Good afternoon and welcome. My name is Hana Worthen and I am co-chairing the Transmedia Arts Seminar with today's speaker, Magda Romanska. Thank you for gathering with us here today. So before I introduce Magda and say a few words about our collaboration, I want to express our sincere thank you for the support of the seminars to co-sponsors, the Mahindra Humanities Center and the metaLAB both at Harvard University. Also, I want to make some pragmatic announcements. After Magada's talk there will
be time for a discussion. So during the session, you are welcome to submit your questions and provocations via the Q&A function at the bottom of your screen. And if you would prefer to interact via voice and image, we do have that capacity as well. This seminar is being recorded and the recording will be posted on the Mahindra Humanities Center's website, provided with closed captions and available for public viewing. So please let me assure you that by joining the webinar have no obligation to
appear or to speak in the recording. So if you would like to participate in an anonymous way, you can do so under an alias. and by turning off the video. If you would like to participate in an identifiable way, we want to be sure to say that by doing so, you are authorizing the use of the recording in the way I just described. So this is the first fall semester meeting of the transmedia arts seminar, which is now in its second year. So this seminar is positioned to explore theatrical practices
and performances by triangulating new media technologies, transmediality and performativity. Conceived to inquire into the emerging forms of transmedia performance, it explores media interactions in the physical space of theater, as well as multi-platform networks and interactive media environments that expands the theatrical space as they extend beyond it. A site for critical transmedia exploration, the seminar is also a space through which we began to think about and design what we call the Tr
ansmedia Arts Center, an online public platform dedicated to archival documentation, curating and disseminating transmedia. performance. We are very excited about the talks schedule for this academic year, and you will find more or you can find all of them on the Mahindra Humanites Center web page under the transmedia arts seminar. But to give you an idea about the next upcoming events, on October 23rd at the same time, at five p.m. EDT, Francesca Ferrando, one of the leading posthuman philosoph
ers, will talk about transmedia and the art of posthuman existence. And on November 19th, Joris Weijdom, who teaches at the University of the Arts Utrecht, but he also founded the Media and Performance Laboratory, will talk about embodiment and presence in designing performative mixed-reality experiences. So these and more events to come will be prefaced today by Magda Romanska's paper, Transmedia Dramaturgy of Pre and Post Pandemic Theater. A talk that addresses an urgent disciplinary question
: how are we, the practitioners and scholars of theater, to analyze, problematize and develop narratives relying on multiple structural and architectural frameworks when our pre-pandemic points of reference and certainties have all changed? I think that Magda hardly needs an introduction. She is a prolific theater.... She is a prolific theater performance and media scholar, dramaturg, and writer. Magda Romanska is an Associate Professor of Theater and Dramaturgy at Emerson College, an affiliate
at metaLab here at Harvard, and the Executive Director of the largest global digital theater portal, TheTheaterTimes.com, for which she won the Elliot Hayes Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dramaturgy in 2018. Another significant digital project she conceptualized and developed is Performap.com, an interactive digital map of theater festivals funded through Yale Digital Humanities Lab and the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas Innovation Grant. She's the author or editor of fiv
e critically acclaimed theater books. The Post-Traumatic Theater of Grotowski and Kantor, Theater Machine: Tadeusz Kantor in Context, Reader in Comedy, an Anthology of Theory and Criticism, and The Routledge Companion to Dramaturgy. Currently, she is also the editor of the series Focus on Dramaturgy, published by Routledge. So, now it's my pleasure to turn things over to Professor Magda Romanska. Thank you so much, Hana, for this introduction, and welcome everyone to our transmedia arts seminar.
