 My tech guy in Boston will text me and tell me that we are not streaming. So I'm interested in theater and technology by way of hearing a lot of theater people talk about how it was the death of theater and how people were just watching computer screens and TV screens and not going to the theater anymore. And coming from a computer family, like my grandmother was a software engineer and my mom worked on the F-15 fighter planes, I think that's simplified or simplistic way of looking at technology. We use it for as many things as we use many other tools for. We use it to do the things we want to do and what we want to do as artists is evolving with our tools. So I have been super super blessed to have amazing people on my panel. This is Sarah Kraft, a multimedia artist and artistic director of Crafty Work. This is Desimona Chang director and David Slaza and video and multimedia also. The vocabulary fills us because a lot of the work that people are doing is pushing the boundaries of technology and theater doesn't have a name yet. Or it falls into that catch-all multimedia. So that being said, what interests do people have in theater and technology in here? Because we wanted to sort of calibrate what we're talking about. Two people's interests and experience so that we're not talking under or above what people are actually interested in. What are you guys interested in? Do you use technology in your own work? Are you interested in storytelling? Are you interested in learning new technologies? All of that. And also working with our sister unions on how to make that happen in theater. You be a technology. Well I can tell you I am really interested in projection mapping as a way to steal the things that are cool about film and add it to sort of the three-dimensional architecting things that are best of theater to make it much better. Building on that, aesthetics, just aesthetics from the theater as applied towards new media and digital delivery. Did you explain that a little bit more? We're talking about applying theatrical approaches or pieces of theater in a theater context. That's why we're here and talking about theater. But we're talking about it in a non-traditional space which is virtual space. How does that play? It's a different thing when you're creating that sort of aesthetic content for a virtual space as opposed to a live theater space. So theater burden on live relationship spaces. This is sort of a broad catch-all that what I'm interested in is finding ways to theater and technology intersect in which it's not simply technology providing the backgrounds for the theater or on the other side of it where theater artists are doing something cool with technology. But where do we actually get to the point where those things are serving the experiences being created in a unique way that could happen in any other context? One of the things I was excited about when inviting these panelists is that they're all doing a lot of that kind of work. It's not you put a show together and you're like, ooh, what tech can we bring to it? But exploring questions through all the available tools, technology being one of them. And there's questions of what's your ratio? When does something, how much tech can you use before it's no longer a theater? Whether that's even a useful question at all, our theater and new media, all sorts, moving towards a yet undiscovered third thing that will be so obvious to future generations that are going to laugh at us for resisting it for so long. But they already are. So with that said, I would love to turn over the stage to my panelists. Do you want to go first? To the presentation? Yeah. Okay, so just a little about myself, my work. I guess, so, well, has anyone here seen my work? I don't know, maybe I don't have to explain it. Okay, so also a couple, you can actually first start the first couple and I'll just talk over it because the audio doesn't matter. I've been making work that is about our relationship with media and technology and mediated experience for decades and whatever tools were available at the time. I started in the early 90s with crappy video and 35mm or 16mm or 8mm film and little tape cassette players and whatever I could get my hands on and have gradually graduated with the technology as it's graduated and evolved. And I think a lot of my work has always been about my own and come out of my own very charged and somewhat conflicted relationship with technology and media and as somebody who I think probably a lot of people in this room have probably shared this experience at some point in my life I had to make the choice about whether I was going to choose a career in the performing arts or choose a career in what is now digital video or film or different forms of media and that's been a very difficult choice I think for some of us and continues to be really interesting and challenging choice and so I did have a career for a while in film and video production specializing in special effects and 3D animation, digital effects and I started inevitably to incorporate that into my performance work. So if you go ahead and play this clip, I write shows, oh did you all reply? You don't have to play again, it's fine. So for me I always work with whatever tools I'm working with are very integral and central to the process from the very beginning and the work is often written and shaped around my interaction and the other performers or collaborators interaction with those tools so that it isn't a kind of design process in a separate tone the writing and devising process and because of that I think really really really interesting and exciting things happen when you're able to work that way and actually put it all in a room together and build it from the bottom up from scratch. So I also play a lot with live, this is from a show, I think it's already open. Yeah, it should be. So this is from a show where like a number of my shows I have a lot of live cameras and I play a lot with drawing the audience's attention to our relationship to media and mediated experience and the way that that shapes and informs us and the experience of liveness and live theatre versus mediated experience. Do we have audio for that? There's no audio coming out. This doesn't really make sense without audio so I'll try to explain. Basically, this is a clip that is sort of... I'm playing it because we had been talking about performing myself. Can you guys hear it? Yeah. Okay, so I'm talking about performing myself, performing myself for you and as I'm performing myself I'm keenly observing and choreographing myself, performing myself for you and as I'm performing the solo show for you and I'm talking directly to you I'm actually talking directly into a camera lens while pretending to look at and talk to you and while I'm actually imagining that I'm looking directly at you I'm actually seeing my own reflection beard in the camera lens and I'm sort of playing with all of these sort of meta-layers of live performance, solo performance the construction of identity and self in theatre and in life and our relationship to the media and to camera, to