Intermedial Performance

According to performance scholar Erica Fischer-Lichte, performance reenchants the world by transforming its participants. This transformation is enabled by the nature of the performance event, which includes the bodies of both performers and spectators, emergent meanings, and performative generation of materiality (Fischer-Lichte 2008). Transformation is a liminal experience consisting of shifting boundaries, crumbling dichotomies, and breaking boundaries (Fischer-Lichte 2008).

As all the performances in workshop K and workshop T used video games in some manner, it is important to establish them as intermedial and/or live media performances. Intermedial performances are performances that use different media in their production, and during which those media are somehow redefined. Intermediality is about diversity rather than unity, it is collage or montage rather than a total work of art (Kattenbelt 2010: 35). Intermedial performance can be ‘both physically based and on-screen; experiences may be both actual and virtual; spaces may be both public and private; bodies may be both present and absent’ (Nelson 2010: 17). Chiel Kattenbelt summarizes:

My aim is to emphasise the performativity of intermediality by arguing that intermediality is very much about the staging (in the sense of conscious self-presentation to another) of media, for which theatre as a hypermedium provides pre-eminently a stage. (Kattenbelt 2010: 29)

The intermedial approach thus allows experiencing other media, such as video games in this article through the paradigm of theatre.

To deepen the concept of intermedial performance, I will add Grayson Cooke’s idea of live media performance. Examples of this type of performance are VJing, live cinema, expanded cinema, and live coding, to name just a few (Cooke 2010; Scott 2015). Cooke has pointed out that live media performance is a difficult and under-examined genre, as it exists between the modes of production and performance, always in between (Cooke 2010: 194). According to Cooke, live media performances happen in ‘real time’, they are live and happen in the moment. Even though humans are involved in the process, they operate on a temporality that differs from the human intention. This means that there are always things that remain beyond human control. For example, in performances including generative algorithms, certain conditions are set, but the emergent performance has not been intended to play out exactly as it does. (Cooke 2010: 200–201) Live media performance is thus always unscripted and unpredictable.

I have chosen to include intermediality in the definition of the performances produced during workshop K and workshop T. As such, the definition already acknowledges the presence of other than human forces in the performance. The aim is thus not to focus on what games do to the concept of performance, but rather what the inclusion of performance does to the act of gameplay. When discussing video games, performance also has connotations of efficiency and technological capacity. Examples from the workshops show how the failure of technology or flawless technological performance capacity affected the performances. Failure in technological performance made room for different, improvised performance by the human performers as well as for the emerging non-human agencies.

Intermedial or live media performance emphasizes action: ‘components of the event emerge and re-emerge in a range of “entanglements” that are always producing further “entanglements”’. (Scott 2015) The focus is on the process of production of the performance. The frame of performance and especially intermedial performance does indeed transform gameplay into something new. All the components are there already, but for example, the potentials of agency are activated by framing certain actions in different ways. For example, during gameplay, a stuck character could be seen as a nuisance, as something unwanted, but during a performance, the same occurrence could be seen as an event belonging to the whole.

What is Gameplay?

As this article deals with the intertwinings of performance, theatre, and gameplay, it is necessary to establish what is included in the concept of gameplay here. Jesper Juul summarizes gameplay as a term to describe ‘not how a game looks, but how it plays: how the player interacts with its rules and experiences the totality of challenges and choices that the game offers’ (Juul 2014: 216). Gameplay is rooted in the programming and/or rules of digital or analog games, yet it can only be understood in relation to the player who experiences it through audiovisual, fictional, and other elements (Juul 2014: 216).

In this article, gameplay then means actions that are conducted while engaged with a video game. Not all the performances discussed are gameplay in the strict sense, but all are derived from gameplay. Juul emphasizes the unique nature of games in relation to other art forms, such as cinema or literature: they are ‘unique in explicitly evaluating the performance of the audience, and in controlling the audience access to further content based on that evaluation’ (Juul 2014: 216). While the difference between cinema and games is significant, performance and games – or gameplay – share more in common, at least if we consider the player not as a member of the audience, but rather as a performer. Both come to existence through actions.