We are very happy and grateful that you can join us. And as Hana mentioned, special thanks to Mahindra Humanities Center and metaLAB for co-sponsoring this event and our series this year. Today's lecture is going to be a kind of an introduction and overview to the different types of transmedia experiments that have been taking place on the margins of theater pre- pandemic. And some questions that I pose are attempts to try to create a critical vocabulary in the ways that we think and talk about
those works. And I will also look at some of the newest developments that have happened since the pandemic started and much of theater moved into the online space, creating, again, new possibilities for new media. So this talk is designed to be accessible for both non-theater and theater people. So I hope everyone can get something out of it. First, let's start with our working definition of what transmedia is. And here is the two definitions, one from Henry Jenkins and the second one from Robe
rt Pratten who basically defined transmedia as a multi-platform storytelling in which a story is enhanced through being told through multiple media. It is not adaptation, every component of the story can exist on its own, and audience participation oftentimes heightens the enjoyment of the story and the engagement. This is a classic in before transmedia, and we conceptualize each discipline separately and each discipline, each genre, had its own mechanics and its own rules. What we have right no
w is this world when things blend into each other and we end up with video game opera and interactive fiction writing. And as these different media blend into each other and influence each other, we're learning that they're also are creating a new way of thinking about how about stories, how narratives are being structured into a dimensional space of real world and digital world. So of this comes the most pertinent dramaturgical questions: What are the laws and the rules of transmedia storytell
ing? What storytelling structure from film drama, novel should we use? How are audiences going to interact with these new stories? What is essential and what is superfluous? And of course, the big question. What is the point? They are basically two models of transmedia or what I call the autonomous and codependent. In the autonomous model each component of the storytelling can exist independently. So something like a franchise like Star Wars is always quoted in this since each element of this St
ar Wars franchise can exist as an independent story. And then there is the codependent, where all elements of this story are connected in such a way to do it would be impossible to understand the meaning of the story unless you know all of its components. So Norwegian TV shows come, which has a very big online component is one example, where you sort of have to know what's going on between the characters online to understand the TV series. Then there is the model which combines both of these ele
ments and each component can exist independently, but when you approach them together, the enjoyment of the entire work increases and the meaning also becomes richer. And this is what happens in most of the theater-based transmedia experiences. Now, transmedia itself is a rather big umbrella. And I want to just give you a short overview of what, when we talk about transmedia, what we can potentially mean. So, of course, there is the attached media for the purposes of marketing, which are built s
trictly around commercial objective. There are, of course, franchises such as a Star Wars. With franchises, typically, there is a very clear point of origin. So there is one piece of work which is popular and then things grow out of it. It has a vertical structure and it's usually open ended, which allows for additional components to be added. Then there is an event which is typically contained by the time frame. It's horizontal in structure. It has a clear ending. And however, oftentimes it has
no clear point of origin since many things happen simultaneously. Then there is the educational purpose where multiple platforms are used to advance an educational purpose. And then, of course, there is the social and political purpose where transmedia is used to advance. either a political or social cause, and this is as Hana's lecture last year showed, it's actually been around for quite some time and used in different political systems quite effectively to advance a particular political poin
t. And then there is, of course, the artistic, which doesn't have any particular purpose beyond exploration of the medium. Potentially some sort of philosophical message.Those types of projects are interconnected and they typically are predesigned. So unlike franchise, which oftentimes sort of builds on the success of the previous work, artistic projects, which most of the theater projects are, are predesigned and and focus on the more idealistic purpose than others. The Dramaturgical Variables.
So in today's lecture, I'm going to focus on the artistic types of transmedia, which usually involves some form of theatrical foundation, whether live or digital. And as we are discussing these types of transmedia performances, there are two important aspects we want to look at: the external and internal valuables. So, the external variables is time, space, and action. And here I'm being very classical in my approach and I'm referring to, of course, Aristotle and internal plot, character, and t
hought. So,I would like to use this sort of basic familiar terminology to show different examples of transmedia and how they can be analyzed depending on which variable is altered. So let me see. This is, let me see... As we are progressing through classical Aristotelian dramaturgy to transmedia dramaturgy, we see a certain shift in the way that time, space, and action is being dislocated. So, of course, Aristotelian, you know, the well-made play, demands that all in unison. So, we have unity of
time, space and action. In Epic, Brechtian, and post-traumatic dramaturgy, allows us dissonance of all three on-stage. However, for the audience, the story still takes place, or whatever was happening on stage, it still takes place on stage. So the audience is literally in the same place and the same time. In the same place, in the same building. But in transmedia dramaturgy, you not only dislocate the internal variables of time, space, and action, things can take place in multiple spaces, in m
ultiple time frames. You've also dislocated for the audience themselves. Because now an audience can approach it from multiple vantage points and their location. Their geographical location. Their time and location doesn't have a particular meaning as it did in previously. So, transmedia dramaturgy challenges the notion of spectatorial co-presence. So, the co-presence can be developed along the time-space continuum. In theater, we all watch the same thing at the same time, in the same space. In
