Creating Interactive and Digital Performances Daniel Thompson, 26 January 2013 Session created by Daniel Thompson. We started off the session with myself (Dan Thompson) explaining the project that my company, Block Stop, and I are currently developing. This is a project in which the audience member spends the majority of the performance watching a monitor and wearing head set technology, they are linked wirelessly to a live performer who is wearing a spy camera and also wearing headset technology. The audience member is able to see and hear everything the performer does from a first person perspective whilst speaking with that character and guiding them through the narrative. From this starting point we began to discuss particularly the use of technology within performance. Can these styles of performance be gimmicky? Can the use of digital technology within performance over-complicate things unnecessarily? In our project, for example, why have we chosen to experiment with this and how are we going to make it work? We then had a lengthy discussion about the role of gaming (particularly video gaming). We discussed ways in which gaming has been used within a performance context and asked whether there is a meeting point between a (video) gaming experience and a theatre experience. What might happen in that space? Is that interesting? Is that meaningful? We discussed how that, whilst there are differences between gaming and theatre, there are also huge similarities. Particularly mentioned was the similarity in the creation process, particularly in the designing of systems and rules. One of the differences mentioned was that in video games you normally have options to pause things, to rewind, to try things again if you didn't like the outcome; is there any space for this within an interactive performance? We then hit the question of ‘why’? Are these kinds of explorations meaningful and what is the point? It was mentioned that within the framework of audience members having an involvement with the performance it is perhaps better to invite meaningful choices within a controlled system rather than to have open ended freedom of choices which then become meaningless. It was also suggested that, within a narrative structure, it would be important for the audience to care about the consequences of their choices. On the question of meaning, however, one person mentioned that, as this kind of work is still very new, the fact is that we might not fully understand yet what kinds of thought and meaning it could provoke. We should view that as an important part of experimentation and innovation rather than as a reason not to do it. The issue of ‘liveness’ was a recurring one in our discussions. What is liveness? How do we define it? Is it important? There are many examples of purely virtual performances that can be accessed anywhere, yet there is something very special about a shared ‘corporeal space’. What then happens when you bring theatre out of the ‘corporeal space’? Is it still theatre? Is it still ‘live’? Conversely, what happens to the ‘corporeal space’ when you bring digital technologies into it, which, exist, largely, to connect people across different spaces? What happens when virtual and corporeal spaces are brought together? Interesting and relevant projects, events, artists and/or performances mentioned included: Clairvoyance, Lundhal and Seitl, Geek 2014, Metis, Water Wheel, the Science Museum's Google app, Ontroend Goed, Blast Theory, Punch Drunk's collaboration with Hide and Seek, SecondLIVE, The Situation Room and Icing the Poet. Tags: digital, interactive, games, Technology, Digital, Interactive, gaming, technology, virtual