Gameplay happens with and in relation to games, yet there is no one definition of ‘game’ that would cover everything that is generally accepted and rejected as games (Elias, Garfield & Gutschera 2012: 5).⁴ As this article does not strive to be rigid on what exactly counts as a game, it is enough to state, that a game is ‘whatever is labelled a game in common parlance’ (ibid.: 6). It is a vague definition, but it reflects the way games were chosen during workshop K and workshop T. The students were instructed to use a game, later a video game, and what they chose reflects their definitions and ideas of games.

Games and Performances

Performance and gameplay are both rooted in play⁵ and are in many ways mixed. Many differences are on the hierarchical and institutional level and have little to do with actions themselves. If we look at an individual gameplay experience and compare it to an individual experience of a performer, descriptions tend to be quite far from each other. The situations described are intendedly simplified, rather stereotypic. The aim is to draw the end of imaginary dualism comprised of “gameplay” and “performance”. On this scale, the stereotype of gameplay is on the other end and the stereotype of performance on the other. Gameplay, especially with video games, tends to be seen as solitary: it can be shared with friends, but it is also designed to be done alone (Elias, Garfield & Gutschera 2012: 22–29). Theatre or any kind of performance can be seen to be the opposite. For performance to be performance both the performer and the spectator are needed. Traditionally this is understood as the presence of at least two humans, and generally, the audience is significantly larger than the group of performers. Games often have some kind of result the player(s) is trying to achieve. This goal is often very concrete, achieved by completing certain actions in a certain order. There are, of course, numerous exceptions to this norm, as video games come in various forms. Performance, however, does not carry the same reputation of being goal-oriented, even though arguably people making performances do generally have goals: to perform, to express, to make money, to be seen.

Like performance, gameplay is seen here as an action that cannot be repeated as exactly the same. Games can be played again, and sometimes the player must repeat certain sequences to the brink of boredom, but the event is never exactly the same as it was before. Something always changes: in the player or in the game. Gameplay is never determined beforehand. The part of the player might be mapped out, but anything can happen: the player might sneeze, faint, get bored, play badly on purpose, or forget what to do – there are countless possibilities for distractions. The same goes for the nonhumans in the mix: the console might explode, the game freeze or get glitchy, or the power might go out. All these examples show how gameplay is live and tied to the moment. This liveness connects with the genre of live media performance: we could argue that all gameplay is emergent action happening within the programmed frame of the game in the interaction between the non-human game elements and the human(s) playing it. Some ways of playing video games and watching gameplay already extend to the realm of performance: for example, E-sports has established its place as a sport, which is watched by millions of people both online and on-location during game tournaments.⁶

Discussion of the necessity of liveness (Auslander 1999) as essential to performance has been present ever since virtual forms of performance gained space. Many performances use video, either live or pre-recorded. If we look at video games, they answer many of the demands of liveness. The environment reacts to the player in many ways, and the composition and rhythm of gameplay are not easily repeatable. Each time a player plays any video game is unique. In other words, the interaction of the player and the game is live.

Humans and Non-humans: Defining Agency both on and off Stage

When performing with and for video games, or any kind of machinic device, the question of the non-human arises. We can argue that the video game is a performer as well. The way of looking at the nonhuman performership depends on the role of the nonhuman in the performance. The frame of anthropomorphism is always present when discussing non-human agency. When we open the discussion about whether nonhumans can perform, we define performance solely through human experience. This is of course expected and, in some ways, unavoidable, as our experiences are limited to our human bodies. However, we can make openings and allow for alternative perspectives that consider the possibility of different experiences.

Regardless of the level of agency we give the nonhumans, in these performances their presence is undeniable. Video games simply do not exist without nonhuman input. As this nonhuman influence is usually interactive, we tend to take its influence, if not agency, into account. Labeling video game performance as live media performance allows us to better take the nonhuman agencies into consideration. Jo Scott, drawing from Karen Barad, sees agency in live media performance as emergent, not pre-existing. In other words, agency is created in the intra-actions that take place in the specific performance. Scott writes: ‘each moment of improvised generation involves a specific “being” and “doing” in order to build the audio-visual or intermedial space and that moment is also a point of agential enactment.’ (Scott 2015).

Jo Scott also calls the intermedial performer a creative technician, which also underlines the nature of the performance. Even though the performances made in the workshops differ from Scott’s events, the basics of working between two worlds, the actual and virtual, apply. (Scott 2015) The sense of danger from technology is also something that defines these performances.

