PlayOn! Bulletin, Issue One, June 2022

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STORYTELLING FOR THE HERE AND NOW - INTERVIEW WITH L: There have been some really exciting methods. The training aspect of the network
will be an interesting and valuable are longing for profound debates, for
of the hopelessness of the times. People Richard Hurford | UK
PLAYON! ARTISTIC DIRECTOR DIRK NELDNER
But isn’t Hope the oldest con-trick in when is always Today.
Recently I came across the British immersive technologies ... the hope for
projects coming out of the network so
CONCRETE UTOPIAS the world? Was Bloch asking us to Our Today is the Digital Age and this is literature professor Terry Eagleton and improvement drives us, trial and error
D: Yes the real challenge lies in the field And we need mediators between the far. Pilot’s experience as a theatre company
for young people has been that it is as the project reaches its midway point? sions in a time when we are afraid of
IN THE DIGITAL AGE believe in fairy tales? Certainly not. just the start. For some people it’s been his book: Hope without Optimism. is our process of hope and failure.
legacy for the project, what is your hope guidance, for critical and open discus-
of training! There are - at least in Europe two worlds: Theatre and digitality. You
Bloch’s hope is not the hope of
a bad beginning. For others, the good I don't know if he would approve of Eagleton notes that there can be hope
- no offers at schools for directing and can't imagine how difficult it is to bring a new way for us to explore storytelling
war, of climate change, of pandemics, of
By accepting that Utopias are possible,
the connection with the word has gone. Nor is it the passive hope of are not built by trusting to fate or by pro-
because when I googled him, I read his present. However, a future that could
desperation when everything else outweighs the bad. But Concrete Utopias me mentioning him in our context, only if the future is anchored in the
acting that introduce young artists to representatives of these two worlds into for our audiences as well as appealing D: Theatre has often proven in the past the tearing apart of our societies. When
the new immersive technologies. This is a common working process. Because to those who may be excited by being that it is able to adapt to new technologies,
to use them to tell stories even language formats and explores these
theatre is open to learn new artistic
“ concrete” no longer feels like a paradox wishful thinking. This is Hope redefined jecting dystopian visions of today into article "Why I never use email", which be fairly described in the language of
where bridges need to be built. So far in there is still a big gap in understanding, it active or part of the live experience. It
or a problem. If a Utopia can exist, then as a problem to be solved. We hope for a the future. Today it is only natural for us is more than critical of everyday digital the present would have too much in
our experience in our network - where is so hard to convince theatre-makers to has also been a good opportunity to see more intensely. But the reason I really themes, the future of storytelling is not
obviously it must be able to be concrete perfect system and then use that hope to to fear another wave of the pandemic. applications. However, when I searched common with the status quo, to be
theatre and digital universities meet - open up. The same is seen on the other the inventive ways our partners across have such great hope that theatre plays only exciting but important in helping us
- real, not abstract. How? Because things drive our actions towards a solution. Today it is understandable to feel despair further I came across his book "Culture" considered a real future at all. And with
students of technical disciplines are also (digital) side.
Europe approach these technologies and such an important role today is because navigate the world that we are living in. ´
changed.
In fact it’s a whole system constructed
from many solutions that must against the people of Ukraine.
to myself
destroys
at the brutal aggression unleashed and thought
that, Eagleton
very interested in artistic realisations.
Human beings constantly make plans
my
PROJECT COORDINATOR
https://vatteater.ee
PLAYON! TECH PARTNER
VAT Teater | Tallinn/Estonia Akademie für Theater und Digitalität |
Dortmund/Germany
Est. 1987 as the oldest Estonian independent theatre
15 permanent employees + over 30 freelancers
Shows per year (during the pandemic) 150
Spectators per year 15000
VAT Teater is a small theatre with a big... ...reach!
A NEW APP
FOR PLAYFUL
INTERACTION -
BEN KIRMAN | UK
Many theatres within and beyond
PlayOn are interested in how mobile
phones can be integrated into their
productions. This is a complex topic and
it can be difficult to understand what is
possible and the creative opportunities
presented by this platform.
To help, Ben Kirman (Digital Creativity
Labs) has made a demonstration app
toolkit that can be helpful in thinking
about different kinds of ways mobile
phones can be used apart from the
familiar. It is a playful tool that might
help give some ideas of unusual
interactions.
The demo app is only available for
Android, however the features work on
iPhone too.
You can download the app on an android
device, and instructions are available
on the webpage at
https://ben.kirman.org/stuff/
playon_app.html
There is also a short video demonstration
of a couple of the features:
https://youtu.be/_dCTcEGSyY8
The app has a selection of features to explore.
Of particular interest for thinking
about "concrete utopias" is the "location"
tab, which finds out some features of
your current location, and the "remote
data" tab, which allows you to give
feedback live to a server. On your computer
(or another device) you can see
the output of this on this control panel:
https://playon-demo.web.app/
The app and the control panel are
connected live - changes in the control
panel affect everyone with the app
imme diately. You can send notifications,
change messages and colours, trigger
events and there is a simple voting
system. Note it might be confusing if
many people are using the control panel
at once!
