Editorial Introduction

This themed issue of RiDE reflects upon the opportunities and challenges of the ever-increasing mutability of the dramatic form in contemporary cultures across the world. It builds upon the 2012 themed issue: Innovation, technology and converging practices in drama education and applied theatre (Vol. 17, Issue 4) in which the editors noted: ‘The relentless pace of technological progress will continue to pose new challenges for drama and applied theatre in policy, research and practice’ (Anderson, Cameron, and Sutton 2012, 475). Four years on, this new issue considers the progressive impact of new media forms and the multiple confluences of media that are occurring at a local, national and transnational level, informing and destabilising many of the conventions of cultural communication, including dramatic practice.

Contributions

All of the contributions to this special issue reflect the transformative potential of intermediality for applied theatre and drama education across the globe. As a means of finding cohesion for the spectrum of ideas and range of practices presented within this edition, we have structured the special issue around three central themes that resonate within certain groupings of articles. We begin with the theme of Intermediality with Children and Young People, followed by Intermediality in Higher Education and conclude with Intermediality, Community and Participation. These sections are intended to allow the reader to find connections and contrasts within related fields of practice and research, and in no way function as rigid categorisations. Indeed, there are other themes that re-occur across those groupings, including the experimentation with low-tech approaches and the use of intermedial theatres as means for attracting and engaging a younger demographic. If anything, it is the diversity of the practices and pedagogical approaches that is noticeable as contributions range from literacy interventions with under five’s in the UK to historical bricolage with drama undergraduates in South Africa, from exploration of self-perception through intermedial theatre for 7- to 12-year-olds in Australia to the potential of intermediality as a conduit for reconciliation in Northern Ireland.

Intermediality with children and young people

The contributors to this section examine the pedagogical potential of intermedial theatres in working with children and young people in order to address specific issues and concerns. Nicola Shaughnessy and Melissa Trimingham explore how intermedial ‘interventions’ can positively impact upon children with autism through a multi-sensory, child-led approach. They reflect on how intermedial playspaces enable autistic children to create meaning, and what role the body plays in developing cognition through interacting with dynamic intermedial environments. Natasha Budd, Hannah Phillips, Jo Scott and Katie Beswick all reflect on theatre projects that use intermediality with children and young people of different age groups to address specific issues, enhance learning and support the children’s development. Budd’s performance Joy Fear and Poetry turned the stage into an intermedial theatrical playspace for children aged 7–12, and found that the integration of live and mediated performance modalities can expand the communicative potential of child performers. Phillips worked with young people aged 13–18 to devise the intermedial applied theatre piece Heterophobia using digital technology, social media and urban street art forms. The piece aimed to challenge young people’s ideas and discourses around sexuality through disrupting the representations of normative heterosexuality they are routinely confronted with. Scott examines the intermedial space as a ‘system of differences’ (Derrida 1978: 354) where ‘challenging environments, affects and ideas can be positioned, experienced and exchanged’ (Derrida 1978: 369), through a series of intermedial workshops for young people that she run at the site of the Second World War holding camp Theresienstadt (Czech Republic). Beswick explores the potential of low-tech intermedialilty to impact upon the creative and communication skills of under five’s in inner-city London, working in partnership with participatory arts organisation Phakama. Finally Michelle Cox, the last contributor in this section, discusses the use of intermedial immersive performance as a means of attracting and engaging a younger audience demographic through the case study of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society.

Intermediality in higher education

This section brings together a collection of pedagogical approaches for the use of intermedial theatre and performance in Higher Education settings in different geographical contexts. Jem Kelly presents an intermedial pedagogical praxis that is shaped by his practice-led research in autobiographical performance. His praxis is rooted in memory and self-representation through the remediation of childhood experiences. Sanjin Muftic also uses media to layer historical realities, drawing upon bricolage as a methodological approach to ‘embody history’. His project, set in a South African higher education context, focused on the participation of South Africans in the First World War by inviting students to bring diverse media resources into the rehearsal space as a means of connecting with history through found material. Helen Zdriluk considers the potential of intermediality to inform undergraduate Theatre in Education practice, and reflects on the devising and participatory challenges presented by this approach. Zdriluk’s students developed a performance and workshop for 4- to 13-year-olds to explore ‘digital citizenship’, which was inspired by Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet but employed social media such as Twitter and Facebook to make the piece relevant to young people’s lives and concerns. Petronilla Whitfield focuses specifically on the application of intermediality to support UK drama students with dyslexia to access and interpret Shakespearian text, through a transmediation of the written word into image via the creation and application of new computer software entitled Sensing Shakespeare. Finally under this theme, David Devanny and Jack McGowan share findings from the use of a bespoke voice-recognition augmented performance system in performance poetry workshops for students in Higher Education.