the camera. You can go ahead and stop that because we want you to hear the audio. Anyway, I've played with a lot of different whatever's available at the time I've played with live video chats, live emailing, live web surfing remote bi-located performance where there's interaction between people and audiences in different locations, via live media I'm playing now with more interactive and site-specific work including like interactive public art installation and some of the kind of roving interactive experiences like Desdemona's project Is that the hand-off? That was well done, sorry. Hi, I'm Nesimona Chang. I actually self-identify as a stage producer I guess I'm slowly taking my foot into the world of multimedia technology I wasn't really fascinated by technology because this I think is like more me than me so I kind of know who's me and I think in the past couple of years I've been thinking about I've been doing live essentially, you know, visual either in a box or ten plus years and recently I've been thinking about Facebook and Twitter and all those things we all think about like, oh it's ruining our children and they're just going to replace the person-to-person thing and so I have always thought if this phone is more me than me that this phone knows all the numbers of people I love that has what I'm doing today, it has like my calendar, it has my photos Can I make theater with my phone? And so I proposed this project, the Triangle Lab intersection I got a grant to do this experiment and the experiment it certainly was to create a piece of theater using mobile technology and being not the most cleverly techno-friendly person for an artist I decided to try making a play, an airboat play with QR codes and so I essentially created a work with Christopher Chan, a local playwright to create this story that we call The Next Project and essentially you take this QR code you essentially take your phone and you go to a location in downtown San Francisco you scan the code the code gives you a piece of content you look at the content, at the piece of story you watch the story unfold and it takes you to the next location you watch the next location, you scan the next code so it's kind of like the scavenger hunt slash theater games, slash game system so if you're going to scan that with your QR things it should take you to... so this is kind of where my own techno-sappiness is kind of sucky because it will take you to a YouTube video and then you have to watch and so a lot of what I'm working with is just my capacity to do what I philosophically and ideologically want to do versus my actual ability to do these things so when you watch this video on your phone you essentially watch the first chapter of the story of The Next Project which is a story about two characters who essentially communicate by a text and it's like watching a play because you're watching an exchange on your phone so it's like a phone, so you are the protagonist your phone is the phone and you essentially just watch something happening and so I thought, is this... the question was, is this interesting enough? will people do this? and we'll only watch the project so people stay in a corner of the mission staring at their phones watching people testing and so the answer was yes and then the problem was not enough folks came to do it because the marketing was just not a very good... we just didn't market it very well so that's kind of what I'm thinking about and talking to Laura about this project we put up all these questions about oh my god, I just made drama and there were no humans involved are these characters? are these... what is it? am I going to see the show? am I walking the show? what exactly am I doing as the audience person consuming this piece of theater and quote theater so that's kind of where I am yeah, stage director dipping my foot into multi-video Hi, my name is David Slaza I self-identify as an artist and producer and father and let's just show this so there's a piece I made it's now eight years old seven and a half years old that is still a piece of people that I'm talking about it's called Gadget it's about making an atomic bomb let's just roll it so this was a concept of this piece is to tell a story through a live film can we go back to the top of it and play it with sound so that's me managing the video in a 360 degree environment that people are standing in the middle of watching unfold so it's hard to see this part of the video but it's me at the time with DVD turntables and a remixing newscast and some found footage and pop culture stuff that's me talking about it in a loop so this goes to Red Dawn taking through our perception of the fear around nuclear weapons about that and then the fine thing is really nice so I'm going to stop the sound on the video sorry for a technology panel it's amazing how many basic complications we still are facing even in places like Berkeley Repertory Theatre in beautiful downtown Berkeley so this piece is called Full Balcony so the first piece I showed is about how I was thinking about using technology to tell a story actually engaging in turntables and these things to remix a story some information you may be seeing before you know it's Ronald Reagan you can kind of imagine what he's going to say into a different story that I think is more true or more representative of how we might reflect on his messaging now in a more with some hindsight so that's sort of one vein of things I worked in and I do that both as a designer with other writers and generative artists and I make, offer my own projects this is called Full Balcony which is a also a triangle lab project through Cal State's intersection I remade the Balcony scene from Romeo Juliet through online self submissions so put out a broadcast all around the world asking people to perform the Balcony scene into their cameras to me and mainly on their laptops is how people chose to do that and send me the clip and then I re-edited them into a single Balcony scene and it was, so the concepts around this are what, how can you totally broadcasting and allow people to do that make those decisions on their own and how can you kind of rethink what's possible in the way things are arranged and then it became a task about editing me then it's the artist to say okay I've got these submissions what's the story I'm going to tell and inviting people up against each other we just let them come without the sound so I started it that's me up at the bronze at Cal State's and then it was installed at the bronze at Cal State's and it's kind of cooler when you can hear it but it's okay you can go online and do it anyway and then I cast Romeo and Juliet that guy's in Paris, you know he sent this thing in, very good looking guy and so he said oh if I work lovable in that hand anyway so it was pretty clever and it is a project that's available at fullvalpany.org and also through my website fullvalpany.org may have expired and then the other thing I'm doing now if we cut this the thing that I'm working on now is this so this is it's not video, it's a real thing I'm building called Studio One which