Performative Experience Design

228 Pages·2016·4.028 MB·English

by  Jocelyn Spence (auth.)

Springer Series on Cultural Computing
Jocelyn Spence
Performative
Experience
Design
Springer Series on Cultural Computing
Editor-in-Chief
Ernest Edmonds, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia
Editorial Board
Frieder Nake, University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany
Nick Bryan-Kinns, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK
Linda Candy, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia
David England, John Moores University, Liverpool, UK
Andrew Hugill, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK
Shigeki Amitani, Adobe Systems Inc., Tokyo, Japan
Doug Riecken, Columbia University, New York, USA
Jonas Lowgren, Linköping University, Sweden
Cultural Computing is an exciting, emerging fi eld of Human Computer Interaction,
which covers the cultural impact of computing and the technological infl uences and
requirements for the support of cultural innovation. Using support technologies
such as location-based systems, augmented reality, cloud computing and ambient
interaction researchers can explore the differences across a variety of cultures and
provide the knowledge and skills necessary to overcome cultural issues and expand
human creativity. This series presents the current research and knowledge of a broad
range of topics including creativity support systems, digital communities, the inter-
active arts, cultural heritage, digital museums and intercultural collaboration.
More information about this series at h ttp://www.springer.com/series/10481
Jocelyn Spence
Performative Experience
Design
Jocelyn Spence
Digital World Research Centre
University of Surrey
Guildford , UK
Mixed Reality Lab,
University of Nottingham,
Nottingham , UK
ISSN 2195-9056 ISSN 2195-9064 (electronic)
Springer Series on Cultural Computing
ISBN 978-3-319-28393-7 ISBN 978-3-319-28395-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-28395-1
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016933033
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016
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Pref ace
I used to make a living as a user experience architect. I was working to contribute in
some way to the quality of life of individual human beings: never purely rational,
prone to whim or passion, forever dancing through a process of being and becom-
ing. This was my perspective after decades of study in the arts—theatre, music,
fi lmmaking, and creative writing. But every digital artefact in my workday was a
static, fi xed unit—the very opposite of human experience—and people were not
people, they were ‘u sers’. Of course, there is a substantial tradition of digital art that
is anything but static, but such art fi gures very little in most people’s everyday lives.
The digital technology that tends to matter to irrational, passionate, mutable human
beings is the media with which they identify: digital photos, music, videos, anima-
tions, social networking interactions, games, sites, apps, and the like.
I want to shine more light on the meanings that digital media technologies have
for people and performance—well, insert your own ‘spotlight’ or ‘limelight’ joke
here. I know from experience that performance is more than a transmission of infor-
mation and that being in a n a udience is more than processing information.
Performance is a sometimes exhilarating, sometimes exhausting experience, made
up of but experientially very different from a person’s normal activities. I wanted to
experiment with digital technologies as a trigger for emotional and ‘ artistic’ engage-
ment with self and other, refl ecting and incorporating media technologies as an
integral part of the person’s lived experience.
R elatively recently, the fi elds o f h uman-computer interaction (HCI) a nd p erfor-
mance studies have taken tentative steps towards each other. The need to address
felt experience has occupied the minds of some HCI researchers. Similarly, perfor-
mance researchers have tried to make sense of new media technologies in perfor-
mance. Debates on the ontologies of liveness and mediation have given way to more
nuanced examinations of the interplay among their various permutations. At the
same time, online social networking is reconfi guring the basic ways that millions,
even billions, of people conceive of interacting with and displaying themselves for
others. Surely performance studies can contribute to HCI, and HCI to performance
studies, if the right focus can be found.
v
vi Preface
This book attempts to bring together the convergent elements of two different
disciplines to forge a new way of understanding the phenomena of performance and
p erformativity in a world saturated with digital media technologies. The aim is per-
formance, understood as an emergent event unique to each constellation of perform-
ers and audience members. Performative Experience Design stakes a claim to a new
fi eld, framework, a nd m ethodology for creating and making sense of the everyday
performance of twenty-fi rst-century selves.
Nottingham, UK Jocelyn Spence
December 2015
Acknowledgements
To all my colleagues at the University of Surrey, everyone who helped with techni-
cal and/or moral support in building Collect Yourselves! , people who contributed
such stellar comments on the manuscript, and for wise words along the way: Ernest
Adams, Stuart Andrews, Jon Back, Tom Bartindale, Steve Benford, Alicia Blum-
Ross, Janko Calic, Rachel Clarke, Angharad Dalton, Owen Daly-Jones, Kristen Ali
Eglinton, Phil Ely, David England and the CHI Digital Arts committee, Mary Ellen
Foley, David Frohlich, Hamish Fyfe, Connie Golsteijn, Dave Green, Toby Harris,
Jon Hook, Kristina Langhein, Andy Lavender, Karen Lewis, Chris Lim, Roisin
McNaney, Mog (aka Chris Morgan), Simon Pipe, John Shearer, Barrie Stephenson,
Robyn Taylor, Stephen Taylor, Jane Vincent, Annika Waern, Julie Williamson,
Mike Wilson, Peter Wright, and Miki Yamanouchi.
T o all my anonymous participants and non-anonymous performers. Special
thanks to Alex Kelly for being so gracious with his time and to Claire Murphy-
Morgan, my collaborator in intermedial autobiographical performance. I’m also
very grateful for the existence of the Live Art Development Agency, whose study
room provided me with ideas and research material for days on end. My biggest
thanks, of course, go to Ian Spence.
vii

Contents
1 Introducing Performative Experience Design ........................................ 1
The Scope of the Field ................................................................................ 1
Defi ning Performative Experience Design ................................................. 5
What Is the Point? ....................................................................................... 10
The Need for New Methodologies .............................................................. 15
Structuring the Argument ............................................................................ 18
References ................................................................................................... 20
2 Performativity ........................................................................................... 25
Performativity ............................................................................................. 25
A Performance Studies Point of View......................................................... 31
An Experience Design Point of View ......................................................... 36
A Shared Perspective .................................................................................. 41
References ................................................................................................... 41
3 What Exactly Is Performance? ................................................................ 45
Performance ................................................................................................ 45
Performance in HCI .................................................................................... 46
Performance Practice: Kitchen Show (1991)
and Bubbling Tom (2000) ............................................................................ 49
Kitchen Show (1991) ............................................................................... 49
Bubbling Tom (2000) ............................................................................... 52
Key Perspectives ......................................................................................... 54
Postdramatic and Presentational Theatre ................................................ 55
Performance Art and Live Art ................................................................. 56
Aesthetics and Liminality ....................................................................... 57
Key Performance Topics ............................................................................. 59
Autobiographical Performance ............................................................... 59
Storytelling .............................................................................................. 62
Devising ................................................................................................. 65
Participatory Performance ....................................................................... 66
Key Performance Methodologies ................................................................ 67
ix