an amazing area to explore for digital performance

Decode, a digital media exhibition, which showed various types of digital installations was exhibited at V&A (2010). ). The exhibition not only exhibited high technologies, but also manipulated our daily life to engage in experience through these technologies and presented the results as art forms, which was amazing.

The usage of sensors, like, sound, touch and light, in these pieces, the audience can interact with the moving images. For example, in a corridor, there were two lines of plants which were made out of plastic and each one had a light. When the audience passed these plants, the lights lit up in different speed depending on the audience’s speed. Like this, in the exhibition images’ shapes and colours being changed by interaction of audience’s touch, sound and movement.

An impressive piece, picture below. Here, a digital painting is created by hundreds of sensors and screens which interact with the audience, which means the images of each time are different. It is more than a picture, it is like a performance. A performance needs the audience’s engagement, and in this piece the audience also automatically becomes a performer as soon as they interact with the technology.

Digital media involving live performance is my research area. This exhibition opened my eyes to the way that digital technology can bring the audience into a performance as a kind of performer, not just a viewer. The audience interaction affected the art appearance in this exhibition. In theatre, interaction through digital sensors could be used as part of the performance to affect what is on a screen, for example. Art that works in a range of digital ways is a rich area to explore for influence on performance in theat