Intermediality, community and participation

Contributors to this third section consider the use of intermediality in community and participatory settings, bringing together a diverse and rich range of projects from ambulatory performances to confessional one-to-one work. Becca Wood and Molly Mullen present their ambulatory performance Rangi Ruru Walk, that was created to ‘attend to the histories, politics and geographies’ of the site of Rangi Ruru Girls’ School in New Zealand, which was partly destroyed by an earthquake in 2012. Wood and Mullen examine the potential of technologically mediated performance to offer new modes for creative practice that deepen social and spatial connectivity. Developing the earlier theme of low-tech experimentation (Beswick, Shaughnessy and Trimmingham) but with a specific focus on adult audience participation, Laura Purcell-Gates discusses the use of analog technology (specifically a rotary phone) by theatre company Invisible Ink as a confessional medium. She examines how audiences strategically use intermedia in order to create an instance of ‘rupture’ in their process of ‘self-curation’ through confession to the technological medium. Matt Jennings, working in the context of Northern Ireland, presents the project Crows on the Wire (2013–2015) that utilised applied theatre, educational drama and digital performance as a set of intermedial reflective lenses on the recent history of the peace process in Northern Ireland and the challenges this posed for communities in transition. This special issue concludes with Misha Myers, Dane Watkins and Richard Sobey’s study of the potential of social media for participation in theatre, where audiences are invited to interact with and contribute content to narrative worlds played out within transmedial participatory landscapes. They ask, who is the author of those narratives? And how do participants’ own life experiences shape the work and construct meaning through participation?

‘Falling between’: opportunities and challenges of intermediality

ABSTRACT

This article frames the special issue by offering a broad reflection on the historical development of ideas that have informed debates concerning intermediality and its pedagogical contexts. It opens with a brief articulation of media and intermedial theory to inform the debate. The challenges of contemporary media hybridity are then set within an historical context by tracing the origins of current (perceived) knowledge dichotomies and hierarchies into the philosophical canons of Western antiquity. In examining distinctions between the different types of knowledge and expression that form the constituent parts of contemporary intermedial theatres, the article considers philosophical debates, traces historical trajectories and probes social dynamics from Aristotle to the present. Moving on to the current historical and social context of intermedial practice and pedagogy, the article examines specific challenges and opportunities that emerge from our own intermedial age. This multifaceted and trans-historical approach leads the authors to suggest that old hierarchical and divisional structures impact upon contemporary practices, affecting how those are perceived, received and valued.

KEYWORDS:

• Intermediality
• pedagogy
• multimodality
• techné
• epistemé

1. Introduction

In 2001, Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen proposed the concept of modes to describe the diverse cultural resources we utilise for making meaning, from the written word to image, sound as well as technologies; in combination and in certain layouts these formed media such as a book or a film. They argued that Western civilisation was increasingly shifting away from a culture of monomodality towards a state of multimodality. They wrote:

… not only the cinema and the semiotically exuberant performances and videos of popular culture, but also the avant-gardes of the ‘high culture’ arts have begun to use an increasing variety of materials and to cross the boundaries between the various art, design and performance disciplines, towards multimodal Gesamtkunstwerke, multi-media events and so on. (2001, 1)

In 2016, multimodality is ubiquitous within our everyday lives as we find ourselves immersed in complex networks of communication, informing how we engage with the world and how we find agency over our own identity. In The Four-Dimensional Human (2015), Scott encapsulates this condition when in the sleeve notes he writes:

A constellation of everyday digital phenomena is rewiring our inner lives. We are increasingly coaxed from the three-dimensional containment of our pre-digital selves into a wonderful and eerie fourth dimension, a world of ceaseless communication, instant information and global connection.

New combinations of modes are forming exponentially, transgressing traditional media boundaries and coalescing as new intermedial forms as exemplified by the internet which houses and reframes multiple media including online ‘live’ theatre or digital gaming which fuses a multitude of elements influenced by, among many others, the agency found within immersive theatre, filmic narrative and literary text. Throughout this issue, contributors engage with how dramatic intermedia afford us innovative, yet at times challenging, domains within which to explore and find agency over our own lives and our societies.

2. Multimodality and intermediality: the contemporary context

Alertness to the ubiquity of multimodality has given rise to new assertions on the significance of intermediality. Krämer stated that ‘intermediality is an epistemological condition of media-recognition’ (2003, 82), inferring that no single medium can be understood or critiqued unless there is recognition of its fundamental intermedial and intermodal substructure. Sava underscored this point when she wrote: ‘In recent years, the debates surrounding the notion of ‘medium’ have increasingly emphasized the idea that all media are “multimodal”, to the effect that the intermodal is almost inextricably folded into the intermedial’ (2010, 105). This a-priori acceptance of media as modal composites that cannot function in isolation was given particular attention within Bolter and Grusin’s concept of remediation (1999). They argued that new media could only attain their full cultural significance through an acceptance of how they had ‘refashioned’ existing media. This perspective was distilled in their unequivocal statement: ‘Media need each other in order to function as media at all’ (1999, 55).

