Giannachi explains how the root of the word technology indicates that the intention was to be a craft and art form. She explains how art has been reproduced through technology and has been iterated and advanced through technology. Giannachi explains the arts which took main focus of mechanics to explore the methods of their previous work. An example of this is Oscar Schlemmer’s ‘puppets’, where he replaced stage presence of the body with a mechanical structure. This was an extension of culture critique where an arm was replaced with a mouse, representing the mainstream use of computing, amongst other objects. The Dada movement was one which also utilised the use of machinery in work to respond to the culture of it’s time. Picabia said that the machine was ‘the genius of the modern world’ and as we can see from the rapid changes in use, this could be true. Cubism and Futurism were art forms that were both informed by mechanics and mathematical sequences. Giannachi explains how Bertolt Brecht’s interest in science and technology forwarded the actualisation of it’s presence in theatre and life.
It is interesting therefore that images that appeared over this time grew more like the human form (than their predefinitions) from Kasimir Malevich and Fernand Leger. These avant-garde moments were highly linked to enthusiasm towards technology and experimental art.
Gianaccchi brings attention to the chaos of cyberspace. Attention to the way that it has a web of memories and banks and global interconnection can be achieved. Cyberart in that way is a collective piece of art and is openly worked on throughout the world. ‘the machine for generating events’ explains Pierre Levy. He explains that there are two different virtual worlds. One’s that are open, assessable by all for adaption and iteration. And ones that are closed like CD-ROMs.
Giannachi Explains the importance of understanding the terms of Remediation, the phenomenon of philosophy in virtual theatre. McLuhan said that the act of remediation is to recognise the content of one subject in the content of another. This was recognised in digital media as a representation of other context and forms. Giannachi explains that one of the goals of virtual theatre is to be unseen. The creators intention is to have the viewer see the work without knowledge of their intervention. Immersive theatres create this environment where the focus is entirely on the work itself and less on the how the work was produced.
She explains that the presents of virtual spaces is constantly moving, similar to the way that i understand time to be on a long line of thread that you can never really catch up with. William Mitchell explains that virtual material is all one content of mathematical information, where it can represent a photograph or abandoned files etc, it can never represent a proof of physical material. Because of this the only physical theatre that it produces is the viewers interpretation. This is again, a remediation of the performance of the viewer.
Giannachi explains that the simulations of VR are not real, and the viewer must interpret them through their sense before an open can be deemed ‘real’. She gives the example, a rock thrown at you in VR is not a rock until it hits you in the head and hurts. I think she is explaining the tangible relationship between the body and the screen being highly limiting.
Giannachi comments on the possible manipulation of the screen. She explains that people often game through a screen, navigating it as life experience, however the objective behind the screen is not a extension of the world that the body reacts to in a first hand way. You do not experience things through are screen which are connected to the bodily senses of your moment of viewing.
She explains the three delivery methods of virtual reality:
- Immersive and inclusive experience through googles where the viewer feels as if they were inside the virtual space. (Enscape)
- On a screen, where the viewer can steer the motion of the by using physical controls. (Grand Trismo)
- Through ‘third-person VR’, where the viewer you watch and steer yourself as a third party in a virtual scape. (Sims)
All forms of virtual theatre aim to produce work that expands the audiences point of view. The work constructs itself in the connection between the environment and the viewer.
Giannachi, Gabriella. Virtual Theatres: An Introduction. Routledge, 2004.
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