User:Rachelm301/sandbox

The term Digital Performance can usually be defined to consist of all types of performance in which computer technologies have taken on the main role rather than an auxiliary one in the content, techniques, aesthetics or the delivery forms. Digital performance will usually explore the representations of the subliminal, dreams, and fantasy worlds. Over the past decade or so we have witnessed a very vast and incredible development within every aspect of the technological world. As a result of this, there has been a large increase in the experimentation with computer technologies being integrated within the performing arts; and with the new technological creations and the developments of existing digital technologies they are also beginning to create a greater, more significant impact in the way in which different art forms are being practiced. Digital media now has a new and more dramatic role to play in live theatre, dance and performance; and while digital media performances are beginning to proliferate there are now many new forms of interactive performance genres that have emerged in the style of audience participatory installations that can take place either on the internet or played on CD – ROM’s. “Computers are arenas for social experience and dramatic interaction, a type of media more like public theatre, and their output is used for qualitative interaction, dialogue and conversation.” Computer technologies can be contextualised as being of social, cultural and artistic change. Computers do now permit for the artistic modes of expression and for the new generic forms of networking and interactive performance. Theatre itself has always been at the cutting edge of technology and it has been quick on the mark to recognise, and to take full advantage of the dramatic and aesthetic potentials that these new technologies have to offer. Theatre, dance and performance art have always been known to be a form of multimedia; and right at the very core of the theatre through all the manifestations to the contemporary experimentation as well as incorporating all of the visual elements in to a production; at the foreground to any piece there is the human voice and the spoken text. Locating the roots of digital performance practices can be traced back for many decades. There are three main periods in the history of multi - media performance; Futurism during the 1910’s, mixed media performance during the 1960’s and experimentation with a performance and the computer during the 1990’s. Both during the eras of Futurism and the experimentation with computer incorporated within performance, are both greatly inspired by the development of new and existing technology. Researching back digital performance practices have experimented with numerous of the avant – garde movements dating from the early twentieth century, these movements are ranging from Bauhaus, Dada, Surrealism and many more. It could be said that digital performance can be linked to the aesthetics, philosophies and practices of the futurist movement. One of the main links that has been found which can connect futurism to digital performance was with the use of the ‘machine’ which was used in the set of Robert Lepage’s Zulu Time (1999). Although, it can be said that the avant – garde movement Futurism is a more philosophical basis for contemporary digital performance, then any of the other avant – garde movements such as the likes of Bauhaus, Dada, Surrealism which are mainly used to provide inspiration for a large part of the content and styles for the artistic expression. One of the earliest examples of when theatre and film were being integrated together with the use of digital technology was to try and challenge the distinction between what is ‘liveness’ in the live performer on the stage and the media imagery, it is about the relationship between the virtual and the actual performance being the dialogic interactivity. Theatre pieces which have integrated digital media and computer generated projections built into performances have a long historical lineage that stretches back to over a hundred years ago to a Loie Fuller’s experiment. In 1911, Fuller conducted an experiment where film footage was projected onto diaphanous robes, this being the first integration with film being used in a theatre performance. From the early 1960’s, computer generated imagery then began to emerge as a distinctive art form, and in John Whitney’s film Catalog (1961) viewers witnessed one of films’ first ever uses of computer transformations. Although digital arts had been developing since the 1960’s, in the 1990’s computer technologies had become much more accessible to artists which led to an extensive digital performance activity. It was during this time that computer hardware was built to became more “user – friendly” and we witnessed the invention of the digital camera and the home PC’s and the establishment of the World Wide Web, it was this period of time which would then be known as the ‘Digital Revolution’. From 1970 there was a period of time of theatrical experimentation that elevated the visual over the verbal; there was a proliferation in the use of media projections in theatre, dance and performance art, using both screens and video monitors. With the ease of using these video technologies many artists began to explore the possibilities of integrating visual media within their live work. The use of media technology including the likes of film, video and sound equipment became a characteristic for experimental theatre, and some of the most noted performance artists of this time were creating work by incorporating video and film into their productions. As digital media becomes more and more popular, the perception of digital images and videos now are now lacking in authenticity as these technologies have progressively intensified over the past few years. Digital performance is an expansion of a progressing history of embracing the adaptation of these technologies to amplify a performance and the visual art aesthetic effect and to create the sense of a spectacle as well as capturing the emotional and the sensorial impact.