DPI:

Why use media on stage?

Hal Eagar:

It just seems like an obvious extension to stage spectacle to me, it always has. Now maybe I should be doing something less obvious but I seem to be good at theatre and media which makes it hard to switch gears; besides after 13 years it's finally caught on; so no stopping now. But really it's satisfing because I'm good at improvising and doing things for which there are no maps or standard techniques. If a technique becomes established then someone with more patience will probably learn to do it better and with more finesse than I do it fairly quickly. But I hope I have moved on to figuring out some new problem by then. Also art, particularly where art and technology meet is one of the sweet spots to do that kind of playful work. I would not want to be take risks or allowed to take the kind of chances and experimental approaches if I was writing code for medical devices, or even contact databases. I do engage in that type of more staid as a day job and it can have some enjoyable challenges, but it's not as playful and the results are not so visceral.

So I said nothing about why the audience should be interested yet. Well, the direct visceral results may be enough for some audience, but that's not my thought when working.

Sometimes do I think about wanting to compete with film and TV and video games but to get to caught up with your competitors may get in the way of fresh ideas so I'll leave that to the media experts, and try to approach media in theatre as a novice not an adept. And so the resasond I do is just to discover what can be done.

We are in the process of assembling points of view from as many digital performance practitioners as we can. We thought it only fair that DPI's Director, Hal Eagar, be the first answer the questions he drafted.

The questions:
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