New media art, participation, social engagement and public funding

This article investigates the current condition of new media art in Britain, examining how cuts to arts funding have affected the art form's infrastructure and capacity for survival and growth. It considers media art in relation to other contemporary art practices, particularly in relation to its inherent capacity for enhanced and sustained user participation, and asks why it is that, though government agendas favour participatory art as ‘socially useful', media art appears to have been hit harder than other art forms. The article puts forward four reasons that could explain this paradox, and argues the importance of the survival of new media art, not as isolated practices invited to exist within mainstream contexts, but as a distinct art form

Cybertheatres: Emergent Networked Performance Practices

This thesis explores the emergent genre of cybertheatres or networked performance, that is, performance that employs the Internet and/or other types of networking technologies (telecommunication, mobile) and attitudes. I argue that networking technologies produce hybrid spacetimes or heterotopias (Foucault), which function as stages for networked performances, a novel and increasingly popular field of practice and research. The aims of this project are to a) articulate networked performance as a distinct genre, which is a hybrid between theatre/performance and networking technologies, b) situate this within a lineage of performance practice, c) identify and analyse its principal ontological and dramaturgical elements and, d) explore appropriate curatorial strategies for its presentation to a spectrum of audiences. To achieve these aims I undertake a critical analysis of cybertheatres, starting from 1967 and focusing on current practices. My analysis unfolds through engagement with discussions along two pivotal conceptual vectors, and through applied exploration of two core elements of practice: The conceptual vectors along which this thesis develops are: 1. Space: I examine the spatial nature of the networks that host cybertheatres, employing British group Blast Theory as my case-study. 2. Presence: I question the validity of the presence vs. absence dichotomy within networked environments. I investigate this through the work of Belgian duo Entropy8Zuper!, relaunched as Tale of Tales. Further on, I undertake a practical exploration relating to the subject of the curation of cybertheatres. I reflect upon and evaluate the three-day event Intimacy: Across Digital and Visceral Pelformance (December 2007), which I initiated, produced, co-directed and cocurated, to propose curatorial strategies that are appropriate to emergent practices in general and cybertheatres in particular. I close by a shift of voice from the author to the collective: I join the collaborative project Deptford. TV as a method of studying artistic, curatorial and social platforms that demonstrate Web 2.0 attitudes, and argue for the genre's particular potential for new forms of social engagement within a computer-mediated culture

Blast Theory

Whether seen as a theatre or performance group, an art ensemble that uses different methodological approaches including live performance, or a new media art company that creates works informed by cutting-edge technology, from the very outset Blast Theory has actively questioned, challenged and transgressed disciplinary boundaries, merging theatre, performance, interactive arts and gaming. Through its artistic practice, the company innovates by developing new models for active audience participation: using emergent technologies and interactive media in ways that have shaped the contemporary British and international cultural landscapes; exploring formats that merge practices and approaches; situating its work in unconventional or unexpected contexts; confronting audiences with tough questions and challenging demands; and, above all, being prepared to take risks. Though refusing to be defined as a theatre company, Blast Theory has certainly helped shape the contemporary theatre landscape in Britain and internationally by inspiring companies to experiment with participative practices, locative media, mobile interfaces, pervasive gaming and the creation of complex and layered immersive experiences

Karen by Blast Theory : leaking privacy

This project offers engagement with digital technologies related to bodily interaction and creativity from a multi-disciplinary perspective. In so doing it aims to illustrate the synergies and differences in the theorisation of the body and technology, and how this in turn shapes new or evolving practices across the arts and humanities. By taking a multi-disciplinary approach the collection offers a comprehensive view of digital technology research that both extends our notions of the body and creativity through a digital lens, and informs of the role of technology in practices central to the Arts and Humanities

Digital Cultural Heritage in the 'land of the ancient': the case of Greece (panel discussion)

[extract from the 'Book of Abstracts'] The panel will bring together professionals coming from different areas of the cultural spectrum (Research and Creative Practices from the academia and museums) to discuss ways in which Greek institutions, designers and artists are currently handling the concept of digital cultural heritage. In a country famous for its glorious (ancient) past, how do creative professionals and museums enter into dialogue with the old and the analogue in order to create a present for themselves? Furthermore, the panel will discuss ways to improve and cultivate practice-based research that can inform, transform and elucidate current speculations of diverse and inclusive academic and non-academic environments in order to empower our society in a variety of contexts and improve our way of communicating the increasingly multicultural challenges to the world

