Live technologies in theatrical performance in a post modern perspective

Résumé du document

How does the use of live technologies in theatrical performance exemplify our own positioning in a post-industrial technologically based society? Further, how does this in turn explain some of the concerns of the postmodernists? These are the buzzing thoughts that plague an individual's or a society's mind at large when considering the topic on ?Postmodernism and its impact on theatre'. Postmodern cinema is wealthy in intertextual references, and is often self-reflexive. However, the same can be said of theatre performances that utilize the newly designed live technologies. The use of technology enables theatre to broaden its horizon of communicating in other ways other than through the spoken text on stage. These references can therefore be perceived through mediums such as visuals and sound. As the composer Philip Glass rightly declared that ?technology is a lot of things.' It is an indisputable fact that the grand piano is a masterpiece of technology. Douglas Coupland (1995) also stated that Language by itself is such a unique technology. Indeed, technology can mean many things and postmodernism encourages the fusion and juxtaposition of many disciplines such as film, music, and the time-based medium of video art. As Auslander (1999:24) observed, that live performance more often than ever, incorporates mediatization such that the live event itself is a product of a technological advancement. This highlights the inevitable positioning of the performer and of ourselves as the product and the object of the newly built technologies being used to its fullest. In this context, humans are therefore being referred to as cyborgs in our post-industrial and technologically based society.

Extraits

[...] Her surgical performances are mediatized. Thus, she merges with technology in a fusion of mechanical and organic and in a way is by technology' (Dixon; 2004: 26). Even if actual mechanical technology is not implanted in her body, she still represents a form of cyborg, in the same way that people can be cyborg-like to various degrees. The male characters in the film A Clockwork Orange (1971) for example, are very mechanically minded. She is however, not so much a victim of technology as its perpetrator, thus participating in a double gesture. [...]

[...] (2005). Hotel Methuselah. A document by imitating the dog and Pete Brooks, pp.9-11. Rees, A.L (1999). A History of Experimental Film and Video. London: British Film Institute, p.2. Russolo, L (1913) The Art of Noises, July http://www.unknown.nu/futurism/noises.html The Andersen Project (2005). Robert Lepage. Produced by Ex-Machina. The Passing (1991). Bill Viola. [...]

[...] Like technology, memory seems to defeat itself. The character's deja vus serve to exemplify the postmodern anxiety of the loss of the real and parallel realities that are interconnected and give the impression of the ‘real'. Goodman (2000: 288) refers to the emergence of a ‘replay culture' where we are used to rewinding everything. She says that, as a result, often seems that we no longer live so much in the moment, but rather live in the frame of a media –orientated world-view'. [...]

[...] He observed that all ideas ‘fuse in post--modern life, bounce off one another' (in Tousignant; 2000: pg.un). Therefore his use of film, visuals and varied music and sound sources mirror the hybridity of postmodern life and the accompanying idea of ‘shopping' into different disciplines and mediums, as he further states that of these different disciplines inform each other; they don't work against each other'. Laurie Anderson demonstrates this when she utilizes the medium of the rock concert for her performances. [...]

[...] The Routledge Reader in Politics and Performance, London: Routledge, p McRobbie, A (1994). Postmodernism and Popular Culture. London: Routledge, p Munby, J (2005). ‘It's just like a film' in Quick, A. (2005). Hotel Methuselah. A document by imitating the dog and Pete Brooks, p Orlan (1996). ‘This is my body this is my software' in Ashby, I (2000). Mutant Woman: the use and abuse of the female body in performance art' in Campbell, P (2000). The Body in Performance, London: Routledge, p Quick, A. [...]