Aleksandar Dunđerović and Ivan Pravdić: Review of the book Digital Performing Arts – Participatory Practices in a Digital Age

As mentioned in the introduction by Mirjana Nikolić, since 1957. with the founding and uniting of four arts academies – Faculty of Music, Faculty of Fine Arts, Faculty of Applied Arts and Faculty of Dramatic Arts, the University of Arts in Belgrade has been an integral place for the progression of cultural and art fields. Since 2001 the idea of binding and complementing knowledge from each program started with forming Interdisciplinary studies in Belgrade. The interdisciplinary studies implemented many new study programs, book publications, practices and conferences, one being the International Conference Digital Performing Arts – Participatory Practices in a Digital Age in a hybrid form, from 6th to 8th April 2022. The goal was to gather professionals and artists worldwide to present their experiences and ideas of digital arts and performance. The interest in the topic was very engaging since these practices had an intensive impact, developments and modifications due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The conference was an interlude which continued with the book of the same title, and hopefully, the subject will keep improving. When it comes to new and interdisciplinary fields, advancements will be continuous and may further spawn another, hybrid forms.

The digital forms exist as early as the idea to “tape” some notion. In the 19th century, there were many attempts to do so. For instance, kinetophone and kinetoscope showed dancers in motion. Although those tapes were analogue, today, they are digitized and can be seen on many platforms and channels as a part of digital footprints. A prominent example of progressive work on performativity and digitalization is the work of Oskar Schlemmer, an artist and pedagogue at the Bauhaus school. Although, at that time (first part of the 20th century), robots were not developed and technology for performances was just being modestly electrified, Schlemmer’s Das Triadisches Ballett (The Triadic Ballet) uses geometrical shapes as a representation of the “dehumanized human body”, making people look like dancing machines. Laterna Magica was one of the first projectors that used pictures and light sources to present them on a bigger scale, and that was the beginning of large-scale projection and the opening of theatres to modern media and technology. Later, the Czech multimedia theatre Laterna Magica, inspired by formal principles of Erwin Piscator’s political theatre was founded in 1958 and still exists today.

From the visual perspective of the book, its yellow and black colour palette and picture of crowded people climbing up the stairs represent modernity, movement and development. The title picture captures people wearing masks, presenting an era of COVID-19 that everyone feels is far behind us, but it left a recognizable trace in the arts and digital world. Many of the essays in the book handle stories of the transition from live work and performance to digital and online platforms.

The title, written in mentioned contrasts, emphasizes the keywords: Digital Performing Arts, referring to a discipline that is evolving, constantly moving and changing. Further heading, Participatory Practices in a Digital Age, leads to examples of 13 chapters presenting different variations and examples in the culture and arts of digitalization and performance.

The first chapter is written by Aleksandar Dunđerović, one of the book’s editors and is titled War as a Digital Media Performance in a Post-truth Era. The author starts with an explanation of a picture depicting US soldiers putting the American Flag in Iwo Jima. It explains that image is also a type of digital performance because most of the pictures, before being shot are directed and later modified, presenting scenes and choreography made by the photographer. By being altered in a certain way, they influence and tell a certain story to viewers. Similarly, influencers and politicians (who are the most impactful influencers) are in some way digital performers who try to convince and tell indoctrinating stories to audiences. Dunđerović gives examples of the NATO bombing and Russian-Ukraine war, being inscribed by politicians before they happened.

Continuing similar discourse, Marija Barna Lipovski also mentions that Ukraine’s president Zelensky is not a professional performer by accident. She analyzes digital media tools used for the Russian-Ukraine war in her essay Hashtag #battleofUkraine. She divided her work into two parts, first a theoretical approach based on Heidegger and Ihde’s explanations and definitions of technology. In the second part, she calls our society a society of performers, where wars and media wars in parallel shape public minds.

Persephone Sextou tells a story of applied theatre, Digital Solutions to Applied Theatre in Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic, in response to COVID-19. Since C19 started, performers have not been allowed in children’s hospitals due to safety restrictions. During that time, children’s health and well-being worsened due to a lack of entertainment. Therefore, movies and other forms of digital media were made for specific age groups using theatre and performance principles. The whole project is a good base for creating interdisciplinary art and scientific-based events in paediatrics.

Another story of C19 experiences is Zoom, Camera, Action – The Creation of Action Choreography for Online Theatre using Isolated Actors by Lizzie Conrad Hughes. This essay also follows the transition of Shakespeare Theater into an online (Zoom) performance due to the pandemic. It explains the choreography and logic behind certain moves used by actors and actresses. The online approach kept the mental well-being of actors since they were still able to pursue their jobs and careers, and it allowed mothers of young children and people with disabilities to participate in the same way as others. This transition was so influential that Shake-Scene still works online today.

In Interactive Digital Live Art from China, Bill Aitchson tells his story as the curator of a digital project Love in the Time of Corona. In this performance created by participants in different countries, the phone was interchanged between people. Using phone cameras and interactive applications enabled the mobility of each performer. The goal was to discover functional ideas and techniques for establishing connections with strangers (online participators), which they had accomplished since the project brought new approaches to online performance and helped develop online performances, festivals and audiences. Various topics were mentioned during this project, such as disabilities, feminism, relationship issues etc.