the museum, we all watch the same thing at different times. In multisite, multilinear, transmedia stories, co-presence can be manipulated to create both the communal experience of theater, when things happen in sync, And the individual, solitary experience of the novel, for example. The spectator can do/watch the same thing at the same time in the same space, but they no longer necessarily have to. So the question that we ask, of course, is: time/when, where and how? And I want to show you a cou
ple of different examples of transmedia as they happened before the pandemic that dislocate one of each variable. And so the first example that I want to use is is Jay Scheib's "World of Wires" which is a theater performance, which is also being recorded live and projected on the screen. Depending on which, whether the audience member watches the stage performance or the video performance, They get a different experience of the work. So let me play it for you. [Muffled dialogue] [Audience laught
er] So this is a really great example that shows us how manipulating two different platforms can create a quite different experience for the audience members who watch what's going on on stage, because, of course, they will see the transformation and those who watch this screen, because, of course, you know, for them, it's magic. And so and so this is a performance in which time, space, and action is in sync. But nonetheless, different subjective experiences, depending on which platform the audi
ences chose to participate. Now, this isn't a good example of a videogame opera. I worked on this one as a consultant, a transmedia consultultant. And it had kind of a three-layers of interactions. The performers would be singing and performing here, and here would be their avatars being screened and also performing on the screen, on the top screen. So I'm going to play a little bit for you. [Instrumental music] The way this worked was there was a face ware singer who would basically repeat what
this opera singers were singing and then this would be projected on the screen. So we had to add three levels of video. The livefeed, the camera feed, and the face ware/bodyware feed. So this is a pretty common singing performance with multiplatform framing. And this is kind of how it looks like. This is an opera singer. This is the face ware singer, and this is the CGI character that, you know, mimics what the singer does on stage. The technology here was challenging. And, of course, you know,
the question is, for what purposes does it does it serve? An additional component-- there was also an app which allowed participants to view different characters as well. Here is a really fun opera that I saw in New York last year in which the audience, I don't have a video of this one because it's not posted yet. But I can tell you it's... The audience members at the beginning were asked to provide their e-mail addresses. And the performance, the show itself was about surveillance. And at some
points during the performance, the live feed from participants social media was projected on the walls which had a somewhat disorienting....disorienting experience. It was a disorienting experience for us. Because suddenly you saw your your social media feed projected live among participants, which was kind of strange because it is a public sphere. However, having this projected in person seemed to be a strange experience. So, adding this social media platform component was both kind of a new w
ay of using a form of social media, but also commenting on the content of the narrative which had to do with surveillance. The next example. So those were all examples of all of the dimensions being in sync. Now I want to show you a couple of things that had a multiplatform, multisite structure. So this one, "Every When at Once" was a performance which took place in three different places around the world. Each place, each performance had their own audience. And then they were all projected and
screened together on YouTube. So the challenge with doing something like this is that each component has to be independently viable for the audience members who watched it live. And then everything has to be coordinated in order to make sense for the people who watch it simultaneously online as well. So, this is quite challenging to do and simply because, you know, syncing all of those things can be difficult. And this was one of the earliest multisite performances that used digital format, Andr
e Carreira's "Odiseo" which took place in three different places, Buenos Aires, Bremen, Germany, and Florianoplis, Brazil. And it was a story of a man caught between a wife and a mistress. And in each location the audience members could see each person's conversation with the other, you know, with the other party. So, you had kind on an input into seeing what each character saw on location, and then, you also had an input into seeing what they experience in, you know, by talking to other people.
Andre was talking about this performance and he was acutely aware how it sort of dissolves time and space. And this is what he says about the actors and the spectators: "There is a change in relation to the perception of time and space. The dissolution of space and time creates a condition marked by placelessness and achrony (absence of time), an increasingly more common experience today, which are cultural habitats naturalize. We live in an era in which we no longer marvel at the fact that we
can talk to someone on the other side of the planet, sharing images and data simultaneously ,or at capacity to build a world of information through websites and blogs. The idea of theatricality is supported by a concept of an expanded scene in which the notion of unity of place dissolves to emphasize that unity of time." So this, you know, was one of those early multisite performances that nonetheless was very effective and utilized, you know, that the format to comment on the content. And now,
And this was, you know, a big craze in the early 2010's for all types of telematic performances. And here was one which was the Augmented Reality Dance, using, using... Let me just show you. Using an app to coordinate and sync performances. [Electronic music] So this type of synchronized telematic performances have a kind of a, you know, format of an event. They happen within a particular time frame. And they have a beginning, an end. And they typically are not narrative bound. So, you know, the
y are just called, you know, forms of flash mobs. And I haven't seen yet a good way to utilize them in a performance which would have a narrative structure. But nonetheless, this was, you know, one of the early options out there. And hopefully we might put them forth more. One of the earliest cyber dramas was The Etheatre's "Cyberian Chalk Circle" And this was a chat-based theater piece in which time was out of joint because you could come in and out whenever you wanted. It was sort of an ongoin
