Editors’ introduction

Chris Salter, Guest Editor of this special double issue of Theatre and Performance Design, has long observed and analysed the ‘entanglement’ of technology and performance histories and practices (Salter 2010) and made visible the degree of (invisible) surveillance with which ‘sensing machines’ have infiltrated our daily work and life (Salter 2022).

In the call for ‘On Capture’, Salter again focussed on surveillance, yet this time with a focus on performative bodily and scenographic practices and the way in which artists interpret and realise ‘capture’ on the stage and in the studio, and how key parameters of performance (body, time, space) are represented, altered and critiqued through the encoding and decoding of data in live and mediated performance. The timeliness of this issue is also its urgency. As relentless reports on the rapid development and expansion of the properties of public-facing artificial intelligence (AI) systems unfold, an ambivalence towards our fascination with technology comes to the fore. Is the deliberate slowing down of AI research and development justified to establish ethical strategies to deal with its purported limitless knowledge production and communication, as some suggest? Is a certain techno-pessimism the natural consequence of being confronted with a technology that may erase us? On the other hand, rather than dominate or erase, the call by psychologists and neurobiologists for AI to develop so-called ‘hot’ cognition (Cuzzolin et al. 2020) – that is, to understand and react to a person’s thinking, including the concept of Theory of Mind (ToM) – may just be beginning to be answered by the most recent research. ToM denotes a person’s ability to take another person’s perspective in communication, and whether or not AI has ToM is hotly disputed right now (Whang 2023). If, however, an AI system is equipped with ToM, it not only will understand humans’ thinking but will also be able to understand that of another, similar AI system. This will mean robot-to-robot performances, as well as human and robot ones, will be able to not only simulate ToM and related qualities such as empathy but will actually embody these in real time, opening up myriad perspectives and concerns for artists at the same time.

In line with the above thoughts, the responses to Salter’s call by practitioners and theorists demonstrate a deep engagement with creating new (and different) relationships and new (and different) production and reception aesthetics forged from the confrontation between the physical body and binary data. The depersonalisation of the actor’s body, evoked since Kleist and Maeterlinck and revisited by Craig in his concept of the Übermarionette, and its subsequent re-personalisation in a ‘datafied’ theatrical environment and, with it, the processes of de-theatricalisation and re-theatricalisation of the stage are some of the aspects prevalent in this issue. These deconstruct and redefine, often in experimental settings, key issues of identity and mimesis, of presentation and representation in performance (theory).

Dedicated to artists’ and theorists’ diverse practices of interrogating, expanding, pushing, and contextualising existing and new technologies of data capture in scenography and performance, ‘On Capture’ shows that humans and more-than-humans will not only exist side by side but rather evolve together, in both synchronous and dissonant ways. For a journal such as ours, this means that the discourse on technology, body and space in the expanded practices of scenography will continue to be one of the focal points of our engagement with contemporary practice as we interrogate and respond to the diverse and creative ways in which scenographers, artists, architects and their theorists invite a new player here to last: AI.

Our regular feature ‘Report from … ’ also looks at the expanded practices of scenography but in this instance how this expansion is encouraging new and progressive pedagogies in India. In his ‘Report from Kerala’, Richard Allen gives us an evocative and informative account of the inaugural International Festival of Theatre Schools (IFTS) held at the University of Calicut in Kerala in February of this year. His observations reveal not only the range of pedagogies employed in theatre departments across the sub-continent but also the delicate balance being struck between preserving traditional practices and embracing the newest technological advances. Appropriately, for this special double issue, Lawrence Wallen’s ‘Influential design’ is a dialogue with ChatGPT on the polymath Peter Weibel who passed in March this year, and shows the relentlessness, creativity and scepticism needed to employ AI as a writing partner. Looking forward, we have a special double issue ‘On Light’ (Autumn/Winter 2023) coming up; this will be co-edited by Katherine Graham, Scott Palmer and Kelli Zezulka, – their recently published anthology Contemporary Performance Lighting: Experience, Creativity and Meaning is reviewed in this issue – and a special double issue devoted to Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space (PQ) 2023 in Spring/Summer 2024.

We thank Chris Salter for guest editing this timely and provocative special double issue, and all the contributors as well as our reviewers. Thanks also go to our book review editors and to Nick Tatchell for keeping us on track and bringing everything together.