The specific term intermedia was first invoked in 1966 by the Fluxus artist Dick Higgins in his short essay entitled Intermedia, to describe the myriad of hybrid performances that were proliferating at the time, prompting him to note that ‘ …  much of the best work being produced today seems to fall between media’ (1966, 1). Ever since there has been a divergent discourse on the ontology of the term and how it may be defined in itself and in relation to other terminology, including multimedia. This latter term is, at times, delineated as a form in which there are ‘many apparatuses that support performances’ (Giesekam 2007, 8) rather than ‘a mutual reciprocity, with two or more media coming together in conversation’, as intermediality is envisaged by Klich and Scheer (2012, 71). At the outset of this special edition, it is worth reminding ourselves of the elusiveness of the term intermediality and to note that many current theorists guard against demarcating fixed boundaries. Rajewsky reminds us that ‘it is obvious that difficulties arise when any one individual approach to intermediality lays claim to having grasped “the intermedial” as such’ (2005, 44–45). However, along with many other writers (Chapple and Kattenbelt 2006; Bay-Cheng et al. 2010), she goes on to identify the transgression of traditional media boundaries as a central feature of intermediality.

In this sense, intermediality may serve foremost as a generic term for all those phenomena that (as indicated by the prefix inter) in some way take place between media. ‘Intermedial’ therefore designates those configurations, which have to do with a crossing of borders between media … (Rajewsky 2005, 46, emphasis in the original)

In Mapping Intermediality in Performance (2010), Robin Nelson, specifically places emphasis ‘on the principles of composition of live theatre as a ‘“strongly multimodal media” (Elleström 2010, 38) phenomenon’, citing Kattenbelt’s contention that theatre possesses a ‘distinctive capacity to be a hypermedium which “stages” other mediums (2006, 37)’ (13). The potential of these transgressions as a consequence of the porosity of drama and theatre is the catalyst for this special issue, as the boundaries dissipate between applied drama and the wider pedagogies of related somatic and digital arts.

While articles in this issue focus on the opportunities and challenges of contemporary applications of intermediality in applied theatre and drama education, this initial essay from the editors offers, as a frame for these current debates, a broader and deeper reflection on the historical and pedagogical contexts of intermediality. Initially we consider the historical distinctions between the different types of knowledge and expression that form the constituent parts of intermedial theatres, reflecting on the dualist ontology arising from perceived dichotomies and, secondly, we examine specific pedagogical challenges that emerge from our own intermedial age.

3. A trans-historical overview of knowledge hierarchies: falling between ‘high’ and ‘low’ knowledge (and art)

Paul Hamlyn Foundation’s Special Initiative ArtWorks: Developing Practice in Participatory Settings (2011–2015) resulted in an Evaluation Survey of almost 1000 artists working in community, participatory and socially engaged settings, demonstrating that the majority believe their work ‘is not valued as artistic practice within the arts sector’ (DHA 2014, 29). Susanne Burns, the project director, responded to this finding by stressing that ‘work in participatory settings is valid practice in its own right’, highlighting that ‘the status of the work must be raised’ and urging stakeholders to work together in order to ‘ensure that its economic contribution, as well as its social value, is recognised’ (Paul Hamlyn Foundation 2014, 4). This suggests that applied and socially engaged practice is considered, to some degree, inferior to other types of artistic practice by the art establishment. The view is supported by Artistic Director of Utopia Arts Frances Rifkin who suggests that in arts funding, ‘the idea of a hierarchy of aesthetic worth generally relegates PT [Participatory Theatre] or socially-based work to the lowest level as “utilitarian”’ (2010, 16). We will argue that the reason applied and socially engaged arts are perceived as inferior by the arts establishment is their association with a specific class of citizenship, that is, the ‘lower class’.

Rifkin points to a tool developed by the International Federation of Art Councils and Culture Agencies (IFACCA), which develops the notion of ‘fair culture’ in order to counter the perceived low esteem in which socially engaged and applied practices are held. The document proposes the use of ‘ethical lenses’ to ‘define the purpose of the work, helping to avoid value judgments which discriminate against either the notion of art for art’s sake, or socially targeted work: it suggests a spectrum rather than a hierarchy of practice’ (2010, 16). The ethical lenses suggested here derive from Aristotle’s Ethics (Rifkin 2010, 17). Indeed, what better place to start unpacking this than Aristotle who is, perhaps, also the root of the problem.

