Performing Presence

Performing Presence: Between the Live and the Simulated proposes that the advent of new media forms, and the increasing integration of contemporary performance and media has generated new engagements, practices and understandings of presence.

Developed as part of a major research project led by Gabriella Giannachi and Nick Kaye, and funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, Performing Presence poses questions over the nature of action, identity and self in the relationship with media forms, while engaging with art, media and performance theory, current discourses in science and presence research in virtual and mixed reality. The artists included in the project are leading international figures in their respective fields, whose work exemplifies contemporary concerns with performance, technology and presence. Addressing new media art and performance, multi-media theatre, video installation, mixed reality performance and locative arts, the book presents case studies of work by Lynn Hershman Leeson, Paul Sermon, Gary Hill, Tony Oursler, The Builders Association and Blast Theory, as well as analyses of a series of related experiments created for CAVE, an immersive virtual reality environment. Performing Presence combines extensive analysis, and extracts from interviews with the artists, as well as the documentation of elements of work and working processes, in order to provide specific insight into these engagements with contemporary practices and concepts presence.

This book will be of interest to students, researchers and practitioners of theatre and performance, contemporary art, media, new media and technology.