, the users are confronted with issues such as the invasion of privacy and will eventually received a profiling report based on the choices and actions of the user during the gameplay.
The word hybrid indicates that the reality is a product of the two environments which are complementary to each other. When we look at a person’s media-saturated life, we cannot simply investigate their actions in physical world because that does not account for all their everyday activities. Similarly, one’s virtual life cannot be separated as an independent whole as well. Profiling based solely on one’s digital footprints and virtual body can only establish an incomplete fragment of the whole. The first generation who experienced the new frontier or virtual communities have already discussed the relationship between the real and the virtual. Howard Rheingold in his Virtual Communities believes that the virtual space possesses a liberating power to produce new models of subjectivities and thus challenge and extend the idea of identity.[3]‘Extend’ is the operative word in this sense; these new identities in virtual space are extensions to one’s physical, or organic, identity in the material world. Hence, these virtual identities, though being transmutable and intangible, is still grounded by one’s flesh body.
In visual culture, especially the fashion world, ‘identity’ is an important aspect. Fred Davis in his book Fashion, Culture, and Identity raises a question of nature in regard to the statements people make with their all kinds of visual and olfactory accessories.[4]They serve as clarifications and enhancements to whom one really is in a sense of one’s own definition. Virtual environments, arguably, offer a similar opportunity to clarify and amplify. Take the action of registering for example, a new online identity is generated when one joins a virtual community, names one’s avatar and fills in all kinds of information; this avatar works as the extension of and is operated by one’s flesh self in this particular virtual space.
The distribution of home-owned virtual reality equipment such as Oculus further enhanced the phenomenon. VRChat was created by Gaham Gaylor and Jesse oudrey and launched on 1 February 2017; it is an online virtual space where users create avatars and interact with each other. Polish developer and publisher CD Projekt RED released an action role-playing video game Cyberpunk 2077 depicting a future where the almost every social function relies on the support of technology and the virtual and the reality becomes one. It cannot be denied that the conjunction between the sphere of the virtual and the world of the real is inevitable. Meanwhile, with the popularisation of the phenomenon as a result of the success of related-themed movies such as The Matrix seriesor Ready Player One (2018), the discussion of the state of reality we are living in has been pushed to a new high.
Hybridising the Performance
The more mediatised our society is, the more integrated virtual and reality becomes. As a result, it bleeds into every aspect of people’s lives: real-life conversations can easily be about online interventions and vice versa. On top of it all, the mode of thinking changes, because the society has been ‘familiarised and embedded in electronic communications and virtual representations,’ as Matthew Causey put in his definition of a postdigital culture.[5]This familiarisation and embeddedness not only shows in our functional acts such as making payments or posting pictures online but also, and more thoroughly, our behavioural conditions. Taking pictures has been connected to posting and sharing online. The way of gaining popularity is equated with views and likes online. Human networking is often done with internet powered tools. Moreover, this bleeding is bilateral. Online chatting moving to real-person meetup is considered a normal way of social engagement. Online shopping platform such as eBay and Amazon will have marketing boards set up in all corners of the city. Such prevalence of media technology presence in everyday life cannot and will not be ignored by contemporary artists. Many pairs of keen eyes have spotted this phenomenon and started to address it, especially since the turn of the century. English artist and writer Tim Etchells in his Certain Fragments (1999) describes technology as something that cannot be ignored, ‘you have to think about technology, you have to use it, because in the end it is in your blood. Technology will move in and speak through you, like it or not. Best not to ignore.’ More and more theatre companies and performance makers share a similar opinion and are starting to address this phenomenon and its subsequent problems., Builders’ Association[6]has made performance pieces that discuss people’s online privacy. Interactive experience makers Blast Theory[7]employed technological devices such as smartphones in their performance. Netflix’s Black Mirror: Bandersnatch[8]incorporated user choice and techno-texts writing into filmmaking. Emerging artists start to question and challenge the changing modalities of social interaction.