In his seminal book Nicomachean Ethics (350 BC, bk. VI), Aristotle deliberates on the distinction between techné, which stands for practical knowledge, art and crafts, and epistemé, referring to cognition and theoretical knowledge. He is generally perceived to hold techné in some contempt, deeming it suitable only for the underclasses of the un-liberated and wage labourers, while holding up epistemé as the preserve of a higher class of free citizens. Aristotle’s perceived approach to practical knowledge as inferior to theoretical knowledge, and as suited to an inferior class of citizenship, informed the Roman distinction between artes liberales, which included forms of knowledge ranging from science to rhetoric, and artes mechanicae, including arts and crafts from painting to agriculture (Weibel 2012). Following the Aristotelian tradition, in ancient Rome the study of artes liberales (grammar, dialectics, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, music theory, astronomy) became the subject of a non-vocational education that befitted the free citizens, forming the curriculum of the monastic and convent schools and, from the thirteenth century onwards, of universities (Weibel 2012). The applied artes mechanicae on the other hand (architecture, agriculture, trade) continued to be derided as vulgar, and deemed appropriate to a lower level of citizenship occupied by labourers and slaves. A change in how different types of knowledge were valued started to appear in Medieval times, with the publication of Hugh of St Victor’s book Didascalicon: de studio legendi [Didascalicon: on the study of reading] (1176–7), which included the theatrical arts as one of the artes mechanicae (Taylor 1991, 74). Though Hugh, consistent with his times, referred to the artes mechanicae as inferior, he nonetheless incorporated them among the primary divisions of knowledge, which was groundbreaking at the time (Walton 2003). A decisive shift in Western society’s perception of value for the mechanical arts occurred in the fifteenth century with the rise of the bourgeoisie, which promoted what we now know as fine arts and crafts to the ranks of the liberal arts (Applebaum 1992, 373–374).

This brief historical trajectory suggests that dominant long-standing patterns of Western knowledge hierarchies have been formed on the basis of the widely held view that Aristotle held techné in contempt. Both theatre and technology were once excluded from established knowledge canons as a result of those divisions. As social shifts occur, those hierarchies change – however one could still trace a low esteem for applied forms of knowledge and art back to the perceived lower status of techné in comparison to epistemé. This is a view we would like to question. Before we do that, it is worth noting that the techné and epistemé of the Aristotelian tradition do not neatly correspond to current understandings of art and science.

Aristotle identifies both techné and epistemé as two of the five states by which the soul possesses truth, the other three being: prudence, wisdom and intellect (2002 [c. 350 BC] bk. VI.3, 333). He places all five states in a continuum and presents them as equal in value; moreover, he suggests that truth can be achieved by a combination of the different states, rather than through one or other of them in isolation. So the five states are seen as natural partners rather than in competition with each other. The main difference between epistemé and techné is articulated in relation to, on the one hand, truths that are beyond the scope of the humans to influence or alter, such as the laws of nature and the necessary rules of mathematics (epistemé), versus, on the other, truths linked to objects that admit of change, and which tend to be manmade (techné).

Aristotle defines epistemé in relation to certainty, as it concerns laws of nature that are given and eternal: ‘For all beings which are simply from necessity are eternal; but things eternal are without generation and incorruptible’ (Aristotle 2002 [c. 350 BC], bk. VI.3, 333). Aristotle looks upon universal laws as eternal facts that do not shift or change but are frozen in time, as absolutes that exist regardless or irrespectively of the human condition. Nevertheless knowledge, as we understand it today, can be neither absolute, nor eternal; it is always possessed and embodied by humans (themselves neither absolute nor eternal), who must undertake a, de facto faulty and fragmented, process of discovery to reach it. Scientific knowledge, as our current historical perspective demonstrates, does shift with time. Rather than being an eternal given above and beyond human agency, it is as human-made and performative as techné itself. Furthermore, Aristotle’s notion of epistemé is about things that we know as abstract knowledge rather than anything that can be applied. Aristotle’s approach to epistemé as eternal and absolute points to a metanarrative we humans must contest with.¹ From our current historical perspective, the understanding of epistemé as something given that humans have no agency to influence or change sounds similar to fate as ‘the development of events outside a person’s control [ … ] pre-determined by a supernatural power’ (Oxford Dictionaries 2016). Aristotle’s definition of episteme offers a fatalistic view of the world, which is very much at odds with current understandings of the nature and essence of science.

