What is INTERMEDIALITY ?

Contemporary theatre practice, in an exciting and creative way, fuses 'new' and 'old' media technologies to produce innovative effects. The move from analogue to digital technology and the incursion of the mediatised within the live performance have impacted on all areas of performance including the performer, performance space and audience. Multimedia and Intermedial performances now take their place regularly alongside more traditional forms of theatre. As traditional theatrical forms based on word / image / sound meet and interact with the 'new' mediatized forms of cinema, television, digital technologies and the Internet, so they are creating in their fusion a profusion of texts, intertexts and spaces in-between. This is the border territory of Intermediality and Performance which has been explored for the past years by the IFTR-working group 'Theatre & Intermediality', culminating in the edited volume "Performance and Intermediality", to be published in Summer 2005.

INTERMEDIALITY is a conceptual framework about seeing performance and theatre differently: The arrival of the multimedial and intermedial in our personal space, performance spaces and in cultural life internationally demands diversity in material and flexibility in thinking. In particular, the arrival of the digital demands new ways of thinking about performance that is not limited by barriers or artificially imposed boundaries. Research in intermediality investigates intersections between the body and voice of the actor, the place and space of performance, and the audience interaction with technology. It offers a perspective in which theatre and performance is at the centre (not at the side) of the new media debate.

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CHAPPLE, Freda and Chiel KATTENBELT (Eds.)
Amsterdam/New York, NY, 2006, 266 pp.

Pb: 90-420-1629-9 EUR 54 / US$ 73

Peter M Boenisch

Aesthetic art to aisthetic act:
theatre, media, intermedial performance.

(AN EXTRACT)

from
Freda Chapple, Chiel Kattenbelt, eds, Intermediality in Theatre and Performance, pp. 103-116

This essay puts forward the proposition of theatre as a medium and so reviews the vast field of contemporary media studies from W Benjamin to J D Bolter and R Grusin via M McLuhan, J Crary and L Manovich, to situate the key concepts of mediality and theatricality, before arriving at a new definition of intermediality. Foregrounding the crucial role of the observers in the process, intermediality as a concept is no longer reduced to being the mere use of various media technologies in live performance, nor as confined to the computerized media-cultural economy in the early years of the 21st century. Rather, it is presented as an effect performed in-between mediality, supplying multiple perspectives, and foregrounding the making of meaning rather than obediently transmitting meaning. Drawing on the Greek word aisthestai, to perceive, intermediality is investigated as an aisthetic act, which has close affinities to theatre – the place “to see and behold”, as the Greek verb theasthai suggests.

Keywords
aisthetic act; authentic experience; extension of man; inter-activity; intermediality; mechanical reproduction; media as agency; media as Gutenberg Galaxy; mediality; media and presentation; media studies, theatre as medium; theatre and medial specificity; observer; perception, perspective, plurifocal; remediation; theatricality; the real/realities; transcoding.

"What is clear is that the invention and invasion of electronic microchip-technology has profoundly affected our ideas about what constitutes a medium because digital information processing undermines any clear-cut specification of sign-systems, genres, and media. Instead, microchip-technology subjects all texts, images, sounds, colours and movements to indifferent binary computation of zeroes and ones. At the same time, computer technology allows the merging of mechanical, electrical, and electro-magnetic systems into a single electronic system, while also short-circuiting industrial, technical, scientific, artistic and aesthetic networks. In this context, concepts such as the cinematic or the theatrical no longer make sense, as all kinds of codes, data, and functions are today collected up into bits, bytes, and little silver disks. Clearly, we need now to look for a new conceptual framework that will facilitate analysis of theatre amongst the proliferation of the new media rather than proclaiming the demise of theatre. Ironically, we are aided in this project by the Canadian media philosopher Derrick De Kerckhove, who twenty years ago discarded theatre within the then emerging digital age as no more than “an image of past cultures preserved in universities which are the last strongholds of literacy” (De Kerckhove 1982: 152). However, despite this prophecy of gloom, theatrical performance has reappeared as is evidenced in the debate over Computers as theatre (Laurel 1992); the electronic culture of digitized computerization as the age dictating performance, performativity, (McKenzie 2001) and, most recently, Virtual theatres (Giannachi 2004). This chapter will take the debate in a slightly different direction in that I will discuss first of all theatre as a medium, and investigate its relationship to what is commonly referred to as the media. From here, based on review of contemporary media studies and their suggestions of what constitutes a medium and mediality, I identify Intermediality as an effect on the perception of the observers. Drawing on the original meaning of the Greek word aisthestai, ‘to perceive’, which initially referred to more than just the beautiful and sublime, I identify intermediality as an aisthetic act located at the very intersection of theatricality and mediality. This approach goes far beyond merely quoting, borrowing or the incorporating strategies of another medium in performance, such as using the language of cinema on stage.

[...]

