The following post was contributed by Karl Rouse, Senior Lecturer in Alternative Theatre and New Performance Practice at CSSD, University of London. It was originally a comment on the Live Blog for our first Interactivity Symposium ("What's The Point & What's The Place"), but we've promoted it to a full blog post.
Enjoy!
-Yaz (admin)
I chaired this event on Saturday [The Interactivity Symposium, 9th January 2010] and enjoyed it very much, interactivity is something that I have been excited by and interested in for sometime. I therefore wanted to offer some of my thoughts on the subject, some of which are inspired by the talk; others are just my manifesto if you will.
Officially I first started to study interactivity and work with it when studying at New York University when I took a class with John McKenzie who has a interesting book ‘Perform or Else’.
The first thing we had to do in the class was look at the interface of objects, leading to the interface of design, and learning how we create the ability to interact with things, as well as ideas. Our interaction with the objects often would not lead to the object changing it’s purpose, although sometimes it would, however we were always interacting with it and from this comes my definition of interactivity.
We then looked at the Museum of Natural History and were assigned a project to design the new dinosaur exhibition (it’s been there a while now) and consider how the guests at the museum could learn as much about dinosaurs as possible through their interaction with the exhibit. They could not change the outcome of the exhibition, but it would be hard to argue that they were not interacting with it.
I wanted to raise this issue as interactivity should include a discussion of those events where the audience can participate, change and influence, as well as those times when they cannot but interactivity still takes place.
Experience design seems a good thing to consider in these debates as well, it has been said there are 6 dimensions to experiences: Time/Duration, Interactivity, Intensity, Breadth/Consistency, Sensorial and Cognitive Triggers, and Significance/Meaning
For me this is interaction and interactivity. That a change occurs in me as a result of the action I take that the opportunity provides.
What was interesting about the talk was interactivity was considered by the panel to be an event that the audience could change, and for me when designing what I believe to be interactive events, projects and ideas, the audience and their ability to change have often been a small consideration but I still believe them to be completely about interaction.
Indeed by defining one’s ability to interact as the potential to change the outcome appears limited in its usefulness, but of course should be one of many facets of it’s possibility. In art the greatest and perhaps most difficult of achievements is to create change in the audience, while in actual fact it is the easiest thing in the world to ‘derail’ a performance of any kind, even in a proc arch theatre (even if you may quickly find yourself removed very quickly!).
The audiences within my projects are asked to no longer be passive and as such the event is interactive. An event may not be physically altered, but the interface of the event may lead to emotional or cognitive changes.
The interaction takes place because we acknowledge that we are there, that there is a reason for this and that the space, the objects, the words and the physical body should engage performer and participant (audience).
I view this as the most important thing, as it is this engagement that I want to create. If the engagement comes from changing the outcome then that is exciting as well, but simply having that opportunity seems weak as a method of engagement, here I speak as a consumer of theatre. If it is achieved then I look forward to that possibility, but the driving force behind the creation of the work I believe to be the interaction between performer and audience, sometimes the boundary between the two may be hard to define, at other times the theatre architecture may at first make it appear there is a separation of audience and performer but this is not necessarily so.
I’ve also spent a lot of time considering experience design in theme parks, particularly Walt Disney World in Florida. Again everything is considered for it’s ability to interact and interface with the people who are in the park, from architecture design, sound design, lighting design, food choices, costume, lines of sight and so on. A ride on the Tower of Terror is intended as a interactive experience design from the landscaped gardens you wait in line in, to the music that is played, the film you see, the ride you enter, and the people who load you onto it, and I love this kind of experience design. The event starts from the minute you enter and doesn’t end until long after you leave. The interaction occurs on many levels, but in essence we want you to become the people in 1920’s Hollywood entering a real hotel, about to live the narrative (even if the narrative doesn’t change). Indeed the whole park is designed as a ‘movie’ with onstage and offstage (onstage is any area that guests can see, offstage is any area they can’t), a soundtrack for each area of the park, underground tunnels to ensure someone in costume for one area of the park is never seen in another area of the park, even the journey from the car park at Magic Kingdom is designed to create the ‘fairytale’ narrative, i.e. you have to park some distance away and travel by water to get to the castle, small subconscious narratives are written into the design of the parks even if they are not noticed by the audience who travels through them. However it works, 90% of the audiences who come to these parks have been before, many having been five or more times, on average once every four years although this depends upon location of the audience and their home location. This means each year only 10% of the audiences are new, which is an extremely successful business model.
But to head back to performance for a while!
What the audience has the potential to change at each performance they see is their view, opinions, ideas, experience and this is where performance must be interactive for me, on a very personal level, if this is achieved through giving the audiences more choices in the production itself then great, but if the starting point is to simple give the audience a choice in the outcome this seems a weaker place to start and is perhaps why I’m left uninspired by those books that allow you to choose the ending…because on the whole the stories they tell are not as interesting
When thinking about the future of this work what scares me the most (or indeed about any work) is when I hear any practitioner only talk about what they want and what matters to them. The arts is possibly one of the only industries where this is an accepted model of practice. This does not mean that I don’t think the work in these cases should exist but I believe (and I’m happy for many people to disagree) we have to make work for the audiences as well as lead them to new opportunities, which they may not yet have considered.
As part of the Centre for Excellence in Theatre Training I am a fellow for Enterprise Curriculum and within that role we look at the difficulties that young and emerging practitioners will face, what is evident is that funding will become more difficult (it never has been easy) and audiences may become more conservative as they choose where to spend their money, and as such the work they make better be good. No one has the right to earn their living as an artist, although everyone has the right to be an artist, provocative yes, true, absolutely. Of course everyone has the right to fail trying to make their living as an artist, but it upsets me that so many do and this is why I engage with the work. The economy of performance is often something that people don’t want to talk about or are even disgusted by, but again we are quite unique in our industry of having such a disdain for financial success for our work, and I believe it is time to adjust our opinions. I know there are many examples of work that were not ‘successful’ at their time of origin which are now among our greatest works, I know audiences often need time to adjust to new work and new ways of enjoying performance, but I also know there are to many people studying performance, trying to work with performance, and as such events such as this are wonderful allowing debate, ideas, and learning to take place so that work can be made ‘better’ and audiences can be developed.
I say this as new, young companies must ask why they wish to work in the way that they work, who are they doing it for, how do they measure their success and what is the impact of their creation.
To end this post I believe that theatre is a democracy and good work will eventually generate good audiences and as a result of this no one should ever fear or even feel the need to defend their work as ultimately if people want to see it they will, of course sometimes it doesn’t matter if people don’t see it as work has a right to exist even if there is no one to look at it and interact with it
“Electronic Book Review”
reblogged from untitled-project:
A site full of articles (loosely) about the philosophy, debates, and art of making and playing games - mostly computer games.
Provides a good way of thinking about elements of this project, lots of ideas, and a useful set of terminology.
(I’ll link to specific articles later on)
