Ontology and theoretical background for performance, scripting, and context of technology (preliminary abstract)

Conceptual development through technological implementation:  

Script development--History

Haunted When It Rains is a performance piece exploring the possibilities technology provides to expand the performance of myth. This meditation on the myth of Mary Magdalene seeks to discover a performance form that summons a spiritual integration of the actor with technology.

The theater of ancient Greece provides a historic model for the integration of technology with the performance of myth and ritual; and likewise, theories surrounding the performances of the ancient Greeks inform the theoretical framework for performance, scripting, and media presence in Haunted. Ontological theory from Aristotle’s Poetics, as well as the performance philosophy of Fredrich Neitzsche’s Birth of Tragedy principally inform scripting and performance of the piece; while the performance of technology is a derivation of the Euripidean deus ex machina. Beyond the influence of the Greeks, the conceptualization of mythic performance accessible to a contemporary audience (i.e. utilizing icons from the American Old West) is inspired by the mythological theories of Joseph Campbell as well as the concepts of archetypal manifestation suggested by Carl Jung.

  Deus ex Machina.  Haunted’s definition of theater is derived from theater’s Greek etymology, the theatron, literally translated as "the seeing place," or more beautifully, "the place where the gods are seen." It follows that if our theater is the place where the gods are seen, the presence of technology in Haunted should be modeled from the technology inspired by Euripidean tragedy, deus ex machina, translated from the Latin as "the god from the machine." Our specific understanding of deus ex machina assumes that if the culture gathered at the theatron to see the gods, the deus ex machina was the technological means through which the god appeared. Of significant note, we assume audiences who came to see the god appear via the deus ex machina were not enthralled by the spectacle of an actor lowered onto the stage by technology, but rather where the god appeared, which we suggest was someplace behind the spectacle, embedded within the interaction of actor, technology, and audience.

The concept of deus ex machina at work in Haunted attempts to contrast a perhaps more common role of technology in modern theater, which employs performance technology as a vehicle of auditory or visual spectacle. Modern theater supplies some elaborate examples of such spectacle, and their effect tends to remain superficial. (For an extreme example, consider the over-teched helicopter that flies in the Broadway production of Miss Saigon, which arguably crushes any presence of pathos with a glorified toy.)  In contrast, Haunted defines media presence by the literal translation of deus ex machnia, attempting an interaction with our technology that inspires a sense of the "god from the machine." This interaction seeks to utilize technology not as a sporadic presence in juxtaposition with an actor’s pathos, but as an intimate instrument of spiritual resonance to the actor, assigned to invoke "Dionysian revelry" within the actor while simultaneously serving as the "Apollonian dream image" that compliments the actor’s state.*

*  The figurative dichotomy between Apollo and Dionysus employed as a method of mythic performance is a key subject of Neitzsche's Birth of Tragedy.  A more complete discussion on Nietzsche's performance concepts as they relate to Haunted will be compiled supported by research from the rehearsal process.

The essential performance form of Haunted is informed by the Victorian seance.

The initial script for the project now known as Haunted When it Rains was called Jacob’s Ladder, in which a microphone array worked in tandem with a solo performer to create an environment that placed the performer in direct improvisation with technology. Using overtones and resonant frequencies from a live, sung performance, the script sought to implement the microphone array and audio software to create accompaniment and as well as melodic phrasing comprising an improvised duet between technology and vocal performer. I envisioned this as a demo script, approximately 8-10 minutes in length, and imagined it could combine music with poetry, but the key intent of the performance was the creation of a sonic environment through a performer’s improvisation with technology. Meaning behind the piece hoped to suggest a mystic state of vision, Jacob’s Dream, with sound echoing both celestial and chthonic resonances.

Information available regarding microphone array research suggested the array would be capable of detecting the performer in space via sound localization. However, implementation of sound localization would not be possible for the projected deadline of the project, and the mic array would need to receive information of the performer’s location (in time and space) from another source. Video sensing was suggested for use in the project, which I took to mean (incorrectly) that location of the performer could be provided by video sensing of an event. If video sensing could provide (x,y) location, as well as the time a performer enters into a location, I imagined the stage could become a kind of large musical instrument, with different areas on the stage denoting different commands for an audio filter, or even commands for a particular sound or note to be played…as though the space of the stage could become analogous to a keyboard on a synthesizer. This was intriguing from a theatrical standpoint in that the commands to create music could take on the visual and symbolic language of the stage, and offered the potential for a unique musical performance to take on added layers of a story told by text, song, and movement.