Techné, on the other hand, is, according to Aristotle, ‘a state concerned with making’ (1994–2009 [c. 350 BC] bk. VI.4). It is also a process of ‘coming into being’ or ‘revealing’ of something that has its origins in the maker (Aristotle 1994–2009 [c. 350 BC] bk. VI.4). In this instance it is the human subject, rather than nature, that initiates the process of revealing; that is, the coming into being afforded by techné is not a universal necessity (as in the case of epistemé) but a human choice, foregrounding human agency. Techné concerns the human-made, shifting and changeable laws and practices that govern and shape our everyday lives; it can be understood as an embodied practice entangled with the multiple (multimodal/intermedial) micro-narratives of being human. It is connected to human agency and choice, defined by Aristotle as ‘deliberate desire of things in our power’ (1994–2009 [c. 350 BC] bk. III.3). Thus, any act that leads to human empowerment via progress can be understood as an act of techné. It is interesting to consider that this definition of techné is consistent not only with what we today understand as art, but also, and most importantly, with what we today understand as science and technology.

Not only does technology derive from techné etymologically but crucially, Aristotle’s understanding of techné as a process of ‘revealing’ has shaped Heidegger’s influential essay ‘The Question Concerning Technology’ (1977) (which, in turn, continues to shape current deliberations around technology). Here, Heidegger suggests that instrumental interpretations of technology as ‘mere means’ are inadequate (1977, 5); instead, he argues that we must undertake a causal interpretation of technology in order to grasp its essence, or ontology (1977, 6). This investigation into the ‘why’ of technology brings Heidegger to the notion of poiesis or ‘bringing-forth’ (1977, 10): ‘Bringing-forth brings hither out of concealment forth into unconcealment. [ … ] This coming rests and moves freely within what we call revealing’ (1977, 11). Heidegger relates revealing to the Greek aletheia, the Latin veritas, or the contemporary Western notion of ‘truth’ as in ‘the correctness of an idea’ (1977, 12). ‘What has the essence of technology to do with revealing?’ asks he; and he answers: ‘everything’ (1977, 12). Heidegger concludes that ‘technology is a way of revealing. [ … ] It is the realm of revealing, i.e., of truth’ (1977, 12).

Having reached this conclusion, Heidegger acknowledges that an understanding of technology as ‘truth’ should strike us as strange, forcing us to question what ‘technology’ actually means. Although both techné and technology as processes of revealing are poietic, Heidegger asks how modern technology differs from analogue technologies, such as those employed by craftsmen. He acknowledges and endorses the claim that modern technology differs radically from analogue technology due to its grounding within science. He argues that modern technology is also a revealing (1977, 14), but this revealing is not poietic, it ‘does not unfold into a bringing-forth’ (1977, 14), but is, instead, a challenging: ‘it challenges forth the energies of nature’ (1977, 15). Modern technology as understood by Heidegger could not be further from Aristotle’s fatalistic view of episteme; indeed, Heidegger has been accused of technological determinism as his essay has been read to suggest that modern technology can determine the structure of society.

Though Heidegger looks at modern technology as one that ‘sets upon’ and challenges the energies of nature (unlike analogue technology and craft that reveal by making rather than challenging) he still articulates it as a revealing. That is, he acknowledges that techné and technology (based on modern-day science) ontologically belong in the same family. This entails a merging of techné and epistemé in modern-day technology – here episteme is no longer understood as fate but has become itself a techné, that is, a revealing. Whether one agrees with Heidegger’s understanding of modern technology as a challenging or not, the important point here is that science and technology have come together through techné in the process of revealing or human agency. Following this reasoning we argue that hybrid intermedia technologies merge an ancient trans-historical divide that is, first and foremost, social rather than ontological: that of the separation between techné and epistemé, and, consequently, between artes liberales and artes mechanicae, the theoretical as the preserve of the wealthy and free high classes and the applied as suitable to the underclass of slaves and labourers, ‘high’ and ‘low’ art.

4. The dualist ontology of intermedial practice

Although Aristotle is understood to have deemed techné suitable to a lower class of citizenship, generally modern societies value the arts. The Art Council England’s Report on the value of the arts for society talks about art and culture ‘illuminat[ing] our inner lives and enrich[ing] our emotional world’, alongside measurable benefits such as the arts’ impact on social and mental well-being, community cohesion and so on (2013). However Weibel argues that the contempt once preserved for the artes mechanicae of the past is now directed towards automation and the machine (2012). Weibel suggests that the division of mind over body, which led to the long-held assumptions of hierarchy of the liberal over the mechanical arts, is now replaced by an assumption that the originality of work carried out by a human actor is of higher order than work undertaken with the aid of electronic media. As automated machinery, computers and robots are replacing the underclasses of slaves and waged labourers, our contempt reserved for the tasks they once used to undertake is now addressed towards the outcomes of machinic labour (Weibel 2012). This is why, argues Weibel, media and digital arts are met with contempt in the fine art world (2012).

