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

The response of perennial and temporary headwater stream invertebrate communities to hydrological extremes

The headwaters of karst rivers experience considerable hydrological variability, including spates and streambed drying. Extreme summer flooding on the River Lathkill (Derbyshire, UK) provided the opportunity to examine the invertebrate community response to unseasonal spate flows, flow recession and, at temporary sites, streambed drying. Invertebrates were sampled at sites with differing flow permanence regimes during and after the spates. Following streambed drying at temporary sites, dewatered surface sediments were investigated as a refugium for aquatic invertebrates. Experimental rehydration of these dewatered sediments was conducted to promote development of desiccation-tolerant life stages. At perennial sites, spate flows reduced invertebrate abundance and diversity, whilst at temporary sites, flow reactivation facilitated rapid colonisation of the surface channel by a limited number of invertebrate taxa. Following streambed drying, 38 taxa were recorded from the dewatered and rehydrated sediments, with Oligochaeta being the most abundant taxon and Chironomidae (Diptera) the most diverse. Experimental rehydration of dewatered sediments revealed the presence of additional taxa, including Stenophylax sp. (Trichoptera: Limnephilidae) and Nemoura sp. (Plecoptera: Nemouridae). The influence of flow permanence on invertebrate community composition was apparent despite the aseasonal high-magnitude flood events