Routledge Companion to Performance and Technology
1st Edition
Published on 18. May 2026
Book
Hardback
754 pages
978-1-032-67860-3 (ISBN)
Description
Technology has become fully integrated into the ecologies in which we live, including our ways of making and making sense of theater, dance, and performance.
While these practices have long histories of incorporating tools and instruments in live performances, from masks, to amplification, lighting, and stagecraft, technology today can no longer be understood as a tool complementing essentially non-technological behaviors or environments. Technologies and how they are developed and used are informed by ideas, assumptions, and practices that are culturally and historically situated and have material impacts. Whether implicitly or intentionally, we are always already operating in and requiring creative and critical means of engaging with technoscientific lifeworlds. Authors in this volume show how human-technology intersections within the performing arts reflect developments in the world at large and how artistic inquiry might contribute to or intervene in these tendencies. Together, the chapters in this volume offer a broad view that includes diverse types of performances and a range of technologies without imposing these as categories on a field that does not operate along the lines of such categorizations.
This broad view also allows us to bring together discourses and subjects that have been discussed separately in relation to different genres or aspects of performance, different types of technologies, or from the perspective of different technology-related concerns, including interactivity, immersion, inter-, multi-, and transmediality, equity, futurisms, archival practices, and new dramaturgies.
While these practices have long histories of incorporating tools and instruments in live performances, from masks, to amplification, lighting, and stagecraft, technology today can no longer be understood as a tool complementing essentially non-technological behaviors or environments. Technologies and how they are developed and used are informed by ideas, assumptions, and practices that are culturally and historically situated and have material impacts. Whether implicitly or intentionally, we are always already operating in and requiring creative and critical means of engaging with technoscientific lifeworlds. Authors in this volume show how human-technology intersections within the performing arts reflect developments in the world at large and how artistic inquiry might contribute to or intervene in these tendencies. Together, the chapters in this volume offer a broad view that includes diverse types of performances and a range of technologies without imposing these as categories on a field that does not operate along the lines of such categorizations.
This broad view also allows us to bring together discourses and subjects that have been discussed separately in relation to different genres or aspects of performance, different types of technologies, or from the perspective of different technology-related concerns, including interactivity, immersion, inter-, multi-, and transmediality, equity, futurisms, archival practices, and new dramaturgies.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Postgraduate, Professional Reference, Professional Training, and Undergraduate Advanced
Product notice
Laminated cover
Illustrations
126 s/w Photographien bzw. Rasterbilder, 126 s/w Abbildungen
126 Halftones, black and white; 126 Illustrations, black and white
Dimensions
Height: 244 mm
Width: 170 mm
Thickness: 41 mm
Weight
1440 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-032-67860-3 (9781032678603)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Maaike Bleeker | Norah Zuniga Shaw
Routledge Companion to Performance and Technology
E-Book
05/2026
1st Edition
Routledge
€350.99
Available for download
Maaike Bleeker | Norah Zuniga Shaw
Routledge Companion to Performance and Technology
E-Book
05/2026
1st Edition
Routledge
€350.99
Available for download
Persons
Maaike Bleeker is a Professor of Performance, Science and Technology in the Department of Media and Culture Studies at Utrecht University and Director of the Research Institute for Cultural Inquiry.
Norah Zuniga Shaw is Professor and Director for Dance and Technology at the Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design (ACCAD) and Department of Dance at The Ohio State University.
Norah Zuniga Shaw is Professor and Director for Dance and Technology at the Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design (ACCAD) and Department of Dance at The Ohio State University.
