Critical Techno-dramaturgy: Mobilizing Embodied Perception in Intermedial Performance
Loading...
Date
2016-02-16
Authors
Fernandez, Stephen
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Waterloo
Abstract
This dissertation attends to the ways in which the deployment of technological devices in twenty-first-century intermedial performance might influence the audience members’ perception of the
relationship between humans and technology. Drawing upon the work of scholars in the fields of
new media, performance studies, and the philosophy of technology, I argue that intermedial
performance artists reinvigorate the role of the human body in performance by mobilizing
embodiment as a techno-dramaturgical strategy for shaping the audience members’ perception of
human-machine interaction. Chapter One surveys the history of performance and technology
from the ancient Greek theatre to twentieth-century performance, with particular emphasis on the
conceptual significance of techne and poiesis in dramatic theatre. Chapter Two examines the
theories of intermediality in performance as well as the co-evolutionary relationship between
human beings and technicity in order to delineate the analytical and dramaturgical potential of an
original conceptual framework known as critical techno-dramaturgy. Chapter Three explores the
interplay between embodiment, technology, and space in intermedial performance and its effects
on the audience members’ awareness of their embodied existence as they navigate the cityscape
with bicycles, handheld computers, and mobile phones. Chapter Four investigates the intersection
of performance and techno-anxiety by looking at how intelligent machines that appear to perform
autonomously might affect the audience members’ perception of these anthropomorphic
technological agents in relation to their own bodies. Chapter Five examines how the construction
of the “cyborg” as both a conceptual metaphor for and a material instantiation of human-machine
“fusion” could impact the prosthetic relations between persons with disabilities and the
technological devices that they employ in intermedial performance. Finally, Chapter Six looks at
my involvement in the production of an original creative project that uses critical techno-dramaturgy
as a strategy for shaping the audience members’ perception of the complicity
between digital media (particularly video technology) and the mediation of death.
Description
Keywords
Intermedial Performance, Dramaturgy, Digital Media, Philosophy of Technology, Embodied Perception