Weibel’s argument can be extended to the domain of intermedial theatre and performance. What we want to suggest here, is that intermedial theatres pertain to a dualist ontology due to their inherent engagement with digital technologies. On the one hand, intermedial forms constitute live performance, which has been discussed as ontologically tied to the present and so, in a ‘strict ontological sense’ as ‘non-reproductive’ (Phelan 1993, 148). On the other hand, intermedial theatres’ ontology is essentially intertwined with the reproductive ideology of representations that Phelan has vehemently contested as pertaining to live performance (1993, 31), sparking passionate and durable debates concerning the relationship between the live and the mediatised (Auslander 1997, 1999; Chapple & Kattenbelt 2006; Barker 2013; Read 2013). Though we do not wish to re-enact these debates, we do wish to draw attention to intermedial theatres’ particular position at the centre of this battleground. While Phelan and Auslander debate about the relationship of live performance to a mediatised culture, intermedial theatre forms constitute the marriage of the two, being simultaneously live performances and their mediatised, semi-automated, mechanical counterparts. This dualist ontology has a twofold effect on the way intermedial forms are perceived and received within established disciplinary discourses.

Firstly, intermedial practices can be looked down upon by scholars, practitioners and funders.² This is because live, visceral performance is sometimes held up not only as a work of art, but also as –potentially at least– a site of ideological resistance: Phelan, for example, argues that performance ‘clogs the smooth machinery of reproductive representation necessary to the circulation of capital’ (1993, 148), suggesting that performance is essentially anticapitalist. In the same way that media/digital arts, though major contemporary art forms, have yet to receive acceptance from mainstream cultural institutions as is well documented in the work of several scholars (Grau 2007; Gere 2008; Chatzichristodoulou 2013; Cubitt and Thomas 2013), intermedial performance practices can be considered ‘bastard’ by the theatre establishment (Vanderbeeken et al. 2012), taking their place as the artes mechanicae of the contemporary theatre and performance world. It is interesting that Pavis discusses the incorporation of media forms in theatre as ‘technological and aesthetic contamination’ (1992, 134), a term that entails ‘the soiling or making inferior by contact or mixture’ (O’Toole 2003), suggesting that media are harmful: they constitute a hazard that threatens the ontological ‘purity’ of live performance.

Secondly, intermedial theatre makers and scholars can be in themselves conflicted about the ontological status and disciplinary framework(s) of their work. Current debates position the live and the mediatised, if no longer in opposition, certainly still in tension with each other (Kershaw and Nicholson 2011; Barker 2013). Intermedial theatres cannot but embody this tension, as they fall between the live and the mediatised, the human body and its machinic avatar, now-here and nowhere, as well as live performance’s commitment to ephemerality and mediatised practices’ inherent capacity – or inevitable necessity – of self-documentation. As a result, makers and scholars of intermedial practice can run the risk of looking down upon their work. Its dualist nature can become a cause for self-contempt, or an obstacle to fully embracing its own hybridism. This is not due to the ontology of intermedial practices; rather, it is the outcome of the previously discussed socially constructed knowledge hierarchies.

Up to this point we have offered a brief trans-historical account of techné and epistemé as different forms of knowledge, and have considered the hierarchical relationship between the two, which persisted over several centuries and still persists, if in different manifestations, today. We did so to suggest that a current manifestation of this hierarchical distinction can still be found in theatre and performance practices, whereby physical, visceral theatres and performances have gained in esteem as artes liberales. Arguably, the art establishment and theatre purists still retain a degree of disregard for applied and socially engaged practices, exacerbated by the transgressions of new technological and intermedial applications, resonant of the artes mechanicae. However, this antipathy is misplaced as, (1) theatre and technology have always been tied together by their applied nature, historically being classified as part of the same knowledge canon of techné or artes mechanicae; (2) in the Aristotelian tradition, techné and epistemé are considered equal, if different, states that can support the soul in its quest of truth; (3) in Heideggerian discourse, techné and epistemé have merged in the techno-epistemic hybrid of modern technology.

5. The current pedagogical challenges of intermediality

When, in the early 1960s, McLuhan, the influential Canadian philosopher, initially identified the shift from the ‘Gutenberg galaxy’, dominated by the printed word and the authorial hierarchies that this engendered, into the ‘electric age’ (1962) he could not have foreseen the technologies that we are now enveloped by. Accounting for this, Boenisch proposed in 2003 that we redefine our age as ‘electrONic’³ (34). Within this he recognised the subtle recalibration of perception that has occurred over several decades as our ‘sensorial apparatus’ has been adjusted by photography, film and computer technology. From this he identified some significant implications of our ‘electrONic’ state of being, in particular the pre-eminence of ‘multi-mediality and multi-sensoriality’, ‘space for varieties, minorities and numerous identities’ and the reorientation of the user from a state of passivity to one of interactivity (37–38).