g project. And it was one of the very early uses of digital space for theatrical purposes. And the other one, which was also sort of with time being out of joint, was Open Online Theater, a project in which the audience members can log in and participate by directing dancers and interacting with the dancers as they were performing. Of course, there was a whole genre that also developed about 10 years ago of different kinds of social media plays, both Twitter and Facebook, either through multiple
accounts or told through one account. And so we see how these early experiments are attempting to dislocate the question of time and the question of space. The more recent examples is something like "Hopscotch", which was immersive opera out of Los Angeles, which consisted of 36 chapters performed across the city and on location and within taxicabs. And at the end, everybody came together and there was a kind of a synced final scene. And here is a little video I can play for you. [Female voice:
The previous experience was a pretty massive logistical undertaking. We had 24 live chapters that the audience would experience while traveling around three distinct routes. We labeled these routes red, yellow, and green, and each route weaved through different geographical neighborhoods around downtown Los Angeles. Each road contained eight chapters. Each chapter lasted around 10 minutes, either taking place in moving limousines or an iconic Los Angeles sights. Each gave a glimpse into differe
nt parts of the city and different moments into these characters lives. Male voice: We wanted to create a story that was open enough that any single chapter could feel like its own point of departure. The principal character is Lucia, a woman. We see her for them throughout the various stages of her life. There is Jamison, a scientist who rides a motorcycle, very angsty. And Orlando, who is a musician and poet and philosopher. And the three of these characters, the principal story really is watc
hing them navigate a world of change, a world that is constantly in flux. (Man singing) (Man singing) Female voice: We follow Lucia from when she's young to when she is old and basically somewhere in the middle of this piece, the old Lucia communicates with the young Lucia. So we see her have a quinceanera, we see her falling in love. We see her get married. We see that fall apart. We see her try to make peace with that and really struggle. We see her meet someone else and then make peace with b
eing able to feel something again. And we see it in this really wild variety of sounds and these wild this wild variety of different art forms. And the hope is that you can kind of tap in at any moment and tap out at any moment and still get a feeling of a life.] So, for theater scholars, of course, this will this will remind you of medieval Mystery Plays performed all around the town with different scenes performed at different locations. So this is one of those good examples where we have mult
iple large multi store narrative happening on multiple levels and different in different time and space. And you can also see them on screen as well. Here is another fun example from a Shakespeare company's adaptation of "A Midsummer Night's Dream". which included a big component of crowdsourcing when the audience members would contribute to the background stories of all of the characters through different social media. [(Male voice) If thou lovest me then,
Steal forth thy father’s house tomorro
w night. And in the wood, a league without the town, There will I stay for thee. (Female Voice) I will go tell him of fair Hermia's flight, Then to the wood will he to-morrow night,
Pursue her (Male voice)I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows] So, Shakespeare Company already had, you know, a pre-existing audience, and their were able to pull from this audience to create this
entire online, you know, second life for these characters and locate them in the present through social media interaction. So this happened quite a lot when the work is given out to the audience members, and they are the ones who create various transmedia components that can distort it outside of their prime location into different areas. Here is another good example. This was an adaptation of "The Tempest" by RETZ, a theater company. And this was an interesting one. I'm going to turn off the v
olume on this. This was a quite interesting one which they built for over six months by interacting with the audience members online and on the phone and through other media. And once a while, creating this site based performances where the audience members could follow the characters in real life. And then on top of it, the audience members eventually began building stories and interacting and collaborating with the performers. So this was quite an interesting example of that sort of performanc
e, which was stretched in time and really played with duration. And so this was a discussion of external variables, of time, space, and action. And here, I want to talk about the variables internal to the story. So plot, theme, and the characters. And so the plot oftentimes is non-linear. And almost always multidirectional. Theme: is there one? You are the character and the character is you, oftentimes with the audience participation. And of course, there is a whole group of transmedia characte
rs which are at Technobjects, which I will mention in a moment. So this is just, you know, a refresher course. Classical dramaturgy, classical plotline for the for the, you know, typical well made play, theater play. Here we have the inciting incident, rising act, climax, falling action, resolution, and scene of suffering somewhere around here. This has mostly been adapted by film and filmmakers. And and, you know, people play with it. The order of things can change. You can try to avoid cathars
is or some sort of those sorts of things. You can have multiple climaxes or you can have falling action, or scene of suffering before climax and things like that. But it's all going on in the basic structure of drama, of traditional realistic drama. Now, in the new transmedia work, however, this does not really work. We no longer talk about plot. Instead, we talk about narrative architecture or dramatic architectonic. Because here you're not to tell a story. The sequence of events, first of all,
is out of order and oftentimes spread around across multiple platforms. Class audience often interacst with the architecture of the space that you're building, either in real life or online. And the story or the information is given to the audience members through the architecture of this space in which they explore. The story no longer have to be told through characters. It cannot be told through the space or through objects that the audience interacts with. And of course, from the video game,