Postdigital Performance and Thinking Digitally
David Berry and his colleagues observed this rising philosophy of approaching arts and life and published their report in 2012, New Aesthetic, New Anxieties.[9]They started from the world of design and spotted an increasing trend or design concept that was closely tied up with the internet culture; Berry and his team furthered their research in media art, performances, and arts in general. According to their observation, there is an emerging episteme of digital hegemony, meaning computation has become the major methodology for any kind of operation and, concurrently, media technology takes the crown of the primary way for contemporary humans to engage the world. They named it the ‘new aesthetics’ and its subsequent problems ‘new anxieties.’
Essentially, the new aesthetics is born out of the necessity of portraying the world the way we experience it: virtual and physical bleeding into each other. The society we live in is embedded with media and technology usage, and the internet culture is deeply embedded in our day-to-day life. The distinction between the real, the virtual, the organic, the simulated seems to be dissolving, and hence, postdigital, as a term, entered the scholarship.
As with other newly born terminologies, there are many versions of definition, each slightly varied with others. Matthew Causey is an American film and theatre maker as well as an academic on relative matters. He views these types of performances that challenge and address the changing mode of living ‘postdigital,’ whose words are quoted in the section above. In conversant with other scholar’s takes on this matter, he contributed his own version of a postdigital model which does not denote the meaning that the so-called digital era has ended but a recognition that we are precisely living in a highly digitalised world. He compares the prefix ‘post’ in postdigital with the one in posthumanism and defines it as ‘a recognition of the overdetermined relations, circulations, and exchanges of those phenomena within the current condition.’[10]In this sense, a postdigital world is not only a world entangled with media, machine, and the internet but also a world where people are revaluating the concepts of humans and society through their negotiation with the daily usage of digital technologies.
German theatre scholar Hans-Thies Lehmann published his ground-breaking work Postdramatic Theatre in 1999, offering the result of his decades of observation of the evolution of contemporary theatre. He considers the shift from text-based drama, especially seen in experimental theatre, partially enabled by the development of technology, a product of artists’ attempt to reflect the world in a more authentic sense.[11]In this sense, postdigital theatre or postdigital performance is of a similar nature; artists are responding to the changing modalities. These modality changes are products of the hybrid our society has become. As argued above, our real life and virtual life are interwoven and entangled, therefore, performance aiming to reflect modern life will inevitably address the phenomenon, either by actively adopting multi-modalities in the work itself or by portraying people shifting between various modes of interaction. Matthew understands these works as ‘thinking digitally.’
Two Methodologies and Two Approaches towards Postdigital Performance
Artists or performance makers think digitally in their postdigital work to better understand the nature of our current society and reflect on the problems thus made. There are many ways to think digitally, and this essay will examine two methodologies, through technological interfaces and through contextual references, and two concomitant approaches, centrifugal and centripetal.
The first methodology of using various technological interfaces, specifically multi-media, is the most obvious way of making postdigital performances. It focuses more on the design, direct, and presentation aspects of a performance, often seen employing the use of screens, projections, and other types of media interfaces. Some of the aforementioned companies and performance groups such as Builders’ Association are famous for this type of method. For example, Elements of Oz (2016) cleverly incorporates the augmented reality technology [12]in their live performance where the audience can experience two dimensions simultaneously, one through flesh eyes and one through the camera on their technological devices.[13]
The second methodology is contextual references; it refers to a subtler way of dealing with the hybrid nature of our world. For instance, by having a character interacting with another character via phone/vid-call, making references of internet culture in the dialogue, or even including technological devices in the staging, performance makers are enhancing the embeddedness of technology our life is. These contextual references are often so subtle that contemporary scholarships sometimes overlook this type of performances or simply deem them ‘conventional.’ However, one may argue that it is precisely because these contextual references are not made salient that they in actuality accredit the fact that these modes of interaction have been normalised in our social life.
Based on these two methodologies of thinking digitally, this essay will also propose two approaches when adopting these methods of performance making, namely centrifugal and centripetal.
Centrifugal force is an inertial or pseudo force, occurs apparently in a circling or rotating frame, described as an outward going force.[14]Conversely, centripetal force is one whose direction is always inward and towards the centre point of the rotating frame. To put it another way, centrifugal force describes the process of a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree dissemination from a fixated point whilst centripetal force pulls, collects and gathers. One offers the same point of departure, and the other the same destination.
