Performance And Technology

This original and timely collection features writings from international contributors who specialize in digital art and performance practices (including Johannes Birringer, Robert Weschler and Philip Auslander). There are few writings per se that attempt to interrogate the interaction between new technologies and performance practice. Furthermore, none have so far linked the sensuous contact that must exist between the physical and virtual, together with the resultant corporeal transformation. In certain technological practices, physicality is both transcended and ludically inscribed - the play (jouer) being all. Consequently, digital practices potentiate creative and aesthetic possibilities and demand new perceptive strategies.

This original and timely collection features writings from international contributors who specialize in digital art and performance practices (including Johannes Birringer, Robert Weschler and Philip Auslander). There are few writings per se that attempt to interrogate the interaction between new technologies and performance practice. Furthermore, none have so far linked the sensuous contact that must exist between the physical and virtual, together with the resultant corporeal transformation. In certain technological practices, physicality is both transcended and ludically inscribed - the play (jouer) being all. Consequently, digital practices potentiate creative and aesthetic possibilities and demand new perceptive strategies.

SUSAN BROADHURST is a Writer and Practitioner in the Creative Arts. She is the Subject Leader of Drama Studies at Brunel University, UK. She is also the author of Liminal Acts: A Critical Overview of Contemporary Performance and Theory (1999) and Digital Practices: A Critical Overview of Performance and Technology (forthcoming, 2006). She is currently working on a series of collaborative practice-based research projects entitled, 'Intelligence, Interaction, Reaction and Performance', which involve introducing various interactive digital technologies into live performance.

JOSEPHINE MACHON is a writer and practitioner in the creative arts and a Lecturer in Drama at Brunel University, West London. Josephine has co-edited Performance and Technology: Practices of Virtual Embodiment and Interactivity (2006) with Susan Broadhurst and is currently working on a new edited collection entitled, Sensualities/Textualities and Technologies: Writings of the Body in 21st Century Performance. Josephine has been the Sub-Editor of Body, Space & Technology since its inception in July 2001. As a practitioner, Josephine’s past and present collaborations explore the fusion of embodied practice and the written text within playful performance encounters.