Présentation de la communication

This conference draws on recent research concerning the performer's status as mediated body/mediating agent in art and performance integrating new technologies. Adopting a double methodological approach of the practitioner-theorist, Dr. Davidson firstly examines the somatic dimension of digital performance as it plays out in the performer's physical contact and embodied cognitive adaptations with technological devices, and secondly, analyses the performer's experience as a mediating agent operating within systems of technological interfacing. Evaluating the technological device, after Broeckmann (2003) and Kusahara (2007), as simultaneously encapsulating a concept, a channel of perception and a discursive mode, she advances an understanding of digital interfaces as new viewing/sensing devices (Davidson 2013, 2015), demonstrating how, in their capacity as instruments of perception, they proffer somatic experiences while also conveying a work's particular aesthetic perspective. Her argument concludes with an interpretation of perspective itself as a new form of dramaturgy, proposing a new understanding of mediated reception.