Content
Acknowledgements
Contributors Biography
Introduction
Chapter 1: Postdigital Performance by Matthew Causey
Chapter 2: Texts and Contexts by Sarah Bay-Cheng, Jennifer Parker-Starbuck and David Saltz
Chapter 3: Intermediality in Theatre and Performance by Chiel Kattenbelt
Chapter 4: Laszlo Moholy-Nagy's "Theatre of Totality" by Sue Broadhurst
Chapter 5: The Digital Double by Steve Dixon
Chapter 6: The Co-Evolution of Performance and Technology by Sally Jane Norman
Chapter 7: Soulcraft Theorizing Black Techne in African and American Viral Dance by Reginold A. Royston
Chapter 8: Robots on Stage in Contemporary Performance by Elizabeth Jochum
Chapter 9: Algorithmic Theater Then and Now by Annie Dorsen and Tom Seller
Chapter 10: Proscenium as Temporary Shelter by Catherine M. Cole
Chapter 11: Performing 'Art and Technology' in Cold War America by Douglas Eacho
Chapter 12: Performance After Automation by Nicholas Ridout
Chapter 13: Dancing and Cameras by Bill T. Jones
Chapter 14: Choreographing Technology, A Dialog with Bebe Miller
Chapter 15: Animate: XR, Bodies, and the Future of the Stage by Timothy Thomasson and Chris Salter
Chapter 16: Body and Shado: Contingent Transformations of Light on Stage by Katherine Graham
Chapter 17: On The Notion of Verticality in Dramaturgy by Joergen Dahlqvist
Chapter 18: Invisible Performers: Sonic Ghosts, an Acousdramatic Approach, and the Transformative Potential of Digital Audio Technology in Theater by Kent Olofsson
Chapter 19: Feminist Unboxing: A Critical Approach toward Incorporating Digital Technologies into Creative and Scholarly Work by Jessica J. Rajko
Chapter 20: Post-Colonial Gueicharo Robots and the Complexities of Sense-Making in Performance and Technology: A Dialog with Yanira Castro by Norah Zuniga Shaw
Chapter 21: The Non-Linearity of Technical Production in the Performing Arts by Ashley Ferro-Murray
Chapter 22: Headphone Theater and the Performance of Perception by Rosemary Klich
Chapter 23: Choreoauratic Frequencies: Tuning in to Headphonic Encounters from Aotearoa by Becca Wood
Chapter 24: The Spectatorial Body in Multimedia Performance: The London International Festival of Theatre (Lift) 2010 by Jennifer Parker-Starbuck
Chapter 25: But How Will They Know It's Live? Anonymous Ensemble's Virtual Performances by Jessica Del Vecchio and Eammon Farrell
Chapter 26: The Digital Double as a Choreographic Technique: The Splitting Magic on Screens by Suparna Banerjee
Chapter 27: Dramaturgy of Technological Absence: Tim Crouch's Truth's a Dog Must to Kennel by Seda Ilter
Chapter 28: The Cyborg-Apparatus Continuum. or, how the question concerning technology has twisted and turned by Kristof van Baarle
Chapter 29: Access, Performance, Technology: Engaging with the Omissions of a Past Creative Self by Alice Sheppard
Chapter 30: Utterances of Global Futurisms by Bhumi B Patel
Chapter 31: Performing Telepresence: Technology and Coloniality in Choy Ka Fai's Postcolonial Spirits (2021) by Evelyn Wan
Chapter 32: The Ear That Speaks by Eddie Paterson and Lara Stevens
Chapter 33: Critical Techno-dramaturgy: Mobilizing Embodied Perception of the Human-Technology Relationship in Performance by Stephen Fernandez
Chapter 34: The Theatricality of Mindar, Kodai-ji Temple's Android Buddhist Priest by Yuji Sone
Chapter 35: Technologies of Community: Digital Portraits in Black Dance by Thomas F. Defrantz
Chapter 36: Cultural Dreams of Datafied Bodies: Motion Capture as a Technological Imaginary by Laura Karreman
Chapter 37: "In the Half-ight": Phenomenological Approaches to Complex Technological Systems by Susan Kozel
Chapter 38: Landing and Dispersing at the Same Time: Embodied Awareness in Virtual and Physical Spaces by Ruth Gibson and Jenny Roche
Chapter 39: Attending to the Dandelions: Social Movement Building through Participatory Arts Practice by Lyndsey Vader