[...] if there is any specific theatricality, it is not to be found in theatre’s exclusive values and aesthetic qualities – but in its very impact on perception and its power of and on its observers. I feel strongly that this most vital aspect of understanding and defining theatre has been largely ignored by traditional attempts at conceptualizing theatre in representational and aesthetic terms alone. While stories, narratives, and their discursive impregnation are without doubt important features, the medium, however, and therefore mediality as such, is in fact theatre’s core message – beyond genre borders, any formal limit, and all cultural frontiers.

This has crucial ramifications. It becomes clear that it makes no sense at all to think of an originally pure theatre that has been invaded by technological media. Nor should we get too overexcited about potentially exciting frictions of live theatre and media technology. We have to accept that there simply has never been a separate history of theatre and media in the first place. Theatre itself is a media technology that utilizes, at its very heart, other media to transmit and store, while it highlights, at the same time, the process of processing information. Theatre is therefore essentially a semiotic practice that incorporates, spatializes and disseminates in sensorial terms (thus: performs) the contents and cognitive strategies of other media by creating multiple channels, and a multi-media semiotic and sensoric environment. It is exactly through this door where intermediality enters theatrical performance.

Intermediality as an effect of performance
Theatre, as an aesthetic act, an artistic medium, and an aisthetic process, relies on its observers. Intermediality, I suggest, is an effect created in the perception of observers that is triggered by performance – and not simply by the media, machines, projections or computers used in a performance. I conceive of intermediality as much more than yet another aesthetic strategy to be simply devised, or than just the latest media-technological gimmick feature just waiting to be switched on as explained by the instruction manual. We could use all of the latest computer techniques on stage without creating any intermedial effect, while intermediality might sneak into a most traditional text-only talking heads drama production. To clarify this core aspect of my argument, let us rewind and reconsider that actor, picture, and video-tape discussed a moment ago. Up to now, we had seen that their theatrical reproduction appears to transparently trans-code them on stage without any trace of mediatization. Yet, I believe that this trace has only been overlooked because, again, we must go beyond the domain of theatre’s alleged aesthetic originalities to scent that microscopic, yet ever so obvious effect. It is no technical, no mechanical, nor a digital effect – but an aisthetic one, which does not transform nor physically affect the actor, photo, or video-tape, as their mediation by means of a camera, scanner, or TV-screen did. This trace of theatrical mediation is produced in the observers’ perception alone: The actor on stage is no longer the actor, but the actor exposed on stage. That photo becomes a photo placed on stage and strangely different from the very same photo hanging stored back-stage before the show, not to mention my screensaver version of it. That video projected on stage is no longer the same as the very same tape I watched at home. As opposed to the digital transcoding into bits and bytes, theatre leaves the thing itself intact, yet the actor, picture, and tape, at the same time, are theatrically reproduced into something beyond their mere (even less: pure) original presence. They become signs representing a character, or any fictional world. Yet at the same time they are also always something presented on stage, something presented to someone, and that is – far more essential than any represented meaning – the very quintessential function of a sign.

As a primarily semiotic practice theatre turns all objects into signs to be perceived. Compared to other media that transmit objects to another space and/or another time, or store them to make worlds out of them there and then, theatre processes these objects into worlds here and now, while simultaneously leaving them as they are. Theatre thus multiplies its objects in a remarkable way into objects on stage that are present and representations at the same time, and – above all – they are presented to someone who is perceiving and observing them. This means that theatre not only mimetically creates fictional worlds, but it does so by utilizing not only three semiotic layers (of presence, presentation, and representation) but also a whole variety of sign-systems. Any theatrical performance, thus, negotiates a multiple range of potential perspectives to be observed.

According to the standard, hegemonic logic of representation, all these simultaneous, alternative layers, levels and perspectives offered en route would be homogenized again into a single, closed and coherent final product of representation: in the destination of the ideal view-point, the single sharp focused picture of the reading camera-eye, or the one defined meaning of the text. Yet, the plurality of the perspectives might also spill over, crack and produce an untidy mess of meaning – either as a calculated result or as a somewhat subversive side-effect. It is at this busy multi-dimensional junction of perspectives that intermediality and theatrical performance meet on the same platform. Intermediality is triggered in performances as an effect in the perception of their observers. It is thus very literally located inter media, inhibiting, blending and blurring traditional borders between genres, media, sign-systems, and messages. The intermedial effect breaks the standard law of observing the media timetable, and interferes with their normal function of creating unified messages, linear narratives, and homogenous worlds in the cognition of the observers. Instead of closing down the multiple semantic potential offered into one coherent meaning, intermedial performances derail the message by communicating gaps, splits and fissures, and broadcasting detours, inconsistencies and contradictions. Therefore, intermedial effects ultimately inflect the attention from the real worlds of the message created by the performance, towards the very reality of media, mediation and the performance itself. The usually transparent viewing conventions of observing media are made palpable, and the workings of mediation exposed. Thus, intermediality manages to stimulate exceptional, disturbing and potentially radical observations, rather than merely communicating or transporting them as messages, as media would traditionally do. It is exactly this disruptive intangibility in the continuous flow of mediatized information that is encapsulated in the formulae of the third meaning, attraction, and magic moment – and it is also right here where intermediality becomes so eminently powerful within the omnipresent performance paradigm of 21st century culture."