Scott writes that the body of the performer in live media performances is in a state of ‘dynamic reconfiguring’, being both a ‘performing technician’ and ‘activating performer’. (Scott 2015) The relation to virtual and/or machine performers is different from the relationship to other human performers. In the workshops of Konstanz and Tampere, non-humans had multiple positions. In some performances, the nonhumans were used as props, and the focus was directed to the human performers. When the nonhuman, even when moved or operated by humans, is in the center of the stage, it is much easier to identify the performance. If the nonhuman in question is, for example, the game device, it is often left out of the reach of the spotlight. It is often perceived as something that enables the performance – for example, lights make performers visible and microphones make them heard – rather than as something that performs.

All performances using technology have a risk of technological failures or errors, most common problems have to do with lights or sounds. In intermedial or live media performances, failing technology has a more devastating effect, as it is often the center of the performance. Failure of technology is part of the genre, but if not anticipated by the performers and/or the audience, it can cause awkward moments.

I have previously argued that errors, glitches, and bugs in video games – and other virtual environments – are demonstrations of nonhuman agency (Huuhka 2018). Small moments of the game being broken, out of control, small moments of nonhuman control. The same can be applied in performances that feature machinic nonhumans, on stage or backstage. Glitches, bugs, and refusal of cooperation divert the gaze to the nonhuman, making it visible. I would argue that the frame of performance transforms also the nature of the glitch. If during gameplay it would be seen as a distraction, as something that breaks the illusion of smoothness, during a performance a glitch can, at least for the spectator, be an interesting part of the performance. It is the element of surprise, the unexpected. We often talk about machines as repetitive and unerring, but for example, in the performances made during the course machines and virtual entities were the ones to err and fail. In other words, the human was the stable force driving the performance. This, of course, applies to only certain types of performances. If the part of the machine or pixel would be preprogrammed and then merely played on screen, there would not be a possibility for the types of errors described here. However, this would not be live and, as such, it would be seen more as a set or prop than as a nonhuman performer. Liveness is at the core of this notion. The events that happen on the stage happen in cooperation with humans and nonhumans, and due to this, the possibility of things going wrong is essential.

In the workshops bugs, glitches and failures did happen. They forced both the audience and the performers to think differently. For example, I took the failures as performative actions by the non-humans, in other words, they became parts of the performance. The human performers were of course somewhat discouraged by these disturbances, as there was the pressure of the performance going as planned. As none of the participants were experienced performers, let alone live media performers, the pre-assumptions of how performances should be were quite rigid. In addition, the pressure of succeeding in making a good performance was also present.

Performing for Pixels

In workshop T, the fourth assignment was to produce a performance for pixels. I wanted to shift the attention from recognizably shaped game objects, such as characters, to more abstract entities. In previous assignments, pixels had been established as performers, but now the task was to imagine the kind of performance a cluster of pixels would enjoy. As the audience was virtual, I asked the students to take the materiality of the game/console as a part of the performance, as well as to introduce an element from the environment to the performance.

My general observation is that these performances broke away from both the norms of gameplay and ‘traditional’ theater the most. My interpretation is that the focus on the nonhuman as a spectator somehow encouraged the performers to disobey norms, thus allowed for more varied takes on performance and gameplay. As the students in the group were not theatre students, they perhaps had more conventional ideas of how a performance should be, for example, in relation to the audience. As the audience was already unreachable and unconventional, the performance seen by the human audience was altered.

When watching the performances, it became clear that defining what would be interesting for the pixels was a difficult task. Students had different visions on what would be enjoyable, and in most performances, they had given a lot of thought to the mental landscape of pixels. Many of these ideas were derived from the way pixels look. Many of the performances created used physical props. While discussing their performances, the students argued that pixels would enjoy seeing something else than pixels or virtual entities. In other words, the purpose of the performance was to be different from their normal life, to separate the everyday from something special. Another point was that as pixels constantly perform for us, we should in turn perform for them. The pixels came accessible through anthropomorphism, by giving them desires relatable to human ones. In many performances, it was assumed pixels had the same senses as humans.

The human performers also were more in the spotlight in these performances: during the previous exercises, the humans had been in a way beside the performance. They had a quality of invisible puppeteers in them: the humans were present, but existing towards the game and the screen. This time the relationship was directed more to us humans, and I think this happened because of the imagined pixel audience. The performers had to take that audience into account, and as a byproduct, this acknowledgement spread to include the human audience.