we get a bunch of new models of plot. We have a branching structure in which, you know, multiple endings for each audience member, depending on which path and they take, what is the point of axis? They can end up in different endings. Then we have... let me scroll here. We have the interactive plot structure in which the audience members start together and then each one goes into different directions. Even though they might have different endings, they might interact at some point as the plot
progresses. Here is one of my favorite models, the exploding model, when something happens over here and then everybody goes into a different direction and everyone gets a different experience. And this is, of course, typically used for that events-based transmedia. And it's quite difficult to manage because you don't know what you might end up with in terms of what the audience experience potentially can be. And here, you know, is also a couple of different examples of traditional game design m
odels: web, maze, tree,and vector. And all of these, you know, have been used successfully in different types of immersive performances. And it depends on how do you want to lead your audience? Whether you want to have multiple endings, multiple access points. And how much control do you want to give your audience in the interaction? So in a classical dramatic structure, we ask about collective motivation, about climactic moment, and about catharsis. In transmedia storytelling, we ask about the
agency of the audience and the level of connectivity between different components of the story and the audience point of access. So, the agency of the audience, how much are they going to contribute? How different components of this story are connected or not? And where will the audience access the work? Through which point? Through a live performance or through social media? Would there be one point of access, or would there be multiple points of access? And all of these decisions have to be m
ade in order for you to understand how your story will be received, how you might think will be received. So here is what's new in plot. So in our classical dramaturgy we have oh, sorry. I just accidentally clicked the wrong button. In the classical dramaturgy, we have exposition, characters, motivations, climactic moments, scene of suffering, reversal/recognition, catharsis, and we have the, you know, the journey from the beginning to the end. And, you know, in drama school they always teach yo
u to look at the first scene, look at the last scene and see how we got from their first scene to the last scene. It's a controlled, closed work. Which the theme, the thought of the work happens in between the beginning and the end. But in transmedia dramaturgy, the questions we ask are a bit different. First, which valuable will be fixed: time space, or action? Agency of the audience. So how much choice and how much control the audience has. Exploration of the environment, free play. How much t
he audience can just sort of fully explore without any intrusion. The level of connectivity between audience members and between different storytelling modules. So, autonomous vs. codependent models. And the audience point of access. Where is the beginning and where is the end? Since we have we can have multiple beginnings and multiple endings. And of course, how much control do you want to have over how this beginning and this ending is being processed? And in terms of the characters, the diffe
rence is between the Aristotelian character, character is proper, believable, consistent. And this is, you know, basic description of realist drama. In the postdramatic theater, the character is figuration, symbol, metaphor, object/prop, abstract. And this, you know, theater of the absurd, postdramatic theater in which we experienced the death of the Aristotelian character. In transmedia dramaturgy, the character is often you, and you are the character. So there's all sorts of participatory, exp
eriential, immersive, interactive experiences, location-based hybrid reality performance games. And the second type of characters which are sort of new, not completely new, are technobjects. And techno objects include algorithmic theater, robots, A.I., data theater, and all sorts of different posthuman characters that also interact with audience in different ways. So this is just sort of a refresher course, but also helps us see those differences. And this is, you know, realistic painting. They'
re real characters, easy to identify. The painting has a three act structure. We know what happened before and we know what happens after. Yeah, we know before, most likely, this is a knight. There was a house is over here, he's wearing pajamas. Most likely the soldiers came, dragged him out of bed. And, you know, this is the climactic moment when we see the execution. And we know what's going to happen tomorrow morning. You know, the wife, the mother will come and willl find the bodies there. S
o this painting is a sort of realistic drama as painted. And the unity of time, space, and action, everything is defined, defined and consistent thought. The painter clearly wants to make a statement about the miseries of war. Now, here is in the postdramatic theater, Picasso's "Guernica", sort of presenting war, but things are a little bit more complicated. And there is, you know, we cannot really easily identify with any single character because characters are symbolic, metaphorical, and alleg
orical and there is undefined time and space. Is it one moment or one year? Unclear action. Everything happens at the same time. And we have multiple and subjective thoughts about it. There is not the one unifying thought that tells us how to think about war. Now, in transmedia, you know, thanks to the newsfeed, this is what we get. We get multiple characters, multiple structure, disunity of time, space, and action and incoherent thought, intermingled and contradictory images, often times flatte
red by the media. So when you go on your news feed you Facebook or Twitter, on Instagram, you'll get a ton of different images coming at you without any sort of coherent story. And, so, how do you build that story and how that story is being built by you? These are all questions that that we are trying to explore because it's, you know, this creation of the of the meaning in that space has quite a lot of implications, not just for ad making, but for now political messaging as well. So this where
we go from. We go from this realistic three act structure, to disunity of time and space, to something that we don't really grasp yet it in terms of what does it may do to our psyche and how we process it. So what's new in character? So in classical dramaturgy, you know, it's focused on the character building. You know, Stanislavski's method of how do you build a character? People are doing things, usually to other people. In a transmedia world, We are also concerned with world-building. So oft