The potential offered by the concept of the stage becoming a musical instrument/storyteller, as well as the opportunity to write a full project for Spring 2004, called for an expansion of the original demo script for a number of reasons. First, my vision for Jacob’s Ladder called for the specific aesthetic of a concentrated, intense performance of no more than fifteen minutes. However, the resources available for the project, such as the formation of a collaboration to work on the project and the luxury of one year to develop a demo staging, offered greater opportunities to expand the piece into something more substantial, something that hoped to challenge and inspire collaborators for the scope of time allotted to the project.

Second, I conceived Jacob’s Ladder as a solo performance piece, but I felt that a solo-performance didn’t allow the flexibility necessary for individuals in the collaboration (whose personalities and talents I had yet to meet) to decide what they might wish to contribute to the piece. So I elected to increase the size of the cast, and to place the mythic subject matter into a context that I knew was more accessible to me, and which I hoped would be more accessible to members of the collaboration: Arizona in the Old West. At that time (mid-summer) I was still under the assumption that trigger cues were visual events detected by video sensing, and reasoned that a larger cast provided a greater opportunity to increase potential interaction with the technology. I then concentrated on finding a story that could be told encompassing several characters.

When asked what was the story behind the piece, my first response was that it is the manifestation of a vision; probably a mystic one, and I felt compelled to remain faithful to that response in every incarnation of the script. The piece went through several manifestations, from a piece of mystic poetry, to a kind of passion play with an apparition, a demon and a nun in her convent cell, to a mystic in a saloon hall, and finally to a Victorian séance…but for each incarnation the mythic subject matter remained constant: a meditation on the myth of Mary Magdalene, set in a time and place reminiscent of Jacob’s Ladder…a space somewhere between worlds…that sought to manifest a vision, to give vitality to persistent memories and needful ghosts. The compelling question for the use of technology in the piece became through what means does the technology act as a catalyst to bring performers and audience into this metaphysical setting of a vision…and more succinctly, how can the technology work to manifest the presence of a ghost.

Somewhere within this time it was revealed to me that the research surrounding the DAR cameras was not attempting to provide location of a performer, but rather, the camera's primary function sought to serve as sources of image capturing. This meant that triggering effects were no longer cued by visual events, and that a realm of visual possibilities could be explored as aesthetic elements in the piece. The technological possibilities of real-time video/audio manipulation, as well as instantaneous memory storage and recall for video/audio inputs when implemented with a performance of mystic vision naturally brought me to an examination of the performance form of the Victorian séance.

The performance form of the Victorian séance seemed to offer the most potential for a diverse interaction with the available technology for a number of reasons. First, the séance consisted of an actor (the type of actor suggested by WB Yeats) in improvisation with technology. As Houdini reminds us, a good magician, which he considered good mediums to be, remains abreast of cutting edge technology; for the reason that before new technology is assimilated into the culture, the culture relatively willingly mistakes the manifestations of new technology as magic, witchcraft, or super-natural. (We can recall that primitive Victorian slide projectors were called "Magic Lanterns" and even early motion pictures were called "Shadow Magic.")

This raises a host of metaphysical questions surrounding the use of technology and the ontology of the super-natural. In the sense Houdini suggests, technology becomes a devise of trickery: the appearance of a ghost is a result of an explainable series of steps, often embedded in a cunning, creative implementation of technology and skillful performance. But, keeping in mind the suggested meaning of the deus ex machina, it also seems reasonable to imagine that the ghost in the above scenario is not necessarily an apparition of trickery, but can alternatively be seen as a real presence embedded within a collective cultural desire (the needs of the living to contact the dead, and vice versa). The skillful use of technology and performance that was found in the séance created a kind of talisman bound by the séance ritual that provided a focal point through which that presence could manifest and be experienced. In such a scenario, the presence of the ghost lies not in the spectacle of the talisman (which is often mistakenly literalized as the ghost itself), but in the relationship between the human experience and the technological/performative talisman with which it connects.

