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E-book
Author Dixon, Steve

Title Digital performance : a history of new media in theater, dance, performance art, and installation / Steve Dixon ; with contributions by Barry Smith
Published Cambridge, MA : MIT Press, ©2007

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Description 1 online resource (xv, 809 pages) : illustrations
Series Leonardo
Leonardo book series.
Contents Introduction -- I: HISTORIES: The genealogy of digital performance -- Futurism and the early Twentieth-Century avand-garde -- Multimedia theater, 1911-1959 -- Performance and technology since 1960 -- II: THEORIES AND CONTEXTS: Liveness -- Postmodernism and Posthumanism -- The digital revolution -- Digital dancing and software developments -- III: THE BODY: Virtual bodies -- The digital double -- Robots -- Cyborgs -- IV: SPACE: Digital theater and scenic spectacle -- Virtual beauty: the search for immersion -- Liquid architectures and site-specific fractures in reality -- Telematics; conjoining remote performance spaces -- Webcams: the subversion of surveillance -- Online performance: "LIve" from cyberspace -- "Theater" in cyberspace -- V: TIME: Time -- Memory -- VI: INTERACTIVITY: "Performing" interactivity -- Videogames -- CD-ROMs -- Conclusion
Summary The historical roots, key practitioners, and artistic, theoretical, and technological trends in the incorporation of new media into the performing arts. The past decade has seen an extraordinarily intense period of experimentation with computer technology within the performing arts. Digital media has been increasingly incorporated into live theater and dance, and new forms of interactive performance have emerged in participatory installations, on CD-ROM, and on the Web. In Digital Performance, Steve Dixon traces the evolution of these practices, presents detailed accounts of key practitioners and performances, and analyzes the theoretical, artistic, and technological contexts of this form of new media art. Dixon finds precursors to today's digital performances in past forms of theatrical technology that range from the deus ex machina of classical Greek drama to Wagner's Gesamtkunstwerk (concept of the total artwork), and draws parallels between contemporary work and the theories and practices of Constructivism, Dada, Surrealism, Expressionism, Futurism, and multimedia pioneers of the twentieth century. For a theoretical perspective on digital performance, Dixon draws on the work of Philip Auslander, Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, Jean Baudrillard, and others. To document and analyze contemporary digital performance practice, Dixon considers changes in the representation of the body, space, and time. He considers virtual bodies, avatars, and digital doubles, as well as performances by artists including Stelarc, Robert Lepage, Merce Cunningham, Laurie Anderson, Blast Theory, and Eduardo Kac. He investigates new media's novel approaches to creating theatrical spectacle, including virtual reality and robot performance work, telematic performances in which remote locations are linked in real time, Webcams, and online drama communities, and considers the "extratemporal" illusion created by some technological theater works. Finally, he defines categories of interactivity, from navigational to participatory and collaborative. Dixon challenges dominant theoretical approaches to digital performance--including what he calls postmodernism's denial of the new--and offers a series of boldly original arguments in their place
Analysis DIGITAL HUMANITIES & NEW MEDIA/New Media Art
ARTS/Performance Studies/General
ARTS/Art History/General
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 737-776) and index
Notes Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212 MiAaHDL
English
Print version record
digitized 2010 HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve pda MiAaHDL
Association of American Publishers PROSE Award, 2007
Subject Technology and the arts.
Digital media.
Arts, Modern -- 20th century.
Performing arts -- History -- 20th century
Arts, Modern
Digital media
Performing arts
Technology and the arts
Aktionskunst
Installation Kunst
Mixed media
Neue Medien
Performance Künste
Tanz
Theater
Technology and the arts.
Digital media.
Arts, Modern -- 20th century.
Performing arts -- History -- 20th century.
Modern konst -- historia -- 1900-talet.
Digitala medier.
Scenisk konst -- historia -- 1900-talet.
Otraditionella konstformer.
Art and Design.
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
Author Smith, Barry, 1944-
ISBN 9780262271806
026227180X
9780262333030
0262333031
9781282098596
1282098594
9786612098598
6612098597
0262303329
9780262303323
0262042355
9780262042352