June 08, 2005
La Fura Dels Baus
DIGITAL THEATER
Digital theater is the addition of actors and 0 and 1 bits, moving in the net. Actors in digital theater may interact from different times and places… The actions of two actors in two different times and places coincide in the network of infinite times and virtual spaces. On the 21st century, genetist conception of theater (from the generation to the birth of the scene) will be replaced by an organization of interactive and intercultural activities.
Digital theater refers to a binary language connecting the organic with the inorganic, the material with the virtual, the actor in the flesh with the avatar, the present audience with the internet users, the physical stage with the cyberspace.
The digital theater of La Fura dels Baus allows interaction on stages inside and outside the net, inventing new hypermedia interfaces. Hypertext and its protocols create a new kind of narration, closer to thoughts or dreams, generating an inner theater where dreams become (virtual) reality.
Internet is the realization of a collective thought, organic and chaotic, that has been developed with no defined hierarchy. Digital theater multiplies in thousands of representations where cybertheater fans may display images of their own subjectivity, within shared virtual worlds.
Will digital theater perpetuate Phallocracy? Will Vaginocracy eventually win? Or will both join in perfect harmony 0-1?
In digital theater, the absolute abstraction coexists with the return to the body, that may have a sadomasochist dimension —as well as a sensual, angelical, or orgiastic dimension; or perhaps a mixture of all of them.
By definition, theatrical act involves an excess, a surplus of performance. It’s the pleasure of showing and being shown. An identification flow is established between the actor and the audience. How does this identification work in digital theater? How does a hand fit into a glove? As an extension of oneself? With the integration in the net?
Digital technology makes the old dream of transcending the human body possible. Thus, cyberspace may be inhabited by bodies with a new representational envelope, between subjectivity and materiality.
We have to leave our own skin to penetrate into a common perceptual reference. The roles of the actor, the author and the audience tend to merge.
Digital culture does not belong to a reproduction technology anymore, but to an immediate production. While photography spoke in the past “it was like this”, by freezing an instant, digital image speaks in the present “it is like this”, joining the live act, the theater, the here and now.
Digital theater allows the image to mutate, from one configuration to another, actual and virtual, placing it in different stages: an icon of synthesis which will always remain HUMAN. [via]
Posted by jo at June 8, 2005 02:12 PM