is a mobile residency that we could live in and you could actually talk to people inside of intimately in a six by ten room and have conversations and it can be deployed wherever you want it to go it's premiering as a performance piece this summer, I think it would go in and a micro residency center so I'm going to be there sometimes there and sometimes not there but I would be hosting other people to come and hang out in this and make work and hold conversations and do what they do as artists so right so video art so my main thinking is around the mediated experience what do we put between ourselves and our audiences or what do we take away between ourselves and our audiences and how do we craft experiences that really are appropriate to these technology that we want to do there's no way I could have told the story of Gadget without, in my mind without summoning these things from pop culture and those references full balcony was totally made with people's films and now this is like well I want to be present with people and I want to talk to them about real things I want to create a safe weird intimacy between us that we can relate to one another and so because this ultimately what I'm pushing up against is this I'm desperate to connect with you guys and because there's this very strange gap between us that sometimes is useful and you can do things with if you know how to manage that relationship but a lot of times it's just kind of um, it's anti-created like it's not interesting anymore so um that's how I'm doing yeah we had a conference call a little while ago because these projects are so interesting and so different we wanted to sort of get to know some of our thinking about them before we actually got here in front of everyone some of the questions that these folks came up with we got really into and I think they're important when talking about technology and relationships um one of them is intimacy the idea of being in a room with someone and that being intimacy, that being safe there are certain other kinds of intimacy that technology-mediated forms do provide asynchronous communication like mixed in, different kind of intimacy so all of your work addresses that and at least a little bit of a way, what do you think about intimacy and your real work communication I mean I think intimacy is when people are vulnerable with one another like when you can create a state of vulnerability or off balance or unexpectedness that that you're like oh and you become aware of yourself or how you're feeling or you know there's like this thing that you can do and that like we have the benefit of that being in theater or in a live format I think it's really interesting because I think I don't think the audience comes to theater to be vulnerable I think the audience comes to watch someone else be vulnerable because vulnerability in you is strength, vulnerability in me is weakness so I mean we would be all in and like oh my god oh my god it's coming out, oh my god don't come sit in my lap don't sit in my lap but I'm here to watch the actors before they're sold out so we want intimacy, we want intimacy given to us this is my feelings we're not interested in being seen which is why we're assholes on the internet we're complete jerks on the internet the common thread of any like law on the website we don't there's something about how we like to consume stories we want to hear someone tell their story and I think we'll get into a place where we're still dissolving where we're interested in performing but even then YouTubers and like video bloggers I'm performing but I'm still not being seen because I'm performing to a camera and you can see whatever you want I'm not responsible I'm not there and just give to you to look at whenever you feel like it so no it's interesting this moment because I do agree with you I do agree up to a certain point but I don't know it's entirely reciprocal like if I came off saying to Sam's lap he'd be like what are you doing? my ticket was not about me showing up it was about me showing up to see you show up it's changing I think that's changing generationally in terms of the the interest in and the hunger for and the willingness for real interactivity in other forms at least I think in the theater it's still it's still evolving and it is evolving because interactive immersive theater has done me a big thing in America this year last year I mean it's been happening in the rest of the world for a while but you know I think because younger generations are growing up so completely immersed in and very versatile and comfortable in different forms of interactivity and I think the explosion for example of in a sense like your project interactive urban gaming kind of treasure hunt tour kind of experiences are really there's a reason people are really soaking that up right now and looking for that I think for me some of what's been interesting up until recently I mean it's still interesting for me but in terms of theater is like you talked about a little bit is this construction of intimacy especially in terms of film and cameras which goes into the internet and YouTube and the whole kind of selfie culture of the constant sort of constructing and branding and shaping and editing and promoting and performance of self in culture is really fascinating and I think it's something that I play with a lot and performance is again sort of directly addressing that in the context of theater and the live experience of theater and the sort of complicated layers of self performing some other self and the difference between me in this room with you right now and that form of live embodied intimacy and the other kind of intimacy that you feel when I'm in a close up on camera and you can see my eyes and you feel like you're inside my head and I can construct this other thing for you and I think that's such a powerful experience now that people are able to do that themselves people are able to do that just pick up their iPhone and be on camera be on film right now and construct these layers of identity and I'm also really interested in just this sort of again this sort of illusion of relatedness this illusion of the construction of intimacy the way that you know feel you know close to the form and they feel to their partner I mean there's so many different manifestations of that culture right now it was interesting that what you just did Sarah it was like when you're talking to the group and as you're talking to the group but when you do this it's like just for me so the intimacy actually it feels like if we did great theater just for me that's what we all want right it feels like this for me in the theater there's like all these people around me and there's like crackling sounds of candy and like you know people wrestling and some coffee and it's like ugh it's not just for me I think this is part of I think this is part of also what's we're going to talk about this sort of the the room for projection part of what is so I mean if anybody has ever had an actual long distance relationship raise your hand you know or been in a relationship where you're in a long