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Avatars, Activism and Postdigital Performance
Precarious Intermedial Identities
Avatars, Activism and Postdigital Performance
Precarious Intermedial Identities
Description
In the context of the postdigital age, where technology is increasingly part of our social and political world, Avatars, Activism and Postdigital Performance traces how identity can be created, developed, hijacked, manipulated, sabotaged and explored through performance in postdigital cultures. Considering how technology is reshaping performance, this timely collection reveals how we engage in performance practices through expanded notions of intermediality, knotted networks and layering.
This book examines the artist as activist and producer of avatars, and how digital doubles, artificial intelligence and semi-automated politics are problematizing and expanding our discussions of identity. Using a range of examples in theatre, film and internet-based performance practices, chapters examine the uncertain boundaries of networked 'informational selves' in mediatized cultures, the impacts of machine algorithms, apps and the consequences of digital legacies. Case studies include James Cameron's Avatar, Blast Theory's Karen, Ontroerend Goed's A Game of You, Randy Rainbow's online videos, Sisters Grimm's Calpurnia Descending, Dead Centre's Lippy and Chekhov's First Play and Jo Scott's practice-as-research in 'place-mixing'.
This is an incisive study for scholars, students and practitioners interested in the wider conversations around identity-formation in postdigital cultures.
Table of Contents
Notes on Contributors
Introduction: Postdigitality: "Isn't it all 'Intermedial'?" Liam Jarvis, University of Essex, UK, and Karen Savage, University of Lincoln, UK
Chapter 1: Avatars, Apes, and the 'Test' of Performance Capture, Ralf Remshardt , University of Florida, USA
Chapter 2: Performativity 3.0: Hacking Postdigital Subjectivities, William W. Lewis, Purdue University, USA
Chapter 3: Randy Rainbow's Musical and Social Media Activism: (Digital) Bodyguards and Politicising/Weaponising Audiences, Karen Savage, University of Lincoln, UK
Chapter 4: Deepfake-ification: A Postdigital Aesthetics of Wrongness in Deepfakes and Theatrical Shallowfakes Liam Jarvis, University of Essex, UK
Chapter 5: The Glitch, The Diva, and Coming Back Out: Aging and Postdigital Identity, Asher Warren, University of Tasmania, Australia
Chapter 6: Voicing Identity: Theatre Sound and Precarious Subjectivities, Lynne Kendrick, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London, UK and Yaron Shylydkrot, University of Sheffield, UK
Chapter 7: Postdigital Place-Mixing in the Wild City Jo Scott, University of Salford, UK
Index
Product details

Published | 18 Nov 2021 |
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Format | Ebook (Epub & Mobi) |
Edition | 1st |
Extent | 200 |
ISBN | 9781350159327 |
Imprint | Methuen Drama |
Illustrations | 15 bw illus |
Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
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