Little Virtual-Digital Mechanical Theatre Automaton

Little Virtual-Digital Mechanical Theatre Automaton is an automated theatre application inspired by my research on historical theatre automaton, my analysis of theatrical elements in several video games as well as the experiments of early 20st century avant-garde movements including the historical Bauhaus. It is also the main artifact of the artistic part of my master's thesis. This Theatre Automaton is part of my larger artistic research on theatre/theatricality and digital games. One of its stage performances takes around 7 1/2 minutes.

Since the project size is really small in this case I am able to provide a web build, but, as always and as is the recommended experience, downloadable files are provided as well - some parts of the lighting and the background videos unfortunately fail to work as intended in the web build, but it's still an interesting visual experience regardless. I therefore recommend the downloadable files for the intended experience. [26.09.2024: I uploaded a web build that should fix the problems with the video files.]

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GEWIDMET DEM THEATER DER AUTOMATEN

DEDICATED TO THE THEATRE OF AUTOMATA

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1. THE VIRTUAL-DIGITAL THEATRE IS HERE.

2. AS DATA BODIES WE ARE LARGER.

3. THE INSTITUTION SIMPLY FALLS OVER LIKE 1 CARDBOARD CUTOUT. BOOM.

4. OUR UTILIZATION CONSTRAINTS HAVE SIMPLY BEEN ILLUSION.

5. WE CAN KICK DOWN THE GATES WITH OUR IRON BOOTS.

6. THE IMPOSSIBLE BECOMES POSSIBLE IN VIRTUAL SPACE.

7. 1 TRIO SURROUNDS THE OBJECTS. AND THE OBJECTS MOVE THEMSELVES.

8. ACROSS THE NIGHT WALL FLUTTERS 1 DODO. THEIR SILHOUETTE IS DRAWN WITH MOONLIGHT. WE HASTILY TAKE A PIXELATED PIC.

Das virtuell-digitale Theater ist da. // Als Datenkörper sind wir größer. // Die Institution fällt einfach um wie 1 Pappaufsteller. Bumm. // Unsere Verwertungszwänge waren nur Illusion. // Wir können die Tore mit unseren Eisenstiefeln eintreten. // Im virtuellen Raum wird Unmögliches möglich. // 1 Trio umgibt die Objekte. Und die Objekte bewegen sich selbst. // Über die Nachtwand flattert 1 Dodo. Their Silhouette ist mit Mondlicht gezeichnet. Wir machen eilig ein pixeliges Pic.

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Initially conceptualized for the university class for which I chose Compliment Machine (2023/2024) as a definitely easier work to actually physically realize. You can find these early sketches included in my postmortem on Compliment Machine. I would consider Compliment Machine as more akin to the cleaner and more corporate aesthetics of the other students’ work, while luckily also breaking those dominant aesthetics that I consider as symptomatic of the commodification of art in the 21st century (while I of course also dislike the canon, my controversial art take would thus be that most art (and especially literature!) from most eras isn’t that good – well, great then for all artists who are alive right now to make a better future). I wanted to create such a virtual-digital theatre automaton since quite some years now, and now I finally had the chance to do so. It was created in about two weeks during July and August 2024.

I think that this automaton out of all of my digital ludic works as of now comes closest to actually bringing my poetology from my writing into virtual-digital space, which is super neat!!!

I was also greatly inspired by Martin Gobsch’s Theatrum Mundi automaton at Krämerbrücke in Erfurt, depicting scenes from the German fairy tale Snow White. Over the past weeks and months I did some research on this automaton, and my inclusion of the arm that opens the curtains is definitely heavily inspired by it. In my initial concept I had two curtains opening to both sides, but also due to the tutorial I followed for animating a curtain as an improved version of what I had in my Theatrical Elegy (2021), I ended up with just one, and I wanted to have a seemingly natural mechanism for opening it. This arm then felt natural to me.

Generally, I was aiming for "realism", believability and the possibility of actually building it in real-life, while it also didn’t have to be hundred percent explainable, some magic and imagination regarding its mechanisms could be left (the great thing about virtual space!), as was oftentimes the case for the automata presented in the historical European theatrum machinarum literatures and exhibitions of the early modern period.

Initially I wanted to include actual rope physics, but they just didn't work out at all, so I thought of a different implementation of all the ropes that is more static, but still serves its purpose I think.

This automaton also works as an exhibit that showcases its inner functioning, so the audience can seemingly have "a look backstage", while also not totally understanding its inner workings, as was for example the case for the audience of Wolfgang von Kempelen’s 1770 Automaton Chess Player as well as in E. T. A. Hoffmann’s 1814 short story The Automata.

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W-A-R-P

THE ACTION OF LIGHT (László Moholy-Nagy)

D-O-T

There are three actors starring in this automaton, and they even ended up on the cover of my master’s thesis. The first one is a deconstructed cyborgian body akin to a humanoid marionette (Heinrich von Kleist/Edward G. Craig), that also could be read in regards to like Donna J. Haraways Cyborg Manifesto as well as mythologic motifs. The second one consists of objects, discarded, junk (Tadeusz Kantor) that become excessive as if they have a life of their own on stage (André Eiermann), while also employing the early avant-garde technique of collage/assemblage as todays "asset flipping" (James Stephanie Sterling) for virtual space. The third actor is robotic like the ones in Theatrical Elegy, and it abstracts the human body into shapes, what has for example been employed at the historical Bauhaus and by artists from dada such as Sophie Taeuber-Arp. These three actors and the automaton thus condense a lot of my theoretical research of my master’s thesis into one very short automated performance.

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Actor 3: I feel like oil today.

Actor 2: Have you started dreaming already?

Actor 3: No energy.

Actor 2: I am shivering without sound. I feel out of touch.

Actor 3: Strange times.

Actor 2: I am the hand that pulls at time.

Actor 3: I am the incandescent industry.

Actor 2 & 3: Our silent smoke shapes minds.

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Further tutorials I used were this one on creating circle-shaped text in Davinci Resolve and this one on importing an image to Blender and using its knife tool. The sound was in part coded in Sonic Pi, and I found a nice discussion on creating drone music with it where I took some code from (drone go brr), which is of course all I was ever looking for, when I can code drone music my life will be complete fr fr.

For the stage backdrops and the decorations I wanted to – being in the spirit of "yassifying" such a theatre automaton – make it a bit vaporwavy and gay; and after choosing Alexandre Cabanels iconic 1847 painting The Fallen Angel, I even found a text discussing this and other paintings as homo-erotic art. Elements like the statue of Atlas and the carnival mask further point towards my master’s thesis, especially my analysis of BioShock (2007).

The second backdrop is the painting A Landscape with a River and Classical Ruins by Johann Heinrich Müntz.

For the camera, I wanted to reuse the one from the Snow Globe Game at first, but chose the more free camera of Koordinatenlyrik instead.

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Here are some of the materials that I was reading/watching at the end of 2023 when I was working on my initial sketches for this automaton and that may be interesting: [1] [2] [3] [4].

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(1 Ansager*in betritt in ausgefallenem Kostüm energetisch den Bühnenraum.)

Trarra, Trarra, die Digitalität ist da! Jetzt ist die endlich angekommen im Theater! Wow! Der Wahnsinn! Lange hat es gedauert, bis die Anhänger*innen des Alten endlich ein bisschen aktuelle Lebensrealität ins Theater reingelassen haben! Aber jetzt ist sie endlich da! Wow! Wow! Ich-

(Stoppt plötzlich. Unsicher, was they jetzt eigentlich hier machen wollte. Blickt sich verwirrt um. Betretenes Schweigen. Tritt eilig wieder ab.)