As discussed in the second section of this essay, hybrid as it is our society, in the relationship between the virtual and the real, the organic and the inorganic, there are still status of primary and secondary; the virtual is the extension of the real. Admittedly, the status quo is constantly challenged by the development of technology, and, in response, by various products and arts alike. Artists like Stefan Kaegi[15]have produced works that questioned the difference between simulation and reality; Technological companies such as Meta[16]are strenuously pushing the boundary of the virtual, exploring the possibility of it being an alternative reality. However, it cannot be disputed that, in the current state, the virtual cannot exist outside the physical. The virtual or the digital is built on data which are stored in physical servers made up with tangible materials. As long as this remains unchanged, the reality will continue to be the primary role whereas the virtual the secondary, however hybridised the society may be. Therefore, the reality or the physical world will always be the destination.
The following two sections are two case studies, respectively of Blast Theory’s Karen and Al Smith’ s Rare Earth Mettle. The former is technologically mediated, and the latter is text-based theatre. The case studies will analyse how these two works represent the aforementioned two methodologies of postdigital performance and how the centrifugal and centripetal approaches are reflected in the dramaturgical process.
Case Study: Blast Theory’s Karen
Blast Theory was founded in 1991; since their establishment, they have been releasing award-winning innovative works, both live and media-based, addressing various social and political issues raised by the advancement of technology. In the past decade, they grew to have their eyes on technological devices, especially portable ones like smartphones and tablets whose pervasion has forever changed our social dynamic. Lead by artists, Nick Tandavanitj, Matt dams, and Ju Row Farr, Blast Theory has been studying the influence on performance portable technological devices have and exploring the potential of a ‘socially and politically transformative’ communicative framework.[17]As per their mythos, their works exemplify the hybrid nature of postdigital society, oftentimes blurring the boundaries between the performing space and the real-life space, between the virtual and the physical.
In 2015, they launched their genre-bending mobile app, Karen, a life-coaching app that presents itself with episodes of recordings simulating one-on-one video-call sessions with the fictional character, Karen, whom the user gradually discovers to be unstable, volatile, and unprofessional. The story, or rather, the non-story of Karen is gamified and comprises of psychological evaluating questions disguised as a life-coaching questionnaire. As the story progresses, the users are confronted with issues such as the invasion of privacy and will eventually received a profiling report based on the choices and actions of the user during the gameplay.
Karen is a great, even extreme example of creating postdigital performance via the first methodology, through technological interfaces. There are three major interfaces in the case of Karen, all of which are familiarised and pervasive in our everyday life. The first is mobile application, or app, made possible by smart operating system (OS). ‘App,’ along with smart OS, quickly dominated our social life since its birth. In 2010, app is voted as the word of the year.[18]From the moment one wakes up to the moment one goes to bed, apps are everywhere, taking forms as the alarm clock, the map, the television, the music player, and so on. The entirety of Karen’s content is delivered in the form of an app which, if conditions are met, will play the users media recordings and send notifications. The second is user interface (UI) often seen in choice-based video games. It may appear as a slide where the user can adjust the position of the indicator to represent degree or as multiple choices where the user taps on the one that suits their disposition the most. The third is video conferencing (vid-call) software interface. Although it seems that recent force majeure made pervasive video meeting platforms such as Zoom and Skype, they have existed for more than a decade and have been enabling the function of multinational companies and long-distance workers for more than a decade. Utilising this, Karen packages its video recordings as vid-calls and thus simulate real-life situations.
Figure 1. Karen asks the user to rate their feelings by adjusting
the position of the black indicator on the text-based UI slide. Blast Theory’s Karen,
2015. (Screenshot provided by Blast Theory, accessed through Google Play.)
Blast Theory combined the three technological interfaces and
successfully created, Karen, as an intuitive game-ish app that fits
perfectly in user’s smart devices. For smart OS users, vid-call or game apps
are no strange concepts at all. It is tailored to blend into our media-saturated
life.