Chapter 40: Black Haptics by Andre M. Zachery
Chapter 41: Performance as an act of Generosity: Sharing Aboriginal Stories through Drone Dramaturgy in Moombaki by Christina Chau and Helena Grehan
Chapter 42: Technopoetics of Togetherness: Live Performance before the End of the World by Marcela A. Fuentes
Chapter 43: The Politics of Performance and Technology in South Africa Jay Pather in dialog with Norah Zuniga Shaw and with contributions from Dr. Ketu Katrak
Chapter 44: Addenda, Phenomenology, Embodiment: Cyborgs and Disability Performance by Petra Kuppers
Chapter 45: Blast Theory's Karen: Reharnessing the New Digital Specificities of a Hyperindustrial World by Neill O'Dwyer
Chapter 46: A Bed of One's Own: (In)Voluntary Choices of Disengagement in Digital Performance Environments by Eirini Nedelkopoulou
Chapter 47: The Sublime Grandeur of Inconsequential Death by Kate Ladenheim
Chapter 48: Performing Counterhistory: The Ghostly Archives of Summer of Soul by Gabriela Trigo-McIntyre
Chapter 49: Archives of Care by Gesel R. Mason, Rebecca Salzer, and Carlson H. Coogler
Chapter 50: Critical Multimedia Editions for Theater Research by Miguel Escobar Varela
Chapter 51: Evolving Practices of Choreographic Transmission for the Screen and Beyond by Shannon Cuykendall
Chapter 52: Playing at Performance: Dance Games and Intimate Media by Kiri Miller
Chapter 53: Steps by Paul Kaiser
Chapter 54: Just Moves?: Motion Extraction, Machine Learning, and the Generative Derivative in Dance By Harmony Bench
Chapter 55: TikTok and Short-Form Screendance Before and After COVID by Alexandra Harlig and Harmony Bench with Crystal Abidin, Trevor Boffone, Kelly Bowker, Colette Eloi, Pamela Krayenbuhl and Chuyun Oh
Chapter 56: Data Drama: How Machine Audiences Reprogram Theater by Sarah Bay-Cheng with contributions from Mariel Marshall and Daniela Rosu
Index
Contributors Biography
Introduction
Chapter 1: Postdigital Performance by Matthew Causey
Chapter 2: Texts and Contexts by Sarah Bay-Cheng, Jennifer Parker-Starbuck and David Saltz
Chapter 3: Intermediality in Theatre and Performance by Chiel Kattenbelt
Chapter 4: Laszlo Moholy-Nagy's "Theatre of Totality" by Sue Broadhurst
Chapter 5: The Digital Double by Steve Dixon
Chapter 6: The Co-Evolution of Performance and Technology by Sally Jane Norman
Chapter 7: Soulcraft Theorizing Black Techne in African and American Viral Dance by Reginold A. Royston
Chapter 8: Robots on Stage in Contemporary Performance by Elizabeth Jochum
Chapter 9: Algorithmic Theater Then and Now by Annie Dorsen and Tom Seller
Chapter 10: Proscenium as Temporary Shelter by Catherine M. Cole
Chapter 11: Performing 'Art and Technology' in Cold War America by Douglas Eacho
Chapter 12: Performance After Automation by Nicholas Ridout
Chapter 13: Dancing and Cameras by Bill T. Jones
Chapter 14: Choreographing Technology, A Dialog with Bebe Miller
Chapter 15: Animate: XR, Bodies, and the Future of the Stage by Timothy Thomasson and Chris Salter
Chapter 16: Body and Shado: Contingent Transformations of Light on Stage by Katherine Graham
Chapter 17: On The Notion of Verticality in Dramaturgy by Joergen Dahlqvist
Chapter 18: Invisible Performers: Sonic Ghosts, an Acousdramatic Approach, and the Transformative Potential of Digital Audio Technology in Theater by Kent Olofsson
Chapter 19: Feminist Unboxing: A Critical Approach toward Incorporating Digital Technologies into Creative and Scholarly Work by Jessica J. Rajko
Chapter 20: Post-Colonial Gueicharo Robots and the Complexities of Sense-Making in Performance and Technology: A Dialog with Yanira Castro by Norah Zuniga Shaw
Chapter 21: The Non-Linearity of Technical Production in the Performing Arts by Ashley Ferro-Murray
