Live Performance and Post-Cinematic Filmmaking

Through the lens of recent artistic works by the authors and their collaborators, this paper explores opportunities cinema’s evolving materiality presents for filmmaking structures, within the context of narrative live performance. In particular, we examine how the integrated authorship of cinematic media, software, and live experiences can drive shifts in definitions and approaches, and spark new theatrical conventions incorporating new media structures. Selected projects by the authors’ research center are used as case studies, concluding with Entropy Bound, an experimental theatre piece that uses machine learning to learn from and influence the dialogue and actions of the lead character through media, progressively evolving as it is rehearsed and performed. The conceptualizations of cinematic media within these research projects were developed in conjunction with their software code and narrative structures. Tracing the evolution of media authorship within these processes, the paper concludes with a discussion of how the progression from digital manipulation focused primarily on media’s formal qualities, to manipulation rooted in its sequencing and semantics, could impact the use of cinema within live experiences and new dramaturgy with potential relationships to contemporary artificial intelligence.