The content of Karen is closely tied up with its form. Its point of departure is both enabled and limited by its app form. Its vid-call interface allows the creator to deliver the story in episodic short videos where the actress Claire Cage or the actor Chris Jared acting out the simulated sessions. These video clips are delivered separately in nine days; during each session, the user is asked to answer questions or make choices; this approach is what this essay will call a centrifugal approach. The form or the media of Karen is fixated but the choices and questionnaire enabled by the UI are led by the centrifugal force, go to various directions, and eventually land in the realm of people’s daily life. From the unharmful outfit choices to those private sexual life prying, they do not go beyond the scope of a person’s social actions, and these actions often do not involve the usage of any technology. This approach reflects one side of thinking digitally that is to think about humans while using technology, and it goes well with performances made with technological interfaces. Stripped to its core, Karenis a questionnaire simulator, yet its mechanical nature allows the users to think about how they behave in their interactions with other human beings.
However, Karen’s ‘ulterior motive’ hinders its centrifugal force. All the questions and choices were written based on the framework of the ‘Big Five’ psychological profiling test[19]and the Myers-Briggs type indicator personality inventory.[20]After the story of Karen, users will receive their personal report on their personality which raises flag for some very current issues like data mining. The report will appear to some very flawed and superficial, as shown in one section, when choosing a gift for Karen, the users who chose bangles were profiled as materialistic, which is generalised and over-simplified measurement. As a result, the users were taken on a journey that started from a technological interface, passing through the realm of social life, yet ended up back to a mechanical point, a profiling test. It does not go through with the centrifugal approach; in attempts to address the socio-political issue of dataveillance, it loses part of its potential to connect with people. It uses digital technology to convey a narrative, which, structurally, reflects the nature of our hybridised living, but its story and its characters remain imitations or simulacra.
Al Smith is an award-winning British screenwriter and playwright whose theatre works all deals with intricate human relationship. Rare Earth Mettle is his fourth and latest theatre project that made its debut at Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Downstairs on 10 November 2021.
Its story follows the snowballing rivalry over the ownership of lithium resources in Bolivia between three concerned parties, a leading NHS doctor specialising in mental health issues, a billionaire and CEO of a tech-conglomerate who is going to launch its new series of electronic cars, and local indigenous community who resides upon the salt flat land.
At first glance, it appears to be a play with a traditional, or conventional structure. It has two acts, and the story develops in chronological order. Yet, under scrutiny, one may notice the many contextual references to the postdigital world that we live in. For the convenience of a textual and contextual analysis, this case study categorises the references into two aspects.
The first aspect is its world building. Henry Finn is the CEO of Edison Motor, a multinational technology company. It launches its campaign via technologically enabled presentation like Keynote, markets its brand image via social media platforms like Twitter, and its employees are inseparable with their productivity tools like laptops and tablets. Anna and Aisling work for the NHS and their professional communication comprises mostly of email correspondences. Nayra is the upcoming young Bolivian politician representing the indigenous people; a large part of her campaign involves her delivering speeches broadcasted via television and radio. Kimsa is the local businessman; his many communications with outside worlds are made available via telephone. And the daily entertainment of his daughter, Alejandra, is to watch cartoons on their television. Such is the world the events of Rare Earth Mettle take place in, and it bears striking assemblance to the real world we are living in. Technology is everywhere; it is integrated in every part of human life. From working to commuting to communicating, the characters’ actions are all facilitated by some kind of technological device. The need to highlight or specify the usage of these devices is unnecessary as it is intrinsic part of their daily life. As discussed in the previous sections, Rare Earth Mettleadopts the second methodology using contextual references of the digital. The subtlety of this method creates a sense of rightly cohesion where the technology-facilitated daily actions are to be taken for granted, because postdigital aesthetics has acknowledged and accepted media and technology as part of standard social life.
The second aspect is its media or digital culture references in the dialogues, and it reflects the second approach mentioned above, the centripetal approach. These references to media culture are there to assist real-life actions and it results in character or relationship development.
Calista, the Head of Sales and Marketing, criticises Henry’s behaviour on Twitter as she implies that it will hurt the sales, while Henry makes his come back saying the demographic of Twitter Users are teenagers who don’t have the ability to own vehicles. These implications are not written out and need no further explanation. Twitter, a social media platform, is used here in a social semiotic sense; it is treated as an established common knowledge, which, in return, reflects how digitally hybridised our social life has become. The virtual interactions can seamlessly bleed into real-life conversations where in the virtual platforms, people air their real-life problems.
