Scene - Volume 1, Issue 2, 2013

This article discusses the work of Canadian artist Lynne Heller, specifically her project The Adventures of Nar Duell in Second Life begun in 2007. It examines her use of computational arts to blur distinctions between artistic media through the creation of digital and material composites in both physical and virtual spaces. Heller’s performances, which involve creating and navigating an avatar in Second Life, become material for her comic books and immersive, multimedia art installations. Moving in and out of formats, Heller bridges physical and alternative spaces and identities. An interview with the artist details the development of her multifaceted project and aesthetic complexity, particularly her artistic strategies and the ideas that inform her work, such as transference and the relationship with her avatar described as a mother-daughter bond. This article considers the implications of crafting within the virtual, and addresses aspects of materiality within these spaces, as well as modes of viewing, interaction and collaboration.

In this comic book style adventure, Lynne Heller’s intrepid but naive avatar, Nar Duell explores her world. The translation of the virtual adventures into comix style documentation is a natural expression of the experience of spending time in Second Life. The superficial and arbitrary nature of virtual life is mirrored in the ‘pow, bam, zap’ aesthetic of the printed page. Nar Duell’s adventures are transmogrified into narrative. The graphic novel supports the illusive nature of the work with the concrete and historical reference to print – a travel guide, and captures the essence and detail of what has been deemed alien and exotic by the outside world, and makes intimate that which is generally seen as inaccessible.

An account, from a performer’s perspective, of the REMAP/RITL workshop in Italy that details the various performer/media relationships encountered during the workshop. These experiences are identified using David Saltz’s taxonomy of performer/media relationships and described in the context of improvisational theatre and traditional Commedia dell’Arte mask work. Three digital media aspects of the work (‘the field’, ‘the object’ and ‘the mask’) are explored and conclusions drawn regarding approaches to digital media and areas for further research.

This article explores how, in an era where e-mail has discharged the letter or where Facebook replaces face-time with friends over a drink, where the lines between virtual reality and reality are colliding, can live performance aid in the creation of an activated citizenship? I believe to create an activated citizenship, we must first involve an activated spectatorship. Wrapped up in spectatorship, itself, are the elements of identity politics, subjectivity, ways of looking/seeing/gazing and cultural conventions. This research explores the relationship between the ways in which spectators look/see/view and the ways in which the production, working with the intimate relationship of performance-spectatorship in a black box theatre, manipulates the visual vocabulary, collapsing the boundaries of culture, performance and the real.

The advancements in, and the use of technology within, the theatre have resulted in some changes in directorial practice. As these advances in technology have changed the emphasis of the process of production, the prominence given to the director as sole ‘auteur’ of a piece of work has become diminished. The scenographic team is now more legitimately described as the ‘auteurs’ of a production. Another contributory factor for these developments has been the changes in theatre practice influenced both by European and Eastern European performance theories. This article explores the nature of these changes and influences and discusses the technology, which has offered greater scope for the manipulation of the stage image, in particular the use of lighting in scenography. The director is no longer a specialist in every area, ‘a man of the theatre’. He or she works collaboratively with the other artists in the production team in a much more democratic process of production. More than at any other time, the director works as another member of the team not only because he or she lacks knowledge, but because the technology has allowed considerable flexibility and the director’s ‘vision’ can be translated into many forms, materials and theories. The contribution of scenography to these changes, changes in acting styles and of what is expected within a performance space, has transformed the way in which an actor uses that space. For example, the importance that Brecht placed on Caspar Neher’s designs for a cohesive performance structure (based on his sketches of/for the rehearsal process) and the relation of the actor to light (which Appia recognized as important) has resulted in stage technologies and scenography emerging as a partner of the actor and thus a new aesthetic.

The aim of the production was to perform the lighting research juxtaposing the historical research with special effects and lighting techniques. It experimented with performance and lighting styles to demonstrate the use of imagination and suggestion, and the emblematic and non-naturalistic in lighting effects from the Renaissance through to the interconnectedness of animation and live performance technologies.