This liveness gives interesting possibilities
- events triggered when certain
numbers of audience members are
in different locations, or even tied to
external systems like lighting cues or
other displays.
Ben is happy to talk more about the
creative potential of this platform
ben@kirman.org, you can also see
more of Ben's work at: https://ben.
kirman.org
https://ben.kirman.org/
stuff/playon_app.html
Est. 2019
10 employees + associated member
The Academy focuses on technical and artistic research and exploration of Digitality. We enjoy
Complexity and Interdisciplinarity.
The institution is characterised first and foremost by the artistic-technical research work of the
(international) fellows. The invited artists, technologists and coders spend five months conducting
prototypical and application-oriented research on the development of digital tools and methods
between sensor technology, actuator technology, XR, VR, AR and artificial intelligence (funded by
the Kulturstiftung des Bundes). This is complemented by a pilot project the academy has launched
with the Helmholtz Association as a research scholarship, as an encounter between science and art.
The research and development is accompanied on one hand by technology-oriented further
education, on the other hand by the initiation of the master's degree program "Digitality in the
Scenic Arts" (working title) with the Dortmund University of Applied Sciences and Arts.
As part of the Theater Dortmund, the academy regularly cooperates with the five other divisions
of the house, as most recently in the context of PlayOn! for the KJT's production: "The Future".
PLAYON! TECH PARTNER
University of York
Digital Creativity Labs | York/United Kingdom
Est. 1963
22020 students from 150 countries
Staff 3800 across 30 departments
https://theater.digital/en
https://digitalcreativity.ac.uk
The University of York is a research university and the home of the Digital Creativity Labs, £18m
multidisciplinary lab for technology and storytelling, with internationally recognised research.
that require new techniques, technology
or thinking to deliver. So we simply
apply this to the idea of the Concrete
Utopia and understand
that all
our thinking, our
planning and our
actions must be
for the future. The
important thing
is to understand
that a Concrete
Utopia is not fixed
by today’s situation
or what happened
yesterday, last year,
last century. It all
depends on what
we can make happen
tomorrow - if
we change things.
Ernst Bloch put it like this: Concrete
Utopias are possible but Not Yet. Not
Yet is not the same as Never. Never shuts
everything down. Not Yet keeps the way
forward open.
On the way there will be mistakes. That’s
fine. We don’t give up today because our
Concrete Utopia is not yet possible. We
build it piece by piece every day so that
tomorrow it will be one day closer.
But what can possibly drive the creation
of a Utopia that we will most likely not
live long enough to see? Bloch’s answer
is clear: the book that first introduced his
concept of Concrete Utopias is called
The Principle of Hope.
We are proposing a once in a lifetime
ritual for the people of Naarm (Melbourne)
to speculate about the next
century and consciously emphasise with
future generations who will inherit our
society. It’s called Child of Now.
We ask people to imagine
the next century through the
eyes of a child born today
to contribute to a massively
co-authored story about the
next century and the most
ambitious portrait of our
population ever created.
But before we continue,
it’s protocol in Australia to
Acknowledge Country, to state where we
are. We write from the stolen, unceded
lands of the Wurundjeri Woiwurrung
and Boonwurrung people of the Kulin
nations. We acknowledge the cultural
elders of the Wurundjeri people of the
past and the elders keeping culture alive
in the present.
We invite you to think about where you
are. Do you live and work on the lands
of your ancestors? How did you come to
be there, have you been displaced? Did
work together in harmony. And work
for every person. Utopias must be
ambitious. OK for some people, even OK
for most people is not good enough. It
must be the “good place” for all people,
which can only be imagined and created
by the ongoing input of all people
towards this common goal.
Clearly such a consensus is not possible
in today’s world, but that is not an
obstacle. We just focus on finding the
solution to make it possible tomorrow.
Concrete Utopias are always historically
specific and no Concrete Utopia model
can be imposed on another time and
place; one size does not fit all. Every
Concrete Utopia must begin in a specific
place at a specific point in time. The
place is a matter of choice and will, but
you or your ancestors displace others or
take part in colonisation? Utopias are in
tension with colonisation.
A utopia, if it ever can exist, belongs in
the future. This is the important work
of speculative fiction, to see the future
and from that future to examine the
now. We send messages back and forth
through time, using what anthropologist
W. E. H. Stanner, in his 1953 essay ‘The
Dreaming’, called ‘everywhen’, the Aboriginal
Australian concept of time in which
the abstract concepts of past, present
and future do not exist. In this sense the
future is a utopia, it does not exist. In
the everywhen everything that can exist
already does, it’s just waiting for it’s time
to unfold, to reveal itself. We don’t create
a future, we discover it. Child of Now is a
However Today is only really significant
as the time and place to identify what
Photo: R.Hurford
specific hopes we
have for a better
world. Then we
must move on
to address those
specific problems
we must solve to
get there.
PlayOn! is hopeful
that within our
Digital Age are the
seeds for Concrete
Utopias to grow
into the good places
of tomorrow for
everyone. We can
choose to accept
that technology
will just build a digital version of the old
world with all its failings and injustices.