This essay reviewed scholarships on the topic of postdigital aesthetics and its impact on performance making and argues that the current society is a hybridised society where the virtual and the physical, the simulated and the real bleed into each other and connects with one another. Performance makers who aim to reflect this status of being therefore need to think digitally.
Then, this essay discusses two main methodologies of making performance with digital thinking, i.e., through either form or content. To further investigate the two methods, two approaches, namely centrifugal and centripetal, are proposed to help with the analyses. As is established in the first sections, there is a primary and secondary distinction between the virtual and the physical, and the physical world takes precedence and serves as the material base for the virtual. Hence, postdigital performances when alluding to digital culture, be it from a formal or content-wise perspective, need to ground it in reality, or rather, in people. Centrifugal approach starts from a single technological point and explores the multiple relations towards human sociality; centripetal approach gathers many digital or media culture references and lead them into the destination of what it means to the people.
Postdigital aesthetics will continue to exist in our social framework for the foreseeable future, and performance makers need to bear in mind that such is the world that we are living in. Be it boundary-pushing technology or traditional text-based theatre, performance art has its means of portraying and challenging the status quo.
The content of Karen is closely tied up with its form. Its point of departure is both enabled and limited by its app form. Its vid-call interface allows the creator to deliver the story in episodic short videos where the actress Claire Cage or the actor Chris Jared acting out the simulated sessions. These video clips are delivered separately in nine days; during each session, the user is asked to answer questions or make choices; this approach is what this essay will call a centrifugal approach. The form or the media of Karen is fixated but the choices and questionnaire enabled by the UI are led by the centrifugal force, go to various directions, and eventually land in the realm of people’s daily life. From the unharmful outfit choices to those private sexual life prying, they do not go beyond the scope of a person’s social actions, and these actions often do not involve the usage of any technology. This approach reflects one side of thinking digitally that is to think about humans while using technology, and it goes well with performances made with technological interfaces. Stripped to its core, Karenis a questionnaire simulator, yet its mechanical nature allows the users to think about how they behave in their interactions with other human beings.
However, Karen’s ‘ulterior motive’ hinders its centrifugal force. All the questions and choices were written based on the framework of the ‘Big Five’ psychological profiling test[19]and the Myers-Briggs type indicator personality inventory.[20]After the story of Karen, users will receive their personal report on their personality which raises flag for some very current issues like data mining. The report will appear to some very flawed and superficial, as shown in one section, when choosing a gift for Karen, the users who chose bangles were profiled as materialistic, which is generalised and over-simplified measurement. As a result, the users were taken on a journey that started from a technological interface, passing through the realm of social life, yet ended up back to a mechanical point, a profiling test. It does not go through with the centrifugal approach; in attempts to address the socio-political issue of dataveillance, it loses part of its potential to connect with people. It uses digital technology to convey a narrative, which, structurally, reflects the nature of our hybridised living, but its story and its characters remain imitations or simulacra.
Case Study: Al Smith’s Rare Earth Mettle
Al Smith is an award-winning British screenwriter and playwright whose theatre works all deals with intricate human relationship. Rare Earth Mettle is his fourth and latest theatre project that made its debut at Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Downstairs on 10 November 2021.
Its story follows the snowballing rivalry over the ownership of lithium resources in Bolivia between three concerned parties, a leading NHS doctor specialising in mental health issues, a billionaire and CEO of a tech-conglomerate who is going to launch its new series of electronic cars, and local indigenous community who resides upon the salt flat land.
At first glance, it appears to be a play with a traditional, or conventional structure. It has two acts, and the story develops in chronological order. Yet, under scrutiny, one may notice the many contextual references to the postdigital world that we live in. For the convenience of a textual and contextual analysis, this case study categorises the references into two aspects.