distance sometimes you there is something uncanny about this space that texting or e-mailing for example allows when you don't actually have to take in that whole actual other person in your face and all of the layers of complication and through personality and in concurrency there but yeah you have room to actually fill in the gaps yourself and to be in this very internal subjective experience that it sometimes can actually feel more intimate I've been thick talking a lot lately in my process with people about the relationship we have with our stuff animals when we kids and the way that we actually continue to do that as adults in a way to infuse even inanimate objects or even you know an e-mail for example with so much projected emotion and relationship and intimacy there's a for every 10 articles on the internet of studies about how instant messaging and all kinds of asynchronous communication e-mail all that stuff dissolving emotional ties and kids don't know how to be truthful anymore or they don't know how to relate with their peers and their families anymore there are about 2 or 3 articles that study how certain certain new kinds of intimacy are being tracked through these media there's one that I sent around to all of us and I'd be happy to put it on the TBA site about a involved in narrative parent comes home from work, kids on the computer how are you doing, how's your day, fine they go into separate rooms they start talking on IM and he tells his mom how his day really was now there's a study that breaks down what the components of intimacy are these media things like self-disclosure, acceptance affection and there's a couple other of these components that are being broken down in a way I think we haven't had cause to before so considering which of these components are more at home in a digital medium I've definitely texted things to people I would never say to them in person probably today but it also does in a certain way call your attention back to liveness even in the most technologically beautifully detailed performance when then the performer comes up to you or when you see them in the flesh it means something different now that we have an alternative to liveness liveness has more semantic heft or it has a different semantic heft that we can use as artists it's interesting working in this over the last couple of decades because I feel like in the last the e-mail thing I was just showing you that's from 2005 that's really like which at the time a lot of people weren't doing that in theater yet it was like oh my god that's so cool but now it's like it's completely outdated but it's so interesting it's changing so fast and I think the media literacy of the audience is changing so fast especially as younger generations are coming up I think as a theater artist you have to take for granted you have to understand your audience at this level of media literacy even in the terms of the way that they relate to language for example on the way that they relate to talk more about that I can text you about it LOL yeah I think it's like your projects we've all worked with this even as playwrights as writers the way that we our relationship to language in a way we write language for the stage and write language for it comes out of people's mouths and it comes out of people's mouths to a large audience versus to a camera versus on the microphone versus through a text or an email all have their own particular language but linguistic style well one cool thing that's on both of your projects is you have an availability on the screen of seeing someone write something and then delete it and then write something else you are in the real time of that performance moment watching someone change their mind and seeing all the things they don't say which is not something easy to do in theater but also a particular kind of self-expression that people can't do they know what it means to go this far in your sense and that process of evaluating and curating is very native to anyone younger basically but how does that work in your media at all and then to capture what people don't normally see or is this a blackout yeah I think editing yeah I mean editing is ultimately I am interested in story and telling story and that's why I am in theater because it's story and it's not film which also is story but it's and it's not something in a gallery which you might de-prioritize story or a public art project or whatever but it is about story and see it I can't keep them today and then there's a I don't know what the question was but really how do you tell the story as best you can how do you keep re-engaging the relationship and re-engaging with your audiences and sometimes that takes different tactics for different situations and if you want to show somebody thinking about what they're doing like maybe you back up forward, back up forward but the main thing that I I think many of my main influences around remix culture and DJ culture and taking something that exists on a record or a film and reworking that to be your own thing and telling story through that and using pieces of stuff that maybe aren't made to tell stories to tell a story so remixing somebody brushing their teeth and sometimes to tell a story about how they miss their mom if you just imagine what that would be like like that, that sounds like something I would do let me just tell you one of two ways either to the fact that this means that digital production aren't basically everyone's hands now you've got your camera here, you've got your video camera here you've got your sound studio, your audio mixer all here and how much does that how much does your audience is basically catching up or passing us how does that technology affect the questions that you're asking as you're laying out a work or as you're exploring work right now what could it be me making a theater piece, just a version of someone else living their real life right, like me going what a theater piece and like, you know, like every little kid in the corner is going well, yeah, real life so that's what I'm curious about like when we started, I mean sure at some point Chagall came to the theater and we watched this because it looked like oh, that's real life, right maybe Chagall has to know that's real life I don't know, it kind of begs the question so what is theater supposed to be reflecting and what is the, why do we make the work we make in the theater and why are we making these types of works, that it's a kind of maybe theater right, and like how do you want to define what you consider a theater is it humans, is it guppies is it lack of screams, is it what is it that's this you know, either a departure around what is there to be traditional theater or an evolution do you go out there and feel the divide between theater and not theater is important and defensible, I'm not saying it's not I'm just going to start a conversation what do you mean important like that there is a lot important to you and your work that how you approach your work at a certain point you'll stop and say that's not theater anymore like where is, where are