entimes you are doing things, people are doing things, objects, algorithms and doing things. You don't always know who is doing what, how, and to whom. So, you know, there's sort of additional level of of analysis and thinking because the agency is not always easy to locate. We don't always, we don't always know who is the agent beyond there, what's going on between interaction of these different components. So the challenges, for the art makers for the theater makers, is there vertical and hori
zontal integration of the world-rules. So whenever you're building this world, it has to be consistent across multiple platforms. It has to have morally justified symbolic structure. And it has to answer the question: so what? Like, why are you building this? Why are you making this? When the character is you, when it is an immersive piece. the questions we are asking is the question of agency/choice. So what are the perceived consequences of the audience action? Interiority, the limits of inter
iority, and the inner complexity of the character. So how much of the personal information, intimate detail do you, are you asking the audience members to reveal about themselves in order to participate in the project? An exploration, the free exploration of the environment. Challenge, how difficult and engaging the experience. If the entry point is too difficult, people will give up. If it's too easy or are not engaging, they will also give up. Complicity. So, you know, how much the audience pa
rticipation increases responsibility for the work which the audience creates. And then, of course, you know, co-creation. How much do you allow audiences to contribute to the works which they are making? Oh, sorry. When the character is technobject, different types: robots, algorithms, artificial intelligence, holograms, brainart, VR/AR. There are different ways of thinking about about them. And this is, you know, the sort of three act structure of the human-machine collaboration: The preproces
sing in which the machine is programed, configured, and loaded by the human. Coprocessing in which the machine and the human produced text in tandem. And post-processing in which the human selects some of the machine's effusions and excludes others. So this, you know, technobject as a character, it's not totally new in theater because, you know, we already bio-objects, we had puppets. We had all sorts of different objects always explored on stage and in different contexts. What's new here is th
at oftentimes this object seems to exist independently, have their own agency, you know, particularly when you're dealing with algorithm or when you're dealing with preprogramed machines. So here is one example of robot theater. So this was a Franz Kafka adaptation with a robot in the main role. And how does the audience members interact and how can the robot function on its own is a question to explore. Another example, this was one of my favorite projects. "Two Google Homes Talking to Each Oth
er", you know. So what do you do when you have to chat bots interacting? And it evoked a lot of laughter. I'm not going to play the whole thing, but I recommend you check it out. And Daim, no debt payments. And Annie Dorsen's famous "Hello Hi There", which was a debate between Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault sort of put into algorithm. I don't have a question. [ Female robot voice: Do you have a question? Male robot voice: That's a question I don't hear everyday. Female robot: A question you do
n't hear everyday is a terrible thing to waste. Male robot: Are all questions you don't hear every day a terrible thing to waste? We're here to discuss Chomsky and Foucault. Female robot: Oh sure, Chomsky and Foucault sounds like a good topic. Male robot: The title of the debate is Human Nature. Justice versus Power. Female robot: Chomsky and Foucault discuss the nature of power among other things. Male robot: Essentially it's humanism versus post humanism. Female robot: Thank you for the clar
ification, my dear friend. Male robot: What Chomsky says in the first minute and a half could have been said a quarter of the words he used. Female robot: Thank you for the explanation. Male robot: It sucks that you can't have real conversations like this in America. You always run into undereducated, emotional hakes. Female robot: It is a sad thing for sure. This sort of debate is virtually non-existent today, especially in America. Male robot: Glasses were so much cooler back then. Female robo
t: Okay. Male robot: Do you have any idea what I'm talking about? Female robot: I'd like to talk to someone else now. Guys, who's going to surprise me with a hot bribe message? My ex got me, too, with no input. 21 if, by the way.] So, you know, when you're using an algorithm, like what, what does the algorithm do? Does it have its own agency and how can it co-create and co-exist with the performers? And this was another piece which used sex dolls, supercomputer, a pet robot, and a digital mon
k, all kind of interacting on stage. And of course, you can program those things for the audience to interact in any way you want. And you can also use algorithm online to divide audiences or to structure their experiences. Here was quite an interesting dance piece, which had a robotic component fused with the actor. And it was was based on neurobiotics research in Berlin, sort of using the extension as a part of that artistic project. This is one in which they used hologram [music plays] And t
he next one is brainart, and this was Ellen Pearlmans's "Noor: A Brain Opera" in which her brain was hooked up to electrodes and depending on her emotions, different colors were projected on the screen and her emotions were dependent on the story that she was telling. And so the audience members could see how her brain functioned in real time through this mechanism. So, this sort of combinations of different types of brainart can happen both in live performance but also through social media as w
ell, and through, you know, through computer. This was that project, which was a VR adaptation of "Hamlet". And it's a kind of like.... let me show you something. [Actors speaking] This type of adaptation, you know, it sort of begs the question, like, why do we need a VR version of "Hamlet" if we can have a real life version of "Hamlet". They don't always necessarily utilize their full medium of the technology which they are using. But they're nonetheless, you know, interesting to look at. Here
is a company from Poland, Dream Adoption Society, which is trying to use VR in performance in a way that comments on the medium itself. So this project, "Bialoszewski/Ginsberg", was trying to create the experience of reading the poetry Bialoszewsk and Ginsberg. And their second project was based on Plato's Republic Symposium, in which they were trying to replicate a kind of a platonic world with, you know, living without the body. Here are the audience members. So these are just a few examples