The first aspect is its world building. Henry Finn is the CEO of Edison Motor, a multinational technology company. It launches its campaign via technologically enabled presentation like Keynote, markets its brand image via social media platforms like Twitter, and its employees are inseparable with their productivity tools like laptops and tablets. Anna and Aisling work for the NHS and their professional communication comprises mostly of email correspondences. Nayra is the upcoming young Bolivian politician representing the indigenous people; a large part of her campaign involves her delivering speeches broadcasted via television and radio. Kimsa is the local businessman; his many communications with outside worlds are made available via telephone. And the daily entertainment of his daughter, Alejandra, is to watch cartoons on their television. Such is the world the events of Rare Earth Mettle take place in, and it bears striking assemblance to the real world we are living in. Technology is everywhere; it is integrated in every part of human life. From working to commuting to communicating, the characters’ actions are all facilitated by some kind of technological device. The need to highlight or specify the usage of these devices is unnecessary as it is intrinsic part of their daily life. As discussed in the previous sections, Rare Earth Mettleadopts the second methodology using contextual references of the digital. The subtlety of this method creates a sense of rightly cohesion where the technology-facilitated daily actions are to be taken for granted, because postdigital aesthetics has acknowledged and accepted media and technology as part of standard social life.
The second aspect is its media or digital culture references in the dialogues, and it reflects the second approach mentioned above, the centripetal approach. These references to media culture are there to assist real-life actions and it results in character or relationship development.
Calista, the Head of Sales and Marketing, criticises Henry’s behaviour on Twitter as she implies that it will hurt the sales, while Henry makes his come back saying the demographic of Twitter Users are teenagers who don’t have the ability to own vehicles. These implications are not written out and need no further explanation. Twitter, a social media platform, is used here in a social semiotic sense; it is treated as an established common knowledge, which, in return, reflects how digitally hybridised our social life has become. The virtual interactions can seamlessly bleed into real-life conversations where in the virtual platforms, people air their real-life problems.
Conclusion
This essay reviewed scholarships on the topic of postdigital aesthetics and its impact on performance making and argues that the current society is a hybridised society where the virtual and the physical, the simulated and the real bleed into each other and connects with one another. Performance makers who aim to reflect this status of being therefore need to think digitally.
Then, this essay discusses two main methodologies of making performance with digital thinking, i.e., through either form or content. To further investigate the two methods, two approaches, namely centrifugal and centripetal, are proposed to help with the analyses. As is established in the first sections, there is a primary and secondary distinction between the virtual and the physical, and the physical world takes precedence and serves as the material base for the virtual. Hence, postdigital performances when alluding to digital culture, be it from a formal or content-wise perspective, need to ground it in reality, or rather, in people. Centrifugal approach starts from a single technological point and explores the multiple relations towards human sociality; centripetal approach gathers many digital or media culture references and lead them into the destination of what it means to the people.
Postdigital aesthetics will continue to exist in our social framework for the foreseeable future, and performance makers need to bear in mind that such is the world that we are living in. Be it boundary-pushing technology or traditional text-based theatre, performance art has its means of portraying and challenging the status quo.
References
‘“App” Voted 2010 Word Of The Year By The American Dialect Society (UPDATED)’, American Dialect Society, 2010 <https://www.americandialect.org/app-voted-2010-word-of-the-year-by-the-american-dialect-society-updated> [Accessed 16 February 2022]
Azuma, R., Y. Baillot, R. Behringer, S. Feiner, S. Julier, and B. MacIntyre, ‘Recent Advances In Augmented Reality’, IEEE Computer Graphics And Applications, 21 (2001), 34-47 <https://doi.org/10.1109/38.963459>
Berry, David M., and Michael Dieter, ‘Thinking Postdigital Aesthetics: Art, Computation And Design’, in Postdigital Aesthetics: Art, Computation And Design (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), pp. 1-11
‘Black Mirror: Bandersnatch | Netflix Official Site’, Netflix, 2018 <https://www.netflix.com/title/80988062/> [Accessed 3 February 2022]
Causey, Matthew, ‘Postdigital Performance’, Theatre Journal, 68 (2016), 427-441 <https://doi.org/10.1353/tj.2016.0074>
Chatzichristodoulou, Maria, ‘How To Kidnap Your Audiences: An Interview With Matt Adams Of Blast Theory’, in Interfaces of Performance (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 107-118.
Chatzichristodoulou, Maria, ‘Blast Theory’, in Liz Tomlinson (ed.), British Theatre Companies: 1995-2014, (London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2015), pp. 231-254.
