| dc.description.abstract | At the intersection of theatre and disability studies, accessibility has become a focal point. With the emergence and frequent integration of digital technologies in performances both fields are in constant need of refreshers in theory as well as in practice. Extended reality, an immersive performance medium, is repeatedly adopted in the Dutch performance sector. Given its reliance on its visual attributes, extended reality has become of interest in developing interactive artistic experiences not just for hearing audiences but for members of the deaf/Deaf and hard-of-hearing-/Hard-of-Hearing communities as well. There is, however, a gap in academic research on the dramaturgical strategies employed in artistic extended reality experiences for immersants from the deaf/Deaf and hard-of-hearing-/Hard-of-Hearing communities.
This thesis investigates whether it is possible to go beyond the practical nature of accessibility and integrate it into the artistic content and dramaturgy of an immersive experience from the inception of a project. In supporting this research, I employ the concept of access intimacy, coined by Mia Mingus, which describes the elusive feeling people with disabilities can get when someone understands their access needs and navigates with them in a world to which they constantly need to gain access to (2011). Through the lens of affect theory, I conduct dramaturgical and concept-based analysis on an artistic extended reality experience, first, in theory, and, then, on the immersive extended reality project of Martina Raponi titled New Noises New Voices XR 2.0 (2023).
Over the course of the analysis, I found that when the different elements of an extended reality experience, artistic and practical, are orchestrated in mind with the access needs of immersants from the deaf/Deaf and hard-of-hearing-/Hard-of-Hearing communities from the beginning of the creation process, it is possible to generate a feeling of access intimacy. This highlights the essential difference between accessibility and feeling safe to be vulnerable while experiencing an artwork, accentuating the dramaturgical potentiality of access intimacy through a network of relational vulnerability between the maker, the artwork, the technology and the immersant. | |