This new ‘electrONic’ world has fundamental implications for practitioners and pedagogues. Such pervasive and permanent developments have created tangible ontological shifts in how we engage with the world. In 1922, the Russian filmmaker Vertov envisaged film as a ‘mechanical eye’ (1994), revealing a new world, now we see through a new digital ‘eye’ and through a body schema responsive to the demands of new media. It may be suggested that ‘enculturated intermediality’ (Crossley 2015) is an ontological state for contemporary society, in that our ‘sensory norm’ is now adjusted to perceive of digital media as ‘natural’ (Auslander 1999, 34) and we have adopted a mediatised corporeality in our behaviour and speech, from our constant and unconscious attachment to a mobile phone to our acceptance of the digital realm as a ‘live’ domain in which to converse and ‘befriend’ others.

However, this is not necessarily synonymous with a critical self-awareness of this mode of being. Whilst there may be obvious opportunities to embrace new media in theatre and drama, we must also recognise the tensions this generates. We now operate within a complex culture requiring new literacies that draw on multiple contexts in rapid succession and/or simultaneously. It is arguably the case that any intermedial event demands a significant level of diverse media and cultural literacy, that is potentially only decoded by the ‘electrONic intelligensia’ (Boenisch 2003, 39) and is partially or wholly impenetrable for other individuals or groups, including children and young adults. The complex dialogues within intermediality often draw upon a plethora of artistic traditions (bridging and disrupting historical divides between ‘high’ and ‘low’ art) within which arise challenging hybrids of epistemic and technical competence. As was highlighted in the editorial for RiDE Vol. 17, Issue 4, the initial assumption that the younger generation are confident ‘digital natives’ (Prensky 2001) quickly dissipates on closer inspection of recent research which suggests there has been an over exaggeration of this technological literacy, with many learners lacking digital skills (Bennett, Maton, and Kervin 2008; Kennedy et al. 2008). Likewise it does not follow that this younger generation possesses the faculties to decode intermedial work and hence develop ownership over, and agency within, such practice. Many studies in recent years have analysed the cultural literacies of children and young adults, including the work of Pascarella, who identified the complex ‘digital literacies’ (2008, 247) they have to adopt. However, he also suggested that ‘many learners lack the abilities of critical analyses and evaluation of the social and institutional rules, regulations, and norms embedded in those environments and cultural practices’ (251).

It may be considered that an implicit demand of intermediality is fluency, both in a range of intramedial languages for each respective media involved and also eloquence with the meta-linguistic structure of intermediality that draws on a spectral combination of nuanced modalities. In pursuit of this fluency, emboldened by the earlier statements of media inter-relatedness from Bolter & Grusin and Kress & van Leeuwen, it may be argued that it is no longer possible or profitable to retain silos of arts pedagogy, and implicit in that provocation is a contention that applied drama pedagogy must therefore seek a more inter-related dialogue with other arts pedagogies.

There has, over the past decade or so, been progress towards this intermedial pedagogical discourse as a response to the multimedial and multimodal age in which we live, but there is still a long road to be travelled. Carroll, Anderson, and Cameron (2006, 2009) notably offered detailed analysis and argument for drama education to embrace technology but often their focus was on digital technologies as tools, or on alternative performance platforms such as Second Life, rather than the intermedial spaces that could be created between the live and the digital. Reflections on specific intermedial pedagogy have been proffered by a select group of writers including Jensen (2008) and Groot Nibberlink and Merx (2010). Much of the writing to date has been focused on highlighting the issue itself and the broad response of finding new literacies in a digital age. Groot Nibbelink and Merx, writing in Mapping Intermediality in Performance (2010), move a little closer towards a specific pedagogical response in positing the potential of intermedial theatre to create a ‘resensibilisation of the senses’ (218) as the ‘clash between digitally influenced perceptions and embodied presence manifests itself particularly as a disturbance of the senses and results in a blurring of realities’ (219). They go on to identify the hypermedial potential of theatre; a mutable space which ‘stages’ other media. This staging, including the capacity to leave other media ‘untouched’ (a film screen on stage, for example) creates the potential for our mediated state of being to be experienced and held up for enquiry. Groot Nibbelink and Merx refer to this when they state ‘media therefore become visible as media, as means of communication, each with their own materialities, medialities and conventions of perception’ (225). However, pedagogical responses to intermediality in drama education are intermittent and rarely interconnected; hence the rationale for and the significance of this particular special edition of RiDE.

