The (St)Age of Participation: audience involvement in interactive performances

摘要

AbstractIn today's age of participation, co-creation, user-generated content and social networking have become part of a mass-appeal digital lifestyle. This contribution discusses potential implications for contemporary and future media art in the context of the stage. It reflects on why and how interactive performances could give consideration to this zeitgeist of empowered spectatorship and, moreover, proposes principles for participatory stage pieces that incorporate practice-based experience as well as findings from (social) flow theory, a psychological framework for optimal creative experience that we found to be valuable for fostering audience engagement in interactive dramaturgies.Keywords: media artinteractive performanceaudience participationsocial flow AcknowledgementsMany thanks to Malwina Stepien and Olga Swietlicka, the Letterbox dancers, to our colleagues at Ars Electronica Linz who helped to produce the three Letterbox performances in Deep Space, and to the highly engaged test audience. This research was supported by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF): AR111.Additional informationChristopher Lindinger studied computer science and cultural management in Linz and Salzburg. He has worked as a scientist in the field of virtual reality research and supercomputing visualisation in Chicago, and as a developer in the game industry. Since 1997, he has been affiliated with Ars Electronica and currently holds the position of Director of Research and Innovation at the Ars Electronica Futurelab in Linz. He does consulting work for companies as well as government agencies, and teaches at several universities in Austria, Germany, the UK and Japan. Christopher is also the project manager of (St)Age of Participation, a three-year artistic research project funded by the Austrian Science Fund.Martina Mara is a social scientist and writer. She studied journalism and communications at the University of Vienna and is author of "Narcissus in Cyberspace." She works as a researcher at the Ars Electronica Futurelab and the Education and Psychology Department of Johannes Kepler University Linz. She also teaches media psychology and media sociology at various Austrian universities. In her current work, Martina explores psychological aspects of interactive technologies, in particular in relation to human–robot relationships, technology acceptance and identity construction on the internet. As a member of the (St)Age of Participation project crew, she focuses on social and psychological implications of audience participation.Klaus Obermaier is a Vienna-based media artist, director, choreographer and composer. For two decades he has been creating award-winning works in the performing arts. He has collaborated with dancers such as Chris Haring, Robert Tannion (DV8), Desireé Kongerød (S.O.A.P. Dance Theatre Frankfurt) and the Nederlands Dans Theater, and composed for such well-known ensembles as Kronos Quartet, German Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra, Art Ensemble of Chicago and Balanescu Quartet. Klaus has taught at universities worldwide, including the Accademia Nazionale di Danza in Rome and Webster University in Vienna. Since 2006 he has been a visiting professor for directing and new media at the IUAV University in Venice. He is also a jury member of the international choreography competition 'no ballet' in Ludwigshafen/Rhein, Germany, and artistic director of the (St)Age of Participation project.Roland Aigner joined the Ars Electronica Futurelab in November 2011 as a researcher and software developer. He studied interactive media at the Upper Austria University of Applied Sciences' Hagenberg campus, and has been employed at Realtime Technologies in Munich, the Interactive and Digital Media Institute at the National University in Singapore, and at Microsoft Research Redmond, among others. His research interests include human–computer interaction, computer vision, computer graphics, and virtual and augmented reality. His major contribution to (St