Immersive Tech

Interpolations 2: Spatial Computing and Performance

All are welcome to the public session of Interpolations 2, an annual think tank devoted to exploring, envisioning, and extending performance and digital technologies in the twenty-first century.

Presented by the Immersive Technology Collective, a multiyear cluster of the Incubator for Transdisciplinary Futures at WashU.

Schedule:

1:15 p.m.: Doors open

1:30–2:45 p.m.: Keynote presentation — Sarah Bay-Cheng, Dean and Professor of Theatre, York University in Toronto

This presentation considers the development of digital historiography in theatre and the performing arts as it emerged from a long history of medial influence on theatre history and practice. Engaging theoretical approaches from intermediality and spatial computing, this talk considers how digital historiography has been used to create history and historiography in and as performance. Considering integrations of media technologies on stage in the 19th and 20th centuries, to the digitization of theatrical performance and records in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, to contemporary debates and practices engaging VR and XR as sites of cultural heritage and memory, Bay-Cheng argues for the increasing significance of performance theory in understanding an increasingly immersive digital experience within and as historical performances. Do digital recreations function like other performance and historical reenactments? Or are there unique affordances for living history within digital simulations? Is this what the future of history, especially performance history, will look like, and if so, how should we adapt the developing archives, ontologies and systems to record and respond?

3:15–4:45 p.m.: Roundtable, “Provocations for Spatial Computing and Performance,” followed by Q&A. Moderated by Elizabeth Hunter, WashU.

Participants:

  • Tarryn Chun, Notre Dame University
  • Doug Eacho, University of Toronto
  • Ashley Ferro-Murray, Doris Duke Foundation
  • Elinor Harrison, WashU
  • Elise Morrison, Yale University
  • Matthew Wilson Smith, Stanford University
  • W. B. Worthen, Barnard College, Columbia University

4:45–5:15 p.m.: Coffee reception

RSVP