Inherent in Houdini’s notion linking technology with human reaction to the super-natural is the factor of time it takes for a culture to assimilate new technology (think of the modern example of alleged military test planes popularly  assumed to be alien UFO near Roswell, New Mexico). Houdini’s thoughts suggest one way technology in Haunted acts as a catalyst to manifest the ghost. The world of the séance, as well as the world of the stage, provides to us the ability to experience time from different perspectives: cyclically, linearly, and perhaps, in the performance of a ritual such as the séance, through a lens suggesting a kind of timelessness. One essential premise for the use of technology in Haunted is that the super-natural, the ghost, lies within the tension between the presence of technology (whose power quickly decreases with the passage of time) and performances of timeless resonance (that seek to invoke powers not at all bound by the passage of time).

I've seen a stunning photograph recently, and I'm looking for the artist. It’s the image of a woman in traditional Mexican dress, she has long black hair that flows freely down her back, and she is looking at an endless desert landscape in front of her, as though she is the Llorona that has haunted the pools of this desert for centuries. Her presence and the communion she shares with her setting seem familiar with eternity. Her right arm is extended to the infinite, as though she is Mary before the cross, but she holds in her right hand a boom box that seems to be from the 1980’s. Somewhere in that tension between the model’s timeless performance for the photograph and the very clear time demarcation inherent in the presence of the boom box lays one element of the ghost at play in Haunted.

In Haunted the actors wear a period costumes, the Medium wears a wireless headset mic that is clearly visible, and she plays a modern keyboard in a stage obviously equipped with heavy technology. Surrounded by and interacting with this modern technology, the actors are performing rituals that suggest a more ancient quality, such as the séance, ritual dance, poetry written from the Song of Solomon, and performances of archetypal images, such as are found in the Major Arcana of the Yale Visconti tarot. The piece also attempts to play with the concept of time, seen in the Medium’s performance of the ancient myth of Phedra in a 19^th century performance style, played in interaction with modern video projection. The intention of this play with time in juxtaposition with the use of technology seeks to inspire the tension through which the ghost appears in the above mentioned photograph.

While Houdini’s idea of technological magic being dependent on time provides one route of ghost-conjuring through the use of technology, Houdini’s debunking of mediumship, as he writes in his Magician Among the Spirits, also brings up at least one point of contention relevant to the performance and intentions of Haunted. Magician Among the Spirits parts from the premise that if a person experiences contact with a spirit or ghost through the mechanics of technology or the adept performance of the medium they are necessarily duped or the victims of fraud, because, unlike the magician, the medium does not refer to her work as illusion. It seems important to assert that the Haunted performance does not assume this stance.

The great Irish dramatist and poet WB Yeats, who was a strong proponent of Spiritualism, suggests that mediumship is dramatization. In his Explorations, Yeats writes, "I consider it certain that every voice that speaks, every form that appears, is first of all a secondary personality or dramatization created by, in or through the medium."  The aim of her spiritual communication, he continues, seeks "to enter at last into their own archetype, or into all being:  into that which is there always."  (p 364-366)  He maintains that the good actor is necessarily in contact with a realm similar to the good medium, and the performance of a true medium should be regarded with the dignity afforded to a great actor. In other words, if the actor/medium conjures the experience of a spiritual presence, we know that the experience we feel in connection with the actor/medium’s performance is substantial and real, just as the emotional experience we feel in a powerful dream is real, even though we are not awake. The ghost, Yeats would suggest, lies in the experience of consciousness invoked by the mythic performance. Likewise, if the medium uses technology in her performance to effectively conjure the experience of a spiritual presence, the technology is implemented in a perfect dramatic sense. Haunted seeks to combine the worlds of medium and actor, as Yeats suggests, affording a mediumistic use of technology in a dramatic setting.

