DMS 416
Intermedia Performance
Course Description
This course stems from the (perhaps contestable) argument that performance, whether traditional or experimental is increasingly impacted by media, and that media practice in its diversity can be contextualized within and as performance. Intermedia performance embraces and explores the nexus between media arts and performance, and seeks to introduce the methodology of Performance Studies (itself an anti-discipline) to contemporary media theory. Within the broad rubric of performance, one may also include critical and theoretical approaches. Part of this course will focus on the ways in which individual students can integrate performance theory into both their work and writing. Particular emphasis is paid to preliminary research methods and approaches to thesis work (516, in particular). This course combines the study of recent debates in performance theory with the creation of intermedia performance projects based on individual students interests and skills. We will consider topics such as the performing body across media; what performance student means to current media practice (and the problems of such an intersection); and new theories of media as performance. We will analyze intermedia performers and performances in theatre, performance art, interactive arts (games, VR, locative and installation practice), networked art, time-based arts (film, video, TV).
The first part of the course will be devoted largely to developing both a general theory of intermedia performance and individualized theories of intermediality specifically tailored to the individual art practice of each student. This theory will be informed by both significant developments in the intersection of media in performance contexts, as well as ongoing developments in media and performance in installation, gallery, and game contexts.
In the second part of the course, students develop individual projects—either practice-based or critical—shaped by reading and collective exercises. This production segment of the course will consist of in-class experiments and a longer term project integrating live and virtual performance with video/film, computer graphics, virtual reality, motion capture.