Digital Media and (Syn)aesthetics: Performativity of Embodied Code

Abstract

This thesis works to investigate the use of digital media in performance theory and practice to establish new ways of conveying information. Using Lev Manovich take on digital new media, Andy Lavender’s network model of cultural production in the wake of new technologies and Chiel Kattenbelt’s definitions of Intermediality I begin devising a theoretical framework and terminology for digital culture in performance theory. I then consider the corporal engagement in postdramatic theatre of Hans - Thies Lehmann to find how non-semantic audiovisual stimuli in postdramatic theatre is defined and used. Here I use Maaike Bleeker’s work on corporal literacy, Joseph Machon’s notion of (syn)aesthetics and the sociopolitical approaches of feminist scholars such as Donna Haraway in somatechnics. This provides a perspective on the use of body in relation to digital technology in our performative cultural. Then I offer dramaturgical analysis of two case studies, the VR video game SUPERHOT and the performative installation The Automated Sniper, in order to examine the application of digital media in performance theory. Using my developed theoretical framework in analyzing the case studies, I argue that the binary nature of digital media invites the pluralities and opposing contradictions inherent in performance theory’s terminology and conception, to form a network of interconnected nodes. These nodes of intermediality, post humanism, (syn)aesthetics, corporality and spatial staging are all major factors in how digital media is used in theatre, and how it has changed the way it can be used as a (re)presentative tool to convey information.