Computer Science studies
Rémi Ronfard, Univ. Grenoble Alpes, Inria, CNRS, Grenoble INP, LJK, 38000 Grenoble, France
I have an educational background in engineering and I’ve spent my entire career in computer science research, first in the industry then with Inria [National Institute of Research in Science and Technologies] where I currently work as a director of research. The term ‘dramaturgy’ became essential to me when I began working in the field of action recognition in videos. I was recruited by Inria into a research program called “From image sequences to action sequences,” which was also the title of my professorial thesis to supervise research students (Ronfard 2010). The interweaving of actions into images has become a leitmotif in my career as a researcher, with incessant comings and goings between analysis – (how to recognize actions interwoven into images) and synthesis (how to represent actions with images). Under the influence of theorist Eugenio Barba, who defines dramaturgy as the art and science of interweaving actions (drama-ergon), I was led to consider my own work as a very particular form of dramaturgy.
In two fairly speculative articles (Gagneré 2016, Ronfard 2016), I suggested the idea that I could establish a digital dramaturgy in only choosing actions that my programs could simulate and recognize automatically. This would be a kind of “theater for the computer,” a dramaturgy able to be appreciated by artificial intelligences. But also, a dramaturgy susceptible to be played out by virtual actors and lit by autonomous machines that would offer theater writers new perspectives of representing interior or imaginary worlds on stage.
Within the scope of the Performance Lab, we have been able to review several recent examples of dramaturgies in augmented reality (Borrel 2019), and we’ve noticed that they are often used in service of classic texts that don’t always justify the turn toward digital techniques. Or rather, these dramaturgies explore new technologies and put them on stage, instead of grasping them to tell new stories.
Some of today’s digital dramaturgies consist in staging texts written by artificial intelligences. Although this might produce spectacular effects, it seems to me to be a more or less a vain project. The inverse, a dramatic text written by a human author specifically for digital stages, seems more promising to me.
That is perhaps the sense we must grant to the term ‘digital dramaturgy,’ that of an algorithmic weaving of human actions into spectacular virtual worlds. It still remains a far-off perspective that requires laborious research both in the fields of computer vision and computer graphics. My hope is that there will be dramaturges to seize these new possibilities and push the boundaries of theater in creative new directions.
More from this author:
Gillian Borrell, Rémi Ronfard, Julie Valero, « Dramaturgies de la Réalité Augmentée », Journées d'Informatique Théâtrale, Grenoble, 2019 [online]: https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/LJK/hal-02471493v1 (03/11/21)
Georges Gagneré, Rémi Ronfard, Myriam Desainte-Catherine, « La simulation du travail théâtral et sa « notation » informatique », in Monique Martinez, Sophie Proust eds., La notation du travail théâtral: du manuscrit au numérique, Manage: Lansman, 2016 [online]: https://hal.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/hal-00768897/ (03/11/21)
Rémi Ronfard, « Analyse automatique de films : Des séquences d’images aux séquences d’actions », Sarrebruck, Éditions universitaires européennes, 2010 [online]: https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-00450230 (03/10/21)
Rémi Ronfard, « Notation et reconnaissance des actions scéniques par ordinateur », in Monique Martinez, Sophie Proust eds., La notation du travail théâtral : du manuscrit au numérique, Manage: Lansman, 2016 [online]: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01389847 (03/10/21)
Cite this item: Rémi Ronfard, “Dramaturgy”, translated by Lauren Fabrizio, Performascope: Interdisciplinary Lexicon of Performance and Research-Creation, Grenoble: Université Grenoble Alpes, 2021, [online]: http://performascope.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/en/detail/177817
Theater studies
Julie Valero, Univ. Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, Litt&Arts, 38000 Grenoble, France
As a specialist in contemporary scenic forms and their creation process, I have always practiced dramaturgy on the sidelines of my teaching and research in performing arts, at a time where it was not integrated into academic research. Between 2018 and 2020, the research fields organized by the Performance Lab in collaboration with academic researcher in digital studies Rémi Ronfard and the company tf2-Jean-François Peyret, were for me the first to be fully included in a scientific approach.
The term “digital dramaturgy” was first used by Rémi Ronfard and myself before the project began so we could distinguish and combine the artistic gesture and the development of new methodologies. This double approach was the essence of our collaboration: to choose, to develop digital tools for the performing arts professional field and by artists who had a specific artistic identity marked by an interest in these digital environments.
The “digital dramaturgy” designates, in the first place, digital working environments susceptible to serve artistic teams – and particularly, staging and dramaturgy teams – simple, malleable tools, capable of treating a great amount of data in a very short time, as well as retaining and therefore, building an archive work. The fields undertaken were intended to evaluate the needs of the teams as well as measure the adequacy between the tools that already existed and those used during rehearsals. Indeed, the use of video footage, the great amount of textual and even audible data that was accumulated during a process of rehearsals by several contributors (assistants, directors, performers, stage engineers) all brought to light at the same time the question of data storage, organization, sharing and reusability. The tool that was developed, Kino Ai[1], aligns itself with others such as (Vitry’s StudioTheatre note books Les Cahiers du Studio or even Clarisse Bardiot’s Rekall in collaboration with Buzzing Light and Thierry Coduys).
Secondly, it seems to me that the term “digital dramaturgy” needs to be broadened to what I call “media dramaturgy”, thus a dramaturgy informed by a digital environment within which it is embedded. The use of file storing and file sharing, collaborative writing tools or even the integration of web research engines to the practice of writing is of course not without its consequences, as illustrated by the work of many artists, for instance the duo Barbara Matijevic and Giuseppe Chico’s, the stage director Émilie Rousset or even Hédé-Bazouges’s Joli Collectif. Le Petit Bréviaire à l’usage des animaux humains du XXIe siècle written by Jean-François Peyret. We followed the first part of the rehearsals of the latter with the Digital dramaturgies team in Grenoble in February 2020 to develop media dramaturgy by associating digital practices with the writing of the text score : it was a matter of testing how Kino Ai, beyond being a simple “tool”, could also become a multimedia writing generator and an editing tool by offering access to different dramaturgy sequences. This part of the program was supplanted by the successive Covid lockdowns.
[1] https://team.inria.fr/imagine/kino-ai/
Pour citer : Julie Valero, « Dramaturgie numérique », Performascope : Lexique interdisciplinaire des performances et de la recherche-création, Grenoble : Université Grenoble Alpes, 2021, [en ligne] : http://performascope.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/en/detail/177817