6. In conclusion

As pedagogies across times are closely linked to social classes, different types of knowledge are deemed appropriate to different classes of citizens. As discussed, in ancient Greece epistemé was the preserve of free citizens, while techné was deemed as suited to a lower level of citizenship. Those divisions and hierarchies persisted across centuries and, to some extent, are still relevant today. For example, the UK government recently announced that England’s secondary school league tables are to be split between academic (A-levels) and vocational qualifications as ‘different courses suit different young people’ (Harrison 2014). Though this decision was presented as novel, it is in fact nothing more than a re-articulation of the millennia old division between techné and epistemé.

Arguably, intermedial practices today bridge the gap between techné and epistemé in marrying creative, applied and somatic, with epistemic, analytical and abstract forms of learning and expression. While they have, on occasion, been met with scepticism from purists of visceral performance, intermedial practices, as the several examples studied herein also testify, are increasingly appreciated by both the educational and art establishments. Moreover, though they were once the preserve of institutional contexts that could afford the prerequisite investment in technological infrastructure and resources, thanks to the democratisation of technologies, intermedial practices are now widely embraced within grass-roots community initiatives (Lockton et al. 2014). However, as intermedia are being embraced by artists, tutors, and community organisers alike, we might have to ask ourselves where might the dangers of social exclusion lie at this point in time. Gulati, in her study of technology-enhanced learning for developing nations, argues that ‘in many cases where there is limited IT infrastructure, traditional technologies such as printed material, radio, and television remain more effective and accessible for rural and disadvantaged groups’ (2008). Though she does not argue against the development of IT infrastructures for the delivery of education in rural and deprived areas, her research shows that ‘in different developing countries it is the rich, upper middle classes and the urban elite who benefit from new infrastructures and investment’ (2008). The question is then, how technological developments and investments made in the field of intermedial drama pedagogy, and in intermedial education more widely, can benefit a wider section of the population.

To conclude, we would like to invite our readers to reflect on the intrinsic potential of intermedial drama and theatre to ‘reveal’ our contemporary state of being by (to paraphrase Heidegger) ‘bringing forth’ our sense of ‘being in the world’. Intermedial processes and practices provide the opportunity to situate ourselves within a rich, mediatised environment that reconsiders and augments the drama ‘with digital technologies’ model as explicated and analysed by Carroll, Anderson, and Cameron (2009). It has the capacity to build upon our own enculturated learning and a sophisticated sense of our mediatised corporeality. Concurrently of course this also presents challenges in terms of the technologies and literacies required to interpret and engage with intermedial forms; yet in the end these difficulties are always worth surmounting as intermedial practice creates worlds that fall between ways of knowing, doing and being, bringing together techné and epistemé in a process of transformation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Maria Chatzichristodoulou (aka Maria X) is Reader in Performance and New Media, and Head of External Development and Enterprise at the School of Arts and Creative Industries, London South Bank University, where she is also leads on the BA Theatre Technologies. Maria is a curator and has previously worked as performer and community practitioner in the UK and Greece. She has published extensively and is co-editor of the volumes Intimacy Across Visceral and Digital Performance (2013) and Interfaces of Performance (2009). She is currently working on the monograph Live Arts in Network Cultures (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).

Mark Crossley is a senior lecturer at De Montfort University in Leicester, teaching predominantly on the BA Performing Arts course, with leadership for devising and applied theatre-based modules. His research interests are particularly focused on intermedial performance pedagogy and contemporary devising. His work on intermediality has been published in a range of journals including IJPADM and Drama Research: International Journal of Drama in Education. Currently he is completing a book entitled Devising Theatre with Stan’s Cafe (Bloomsbury, Methuen) co-authored with the company’s artistic director James Yarker.

ORCiD

Maria Chatzichristodoulou http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0193-4828

Mark Crossley http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3050-8561

Notes

1. >This is in keeping with Lyotard’s suggestion that epistemé is obliged to legitimate itself with reference to a metadiscourse associated to some grand narrative (1984, xxiii).

2. >Technophobia in theatre is an old tradition. Taxidou discusses the technophobic use of puppets, marionettes and robots [ … ] in modernist performance as ‘a direct descendent of the Romantic, even Gothic tradition of the monstrous machine’ (2007, 13). She further suggests that ‘like Frankenstein, this narrative is fully equipped with uncontrollable reason gone wild, anxieties about gender and reproduction and dubious relationships with parent figures’ (2007, 13).

3. >Boenisch clarifies this specific upper-case emphasis of ‘ON’ when he states: ‘My peculiar typography of the term ‘electrONic culture’ stresses the reference to the Post-Gutenberg cognitive formation, distinguishing that cultural concept from electronic technology. At the same time, the upper-case ‘ON’ graphically reminds the reader of the inescapable ON-switches on today’s computer accessories’ (2003, 45).