improvisation

This talk shares collaboration strategies and “funnest practices” for using netprov — networked improvisation, online roleplay literature — in the classroom. In sequences of “jump right in” creative games, students explore such topics as character development and character voice in a real-time laboratory of quick creative exchanges (accompanied by mutual encouragement and laughter). By building a bridge between students’ own social media writing practices and learning about historic literature, their creative strategies are expanded and critical connections between canonical texts and contemporary, everyday writing are made. What students may not realize is that netprov also can help break through their own creative blockages and freezes.

Theatre is a sometimes forgotten casualty of the current pandemic. Social distancing precludes the assembly necessary for participatory theatre. Theatre and theatrical improvisation rely on participants--performers and audiences alike--gathering in the same space, exploiting their physical proximity to tell stories. Because of the limited modalities of communication, virtual gatherings using video-conferencing platforms are, at best, an ersatz solution for audiences longing for connection in an ever more disconnected world. While some performance groups have embraced tele-conferencing and streaming for workshops, practice and performance, many theatre makers and performers are preferring to temporarily pause while waiting for the conditions of performance to resume [1]. We took the opposite view, believing that live theatre cannot wait for the pandemic to wane. 

We therefore built a computer tool for online performance. Our system, called the Virtual Director, enables actors to recreate a feeling of presence with stage partners while performing and storytelling remotely [2]. 

Our research combines cinematic and video communication technologies with the theatrical practice of improvisational and scripted theatre, and aims at recreating presence, virtually.Virtual Director relies on commodity software (TouchDesigner, web browsers), widely adopted video conferencing tools (Zoom, Microsoft Teams) and streaming platforms (YouTube, Twitch)--digital platforms for streaming and video conferencing that we subverted for participatory online performances.

We deployed Virtual Director during community-based performances at the Online Paris Fringe festival. We noticed that the audience was curious about new interaction formats and performance modalities. We believe that our streamed performances redefined the nature of live performance, as we identified four levels of participation: performer, privileged audience member, general audience member, and onlooker who watches the recording of the show. First, our tool enabled visual collocation and presence among performers. Second, Virtual Director enabled visual collocation and audio interaction between selected audience members and the performers, or recreated visual presence if we placed them in a virtual “amphitheatre”. Third, audiences could interact indirectly via chat. Finally, onlookers followed the show via streaming. As a complement to previous analyses of the performers’ experience of presence in a tele-immersive virtual space [2], this paper examines the perception of the performance by audiences and their participation in collective storytelling; we situate our work in literature on improvisation and interactive performance. 

As we performed remotely with multilingual actors from different countries, we exploited live translation and speech recognition technology to enable actors to improvise in multiple languages while being understood by cast members and audiences. Building up on an existing multilingual improv stage show [3], we combined tele-immersion with translation to create a multilingual performance that transcends typical physical limitations of the stage. Our paper concludes with our ongoing work: once we assemble again in a post-pandemic world, we will keep the tele-immersion and translation tools to create mixed-presence connected international shows. 

[1] Berger, "The Forgotten Art of Assembly”, April 2020, retrieved January 2021, https://medium.com/@nicholasberger/the-forgotten-art-of-assembly-a94e16…] Branch et al, “Tele-Immersive Improv”, SIG CHI 2021.[3] Mirowski et al, “Rosetta Code: Improv in Any Language”, Computational Creativity 2020.

The author discusses his computer music composition, Voyager, which employs a computer-driven, interactive “virtual improvising orchestra” that analyzes an improvisor’s performance in real time, generating both complex responses to the musician’s playing and independent behavior arising from the program’s own internal processes. The author contends that notions about the nature and function of music are embedded in the structure of software-based music systems and that interactions with these systems tend to reveal characteristics of the community of thought and culture that produced them. Thus, Voyager is considered as a kind of computer music-making embodying African-American aesthetics and musical practices.

Learn a cutting-edge method of performative creative writing based on human-computer interaction.

You will learn to “write with your voices” (as opposed to typing on a keyboard) by using speech recognition software. We will take turns saying impromptu lines out loud into a microphone. The computer will recognize the lines with varying accuracy and turn the speech into text on the computer screen. We will develop a set of improvisational tools to enhance dramatic writing by utilizing the computer’s errors (misrecognitions) in collaboration with other participants. You will be confronted with situations requiring quick decision-making, because the computer does not reproduce your speech with hundred-percent accuracy – a fact that will challenge you to deal with technological dysfunction in the here-and-now of a performative writing situation. Also, you will be challenged to listen and respond to your human writing partners and their texts. Through guided practice, you will learn to take the writing process in unexpected directions, further into an improvisational realm.

While practicing this collaborative, performative live writing method with human and computer partners, we will work toward creating short fictional scenes. The scenes will be based on dramatic situations that we will come up with together through rehearsals and discussion. In addition to this practical work, we will spend time discussing readings of relevant texts (live writing, new technology, human-computer interfaces and drama).

At the end of the workshop, we will present a live, performative writing event, in which you will have the opportunity to perform those aspects of the writing method that you find most compelling. The showing will be planned and performed collaboratively. At the end of this workshop, you will have the tools to continue exploring the relationship between text, digital media, and performance in your own work.

(source: ELO 2015 catalog)

While improvisational theater has a well-documented history, the role of improvisation on the Internet has been only the topic of passing speculation (Laurel; Murray), either applied metaphorically to the user interface or in speculation on the nature of computer-mediated textual exchange particularly in the context of identity formation (Turkle). While improvisation is deeply connected to the authorial practices of players of MMORPGs and their MOO precursors (LaFarge) and to players of story-generation games such as Jason Rohrer’s “Sleep is Death” and to participants in ARGs, we are specifically interested in text-centered improvisation that has as its goal the creation of a narrative or narrative world, rather than primarily the development of a game experience.

In this paper, we propose to define a new category of collaborative authorship on the Web: Networked Improv Narrative (netprov), as a genre of electronic literature predicated on establishing contexts for online synchronous and asynchronous writing.  After briefly reviewing categories of theatrical improvisation especially the influence of Del Close, we will move into the immediate precursors of Internet improvisation.  The remainder of the paper will explore several creative works that epitomize networked improv, particularly works that we, the authors, have had direct involvement, including, The LA Flood Project, Blue Company, The Los Wikiless Timespedia, the Chicago Soul Exchange, The Ballad of Workstudy Seth, and Grace, Wit, and Charm. The structure of the paper takes on the spirit of collaboration of improv, as we banter back and forth in a dialogue about this emerging form.

 (Source: Authors' abstract)