Davis, Fred, Fashion, Culture, And Identity (University of Chicago Press, 1992), pp. 2-5
‘ELEMENTS OF OZ’, The Builders Association, 2016 <https://www.elementsofoz.com/> [Accessed 10 February 2022]
‘Karen | Blast Theory’, Blast Theory, 2015 <https://www.blasttheory.co.uk/projects/karen/> [Accessed 3 February 2022]
Lehmann, Hans-Thies, Postdramatic Theatre (London: Routledge, 2007)
MALABY, THOMAS M., ‘Coming Of Age In Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores The Virtually Human By Tom Boellstorff’, American Anthropologist, 111 (2009), 525-526 <https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1433.2009.01161_2.x>
‘New Aesthetic, New Anxieties’, V2_Lab For The Unstable Media, 2012 <https://v2.nl/archive/articles/new-aesthetic-new-anxieties> [Accessed 5 February 2022]
Rheingold, Howard, The Virtual Community (Cambridge (Mass.): MIT, 2000), pp. 22-23
Taylor, John Robert, ‘Chapter Nine’, in Classical Mechanics (University Science Books, 2004), p. 344
‘The Builders Association’, The Builders Association <https://new.thebuildersassociation.org/> [Accessed 3 February 2022]
[1] David M. Berry and Michael Dieter, ‘Thinking Postdigital Aesthetics: Art, Computation And Design’, in Postdigital Aesthetics: Art, Computation And Design(Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), pp. 1-11.
[2] THOMAS M. MALABY, ‘Coming Of Age In Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores The Virtually Human By Tom Boellstorff’, American Anthropologist, 111.4 (2009), 525-526
[3] Howard Rheingold, The Virtual Community (Cambridge (Mass.): MIT, 2000), pp. 22-23.
[4] Fred Davis, Fashion, Culture, And Identity (University of Chicago Press, 1992), pp. 2-5.
[5] Matthew Causey, ‘Postdigital Performance’, Theatre Journal, 68.3 (2016), 429
[6] ‘The Builders Association’, The Builders Association<https://new.thebuildersassociation.org/>
[7] ‘Karen | Blast Theory’, Blast Theory, 2015 <https://www.blasttheory.co.uk/projects/karen/>
[8] ‘Black Mirror: Bandersnatch | Netflix Official Site’, Netflix, 2018 <https://www.netflix.com/title/80988062/>
[9] ‘New Aesthetic, New Anxieties’, V2_Lab For The Unstable Media, 2012 <https://v2.nl/archive/articles/new-aesthetic-new-anxieties>
[10] Matthew Causey, ‘Postdigital Performance’, Theatre Journal, 68.3 (2016), 432
[11] Hans-Thies Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre (London: Routledge, 2007).
[12] Augmented reality or AR refers to the enhancement of information presentation through the help of auxiliary technological devices. An AR system combines the physical and virtual objects in a real environment. It runs interactively and in real-time. It registers real and virtual objects with each other.
R. Azuma and others, ‘Recent Advances In Augmented Reality’, IEEE Computer Graphics And Applications, 21.6 (2001), 34-47 <https://doi.org/10.1109/38.963459>.
[13] ‘ELEMENTS OF OZ’, The Builders Association, 2016 <https://www.elementsofoz.com/>
[14] John Robert Taylor, ‘Chapter Nine’, in Classical Mechanics (University Science Books, 2004), p. 344.
[15] Stefan Kaegi is a theatre director specialised in documentary plays, multi-media interventions and collaborative devising. He cofounded with Helgard Haug and Daniel Wertzel the Berlin-based theatre collective ‘Rimini Protokoll.’
[16] It is an international technology conglomerate founded by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004, formerly known as Facebook.
[17] Chatzichristodoulou, Maria, ‘How To Kidnap Your Audiences: An Interview With Matt Adams Of Blast Theory’, in Interfaces of Performance (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 107-118.
[18] ‘‘App’ Voted 2010 Word Of The Year By The American Dialect Society (UPDATED)’, American Dialect Society, 2010 <https://www.americandialect.org/app-voted-2010-word-of-the-year-by-the-american-dialect-society-updated>
[19] ‘Big Five’ measures openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.
[20] Chatzichristodoulou, Maria, ‘Blast Theory’, in Liz Tomlinson (ed.), British Theatre Companies: 1995-2014, (London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2015), pp. 231-254.