Digital
Performance: A History of New Media in
Theater, Dance, Performance Art, and Installation
by Steve Dixon
The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2007
808 pp. illus. 235 b/w. Trade, $50.00
ISBN: 0-262-04235-2.
Reviewed by Dene Grigar
Digital Technology and Culture Program
Washington State University Vancouver
grigar@vancouver.wsu.edu
It’s hard to imagine a bolder or
more in-depth book on digital performance
than Steve Dixon’s Digital Performance:
A History of New Media in Theater, Dance,
Performance Art, and Installation.
Exhaustive without being exhausting, Digital
Performance includes 800 pages that
outline histories as well as theories
surrounding digital performance, with
large sections of the book paying detailed
attention to such topics as the "body,"
"space," "time," and "interactivity."
Along with providing a history
of digital performance, Dixon addresses
assumptions and critiques views taken
by some at face value. Little escapes
Dixon’s lens, for it is a book with
roots in a long-running research project
undertaken, from 1999-2001, by Dixon and
Barry Smith that "document[ed] developments
in the creative use of computer technologies
in performance." Called The Digital
Performance Archive (DPA),
the webbed-based archive included "live
theater and dance productions that incorporate[d]
digital media to cyberspace interactive
dramas and webcasts. . . [and] collate[d]
examples of the use of computers technologies
to document, discuss, or analyze performance,
including specialist websites, e-zines,
and academic CD-ROMs" (ix).
The book begins with a revised perspective
of the postmodern take on art, challenging
Lev Manovich’s stance on new media
art, which Dixon says "fetishizes the
technology without regard for artistic
vision and content" (5) and views that
ignore the importance of Italian Futurism’s
(and those movements connected to it)
influence on digital performance (47).
Section one of the book traces this influence
as well as the development of digital
performance in three periods, looking
first at the avant-garde in the early
20th C, then to multimedia
theater from 1911-1959, and finally to
technology infused performance work from
1960 onwards.
Section two concerns itself with the "Theories
and Contexts" surrounding digital performance,
starting with the "liveness problem" (115),
then "Postmodernism and Posthumanism,"
"The Digital Revolution," and "Digital
Dancing and Software Developments." Here
Dixon critiques postmodern theories that
he says "can . . . operate doctrinally
to impose specific and sometimes inappropriate
ideas onto cultural and artistic works"
(135)––and takes on the theorists
who propose them. Jay David Bolter and
Richard Grusin’s "remediation," Dixon
says, though not a new idea (re: it is
itself repurposed from the "disposal and
recycling industries") does shed light
on "inherent dialectical tensions at play
within computer representations and simulations"
(136). George Landow, Dixon tells us,
possesses "evangelical zeal typical of
the writers at the time" (137). Dixon
points to Diane Gromala’s utilization
of Lyotard’s language game to talk
about new technologies and, then, Deleuze
and Guttari’s theories to explain
her views of virtual reality and, next,
to Gregory Ulmer’s focus on Derrida,
Lacan, and Wittgenstein for theories of
hypertextuality. A whole section is devoted
to Jean Baudrillard, whose nihilistic
and cynical view of technology, while
"seductive and compelling," is "over the
top" and in the end offers a view that
is for the most part one-sided and incomplete
(140-143). There is a section, also, on
Derrida, whose theory of deconstruction
(particularly, that the "world [is] constant
flux") does not really fit "the liveness
of theater," which "conspires to fix
time and space" (author’s emphasis,
145).
It would be easy to react to Dixon’s
critique of theory as simply as one of
a Monday morning quarterback able to make
better claims in hindsight than those
living in the moment of action, so easy
he picks apart past ideas, showing them
to be hyperbolic or faulty. When he writes,
for example, that "an inescapable fact
about the progression of software is that
after the initial miracle of new computer
‘life,’ a certain sameness and
staleness creeps in through the repetition
that replaced the initial awe and wonderment"
(208), we have to ask, isn’t this
problem true for all new things? Is it
just a problem with software? I say this
because I remember having to explain to
a roomful of college students why Piet
Mondrian’s Composition in Blue,
Yellow, and Black is, paraphrasing
their comments, "a big deal, considering
that the painting was just lines and squares
that anyone can do with PhotoShop." The
fact does remain that postmodernism does
(or did, depending on one’s perspective)
offer an alternative to ancient Greek
philosophy and worldviews that have dominated
the Western world for over two thousand
years and don’t necessarily work
for a contemporary world that is vastly
larger and more technologically advanced
than that of 5th century Athens.
At some point we do get excited about
something new and must be able to map
new views onto our new world. But the
question Dixon forces us to remember is,
when and which ones?
But this questioning of Dixon’s perspective
on postmodernism does not mean that his
insights are off base. Far from the truth:
They are right on target for those performers
and performance scholars who have long
wondered about the wisdom of placing so
much importance on theories not born out
of performance practice to arrive a performance
theory. Dixon’s views will perceived
as sensible and be felt as breaths of
fresh air.
The next sections, as stated previously,
look at the body, space, time, and interactivity.
There is a lot to like in the next 600
pages, starting with Dixon’s position
that "bodies are not animated cadavers
. . . . Bodies embody consciousness" (212),
to the dream quality of performance (337),
to the notion of "media time" (517), to
his definition of and categories for interactivity
(563), to cite just a few of the hundreds
of pages of ideas and insights he offers.
Readers looking to consult the DPA
database introduced at the front of the
book will be disappointed that it is not
currently available. Some may wonder why
Dixon did not cite Mike Phillips’
wry work concerning Shakespeare’s
works and monkeys but simply alluded to
it (166) or question his spelling of Margarete
Jahrmann and Max Moswitzer’s work,
the "nibble-engine-project" (611) when
they themselves write of it as "nybble-engine."
Women who have been working with computers
for decades may take umbrage at his Dixon’s
own assumption that the internet was populated
by cowboys, forgetting about us
cowgirls (160) or grrls, as many
of us called ourselves.
Despite these issues, Dixon’s book
possesses both depth and breath that performance
theorists and practitioners will find
not only useful but also necessary for
research and teaching. As such Dixon’s
book is not a history of digital performances
but rather a book about the whole concept
of digital performance.