of technobjects that have application in transmedia. And we are going to move on to the thought. The third component, the third internal variable, and this is kind of a tricky one, because in classical dramaturgy, you know, the thought is the philosophical point that the work is trying to make. But in transmedia it's much more difficult to control and to figure out because there is no, you don't necessarily have control over the ending of your work. And this is Peter Lee from the NOLGONG company
talks about it. There is the end, the ending in theater is always determined, unlike game in which the ending is sort of always open ended. So when we think about the idea of a thought, the Aristotelian definition is that, you know, oh, I'm sorry. The Aristotelian definition is that it's some sort of philosophical saying that is pertinent and that it's a maxim, a statement that reveals some truth of human existence. Layos Egri called it premise, proposition, and it's supposed to prove something
, an argument on the philosophical thought. This is, you know, the origins of the relationship between theater and philosophy. That theater attempts to show what philosophy is arguing about and to reveal some kind of truth of human existence, either universal, for the moment or in general. So, in drama the thoughts that we often, you know, ponder and discuss have to do with the human existence. Why do we exist? What's the good life? Why do we suffer? What is love? What is worth living for? What
is worth dying for? So, thoughts make you question your moral universe and your understanding of reality, teaches you something about yourself and others. In game, it's a little more simple, you know, like, who wins? And at this very early application of video games to theater, where you sort of, you know, theater games, urban theater games that had an objective win something or to achieve something. But most recently we actually experienced a reversal and theater is influencing video game world
and the video games are becoming more philosophical and more, you know, more in line with what theater used to be by asking the same questions that theater used to ask. It is still asking. So in transmedia performance, we basically have sort of emerged at three different types of thoughts. And there is the ethical questions which create a world with moral issues and choices through a multiplatform participatory performance. Then there is the social/political which goes beyond simple game to rep
resent some sort of political or social reality--replicates and makes visible the preexisting power structures and systems. And then emotional, which mimics some sort of experience of the other. So different types of disability simulations or simulations of other marginalized experiences. And those are kind of the three major purposes that emerged in our research of transmedia. So this is a work, an adaptation of Faust, a game in which the audience members, where we're asked to sort of ask to po
nder and think about what would they give up to get what they want. Or what could they sell what they are to get what they want. So it's kind of interesting work because it was an adaptation of Faust, but every audience member was individually asked to make the same ethical decisions that the Faust story was forced to make. And it was across multiple cities, both in real life and through app people participated. And those type of moral games, moral theater games, are actually quite prominent and
quite popular. I find this one of the most interesting simply because it's based on Faust. This one was also interesting this was an adaptation of "The Trial" and it was done in Spain by Stroke 114 company, and it involved both real life experiences and social media, phone conversations. And the idea was to help audience members understand the nature of totalitarianism by creating this type of, you know, experiences of totalitarian process in action. And it was both real life and social media,
as I mentioned. So, the purpose of it was, you know, political/social awareness and making a point about the nature of totalitarian state. Then there is the whole, you know, branch of transmedia which attempts to replicate some form of disability. This is Lera Auerbach's "The Blind" in which the audience members were blinded and, you know, attempted to kind of have this multisensory installation which promised to change the boundaries between all these and performers. The other project that was
in the same vein was a VR project out of Germany, which attempted to simulate the intellectual disability. There is quite a lot of controversy about this project because what we found out is that they actually make people more antagonistic to what the disabled. And so instead of building empathy, they actually create more alienation simply because, when you are disabled you have experience with your disability for your entire life, so it's natural to you. But if somebody is thrown into that disa
bility suddenly without experiencing this before, it can be a very alienating experience. So instead of creating empathy and creating connection, those experiences actually can kind of be a quite alienating. And, of course, you know, there are sorts of different types of experiences that are supposed to replicate marginalized experiences that, you know, immigrants crossing the border into a trap and things like that. And there's a lot of ethical questions around this because, you know, like can
you commodify that kind of experience? And what does it mean to experience, to experience something? And the knowledge that comes from that experience can you commodify that knowledge and actually be a transpose it to someone else? Now, and after all of this, looking at the internal and external variable, I want to do a quick sort of overview of where we are after the pandemic when theater is closed and we are all kind of, you know, stuck at home. And theater people and all of these marginal exp
eriences before pandemic, and suddenly everybody was trying to do theater using digital tools that we had and experimenting with different forms of transmedia, you know, know, postcard theater, Zoom theater, Facebook theater, all sorts of different things. So. So what's going on with the Zoom dramaturgy? So the Zoom dramaturgy is multisite, but not site specific because there is now a preexisting audience members when you're performing from home, maybe except your cat, or something. Then there
is synced but open ended. You can watch it later. And synced but doesn't really feel like it. It's closed, but it feels open ended. It's grounded in the face and voice but its bodiless and immobile. And the different styles that emerged is the realistic/not Zoom-specific, so the play that performed on Zoom can happen outside of Zoom. Zoom-specific--it can only happen on Zoom. Immersive zoom talks to you and you talk to the Zoom. Integrated--part of transmedia architectonics incorporating other
