What could I say? I didn't work on VT pages since I made them (first draft). I am not staging VT productions anymore. Why? Because I want to understand the THEORY of virtual theatre!
No, I didn't write a manifesto either. But I am writing The Book of Spectator in order to see clear this new phenomena -- THEATRE OF ONE.
I leave aside everything about computers, eye-tracking, 3D, 4D and other technology projects.
Third,
I am talking about the development of dramatic virtual theatre.
Moviemakers and game-developers are busy with the effect of immersion, but interests are to see that the new interactivity of VR does to the traditional stage show. In fact, my aim is negative: to see what is the new technology environment in theatre and what effect is has on actor, director, writer of the "straight drama"....
I believe that film did to theatre in the past century something that Web and Internet is about to do in the new century.
Cybertheology: Two Basic Terms: "Cyberspace" and "Virtual Reality" * Theological Aspects
"As cyberspace we understand complex which from millions of computers forms the World Wide Web. VR is computer-generated three dimensional environment. It is used on the Net, but not only there. In the nearest future they will probably integrate entirely. That inaccuracy is not a very important fault but it’s good to know and remember about it. Of course we should concentrate on religious problems and aspects not on purely means of communication. In that article I will use that terms interchangeably."
...
POST-postmodern:
"a. Reality and God
The question of the digital construction of reality is intimately related to the question of the construction of "God" in a technological society. When, as in digital technology, everything is reducible to "bits" the eroding of the traditional concept of God as "unmoved mover," the absolutely stable foundation of reality, reaches its conclusion. In previous work I have suggested that, in a digital world, God is more appropriately thought of as "the ground of possibility" than as "the ground of being." That suggestion, however, may only move the metaphysical question back one step, suggesting that while reality is a social construction, possibility is somehow "given," an unreconstructed ground of the construction of reality. In a world that is completely constituted by the manipulation of signals, even "God" must be understood in terns of the signals by which "God" has been and is constructed. However, I will argue that this does not imply that the word has been rendered superfluous. Rather it involves us in a renewed seriousness about the signals that cluster, through history, around the language of divinity.
b. Human nature
A cluster of basic questions concerning human nature cluster around the discussion of digital technologies. Digital technologies seem to have the effect of marginalizing the human body. That is, computers deal primarily with mental productions text, images in which the role of the body in their production and communication is mused. Susan Thistlethwaite has identified this as a "gnosticizing" tendency of the new media. But the apparently dualistic bias of information
technology is only the "tip of the iceberg." While the medium apparently provides a new sanction to a mind (soul)/body dualism, it radically erodes the sense of personal identity that the old anthropology took for granted. Sherry Turkle, among others, has studied how identities are easily assumed and discarded in the form of digital persona. In the discussion of digital technologies there is a clear split between the new dualists, who celebrate the liberation from the body that the new media make possible, and anti-technological writers (e.g. Mark Slouka) for whom the flight from the body is a flight from reality.
Perhaps more serious than the question of dualism is the question of the "dehumanizing" impactof digital technology. In some approaches to technology, including those of Heidegger and Ellul, technology has the effect of reducing the human subject to a logical object. What are the consequences of this effect of information technology? Should the nihilistic impact of this technology be resisted or viewed as an opportunity? (Vattimo)
Given the classical Christian identification of the rational with the imago dei, a point of view adopted in a secularized form by the Enlightenment, the appearance of a rational or even quasi-rational, machine poses a threat to traditional anthropologies. I will attempt to place all three questions against the background of the history of the imago dei and pose the question of the future of Christian anthropology in a technological culture.
c. Community
Howard Reingold has promoted electronically constructed communities in his book, Virtual Community. Rheingold's experience, based in a pre-Internet online service (The Well) has been paralleled by the experience of the growth of religious community on Ecunet, an online service relating primarily to North American mainline denominations. The question of how an apparently dis-incarnate community (or ecclesia) is possible raises one aspect of the question of digitally constructed community. As well as defending the "reality" of virtual community, however, I want to expand the discussion to include two other questions: 1. If, as often been observed, online community is anti-hierarchical and anti-authoritarian, what kind of community will result? 2. What are the cultural and economic impact of the new media and what does that imply about the nature of the community nurtured by digital technology? I will argue that these two questions appear to reveal a contradiction produced by the technology. While the anti-authoritarian bias of the medium allows minority voices to speak, and thus promotes a genuine pluralism, the globalization of commerce which is enabled by the technology tends to marginalize difference.
d. History/Eschatology
If late modernity is a time of the "end of history", and if science and technology are complicit in ending history, what is the future of hope? Some scenarios of a technologically controlled future are profoundly pessimistic a vision of a techno-bureaucratic system in which no protest is possible. Others see technology as the basis for a new and enhanced human future. Is technology actually wedded to a secular millennialism, as suggested by David Noble (The Religion of Technology)? I will return here to the views of technology surveyed at the beginning of the work and attempt to draw some theologically informed conclusions." * David M. Lochhead, 1998-99
Vancouver School of Theology
