Performance and Technology Practices of Virtual Embodiment and Interactivity

This original and timely collection features writings from international contributors who specialize in digital art and performance practices (including Johannes Birringer, Robert Weschler and Philip Auslander). There are few writings per se that attempt to interrogate the interaction between new technologies and performance practice. Furthermore, none have so far linked the sensuous contact that must exist between the physical and virtual, together with the resultant corporeal transformation. In certain technological practices, physicality is both transcended and ludically inscribed - the play (jouer) being all. Consequently, digital practices potentiate creative and aesthetic possibilities and demand new perceptive strategies.

SUSAN BROADHURST is a Writer and Practitioner in the Creative Arts. She is the Subject Leader of Drama Studies at Brunel University, UK. She is also the author of Liminal Acts: A Critical Overview of Contemporary Performance and Theory (1999) and Digital Practices: A Critical Overview of Performance and Technology (forthcoming, 2006). She is currently working on a series of collaborative practice-based research projects entitled, 'Intelligence, Interaction, Reaction and Performance', which involve introducing various interactive digital technologies into live performance.

JOSEPHINE MACHON is Programme Director for Physical Theatre, and a Lecturer in Drama and Performance Studies at St. Mary's College, University of Surrey, UK. On her topic (syn)aesthetics and performance, she has published various writings. She is in the process of writing (Syn)aesthetics - Towards a Definition of Visceral Performance (2006) and is co-authoring British Physical Theatre - Practice and Practitioners (2006). As a practitioner she has broad range of experience including her current collaborations, which explore the fusion of embodied practice and the written text within playful performance encounters. She is Sub-Editor for the on-line journal, Body, Space & Technology.