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Historic and contemporary examples of paranormal study reveal that human interaction with technology has inspired a belief that certain types of technology contain the potential to act as a super-human lens through which humans are able to detect the super-natural. Whether the belief is valid or not is not a topic of my study, but rather, I’m focusing on the performance of folklore that surrounds the products of man interacting with technology based on this belief. Two examples of this kind of ghost catching are assumed to be present in the Haunted performance: Electronic Voice Phenomena and Spirit Photography.

Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP) assumes that a tape recorder, digital or analog, is able to record sonic resonance within a magnetic field believed to be the presence of a ghost. An EVP will sound like a murmur in a tape recording, a glitch or blip, or like a quiet voice actually speaking words. Whether the recording on the tape is an actual ghost or not is not so interesting as the mood and storytelling that surrounds the presence of this noise on a ghost recording. The most compelling websites devoted to EVP (see www.ghostpix.com) tend to contain some presence of story that provides a possible explanation surrounding the appearance of the noise on the tape, offering a very human explanation for a very technical occurrence.

Significantly, EVP in a sense becomes a kind of performance form, with the researcher as performer in an intrinsic and fascinating interaction with technology. Such a performance form cunningly utilizes human interaction with technology and storytelling to manifest a strong sense of validity (in a performative sense) in the presence of a ghost.

The validity of the presence of the ghost is only as real as its researcher (in our case, the performers and collaborators in Haunted) allows it to be. For the purposes of the performance I’m parting from a premise that the presence of ghosts in EVP is not simply a glitch recorded by technology, but rather, the glitch has meaning because the researcher, like a medium, conjures the ghost that the technology finds. In other words, the appearance of the ghost begins with the faith and desire of the researcher to see a ghost, and his/her willingness to manifest the ghost’s appearance, first through interpretation of sound, secondly through performance of the story. Following the appearance of the ghost to the researcher, the presence of the ghost resides between the researcher and his/her audience, who must also be willing to perceive it.

With this in mind, it’s essential that performers and technology designers in Haunted When it Rains seek to both provide context to the technology in a manner similar to the EVP researcher, as well as inform the use of technology in the piece as an audience willing to perceive the ghost’s presence. By that I mean not necessarily that we are paranormal researchers, but that our performative interaction with the technology should seek the talisman that can create the space for a human experience of feeling a ghost, assuming that the ghost exists in the same place polish director Jerzy Grotowski says theater itself exists: within the relationship between the actor (technology being one of our actors) and audience.

A second type of paranormal research involving technology of benefit to this discussion is Spirit Photography. Similar to EVP’s use of audio recording, spirit photography assumes that the camera (video, film, or digital) has the ability to manifest the image of a presence unseen by the human eye. Spirit photographers cite several possible theories attempting to explain how ghosts appear in pictures, some having to do with the photographic process, others citing the ability of the camera to capture and freeze in a moment the image of phenomena that may be too fast (or slow) for the human eye to detect. Like EVP, the images of spirit photography require a trained eye to interpret, with the ability to detect faces in shadows, and discriminate between a lens flare and seemingly unexplainable shafts of light or glowing orbs that appear in a final image.

Also similar to EVP, a good spirit photographer seems to be one who searches for and conjures the ghost s/he captures in image. For the same reasons that EVP will guide the creation of auditory environment, spirit photography will serve as an overall guide for the interaction of performer with camera array.

Use of the camera array and projections of visual imagery in Haunted offer a number of performance opportunities that enhance, alter, and inform Haunted’s performance. Each of these performance opportunities will keep in mind the intentions of spirit photography.

The ability to recall sonic elements within the performance allows a number of possibilities to enhance and alter the performance. Electronic auditory presence will keep in mind the intensions of EVP research.

The ideas listed here suggest possible methods of integrating technology with the Haunted performance, keeping in mind the primary intent of our interaction with the technology seeks to inspire within the actor a spiritual resonance that is experience as a presence within the audience. This list is preliminary and incomplete, and it is assumed that the actor’s interaction with technology will take on a more profound character during the rehearsal process, as performers are inspired by work with media based on the tenets that have been outlined in the preceding pages.

Some general research links: 

 Spiritualism

Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP)

Bibliography

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