”Live,” digital media, interactivity, and narrative
A brief clarification of these terms in relation to Digital theatre is in order. The significance of the terms “live” or “liveness” as they occur in theatre can not be over-emphasized, as it is set in opposition to digital in order to indicate the presence of both types of communication, human and computer created. Rather than considering the real-time or temporality of events, digital theatre concerns the interactions of people (audience and actors) sharing the same physical space (in at least one location, if multiple audiences exist). In the case of mass broadcast, it is essential that this sharing of public space occurs at the site of the primary artistic event.(6) The next necessary condition for creating digital theatre is the presence of digital media in the performance. Digital media is not defined through the presence of one type of technology hardware or software configuration, but by its characteristics of being flexible, mutable, easily adapted, and able to be processed in real-time. It is the ability to change not only sound and light, but also images, video, animation, and other content into triggered, manipulated, and reconstituted data which is relayed or transmitted in relation to other impulses which defines the essential nature of the digital format. Digital information has the quality of pure computational potential, which can be seen as parallel to the potential of human imagination.
The remaining characteristics of limited interactivity and narrative or spoken word are secondary and less distinct parameters. While interactivity can apply to both the interaction between humans and machines and between humans, digital theatre is primarily concerned with the levels of interactivity occurring between audience and performers (as it is facilitated through technology).(7) It is in this type of interactivity, similar to other types of heightened audience participation,(8) that the roles of message sender and receiver can dissolve to that of equal conversers, causing theatre to dissipate into conversation. The term “interactive” refers to any mutually or reciprocally active communication, whether it be a human-human or a human-machine communication.
The criteria of having narrative content through spoken language or text as part of the theatrical event is meant not to limit the range of what is already considered standard theatre (as there are examples in the works of Samuel Beckett in which the limits of verbal expression are tested), but to differentiate between that which is digital theatre and the currently more developed fields of digital dance9 and Art Technology.(10) This is necessary because of the mutability between art forms utilizing technology. It is also meant to suggest a wide range of works including dance theatre involving technology and spoken words such as Troika Ranch’s The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz (Troika Ranch, 2000), to the creation of original text-based works online by performers like the Plain Text Players or collaborations such as Art Grid’s Interplay: Hallucinations, to pre-scripted works such as the classics (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Tempest) staged with technology at the University of Kansas and the University of Georgia.
These criteria or limiting parameters are flexible enough to allow for a wide range of theatrical activities while refining the scope of events to those which most resemble the hybrid “live”/mediated form of theatre described as digital theatre. digital theatre is separated from the larger category of digital performance (as expressed in the overabundance of a variety of items including installations, dance concerts, Compact discs, robot fights and other events found in the Digital Performance Archive).
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