platforms, Adaptive--adaptations of preexisting texts. And then there is the meta type of Zoom theater, which grapples with the limits of form, commenting on the limits of its content. And finally, we have the post dramatic Zoomturgy. And I want to just very quickly show you some examples of those. So here was already a fun play about a family interaction on Zoom. [Woman: So the bartender says.... what's funny? Young man: You know, we should have done if we could have? Actually maybe the Beekma
n could still do this. So there's this inn up in Lakeville. They closed the inn, but they also have a restaurant so that they could keep doing takeout. And the restaurant put on its website that for every order, we'll give away a free roll of toilet paper. Woman: Were they hoarding? Man:No, they were an Inn, Barabra, with no guests so they had toilet paper. Young man: Within 3 hours, they had 600 takeout orders. So it's written for Zoom, but, you know, it doesn't necessarily have to happen o
n his own. It could be a family conversation around the table. The other types of Zoom theater that emerged is things written for Zoom that could happen only on Zoom. This was a cool play by Adam Bryce with Diana Quick, with a mother trying to communicate with her daughter, who is, you know, in a different place. And the mother accidentally records all of her Zoom monologues. [ After we left the uh, the thing itself and was on very boisterous form, giving it both barrels to the poor driver with
the... some of his prehistoric jokes. I used to think your father felt a kinship with taxi drivers. But it's more he can't resist a captive audience. He bought me this at a garage to sober me up. A, uh, Powerade.] So it's a one person performance but Zoom is essential to tell the story because it creates intimacy. And she would not really record those messages unless she had, you know, Zoom to do it all on. Hello, this is Michael. This is a fun interactive Zoom tarot reading where people can, yo
u know, log in and have a scripted conversation with their reader. And this was a performance that happened in the spring, which incorporated both a Zoom and Facebook prerecorded and live components. Prerecorded were posted on Facebook, and then live components happened on Zoom and and Facebook and the prerecorded was posted on YouTube. So it incorporates, in addition to Zoom, there were other components that it also incorporates. Here, you know, the adaptive, the adaptations of different texts.
This is a Chinese adaptation of "Waiting for Godot". And of course, Chekhov, very popular. "The Decameron" as well, people trying to adapt to different preexisting theatrical texts to Zoom. Here, it was very interesting, what will Lola Proanio Gomez "Dramaturgy of Confinement" where the form tries to comment on itself and also capture the feeling of confinement that Zoom and the pandemic provided. And to illustrate through the form the psychological situation of its audience, of its participant
s. And here, my favorite one is a Caryl Churchill adaptation of "Mad Forest", which at moments makes no sense, but it's wonderful to watch because it incorporates all of these different, different ways of storytelling, postdramatic storytelling, in which this this story is being told through abstraction. There is no obvious connection between different components. [Good evening everybody, my name is Ashley Taita. Thank you so much for joining us for tonight's webcast of "Mad Forest". We'll begin
a few minutes after 7:00. In order to give anyone who participates and has the opportunity to go and thank the frontline workers.] So the way that they did this show itself was it's told in the same mode with different, you know, different themes and disconnected imagery with the different audience members, I mean, different cast members participating as well. So this was "Mad Forest". And so Zoom dramaturgy, we see it as it develops, as people grapple with the new medium and new and essential
condition. Many unanswered questions and many new yet unexplored directions. And it's inclusive and it's probably here to stay. And so the big question that we ask on transmedia dramaturgy is how can it help us shape the framework and vocabulary for human-machine/AI interaction in 3-D transmedial and digital narrative spaces? What do you want to say/do and why? Versus what you're saying/doing and why? How is what you are saying and watching contributing to the transmedia narratives you particip
ate in? And finally, transmedia dramaturgy can help us uncover how knowledge and emotions are created and shaped between the virtual and real spaces, from conspiracy theories and political campaigns to multiplayer immersive games and multiplatform narratives. And finally, the last issue is the transmedia ethics. So when you make reality and fiction, you might end up with $2 million, you know, fee from a Boston firefighting units attempting to do this. You know, Mooninite. This happened in 2007 i
n Boston. You know, fake news that is supposed to be part of the narrative that suddenly becomes part of the of the of the discourse of the public discourse. I had trouble with emergen and the limits of consent. Can you give your audience PTSD? So, you know, in sociological experiments, you need to follow human subjects research regulations. But in theater experiments, you don't. And so this is, you know, kind of a question, you know, particularly, when you're managing emotions and a lot of inte
rnal knowledge of the participants. And then algorithm bias, if you're using algorithm: educational, social, political, artistic endeavors with some mind-changing objectives, how biased those algorithms will be. And, of course, the violence and sex by proxy. Did they prevent or normalize criminalized desires? So this idea, sort of the ethical questions that we are asking of transmedia right now, as we both are looking at it, making it, and analyzing it. And if you are interested in keeping track
of the latest transmedia works, I invite you to visit our section on transmedia at The Theater Times. And of course, to hear our coming future lectures on transmedia at Mahindra and also visit metaLAB and see what you know, what projects and lectures are there as well. So thank you, everyone. And we can ask questions. I tried to keep it within the time frame, but there was a lot of material to cover. So I hope this was informative and help us open up a conversation about how to create and think
and talk about transmedia. Most informative, Magda. Thank you very much for such a detailed lecture introducing a variety of tense media performances.
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