Technology and Art

This post comes from a reflection on a reading from Gabriella Giannachi's book 'Virtual Theatres'.

It is interesting to note that the consideration of technology as art only really began to emerge around WWI. It came from a new found obsession with mechanics which can be seen in the work of Meyerhold and also Schlemmers dancers of the Bauhaus. The Futurists movement can be seen to praise the technological age feeling it was their new art form.

Around the 1960's emerged the idea of 'Cyborg art'. In 1984 William Gibson wrote a science fiction novel from which came the term 'Cyber Space'. The book has been so influencial in modern thinking and it is now hard to imagine art, fiction and technology being separated. For me I view cyberspace as quite an alien thing, although I am sure it has affected my life in some ways. I also view the form of cyber space as it creating a new social group in the world. A virtual community on a scale larger than any other previously experienced.

Many views suggest that it is the viewer that constitutes a 'real' performance of virtual theatre. It made me think when it was supposed that the difference here is the performer is inside the work of art.