people's lines as you're answering your questions and working toward answering your questions I mean I've used a lot of technology in my work but for me, and I don't know if this is true but for me unless there's a live body in front of me I don't really track the best theater it can be all projection other than that live body they might not even be doing it I don't, I feel like for me theater is about me as audience member being in literally the same space physically with a performer having said that I do think that technology gives us but that's from where I'm coming from in the sense that I grew up, I have recently adopted a lot of technology I didn't grow up in it so my niece probably feels like her friends are in her room when she's I-M-ing with them in a way that I don't her response to this question could be very different in the sense that for her seeing a screen and somebody on the screen might actually carry more semantic heft than it does for me and that I think is really interesting Eber, did you see that on the right? Did you see the brush on the web at ACT? Yes. Was that theater? Who saw that production? It totally was because there was a ballet that I could see the whole time and I got to see them when they walked out there were moments in it where I was reminded that I was actually watching people doing this Even when they were in the room they were still doing a lot of things in the next room It was an interesting question though I would say yes I really enjoyed it In our discussion we were having a pre-discussion about just about how much that's coming up right now in the field like I was just on a grant panel where a number of the panelists were one person that was applying with she's primarily a YouTube artist like she's a performer she's a performer and writer but her main medium is YouTube, she has a YouTube channel and she writes these skits and these characters that she performs and she's applying in the theater category and there was another project that was mainly like a site-specific interactive multimedia kind of public event and where these questions of like what is the performative element or is that why is that an application in the theater category as opposed to another category I think we're all confronting those issues not just in the funding field but for real in terms of our relationship with our audience it's really interesting the questions there are a bunch of folks we'll just go around the other side here and take off I wanted to answer the same way he did about an audience that would be in the same space but then when I heard him say that I think about the Metropolitan Opera performing simulcast across the country I think when I talk about it right now my answer is when I lose my audience it stops being theater when they don't get it it's no longer theater as long as they're there and engaged wherever there happens to be it's still theater regardless of what level of technology didn't stop being theater when we started Mikey Actors no we just applied new technology to tell the story yeah I totally agree the integration of technology performance is a continuum that started a long time ago and we have many many miles to go in this you just have to check in where you're at right now these, I was joking there's a light fixture that was designed in the mid 80's probably that's being held by a coffee can to make it look like it was from the 20's you know on stage here in our contemporary production you know it's like we even have to deal with the layers and remember there's so much kind of built into each technology that we have to interface with that's part of the story when you just deal with nice things about accepting that I think that's a really good point because a lot of this moldy discipline there is using the tools at hand it's not theater artists or video artists it's artists pursuing things using the tools at hand these tools they have lightness and interactivity tools and they have digital tools and expanding the vocabulary in any in any direction is going to shape your questions but it's but it's just a question of what tools do you have and what tools are you interested in in finding your crafts on like this light here with the coffee can in front I don't know what's being held down over here but it's being held down by some gaff tape and a plastic cup from the yogurt placed down the street not really tools at hand if you have something you need to do as an artist you will find the tools that you need in order to get it done if it's a plastic yogurt cup if it's your YouTube thing so I think it's actually a potato starch cup potato starch cup? Yeah I don't think it's plastic it's from Jalachoe and I down the street yeah the tools at hand I guess I am really enchanted and still fixated on this teddy bear metaphor and I would let the stuffed animal that we can project all of our needs and desires and sort of challenge the fantasy on and then translating that into the actor as object and what you're dealing with I would love for you to talk more about whether or not you think there's a sweet spot to hit where like where does intimacy overlap with our needs and projections in theater and how can technology aid or the trash from kind of finding that sweet spot if there is one? I think one of the things that's interesting about theater right is that is the sweet spot woman that's absolutely live where you feel like the audience really felt that you know where like you say something and everybody just explodes and laughter or something or you feel the in the room I just got chills I grew up doing theater and you'd write like we all know what that feels like that's something that you can experience as a film actor if you're not in the movie theater something you can't experience as a visual artist you're not in the gallery every single day the gallery is open experiencing that live moment in time and space with the audience and I think for me in live events that's still a really charged powerful interesting interaction even no matter how much technology is also involved in mediating that and for me sometimes I feel like the more that I play with media and technology and sort of calling our attention to the relationship with that you know sometimes sometimes it even amplifies those moments but I feel like in my work I often keep commenting on and drawing the audience's attention back to losing themselves in the like losing the being so drawn into the content they lose the awareness of the form and then being welcomed back up to the medium that's actually being manipulated in order to give them the experience Can I ask a quick follow up in terms of what you're talking about the rare article that actually investigates how it aids certain forms of intimacy to be mediated through digital technology do you think that there's a particular like particularly theatrical kind or flavor of intimacy that you feel really gets a lift from technology or are we just kind of trying to bring the familiar into this antiquated space Can I try that? I think that things that make you that disarm you in intimate ways there are tools