Augmenting Expectation in Playful Arena Performances with Ubiquitous Intimate Technologies

The empowerment and facility of new ubiquitous sensor technologies combined with the inherent freedom of playful arenas has led to a new breed of performance. These new performances meld atoms and bits, performer and audience, fantasy and fact to create an intimate connection between our physical and virtual world and to affectively augment our notion of expectation. Low-cost sensing and quick set up allows for more flexible, spontaneous and mobile performances which infiltrate unanticipated performance spaces. Our interest lies in how technology stimulates the desire of the clubber to create and be performative within this space; how the technology promotes dialogue between itself and the user; how the use of such technology may signal new and innovative performance practices. We perceive the underground club space as an arena where all who contribute to its status as a communal event embrace participation, performance and play. The clubbing environment invites individuals and groups to gather together, to suspend time and to engage in a social activity which allows them to play with and destabilise notions of identity and reality. New possibilities are envisaged through collaborative creativity. Observable participation encouraged by playful arenas may be planned and intentionally invoked by the performance. Alternatively, participation may be unplanned and proactive on the part of the audience. Performativity infuses a club event throughout and manifests on both formal and informal levels. Clubbers use of costume is often highly imaginative and can be extended further into sustained role-play. Clubbers themselves add to a sense of the theatrical experience by adopting “characters” who interact with the crowd over the course of a night. This intentional shape shifting and willingness to “other” provides us as technologists and performers with a fertile ground for experimentation and innovation. A significant aspect relating to the use of hi-tech elements in playful arenas is the apparentness of technology in performance which can either impress or intimidate observers. Alternatively, an apparent lack of technology may have a larger impact if the technology is hidden and only the effects of its usage are seen or felt, without being obscured by the edifice of the technology itself. In this paper, we investigate the use of high technology in performance, specifically within clubbing environments, and deploy our own pieces in these spaces to expose the technical, conceptual and aesthetic parameters associated with such use. The increased uptake of technology in performance runs in parallel with the changing nature of performance itself. In a variety of performance environments, such as galleries and theatres, observers are conditioned and engrained with the rigid rules of acceptable behaviour. New environments are rapidly emerging which do not bring with them such preconceived baggage of acceptable behaviour and are particularly conducive to physical engagement and interaction, with their emphasis on play in a spirit of festival and carnival. In these conditions, interaction thrives and participation flourishes from the unfamiliar interplay between audience, performer and technology, often blurring the boundary between observers and observed. Our paper explores how such relationships change our preconceived notions of acceptable behaviour and with it our legacy of expectation.