Spectator’s Interaction: use of the smartphone on performance

Abstract

In the contemporary theatre the staging is growing in strength of successive sequences of interaction with the environment, expressed at times that are born and die before the actor, in apparent disorder, as a dislocated images that need repairing. Interactive digital technologies, have played a fundamental role in all this, although it is important to note that their role is limited to the channel, the medium of expression. In other words, the commitment to a common language towards a viewer 2.0, and the technical characteristics of the medium favors the fluid between actor and spectator capacity to decide on all the formal aspects of the show in real time.

This article examines the use of smartphones on the stage, as a interaction instruments of the audience in contemporary performance. Audience participation in performance goes back millennia to tribal rituals and communal dances, and the futurists were the first in the twentieth century to systematically initiate performance that relied upon direct interaction from their audience, typically using conflict and provocation to incite the spectators into action. This article insists on the historicity of such relationships and traces how they have changed from the 1980s to a contemporary moment that sees experimental performance in a closer relationship to the art world than ever before. The integration of smartphone as interfaces is a natural evolution of the game at theater prompting new questions as to the place of experimental performance amongst the mediums of art practice.