ACJ Special Issue Introduction

Volume 6, Issue 3, Spring 2003

Order, Chaos and the (Cyber)Spaces Betwixt and Between: The Interconnections of Performance and Technology

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We rail at technology when it gets too noisy, pollutes our air, or is about to drive a new superhighway through our living room. For the rest, we are content to consume its products unquestioningly. So long as we can negotiate the triumph of technology successfully, we are unconcerned to ask what the presuppositions of this technical world are and how they bind us to its framework. Already these presuppositions are so much the invisible medium of our actual life that we have become unconscious of them. We may eventually become so enclosed in them that we cannot even imagine any other way of thought but technical thinking. That is the point at which we shall have turned all our questions over to the think tanks as problems of human engineering. We seem already on the way there.

Barrett, 1979

Technology, properly interiorized, does not degrade human life but on the contrary enhances it.

Ong, 1982

Eleven years ago, a Performance Studies division panelist at a national conference challenged her audience to consider other methods of scholarship besides the written word. Text and Performance Quarterly (TPQ) had been a fertile site for performance theorists to showcase their work, however the "text" had primarily been "words," while the "performance" was represented by those words. What was "lost," she wondered, by using words as the primary vehicle for scholarship, when performance typically emphasized the "body?"

Her call to dislodge traditional notions of orality and literacy has been echoed in other disciplines as scholars seek a more embodied human experience. Currently, most academic enterprises (teaching and research; classes, conferences and journals) still reflect a preference for both the written and spoken word, or the hegemony of "logos." In fact, our introduction (and much in this issue generally) reflects this same preference, for as Gura (2000) writes in a review of James Anderson Winn's book The Pale of Words: Reflections on the Humanities and Performance: "One of the nice ironies of contemporary theory is the way in which even those who claim not to be influenced by the tyranny of language are found to employ it in just the ways they deplore" (p. 216). While "deplore" is perhaps too strong a word for the editors of this special edition, as we recognize the performativity and multi-vocality of language, we do recognize the "tyranny" that words wield as our work, in this introduction, in our Call for Papers, and in our notes to authors, falls prey to that which we hoped to critique.

Two years ago we were invited to conceptualize, propose and edit a special issue of the American Communication Journal (ACJ). As a world-wide web publication, the editorial policy states:

The researcher is free to present his or her findings in an interactive multimedia environment, making use of the entire spectrum of computer-mediated data. Redefining that which has been traditionally recognized as a 'text,' the ACJ liberates publication from the physical and financial firewalls of print by placing the academic work online, complete with much material previously relegated to a footnote, endnote, or the futile 'see also.' . . . The learning opportunities are as infinite and immediate as the researcher's creativity and reader's bandwidth will allow. In short, the purpose of ACJ is to create an interactive digital canvas, upon which communication scholars may articulate their thoughts, arguments, and findings in pedagogically rich and meaningful ways.

As evinced by this editorial purpose, the opportunities offered by the ACJ were immense. Yet even with this challenge, most ACJ articles resorted to "traditional scholarship" that could be accessed on-line. Those who "wrote" on a wider and larger "interactive digital canvas," and tried to leap over the "physical and financial firewalls of print" resorted primarily to the "point and click" method of "reading" (click on the icon, see the artifact, hear the voices, see the bodies). In a sense, "on-line" simply functioned as pages, for "readers" to turn at will. 1

With two major challenges before us, one offered by performance theorists, the other by the ACJ, we discussed the intersections (both real and potential) between these two fields. And we were not alone. Even "literature," traditionally a paper and print discipline, was riveted by burgeoning technology. Mirapaul (2002) cites N. Katherine Hayles, a professor of English at U.C.L.A., on this very issue: "For centuries literature has been delivered in a vehicle with a narrow sensory interface: the print book. As virtual-reality technologies become cheaper and more accessible, literature is moving into vehicles with richer sensory input" (as cited in Mirapaul, 2002, p. B2). In the same article, Robert Coover, English professor at Brown, is quoted about this move: "It may not work very well. . . . This may be a theatrical space more than a narrative or poetic space. Our use of text may be scripting more than either hearing or reading" (p. B2). Even with this disclaimer, he has spent much of his recent career undermining "the dogmatic solidity of the printed text" (B2). Could we do the same with this special issue?

With performance as our entry point, we discussed how we could utilize the technology afforded by the ACJ, to take up the challenge of discovering "newer ways to mean." Could we combine performance with technology in some new and interesting way to expand notions of scholarship in the field of Communication Studies? Admittedly, technology 2 seemed like a curious confrere with performance, as "technology" is often thought of as an alienating presence in contemporary culture, 3 while performance, as mentioned before, is "by definition" embodied. Yet technology had always already permeated the performative place and space: from tape-recorders to video-recorders; from sound-systems to lighting boxes, performance is saturated with technology. In most of these endeavors, however, technology acted as a vehicle, a form, while performance seemed to supply the tenor, or the content. 4 As we discussed the relationship between technology and performance, we believed that the potential of "performance" and "technology" to mutually challenge and shape each other in practice had not come close to being exhausted. As Ong (1982) writes: "Technologies are not mere exterior aids but also interior transformations of consciousness . . ."(p. 82). In other words, could there be a way of making technology and performance 5 simultaneously both vehicle and tenor?

Most submissions for this special edition were modeled on the point and click method of performing technology; exploring the "fourth wall" between performer and audience, but only in the text, not in relationship to the reader. In the mix, however, we received a piece by Heather Raikes, "cosine," "a (re)presentation of an interdisciplinary multimedia performance event . . . inspired by and structurally based on ideas derived from math and modern physics. . ." which proved to be a technological and aesthetic venture that left us challenged, troubled, befuddled, and stimulated. In fact, only one of our computers had the "right programs" necessary to access the complexity of the site. Furthermore, our attempts to impose linearity (and yes, we understood the irony) were left frustrated. Tenor and vehicle became one as distinctions between the "original" installation, the installation as evoked online, and the "performative/technology" tension seemed to dissolve.

We decided that since we had one "technologically" oriented piece, Mady Schutzman's installation, "The Joker Runs Wild" provided a complementary piece as it focused primarily on performance. Well-known for her research on the techniques of performance activist Augusto Boal, Schutzman's website and text investigated "how the strategies of tricksters, jokers, jokes, and joking of all kinds might enhance the dramatic techniques and political goals of Boal's 6 Theatre of the Oppressed." Exploiting technologies to explore Boal, Schutzman used the Joker as both content and form, tenor and vehicle.

With "cosine" and "Joker Runs Wild" as our two installations we invited six critics to "read/explore these installations and provide a critical rejoinder to them--not as separate entities, but as parts of a dialogue in which you as a respondent will also join" (letter to respondents). In order to actualize this conversation, we requested that their responses were less "traditional criticism" than they were a place to make theoretical connections between technology and performance, exploring key issues that these two installations raised. These six responses, combined with Raikes' and Schutzman's installations have provided us, and now we hope you 7 (whenever the performative "now" of experiencing this journal occurs), with a bit of bewilderment, 8 provocation, 9 and perhaps even a little jouissance. Ideally, our hope is that performance and technology might provide a transformative liminal space for the creation of more humane possibilities and meaning.

Works Cited, Authors Notes