(St)Age of Participation. Innovating Audience Interaction in Stage-Based Media Art

Interactivity and participation have been core elements of media art since its very inception. In performances and installations produced in recent years, more or less successful attempts have been made to put this immanent interactive element in the hands of the audience attending the performance-for example, through the use of various tracking technologies. In addition to the attendant problems associated with people`s inability to grasp the connection between cause and effect, the process of enabling audience members themselves to generate sounds or visuals often quickly results in the exhaustion of the performance`s aesthetic, emotional or intellectual quality. In the spirit of our contemporary Age of Participation in which social media and a digital lifestyle set the tone, the project crew-consisting of renowned media artist, director and composer Klaus Obermaier and members of the Ars Electronica Futurelab`s staff-propose to conduct transdisciplinary research on innovative participatory scenarios for the multimedial stage-audience context, as well as to develop corresponding interfaces suited to such artistic works that will be produced in the future. In going about this, particular attention will also be paid to coming up with a concept that could potentially serve as a model for a dynamic interaction dramaturgy that spans a fascinating and aesthetically sophisticated arc linking up, on one hand, artistic presentations by professional stage performers and, on the other, the intermittently active and passive audience members attending them. Interaction metaphors that audience members grasp intuitively and adequate possibilities for them to codetermine in real time the form that aural or visual content takes enhances the quality of the experience as well as the level of emotional and social involvement on the part of individual audience members. We propose that the artistic R&D process proceed collaboratively within the framework of a three-year laboratory- like setting. In the initial phase, the Futurelab will analyze potential technologies. Then, Klaus Obermaier will produce dramaturgical designs for three to five performative experiments that will be implemented jointly and, with the help of experienced performance artists, each tested several times before different live audiences. At least one iteration loop will take place per track, the purpose of which is to optimize the participative dramaturgy. Each test run will be documented on film; it will be assessed with respect to its aesthetic, dramaturgical and technical quality, and also evaluated from the point of view of participating audience members. The artistic-scientific and technological findings that can be expected to emerge from this project may very well constitute a breakthrough of significant proportions that will benefit the international media art scene.

The (St)Age of Participation project staff has performed artistic research on interaction technologies for the stage of the future. The chief emphasis has been on transferring current approaches to co-creativity and digital participative culture into the stage-based media art genre. The aim has been to radically alter the traditionally very passive role of spectators attending plays, concerts and performances, and to accomplish this by means of technological devices that enable audience members to actively intervene in what transpires on stage. Accordingly, one of the essential objectives of this project has been to develop innovative technologies that provide members of the audience with an intuitive way to generate sounds, visuals or other performance content in real time.