Output details

Dissolved

• PaR (Book and DVD)

An exploratory devising processes involved in creating a transnational telematic piece, Dissolved, October, 2013 ISBN 978-0-9565621-6-6, published by Station House Opera.

Accompanied by a DVD record of workshop process, the published book is part of a PaR articulation of the conceptual inquiry.

300 word statement - Information about the research process and/ or content

This outcome is published in the form of a book, itself a PaR outcome of the exploratory devising processes involved in creating the telematics piece, Dissolved. In its design of overlays, the book manifests the fluid imagery and mobilised personal issues of possession, submission and multiple subjectivities of the telematics investigation.

The research inquiry for the telematics project responds to the dominant technological drive (in theatre as in communications) to reduce latency and increase resolution to a point where awareness of distance has disappeared. The exploration of Dissolved is premised on the notion that it might be more interesting to use streaming technologies to let the world be a stage for drama, rather than force a screen to contain the world. The inquiry asks:

➢ how might telematic (virtual) space insinuate itself into the physical space occupied by the bodies of the performers and/or audience?

➢ how might the local be maintained in the presence of the global - spatially, sculpturally, materially?

➢ how might the conventions of spatial coherence and continuity be challenged by the superimposition telematically of multi-layered space (distant over local)?

The findings of the inquiry are that:

➢ through images of local (London) and distant (Berlin), participants can be superimposed upon each other in apparently identical environments, performing together as one;

➢ the means used to accomplish this fluid multiplicity allows participants (performers and audience) to opt in or out of the opportunities offered by the technology;

➢ the doubling of identities draws attention to issues of culture, identity and race;

➢ together, the fluid imagery mobilises dislocations relating to personal possession, submission and multiple subjectivities, even evoking the uncanny.

The published outcome is the book (October, 2013) but the investigative praxis informing it was presented as workshops in London and Berlin 2011-13 (accompanying DVD record).