Or we can choose to hope and identify
the problems that technology can solve.
We can choose to see that the past is
really “no place”. We can learn from
it, but we must not allow it to stop us
hoping for something different and
better. “Concrete Utopias in the Digital
Age” is definitely not a call to imagine
the impossible. Instead it’s a challenge to
search for the huge, wonderful, limitless
potential of the possible and to choose
to make it all really happen, one day at
a time. Let’s hope.
CHILD OF NOW -
Imagining the next century
through the life of a child
born today Robert E Walton
and Claire G Coleman | Australia
way we can encourage this discovery.
We write from the collaborative creative
process of our interdisciplinary Extended
Reality (XR) artwork Child of Now,
a project that speculates on radical
variations of how the next century might
unfold. It focuses collective attention by
enacting rehearsals of
possible futures. Our
aim is to foster embodied
experiences
of indigenised, equitable
and sustainable
societies, to explore
how the future might
feel.
The artwork does this by combining
narrative and portraiture to imagine the
life course of a child born today. We invite
14,400 people to step into the Child
of Now’s shoes at key moments in the
future to help make decisions. The sum
of all the decisions creates a collaboratively
authored future history of the next
century. The holograms we create of
each person’s performance as the Child
of Now form an animated portrait that
ages sequentially, one body at a time,
¬- here is a
connection
to PlayOn!
in terms of
content. But
this book is
a takedown
of culture as
we know it;
in Eagleton’s
eyes culture
is "overrated". The self-identified Marxist
complains: "In some places, culture
has become a way of not talking about
capitalism". A culture to Eagleton's taste
would have to create a utopia beyond
capitalist reality.
Hallelujah, here are the utopian ideas we
are looking for – in a relevant context!
Yes, Eagleton’s approach still appears
dressed in the linguistic costume of
Marxism: property, exploitation and
class struggle ... But honestly, there’s not
much wrong about that for my taste.
In "Hope without Optimism," Eagleton
draws a distinction between hope and
simple wishful thinking idealism, or a
blind faith in progress. Unlike hope,
professional optimism is not a virtue
and it cannot be supported or justified
with serious thought or rigorous study.
He illustrates this by referring to North
Korea and the United States of America,
where optimism is almost a state
ideology. Optimism in the US is often the
same as patriotism. As Eagleton says, a
US-president telling Americans that their
best years are already behind them is
unthinkable; it would be at least political
suicide and possibly even put their actual
life in danger.
HOPE WITHOUT
OPTIMISM
Dirk Neldner | DE
For Eagleton simple optimism is banal.
Hope, on the other hand, requires reflection
and clear, rational thinking - and
always holds the possibility of failure. His
conclusion that Hope drives people and
states to peak performance brings us to
the core issues of our work. We are all
confronted with the possibility of failure
when we make theatre, when we use
one minute each, through a whole life
course. Then, 14,400 minutes (ten days)
later, the Child of Now will die, approximately
one hundred years in the future.
Child of Now is an exercise in co-authorship,
that begins with the two of
us, Claire and Robert, and will grow
and unfold to include thousands more.
Our utopian aim is to preserve the
idiosyncrasy of each voice, gesture,
turn of phrase, body, skin tone, language
and perspective of every contributor
in the Child of Now’s future
archive. This portrait of the Child of
assumption
that we can
really deal with
utopias in theatre
– because
we simply lack
the language
to do so. If I
understand
this correctly,
we can hope,
but we must accept that hope cannot
predict the future, and just be content if
we succeed in reflecting where change is
needed in the present.
This confrontation with Terry Eagleton
gave me a lot of pleasure, even if it’s a
dark pleasure. That's why at the end of
his book I just felt like browsing again
through Ernst Bloch and his main work
"The Principle of Hope". Just to confirm
that my longing for utopias is not entirely
wrong. Bloch calls longing the only
honest quality of man. And he gives me
courage by saying that it is important
that we learn to hope. Because if we stop
hoping, what we fear will come to be.
When it comes to the cooperation
between theatre and the digital world
optimism alone cannot help us. These
worlds sometimes feel like two antipodes,
truly hard to connect up. It
demands the investment of a lot of hope
to imagine we can find a way to develop
creatively together. But it is my firm
conviction, that here such an investment
in hope is really worth it. We must train
ourselves to bring these two creative
worlds closer together. Again, it is about
hope without optimism. Clear visions
must be developed on both sides so that
a common, very concrete utopia can
emerge.
We are the storytellers and we have
the obligation to always develop new
narratives for people. And, in doing so,
also show the audience the opportunities
of our time in expanded spaces,
so that the audience can dive into our
stories and the possibilities they contain.
Now comprised of thousands of people
and their observations of the future
will be radically plural, it will not be
homogenised. Specific plurality is
important.
Have a look at the diagram. The public
will engage in the project in two parts.
In part one, ‘Gathering’, 14400 Melbournians
would come through our
immersive installation to create what
we call the “future archive”. This
experience includes
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