Chapter 22: Headphone Theater and the Performance of Perception by Rosemary Klich
Chapter 23: Choreoauratic Frequencies: Tuning in to Headphonic Encounters from Aotearoa by Becca Wood
Chapter 24: The Spectatorial Body in Multimedia Performance: The London International Festival of Theatre (Lift) 2010 by Jennifer Parker-Starbuck
Chapter 25: But How Will They Know It's Live? Anonymous Ensemble's Virtual Performances by Jessica Del Vecchio and Eammon Farrell
Chapter 26: The Digital Double as a Choreographic Technique: The Splitting Magic on Screens by Suparna Banerjee
Chapter 27: Dramaturgy of Technological Absence: Tim Crouch's Truth's a Dog Must to Kennel by Seda Ilter
Chapter 28: The Cyborg-Apparatus Continuum. or, how the question concerning technology has twisted and turned by Kristof van Baarle
Chapter 29: Access, Performance, Technology: Engaging with the Omissions of a Past Creative Self by Alice Sheppard
Chapter 30: Utterances of Global Futurisms by Bhumi B Patel
Chapter 31: Performing Telepresence: Technology and Coloniality in Choy Ka Fai's Postcolonial Spirits (2021) by Evelyn Wan
Chapter 32: The Ear That Speaks by Eddie Paterson and Lara Stevens
Chapter 33: Critical Techno-dramaturgy: Mobilizing Embodied Perception of the Human-Technology Relationship in Performance by Stephen Fernandez
Chapter 34: The Theatricality of Mindar, Kodai-ji Temple's Android Buddhist Priest by Yuji Sone
Chapter 35: Technologies of Community: Digital Portraits in Black Dance by Thomas F. Defrantz
Chapter 36: Cultural Dreams of Datafied Bodies: Motion Capture as a Technological Imaginary by Laura Karreman
Chapter 37: "In the Half-ight": Phenomenological Approaches to Complex Technological Systems by Susan Kozel
Chapter 38: Landing and Dispersing at the Same Time: Embodied Awareness in Virtual and Physical Spaces by Ruth Gibson and Jenny Roche
Chapter 39: Attending to the Dandelions: Social Movement Building through Participatory Arts Practice by Lyndsey Vader
Chapter 40: Black Haptics by Andre M. Zachery
Chapter 41: Performance as an act of Generosity: Sharing Aboriginal Stories through Drone Dramaturgy in Moombaki by Christina Chau and Helena Grehan
Chapter 42: Technopoetics of Togetherness: Live Performance before the End of the World by Marcela A. Fuentes
Chapter 43: The Politics of Performance and Technology in South Africa Jay Pather in dialog with Norah Zuniga Shaw and with contributions from Dr. Ketu Katrak
Chapter 44: Addenda, Phenomenology, Embodiment: Cyborgs and Disability Performance by Petra Kuppers
Chapter 45: Blast Theory's Karen: Reharnessing the New Digital Specificities of a Hyperindustrial World by Neill O'Dwyer
Chapter 46: A Bed of One's Own: (In)Voluntary Choices of Disengagement in Digital Performance Environments by Eirini Nedelkopoulou
Chapter 47: The Sublime Grandeur of Inconsequential Death by Kate Ladenheim
Chapter 48: Performing Counterhistory: The Ghostly Archives of Summer of Soul by Gabriela Trigo-McIntyre
Chapter 49: Archives of Care by Gesel R. Mason, Rebecca Salzer, and Carlson H. Coogler
Chapter 50: Critical Multimedia Editions for Theater Research by Miguel Escobar Varela
Chapter 51: Evolving Practices of Choreographic Transmission for the Screen and Beyond by Shannon Cuykendall
Chapter 52: Playing at Performance: Dance Games and Intimate Media by Kiri Miller
Chapter 53: Steps by Paul Kaiser
Chapter 54: Just Moves?: Motion Extraction, Machine Learning, and the Generative Derivative in Dance By Harmony Bench
Chapter 55: TikTok and Short-Form Screendance Before and After COVID by Alexandra Harlig and Harmony Bench with Crystal Abidin, Trevor Boffone, Kelly Bowker, Colette Eloi, Pamela Krayenbuhl and Chuyun Oh
Chapter 56: Data Drama: How Machine Audiences Reprogram Theater by Sarah Bay-Cheng with contributions from Mariel Marshall and Daniela Rosu
Index