Blast Theory’s Karen: exploring the ontology of technotexts

The continual and rapid emergence of media technologies predominantly since the digital revolution in the late twentieth century has generated a new social, cultural and cognitive ecology. This new environment has shaped the landscape of contemporary theatre and performance, and has brought about new modes such as virtual theatre, multimedia performance and online theatre. These emerging performative responses to the mediatised ecology have heralded transformations in directing, performing and design, and, relatedly, a paradigm shift in the ontology of theatre and performance. The textual dimension of theatre – a strong aspect of British theatre tradition that is mostly associated with playtexts - has also adapted to the changing performance landscape. As a result of this adaptation process, new modes of texts have emerged. The texts that have emerged from practices, whose design and performance are partially or completely based on new technologies and their aesthetics, can be considered in this group. This article is an experiment in forging a vocabulary to identify such texts, which it presents as technotexts, and explore some of their ontological characteristics. It offers an attempt to start a conversation about the changing ontology of text in mediatised theatre practice. To this end, I investigate Blast Theory’s Karen (2015), a smart phone app-based, interactive performance, which illustrates an inventive textual landscape through multiple layers of writing, and invites questions regarding the changing form and role of text as a process and product in relation to performance, authorship and spectatorship, and textual object/archive

Editorial introduction

This article frames the journal special issue by offering a broad reflection on the historical development of ideas that have informed debates concerning intermediality and its pedagogical contexts. It opens with a brief articulation of media and intermedial theory to inform the debate. The challenges of contemporary media hybridity are then set within an historical context by tracing the origins of current (perceived) knowledge dichotomies and hierarchies into the philosophical canons of western antiquity. In examining distinctions between the different types of knowledge and expression that form the constituent parts of contemporary intermedial theatres, the article considers philosophical debates, traces historical trajectories and probes social dynamics from Aristotle to the present. Moving on to the current historical and social context of intermedial practice and pedagogy, the article examines specific challenges and opportunities that emerge from our own intermedial age. This multifaceted and trans-historical approach leads the authors to suggest that old hierarchical and divisional structures impact upon contemporary practices, affecting how those are perceived, received and valued

Performance studies and citizen media

The Routledge Encyclopedia of Citizen Media sets out to chart the territory of citizen media, a new, fast evolving disciplinary terrain. Citizen media is understood in the context of this project as the physical artefacts, digital content, performative interventions, practices and discursive formations of affective sociality that ordinary citizens produce as they participate in public life to effect aesthetic or socio-political change. Pursuing an inclusive agenda, this understanding of citizen media encompasses such diverse forms of political and aesthetic intervention in public life as graffiti and other forms of street art, street performance, community theatre, rap and hip hop, community radio, citizen journalism, citizen photography, blogging, tweeting, documentary film making, hacktivism, fansubbing, and scanlation. As such it allows engagement with participatory cultures across the entire spectrum of a population, irrespective of their level of access to digital media. Citizen Media and Performance Studies Maria Chatzichristodoulou, London South Bank University, UK This entry will examine a diverse range of performance practices that are, in some way, related to the notion of citizen media. As the connections between the two are emergent – and thus, to some extent, in the making – the entry will be led by current practice, adopting an empirical approach in the first instance. It will start by surveying contemporary performances that unfold within, intervene in or disrupt the public sphere, whether this is physical or digital. These could be street performances, activist/citizen actions, cyber-activist events, performance interventions, public forms of docu-dramas, performative gestures that disrupt quotidian happenings, and so on. It will then attempt to differentiate – to the extent this is possible and desirable – between performance as an artistic (and activist) practice, and performative action as a methodological approach in the service of a political end; or what journalist Paul Mason has described as ‘gestural politics’ (2012: 1). To achieve that, the entry will apply key scholarly work; most notably Richard Schechner’s performance studies approach (2002, 2006), Austin’s theory of the performative utterance (1962), the notion of the performative turn, the idea of theatricality in relation to gesture and protest (Hughes and Parry 2015), and the concept of the experience economy (Pine II and Gilmore 1998)