Skip to main content

Performance

Performance

This strand of the project utilised the mobile phone directly in the preparation and making of performance. In these pieces the phone played a key role, either because performance material could only be accessed on the phone and/or because the phone was the main interface for the development of an immersive environment that was part of the performance.
The performances either took place exclusively outside or utilised outdoor spaces. This choice reflects our ongoing interest in placing performance beyond theatre spaces, but it is also a direct result of the mobility and multimodality afforded by the phone: by potentially offering a screen, a portal and a transmitter for each and every audience member, the phone de-centralises the space that would otherwise hold the performance and re-formats any space as a possible performance area. Within these conditions, what is or is not part of a given performance can only partially be determined by the performance makers. The audience is thus tasked not only with the responsibility to make sense of the performance, but to decide which parts of their experience comprise the performance material in the first place.
Such an open ended experience of performance could further foreground its pedagogic role in raising awareness of acculturated patterns of intentionality and possibly cultivating alternative modes of perception. In this sense, performance might be employed as a training device.
Each performance details the specific way the phone was used and the relation between phone-audience-performance material that structured each performance.