Placemaking in Marginalia: Orality-literacy Fluctuations as Praxis for Extended Reality Performances

Abstract

Placemaking in Marginalia is a theoretical-practical research on experimental Extended Reality technologies for live performances and non-linear narratives. Situated at the confluence of experimental applications of spatial computing, algorithmic theatre and Machine Learning (ML), it leverages a comparative study across oral culture structures, medieval approaches to textual technologies, media interfaces, orality-literacy metamorphoses, intertextuality and systems of extreme variability to elucidate creative parallels and set forth an interdisciplinary methodology for theorizing and developing virtualities and hyperrealities in the form of hybrid live performances for dancers, actors and algorithms. This encompassed the development of two instances of applied research and pedagogy: All Coding is Always Transcoding, a week-long dynamic research laboratory and Enclavados Todos Juntos, a live performance, both taking place at the Meany Center for the Performing Arts in Seattle, in April and May of 2024.