Date: Friday 3 April 2020
CfP: TaPRA Performance and New Technologies Working Group Interim Event – Friday 3rd April 2020 Digital Disruptions: Bugs and glitches in live performance Hosted and supported by New Adelphi Theatre: https://www.newadelphitheatre.co.uk/ and the Arts, Media and Communication Research Centre at the University of Salford Keynote: Matt Adams, Blast Theory: https://www.blasttheory.co.uk/ Performance and event coverage by The Ladies of the Press: http://www.ladiesofthepress.org/ What happens when we apply an aesthetic or disturbance of the digital space, such as a glitch or bug, to a live performance event? Paul and Levy outline the term ‘glitch’ as referring to ‘images and objects that have been tampered with’ or ‘corrupted’ and that this quality can be created ‘by using machines or digital tools in methods different from their normative modalities’ (2015, p.31). It is from this provocation that our interim event call arises – we are interested in curating a day of discussion and practice, where the notion of a glitch or bug in the system of a digital programme or machine is explored in relation to and through live performance practice. How might bugs or glitches – ‘ghosts in the machine that allow chance computational and electronic phenomena to appear and participate in the structure of the work’ (Causey 2016, p.454) – be provoked or applied to performance making? How can a ‘glitch aesthetic’, bringing to the centre the peripheral and ‘superficial flaws’ we experience in encounters with the digital (Betancourt 2017, p.7), be present in performance events? Might it, as Betancourt suggests, have the capacity to re-materialise, disrupt and disturb ‘the aura of the digital’ as ‘a self-productive domain, infinite, capable of creating value without expenditure’ (p.15)? What resistance can such practices offer to ‘surveillance capitalism’, operating ‘through the automated medium of an increasingly ubiquitous computational architecture of “smart” networked devices, things and spaces?’ (Zuboff 2019, p.8) We welcome proposals for papers, provocations, practice as research demonstrations and performances that respond to the call and may be aligned with the following areas: