LIFT Blog: Digital Democracy

Written for the LIFT Blog

Given the steadfast devotion to its development, you could be forgiven for imagining technology to have intrinsic value. Were that the case it would be an end in and of itself, worth chasing for its own sake. Of course, technology’s value is not intrinsic, but instrumental. Any technology – and we must take care to recognise the term’s own multiplicity – can only be a means to an end. It can, as Unlimited Theatre took pains to remind us in their 2007 performance lecture The Ethics of Progress, be as easily used for bad as for good. Take splitting the atom, say Unlimited. Take chatroulette, say I (to get all 2010 about it).

This was the recurring motif of last Thursday’s LIFT Talk – the first of four throughout the festival – under the title ‘Digital Democracy’.

The debate about technology’s value has raised its head already within the work being shown by LIFT. The Builders Association’s Continuous City turned out to be both a treatise on and a polemic against the ubiquity of online communication. Though, formally, it didn’t actually seem to make live use of the internet, in terms of content it is resolute in its convictions that these communicative tools are hindering genuine, meaningful communication. Or perhaps it’s merely flagging up our innate inability to truly communicate, regardless of the technology. It’s a thesis directly contradicted by Dries Verhoeven’s Life Streaming, which creates a connection over 8805km between you and a performer in Sri Lanka. Its more than just a conversation, Verhoeven manages to make you feel as though you’re sharing the same space, the same atmosphere, the same sensations. The question always remains, however, to what extent are we projecting that experience? How real is that connection? How shared is that experience?

During Thursday’s debate, Matt Evans, co-founder of Blast Theory, stressed that theatre’s application of both digital technology and interactivity, which has more or less sprung up alongside it, is in urgent need of critiquing. Rather than simply drooling over the newfangled, we need to analyse and judge its use within or as art according to aesthetic principles. I think he’s absolutely right and it’s a warning that needs heeding by practitioners, curators, critics and audiences alike.

It's worth remembering that neither technology nor interactivity (and I mean that in a stronger sense than mere co-presence) are necessary for theatre. As with any form or content placed onstage, practitioners choose to employ these tools and methods. They could equally choose not to.

In which case, I’d like to beg two questions for discussion in the comment section below:

If it is merely an alternative option – no more or less valuable in and of itself – is it ever justifiable to use technology where one could just as easily not?

What differentiates good interactivity in theatre from bad interactivity?