This article describes the rationale behind the development of a digital performance system that enables a musical ensemble or solo instrumentalist to interact with a generative and reactive visual score, projected in a cinematic environment. A partial feedback loop is setup between the performer and a projection of visual media, which allow the performer to perceive a response to their playing in certain aspects of the projection. The premise underpinning this piece runs far deeper than merely allowing acoustic instruments to interact with technology; it builds on the pioneering work of Benjamin Libet (1916–2007) and challenges the notion of volition and agency in the way performers react and respond to visual stimulus. The performances enabled by this system will not only provide an audience with a stimulating cinematic event but will also provoke the performers to engage in new and unexpected modes of musical behaviour. A prototype of this system is evaluated as a means of developing psychological and philosophical themes around the notion of freewill in interactive audio-visual performance.

This article explores the problematic concept of attention in a mediatized culture. Using Blue Man Group (BMG)’s The Complex concert as a case study, I historicize and analyse discourse on attention and perception through phenomenological and deconstructive frames. I conclude with Michel Foucault’s conception of the heterotopia as the site for a productive analysis of The Complex show, a mediatized manifestation of other spaces, ones that defy focused attention and reveal encounters with and misfires from contemporary media consumption. The heterotopic multimedia concert calls the possibility of attention into question, and with this challenge the Blue Man provides a constructive re-evaluation of consumption and media culture.

The purpose of this article is to analyse the use of local references in drama costume design, considering the possible limits when ‘showing yourself’ to others. From crossovers between the languages of Carnival and theatre, it brings up a local issue, but one that demands a global reflection, because it can lead any one of us, with any cultural background, from any country, to think about which references to choose and how to use them in drama costume design.

This article describes two works by American artist Robert Whitman working in the field of Expanded Cinema and avant-garde performance, with suggestions for contextualizing and interpreting them as intermedial theatre. These works, and the works of fellow theatre artists from the last 50 years, feature in a discussion of the ongoing question of how audiences relate to screens.

In this article, I want to examine the origins of my research, how the research process developed into an experiment of sorts, reflecting on that process and citing it as a potential hybridized form of cultural health interactive art exhibition event, focussing on the feet as they relate to health and well-being for public health engagement. In creating this unique live event, I wanted to interrogate, whether a cultural health intervention in an art gallery, can provide an alternative means to generate and promote public health awareness of self-preventive health care for self-help, wellness and well-being. I will discuss the feasibility of this type of health intervention, arguing that there is a need for these types of interventions to improve health through art, which can respond to local need within a community and bring about behaviour change. I will explore how art can cause us to reflect on health, to understand how feet can have pressure points that affect well-being, and how art can enable people to reflect on health images and think about their own self-care and lifestyle choices. I will analyse how the human foot as masterpiece of engineering and art experience can affect people’s health, and whether those participating in the interactive art exhibition event engaged in better foot care after viewing the art. Thus, in terms of health literacy, health care innovation and exchange, whether the participants in the event are enabled to think further about foot care, health conditions in relation to reflexology, and to feel motivated to change their behaviour? I consider whether the dialogue that ensues among viewers in the gallery space plays a contributing role to illness prevention, health promotion and how the self-care of feet may contribute to a sense of wellness and well-being. My thesis is that the art gallery event serves both as an artistic and a health promotion endeavour, demonstrated through the narratives of photography and interactive art. The liveness and performativity of the event (with two reflexologists present to conduct mini-taster sessions of individual client assessment during the exhibition) raises questions of how to evaluate the interaction and how to analyse the practical implications of the ideas that the exhibition is advancing. I consider the experiment from the perspective of both the academic and the complementary health therapist, particularly in relation to my role as a Senior Research Fellow at Nottingham Trent University, UK in the Narrative & Interactive Arts Department in the School of Art and Design, and in my role as a Reflexologist in private practice.

Eugene Onegin, Kaspar Holten (dir.), London: The Royal Opera, 14 February 2013

Playing Cards 1: Spades, Robert Lepage (dir.), London: The Roundhouse, February–March 2013

In the Beginning was the End, Dreamthinkspeak, London: Somerset House, February–March 2013