to help with that some people like sex toys and some people like Skyping naked or not and it's not even just about intimacy it's like sexual intimacy but I think there's all different kind of tools to get yourself intimate from the mic game to like whatever you know try it and also what I've seen in projects where the technology is a really successful interval component of it and not just something stuck up afterwards or in the background is that part of the content is the medium like part of what's talking about next when I saw it the first time is it was really digging into why do you feel close to this person because it will turn around and be like you don't actually know what you think you know or you don't actually know something incredibly important so make it a piece where you're problematizing this kind of intimacy like what is this intimacy mean when does intimacy become threatening why do we assume that we know things we don't are there things that we do know by virtue of how someone expresses themselves in writing that you meet them and it's you don't know those things but it is it ends up being important when you're using these technological tools that the inquiry involves the use of that kind of communication like exploring how that communication works what are its pitfalls what are its rewards what what new paths can it lead you down I wonder too I don't know which time I left but I've and this is all super interesting but I also don't want to lose track of some of the things that people at the beginning brought up when we asked about your interest and actually we keep coming back to the process you know the medium has to be integral to the content the content and form have to be in an ongoing process with each other or it doesn't have to be but I think we work that way and a certain kind of work comes out of that but it does also bring back like really practical questions like if you're working in a union theater and I think maybe that would be an interesting thing to talk about like not just this sort of like larger philosophical and aesthetic questions but like really practical that all sounds great but how do we actually do that and I know that I I could never have made the work that I've made if I was only working in a union theater I've had to make this work in very small low-key DIY spaces and then sometimes translated to a union theater which is also its own challenge and I think it's also interesting even for the unions and the venues how that conversation with you can probably talk more about this is how that conversation is evolving even how when I did the show we were looking at at Yerba Buena I was super super lucky to have a really amazing crew that was willing to be more flexible in terms of the boundaries between disciplines and intermediates who could touch the camera and who could touch the microphone and could I touch my own things because I have to touch them in the work and I think that's also a really evolving conversation I know that the people at production team at Yerba Buena worked really really hard with the union crew to make sure they had the right crew for my show that understood the kind of work that it was and what was going to have to be involved I mean I had a great pleasure to sit on the equity negotiation as the rep from Z-Space to negotiate the equity contract for the Bay Area theaters and you know they're terribly afraid the union representatives are terribly afraid of actors imagery being reproduced without their compensation in mind and everyone I'm sure I don't know did the back get renegotiated recently I did it several years ago now next month yeah I mean it's brutal and it's just kind of dumb not in a bad way but it's not if membership representative membership wasn't really there it's the union leaders who are there who I guess are representative membership but were membership pulled about some of these specific things I'd be very curious to know what their response rate was but no but there are ways around it that are fine like well if the context in which things are made is one thing so full balcony which is this film piece evaded actors equities jurisdiction in that it was designed to be set up as a public art installation it was funded with theater grant money through the Triangle Latin and through another foundation that vows not to fund video okay so so it's very weird how to make the cases but I think tell the right story to the wrong people and just go for it and my so far I use tons of stolen and reappropriated material in my work I use lots of imagery of people who have representation around their image and things like that and I'm looking for and waiting to be sued as a public response and a meaningful one to the work and what and I'm preparing my since I graduated grad school part of my work was about how to prepare for that moment has been about trying to make that moment real and get sued because this broadcast will look forever alive so maybe after I go do lawsuit I'll look at it and see but I'm mainly looking to push the barriers around what who owns your image and what circumstances if you're the United States government there's an entitlement to owning everything you do if they want to check it out you know so it's but can we, can I use Ronald Reagan and make him say something different I mean he's kind of in a public domain sort of but he's a union actor and and you know anyway so but and then in stage hand stuff there's a different I think each silo of labor has its own conversation and the ones and it's weird between SAG and stage and equity and film and it's like kind of finding the grand area in each of their agreements and just read the agreements I encourage you, if you're an artist who wants to ride the gray area in an actor's contract and where you want a union actor to be part of your thing read their agreement so you can help them understand what they're able to do or not do so the fact that these contracts were drawn up before all this media existed is both a hindrance and in some ways a help because you can not chase it well I mean we wrote this, the union contract was written just a few years ago Facebook existed and YouTube existed and all this I mean they really do it every three or four or five years whatever it is I mean they know what's going on it's just about unwillingness to make concessions to the changing world you didn't actually get all the way around with that filter I don't mean to point you out there my response is more to the line between like the fine audience viewer and I think about theater is it comes back to me as a community my problem with if it's for a performance for one audience member you know at least the way I was brought up is that there's an uplifting of the community discussion by just watching it on YouTube who do I have to share that with and I think that's something even in the dark this sort of theater space so it makes it different from film if we've done the work in a way that we've had that level of that varying of soul the group can feel that palpable energy from the audience I mean part of why I came to see this