Digital double

In digital performance, take digital double for instance, Steve Dixon (2008) suggests that performing with live video projection, two performers, physical and digital, explores the relationship between their real and digital, body and mind. The live performer and her digital double reflect and copy one another. Also, the digital double is a self-reflection that could effect its live double as well.

And here the use of screens in performance seems to echo Lacan's mirror stage because they can be used to separate a virtual, or abstract, world from the real world of the performance. For example, when a screen shows a body double of the performer, is the world on the screen similar in role to the reflection in the mirror? Also, it seems that the reflection in the mirror is in some way imaginary, that the understanding of the reflection by the subject is connected to subjective and internal thought processes. This seems similar to the use of projections to communicate performer's inner states to the audience.

In my last piece, iThnker, a video installation, I focus on exploring the relationship between projection and onstage acting. In particular, I am looking at the usage of a ‘digital double’, how this double works with reflection with the real body, and showing inner states, dreams and fantasies.

From Descartes, Mind and Body Spilt, our body contains our mind, however our mind might be limited by our body and self. In digital performance, in one way, video projection seems could free the Mind, separate it from the body, and present it in visual ways, showing the abstract worlds of dream and conscious fantasy.

Here, this idea has a connection to Lacan’s ideas about the mirror stage and how we form ourselves, our self-identity. In addition, Dixon suggests that dreams and fantasies, unconscious and conscious, may be seen as a reflection of human beings' true self’.

This seems the usage of screens showing images of dreams or fantasies of character, in some level, could fully present a character.