Digital Weekender Symposium
Digital Performance Today: Cutting Edge Avant-Garde or Cultural Mainstream?
Sat 12 Nov, 11-5pm
Watermans Arts Centre
The world is digital now, so what does this mean for digital performance and the arts? Featuring practice and research demonstrations, talks, round tables, provocations and coffee sessions, the Symposium will ask how the field of digital performance has developed over the last decade. Have digital initiatives such as Metropolitan Opera Live in HD, NT Live and BMW Tate Live, augmented reality and urban gaming applications, shifted digital performance practice and research from cultural avant-garde to the mainstream? Which are the most exciting current entanglements and intersections developed between performance and technology? What can be defined as digital performance at a time when performance is always already digital? (following on from Charlie Gere’s argument about the term 'digital culture' being a tautology as culture is already digital (2008)). And what is the role of digital performance research today? The Symposium will launch two new Digital Performance initiatives: • The Practice-as-Research cluster Laser Unicorns, encompassing artists and academics from the UK, Europe and USA • The Digital Performance strand of London South Bank University’s Centre for Research in Digital Storymaking Symposium Schedule Keynote: 11am-12:15noon – Tassos Stevens, Artistic Director, interactive theatre making company Coney Lunch Round Table: 12:30-2pm – Lunch with the Laser Unicorns Jo Scott (University of Salford), Kerry Francksen (De Montfort University), Sophy Smith (De Montfort University), Maria Chatzichristodoulou (aka X) (London South Bank University), AΦE cross media physical theatre company; Creative Residency artists Coffee Round Table: 2:15-3:45pm – Coffee and cake table with the Digital Performance cluster, LSBU Centre for Digital Storymaking fanSHEN theatre company, Studio for Electronic Theatre, Maria Chatzichristodoulou (aka X), Astrid Breel, Elena Marchevska and Jon Lee Keynote: 4-5pm – Jorge Lopes Ramos The symposium is a free event but tickets must be booked in advance. An express lunch will be available for £5.50 from the Guru Tandoori Kitchen, with a curry, naan, rice and side salad. The Symposium is supported by De Montfort University and London South Bank University. Image credit: #RioFoneHack by ZU-UK (2015) Link project: https://www.thespace.org/news/riofonehack-taste-brazil-and-childhood Link website: zu-uk.com