Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
observing digitally created images. Dixon explains the disjuncture by referring to
Susan Sontag. “Taking the risk of extending Sontag's implied hierarchies of form,
we would expand her idea further to argue that the sense of ritual and event is (or at
least should be) far more marked in live performance than in cinema
Where
film, video, or digital projections are used in conjunction with live performers in
theatrical contexts, once the performers leave the stage, there is a marked difference
in the mode of spectatorship.” (Dixon
2007
: 129)
For some, blending different modes of spectatorship is unproblematic, even, to
take a Deleuzian view, simply to be expected (Deleuze and Guttari
1987
: 9-28).
For others, it appears to usurp the centrality of the (physical) body in performance,
perhaps exposing an underlying anxiety about the status of the body drawn from the
need to constantly re-assert the body's significance in the face of the ephemerality
of performance. We suggest that these divergent views could be seen as an artefact
of the change in the nature of the digital that Jurgenson suggests has left us with a
concept of digital duality that pertains to a previous generation of technology.
A useful parallel for this argument is to look at the evolution of libraries. As Sarah
Wanenchak (
2013
) has pointed out, ambivalence about the changes from mortar-
and-stone buildings housing texts to digital access points assumes that there is a
“single ideal type of Librariness,” even as it overlooks the historical evolutions
of libraries since the Middle Ages. However, the parameters we associate with
twentieth century libraries are shifting. Though the 'Library' still accomplishes its
purpose—namely, to share information—sharing information is no longer limited
by time and space. For example, accessibility to text is not constrained by opening
hours, by competing interests from other readers, or by geographical proximity
to the library. The purpose of the institution has not fundamentally changed, but
the physical, geographical and temporal parameters have shifted dramatically. As
Wanenchak writes: “We are accustomed to topics being heavy with time. On some
level, it's unnerving when they aren't—or at least not in the way that we're used
to
:::
When we hold an ereader, we are aware—if only subconsciously—that time
is not there in the same way it is with a dead tree topic. It doesn't connect to all the
temporally-laden ideas of Bookness that we carry around in our collective cultural
memory.” (Wanenchak
2013
).
Wanenchak talks about topics as “profoundly time-laden,” within a “world that
seems both temporal and violently atemporal” (Wanenchak
2013
). This example is
useful when we turn to the evolution of live dance, and particularly the integration of
biological bodies with digital entities. As in the case with our nostalgia for a Library
with its twentieth century temporal, physical and geographical limitations, the shifts
towards inter-media performance throw up a number of questions. However, while
you could argue that a text read digitally or the old-fashioned way fundamentally
offers the same information-sharing properties, removing dance from its embodied
performative state alters the nature of the art form. Like reading a topic, watching
a dance performance is a time-laden activity. Even durational performances (such
as Einstein on the Beach) where audience members are invited to exit and enter the
theatre at their own volition, create structures within a geographical space.
:::
