Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
proprioception added to the visual through the use of controllers to interact with the
online scenario. TV is more 'passive', the player/viewer affording attention to the
TV screen, yet with no discernable physical interaction.
However, the perspective of the spectator watching yields a different impression.
From the perspective of the spectator, watching the player, the two screens seem to
carry similar weights. The player's active participation in the 'virtual' environment
yields a greater range of physical artifacts that state clearly their participation in
the present moment in the real, perhaps more so than the moments of stillness
attending to the TV show. However, the change of perspective from player to
spectator watching the player in their environment, affords a different view of the
relationship between the physical and digital environments. The spectator sees the
player in their environment as a single event, attention shifting from online game,
subliminally or overtly to the TV show, a glance to any pending online notifications,
a momentary check on the status of coffee level, then back to the game. The
spectator or friend may in turn be predominantly concerned with the TV show,
passively interested in the skill and conquests of the player, and closer to the source
of coffee if replenishment is required. All are components of the real; physical,
cerebral, digital.
The distinction between these two perspectives turns on the association of the vir-
tual with the immersive. The concept of 'virtual reality,' which pre-dates augmented
reality, is tied up with the concept of immersion. The virtual aspires to become
the real through providing a truly immersive experience in sensory, perceptual,
cognitive and affectual terms. Triggering, in the sense that a player/performer's
actions cause an outcome, is a causality symptomatic of tangible interactions.
Watching the player physically interacting with the game through a physical
controller binds their physical actions to the digital environment. While this may be
interpreted to add to the immersion of the player within the digital environment and
remove them from the 'real' in favour of the 'virtual', from the friend/spectators
perspective, the concentration and physical intensity of the player is palpable and
serves to make them no less present to the spectator. The interactions (triggering)
enable the spectator to see further how the player is interacting within the game and
how the player's physicality and the digital environment are bonded together. Our
dancer shows similar symptoms, direct causal behaviour illustrating how the dancer
and the digital environment are enmeshed together.
The spectator perspective is the one given to audience members in digital
dance performance. The audience is privy to the dancer operating within their
environment, inclusive of digital layers, and is able to construct meaning constituted
from all the available elements. The dancer may have their own internalised view
of the environment, however it is the audience member who is in a position to
evaluate the elements as a single reality, not as completely separate physical and
digital experiences. Digital performances such as
The Crack Up
and
Recognition
evoke augmented reality experiences from the audiences' perspective, but not
necessarily from the performers'. This is potentially one of the reasons that digital
performance evokes such varied responses from dance artists themselves. The
embodied experience that is fundamental to dance practice is normally understood