is that I think that would be well the media is that there's always these three unities of time, place, and character but with the use of media you can actually see somebody's soul in this metaphor they're representing up there I love the remixing idea change with the idea of fixing but at times it's not fixed in a way and the other thing is as someone who as a director, as a divider, as a writer I can play with that but I'm not sure how far that would go and I like the bigger conceptual aesthetic that's sort of here how far can we push it because the thing is I'm only speaking to the generation I came up with the younger nephew of Mises he had an iPad and stuff a big process there is so much rapidly and differently than I do I look and sort of say well it can't just be about videoing us playing with videoing and that anymore it's actually got to figure out how to get floppy burn in there and then unpack it into something else because that's the thing is when you see what you guys can do with media I think it's so incredible but when you can actually get close to that microphone change audio the territory of the space change the way that you can actually see the image and the interactivity of the image I just want to echo one point that I think is really important is the shortening of narrative is a very contemporary thing that's happening and there will be a sort of backlash around it or whatever but it's that's real right now in theater there's more and more theaters running on like a full day of service play or like the shop of the day where it's as long as there is and an epic theater experience a body in that place for so long and that's the anti-push to Twitter which is can you say everything and your designated character limit and get used to only thinking in 70 characters or whatever it's like my brain only works so you need to make 70 characters story how many characters? so I'm only using half well I have a question that too goes back to community we as theater people tell ourselves over and over oh my gosh we bring people together oh my gosh there's nothing like being in the same room with a bunch of people and having an emotional experience what about the share function of say this video that you like you don't have to have your 17 best friends in the room with you to share this experience with them what's the difference, what do we want to do with that and you can share it with them I can send it to my sister I can stop them I can send it to my brother there's a real sharing that doesn't mean less it just means different but there's a reason why this is still a theatrical conversation there's a reason why the three of you are not working in a film or a closed video you're just making a media that's being digested by being shared out there's still something about this that likes the audience or wants to interact with that audience even does the Mona your piece which was I'm interested in how you reacted to that were you present, did you go to the corners where people were taking in the the QR feeds and watching their reaction to things we had a launch party last fall where people came and they had their phones and the funniest things I actually made the project with the intent of it being a solitary experience it was meant to be theater number one that was the whole point and one person would scan and then five crowd around that person and they'd all watch the same screen so it was still a group script they're still like I got it so the first person who got it loaded everyone else gathered on the campfire and they would watch that video and I was like oh well shoot there goes my audience of one theory yes but you're being present with them what would be the difference between what you described earlier as a film experience where you're not present at every screening of the film as a performer so you don't interact with the audience that way what's the difference between that and what you did I didn't interact with the audience I think I was trying to be as not present as possible I wasn't more interested in data mining the reaction because the whole script was meant to be like oh I was on this behavior responding to this kind of system the art was one thing but I was really interested in group behavior and how individuals respond to technology as narrative and it was more about watching them and I was trying to be a fly on the wall I don't know how useful that was they would ask me questions so and me and then Laura did it and she had her own thoughts about it too so interesting well I think it's interesting even though I was talking about when the artist is present with the audience I think it's amazing making work where the creator or the generator of the work maybe isn't there but the audience is still having a live interactive experience that they're responding to and one thing I also want to mention I was actually tracking the codes the frequency with which they scan when they got scanned and I was trying to figure out like oh does it get boring at code 4 and so it's like scan scan scan and stop so that's what I was interested in too there was also all this backend data that we collected from the QR codes because they've been trying everything like how often they got scanned how many scans per day you know and you're in the somewhat district specifically in the area of San Francisco you know I saw no one scanning at night all the scans were during the day you know around lunchtime so that was interesting too and no question yeah we have about 10 minutes yeah so here's my question you all have three very cool artists doing very different work from each other and you mentioned being you know at the vanguard of a form that's changing every year so I would love for you to paint me a picture of where you think it's going in 10 years, 20 years, 30 years did you ask about the future of the American Theater 10 years, 10 years ago but when you are old and gray and return to a panel on the same topic I want to know what kind of project you think you'll be talking about a panel on the same project still oh my god yeah I don't think that they'll be talking about this in the same way anymore I totally think that I was actually having a conversation the other day with somebody before I even met you and heard about your project because I missed it when I happened unfortunately about you know I feel like actually the imminent future not 10 years from now but I think much later than that is like a mashup between sleep no more of video game life social media burning man it's kind of a mashup between live interactive site specific roaming first like one on audience of one and audience of countless many interacting in both live embodied ways and virtual mediated ways and does everyone know what I'm referring to when I say sleep no more your production yeah where the version that takes over a place over like six different floors but where it is simultaneously over the course of three hours and everybody's just running around and having a very interactive immersive experience of it so I think that's one of the future I love the I love the you guys