Fields of interaction: From shadow play theatre to media performance

Fields of Interaction: From Shadow Play Theatre to Media Performance examines the emerging contemporary practice of computational media performance and its genealogy through intersections across shadow play, cinema and computational media. One of the ways in which media performance can be contextualized is by looking at contemporary performance forms that emerge from different traditions and cultures. Computational media performance invites us to look at shadow play and reinterpret it, with performative action and locality of place and community in mind. This research connects interactive med ia art with Balinese community-based performance practices. This research connects interactive media art with Balinese community-based performance practices. The interactive media art, in this study, is examined with a particular focus on issues that arise from using computational technologies in the context of performance. This research is concern with the relationship between computation and performance as a two elementary axes, using hybrid research methodology that integrates artistic process and outcomes, performance theory and cross-cultural study of shadow theatre. My intellectual concerns centre on the significance of collective performance structured around the work of computational media art. I focus on two particular contexts of interactive media art practice: (1) interactive audiovisual installations and (2) media performances. These foci, through the collaborative research of the Computational Poetics Research group, have provided a variety of artistic outcomes . The composition and presentation of electronic media, using capabilities offered by computation, extend cinema with its ability to braid encoded process with various media, narrative elements and participants’ interaction in the real time of the performance. The "interaction" of performers, partakers and the elements of the work form situated media performance as inspired by the study of Balinese shadow play. The concept of braided processes, drawn from Balinese shadow play, is further investigated through a series of artistic studies and productions that employ improvisation and real-time animation of media driven by the interaction among performers, participants and materials of the work.