Another author who writes about the transition to online work from a live one is Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez in her essay Jewellery Multiplicity – Digital Architectures, based on a live project with students of jewellery design, architecture, interior design and landscape architecture. In her essay, she uses and explains Project Macbeto, an online Macbet play that investigated the relation between jewellery and screen, augmented reality possibilities and architectural spatial transformations. Through the process of digital pedagogies, as the author names it, interdisciplinary approaches were used to discover new ways of online theatre functioning.

In Gamification in Art – The Implementation of Elements of Video games in Works of Art by the Method of Augmented Reality, Miljan Stevanović, Jelena Pejić and Petar Pejić explain the importance of acknowledging games as a specific art field. They gave examples of Rimini Protocol, Tate Worlds, The Pool of London and Pokemon GO, games exquisitely important as the VR and AR concept of putting virtual characters at real-world locations. These games encourage participation, making games more interactive and attractive to the audience.

Furthermore, in Björk’s Biophilia in the Light of the Performing Arts – A Step Toward a New Paradigm Uroš Z. Đurković analyzes one of the most avantgarde and eccentric singers of the 20th and 21st centuries, Björk. Biophilia is the seventh studio album by Icelandic singer Björk, made in the form of a mutual core application in which you can listen to Björk’s songs and watch visual patterns, or the viewer can interact with it and create new songs. The author sees much higher potential than that – the potential of the interconnection of music, visual and performing arts introducing innovative and holistic approaches to knowledge, art, philosophy and science.

On the other hand, Tanja Ostojić makes a clear distinction and criticism of online performance in her essay Participatory Feminist Performance Practices in Digital Age – A Critical View on Digitalization Approach, or What Cannot Be Replaced Regarding the Public Space and the Presence: The Case of the ‘Mis(s)placed Women?’ Project (2009–2022). Her work is mainly based on her experience and reflection of her performance Mis(s)paced Women, performed online and live. She makes a clear distinction between what can or cannot be achieved online, emphasizing the importance of integrating public spaces and physical senses that cannot be reached over the web.

Polly Hudson describes a gardening and movement project in Birmingham, documented in 2019–2022 in We Reap What We Saw. The author investigated the relationship between nature and human body by working as a dancer and gardener, combining knowledge of somatics and embodiment. The goal was to re-establish a connection with Earth, herself and the land that gives us life and food, showing how humans can awaken their truth and senses.

In the essay The Fluid Context of Performing the Digital: “ NON - FINITO ” – Performings of Spatial Narratives, Svetlana Volic analyses the aesthetic-ethical changes in perception of the digital image, whether as video projection, printed material or on the screen. The research paper also examines digital narratives and development. The title originates from the Italian language, meaning unfinished and symbolizes the philosophical concept of the process of existence, movement and transformation of time and space. And just as performance is a process that exists at one point, meandering and disappearing in our thoughts, the same wave of digital narrative inundates the space temporarily, but it is left as evidence of the event.

A similar experience of digital media exploration of performance appears in Aerodynamics – Multimedia Performance by Ljubinka Stojanović. Her concept of Aerodynamics in the multimedia project relies on Aristotle’s mythos and long-standing interest in research of personality, heritage and phenomenon of human body movement in a given time and space. Mathematical analysis and empirical approximations of aerodynamics are applicable through the art of performance that explores the human moving suppressed by politics and its position in the rapid development of digitalization. By exploring (digital) performance, she concludes how fragile the human position is, with all the wars happening around us, feeling helpless and lost.

The essay by the other editor, Ivan Pravdić, EnterActive in Re: Public – Digital and Live Sphere of Mass Time Design, begins with the author explaining Time Design, a discipline developed by himself. He also explains digital art in general, AI concepts, and the poetics of performative human movement and action. The author also analyzes rituals as the earliest form of syncretic theatre and how they connect with the audience. In the other part, the concept of EnterActive is explained as a digital platform directed to social interaction and connection between cities, people, and screens connecting private and public spaces.

In Kilometre in Cyberspace – performativity of appropriating land-art and conceptual artworks into 21st-century – Internet art practices, Sonja R. Jankov presents the work of two contemporary artists, Kemmel Goldmsith and Greg Allen and their creation of net-art works, digital work sealed to a square kilometre. She problematizes the notion of appropriation as a post-structuralist approach to arts, forming sociability and emancipation, which is possible through its performative aspect.

In Homo Arbiter Formae – Decision-maker and Brainworker, Venelin Iliev Shurelov explains the Latin term Homo Arbiter Formae (in translation One-Who-Makes-Aesthetic-Decisions) relying on the theory of Jack Burnham. Homo Arbiter Formae is the next evolutionary step of humans. It investigates correlations between technology and people: Homo Arbiter Formae as one person, one person as datafied interaction, one person as computer-human symbiosis, one person as all of us.

Connecting and combining the ideas of all these authors invoke the conclusion that we live in a high time of mutualism (or sometimes parasitism) between people and technology. The diversity of digital expressions in essays is a significant example of plurality that digital arts and approaches can reach. Every thought, human doing, motion, and performance can be transmitted on the screen and digitized, leaving traces in the database forever. People and performative arts continue their lives in a digital form, presenting all the world’s (digital) stage.