are under this that's under a and then the screen behind it is essentially the new digital theater and the work you guys are doing is very much we talked about accessibility and I think thank you for talking about the equity issue but I really would love to continue this conversation online because I agree with what Evan said about what theater is like if there's a heartbeat in the room and you guys are in the same space it's theater we're in here in theater talking about digital theater talking about all these new forms it's a evolving thing I'd love to have this just as an ongoing discussion and a repository for what comes out of the back discussion and how these propagated agreements get done between SAG AFRA and equity so that those of us who actually do want to pay in a health intention and do all the things because everybody videotapes everything and as a playwright I want to hear my words but I also want to play about the rules and some of my best friends are equity actors and I don't want to misuse their image so I would love to have the adult conversation in the 21st century that can go beyond this preceding march and really have this let's all be frank and fearless and figure out what this next step is wouldn't that happen? that'll be on next year's theater and technology panel I think one response something you said which was when you put post-it or when you shared the video I think it's beyond just liking it but it's almost like you need to comment or blog in order to get that community feel that interactivity I think also too as you were thinking of the future of theater technology has been driving a lot of the generational conversation and one of the things that you look at at the Google plus is that now they call it circles which funny enough coming back to theater coming from a company that practices it in old ways we always circle up before we start and rehearsals and I think it's sort of a tech way that closing the loop is that you put something out there how it comes back to you not to think about audiences anymore because audiences are open to super-relationship but that just circles how it comes back to them I mean don't forget that technology is being molded after the things we already do it's trying to help us to do the things that we need to do more efficiently more efficiently that's why developers are doing these things Google Glass is now available purchase today so you don't have to spend the 23 seconds that it takes to unlock your phone and check your email you can just go whether that's like a goal of yours or not you get to decide so we have more command over the development of technology or the way in which it's implemented then you might feel you might feel subject to this conversation but we are you know we might feel an object of this conversation but we are in fact the ones being looked at to help define it so stay strong Google the biggest thing is to be as smart as you can be I think take your time and be smart because people are watching one last one I look forward to the different technologies advancing there were several years before the next room I did a play wherein I spent most of my time on stage interacting with an image on the screen the other actor was in the building and he could hear me he couldn't see me so I had problems with if he dropped the line I had no way of visually communicating with him that something needed to happen he could hear what I was saying but he couldn't see what I was saying but I'm sure there's further technology now that could have been fixed there's an app for that yes that's called mind reading it's around the corner and they're going to patent the word mind and the word reading you've heard that Google's trying to patent the word glass right no, seriously as a shortened form of Google glass they're trying to copyright glass it's interesting we live an interesting time I think we should be afraid of it there's something about like we may not have that like when everyone knows of it and a lot of this is going to be bad I'm guilty of making a lot of bad stuff with cameras I so will do it every day for the theater but I think there's something about just like what David said like acknowledging it's here it's not going anywhere you want to just shake it's hand and welcome to the table here I think going at the technology versus theater from the artist end is the wrong way to go about it like I make theater or I make video art or something what are people taking in I don't think the people looking for something exciting to look at are thinking nearly as hard about whether it's theater or video as we are so if you're making something that's interesting use the stuff that makes it the most interesting but what is that stuff how do you get those tools and how do you not be how do you keep focused on the future of what people are looking for what people are finding interesting and then I've got all the science I think there's a lot of conversation to be had around projections or sound editing sound design is technology unless you're one actor on stage with no sound no lights performing outside you're using technology so it's in there evangelism so we weren't like we're using but to me this is something you said that I've been thinking a lot about so that was really interesting this idea of shortening narrative in the sense that technology happens to be in our lives all the time almost 24-7 every day there is a new generation coming up who's been living with it their whole lives so it's actually how they take in information how they feel emotion how they respond to things shaped by Facebook, Twitter iPhones, iPads what have you so how does that very few people now actually watch a movie and just watch it they have something their laptop is on there so they're actually taking in multiple things so whenever I see a show as someone who's like that where it's really slow and it's really expositioning I get bored because my brain has the train to get ahead because of iPads now they're swiping in our brains next thing comes from the right you know what I mean? so it's like how do we what does that mean for a theater piece that doesn't use projections what does it mean about layering the story and that's something that I'm really interested in and I think that's where you get a lot of tension is because an older audience member or an audience member who's not technologically advanced might say all this information you haven't given me enough time to think about it whereas I am bored still because you just spent 10 minutes of my time explaining something to me when I wanted to get to the next thing 9 minutes ago and that's a question when you go with it, when you go against it and I hope we can all start being specific and mindful of our decisions around that our time is up thank you so much for being here thank you some of these articles I was talking about intimacy and asynchronous communication they've put up on the tba website along with the websites if you're a fantastic artist you can get more of their work and get to know more of what we're working on so thanks again wonderful