DATA OCEAN THEATRE (OUT OF THE BLUE); A Discipline-Fluid Postdoctoral Artistic Research Project Exposition

vincent roumagnac

Data Ocean Theatre (D.O.T.) is a four-year artistic research project that explores the intersection of myths, Western theatre memory, new media, digital animism, climate emergency, sea and ocean transformations, queer subcultures, and technological mutations in relation to aspects of “submersion” as a contemporary living condition. Expanding on the claimed unsustainability of Western theatre’s anthropocentric foundations, D.O.T. examines how the notion and practice of the stage transform amidst climate urgency, technological hypergrowth, and discipline-fluid hybridization. It seeks to generate experiments on a new temporal ecology of the stage, examining how theatre-making infrastructures might transition within a multi-agential dynamic of emergence. D.O.T. appears, disappears, and reappears through a series of polymorphic artworks and research affordances based on the ecodramaturgical consideration of the simultaneous phenomenon of 1. the rising sea and ocean levels, 2. the exponential growth of big data in our informational age, and 3. the emotional overload caused by the latter two happening, projection, and prophecy. D.O.T. explores inherited sea-and-ocean-oriented myths and revisits theatre plays with a marine backdrop, looking simultaneously into contemporary nautical vocabulary and sea imagery used as metaphors for computational realities. D.O.T. proposes to re-mythologise Western theatre foundations by forming an alternative pantheon for a queer, hydrofeminist, and technoanimist reset of the “tragic,” at the interplay between a syncretic marine mythology and the ambiguities of “technology-as-monster” narratives. In D.O.T. project, the forces and fragilities of transforming marine ecosystems intersect with algorithmic-conditioned life and crossbreeding of diverse art disciplines and research fields based on collaborations, generating imaginary prototypes for future societal constructions in the floods. D.O.T. is structured around several key components: the prologue Simultaneous Environments, featuring a series of experimental works; the central project Tragedy and the Goddexxes, which culminates in three public exhibitions; and a series of workshops, residencies, and a final publication in the form of an exposition on the Research Catalogue. This final publication of the DATA OCEAN THEATRE postdoctoral artistic research project (2021–2024) titled 'DATA OCEAN THEATRE (OUT OF THE BLUE); A Discipline-Fluid Postdoctoral Artistic Research Project Exposition' performs on the Research Catalogue as both an aesthetico-epistemic object in its own right and as an a posteriori account, or catalogue raisonné, of the project. It also acts as a supplement to the author's doctoral publication, Reacclimating the Stage (Skenomorphoses), completing the latter to form a diptych on the Research Catalogue. Similar to the doctoral publication, the non-linear, non-hierarchical, and non-chronological reading, or hyper-reading, of Data Ocean Theatre (Out of the Blue) invites its visitors to navigate freely and compose their own fluid, archipelagic, and tidal experience to make sense of the project as a whole.

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Data Ocean Theatre (D.O.T.) is a four-year artistic research project that explores the intersection of myths, Western theatre memory, new media, digital animism, climate emergency, sea and ocean transformations, queer subcultures, and technological mutations in relation to aspects of “submersion” as a contemporary living condition. Expanding on the claimed unsustainability of Western theatre’s anthropocentric foundations, D.O.T. examines how the notion and practice of the stage transform amidst climate urgency, technological hypergrowth, and discipline-fluid hybridization. It seeks to generate experiments on a new temporal ecology of the stage, examining how theatre-making infrastructures might transition within a multi-agential dynamic of emergence. D.O.T. appears, disappears, and reappears through a series of polymorphic artworks and research affordances based on the ecodramaturgical consideration of the simultaneous phenomenon of 1. the rising sea and ocean levels, 2. the exponential growth of big data in our informational age, and 3. the emotional overload caused by the latter two happening, projection, and prophecy. D.O.T. explores inherited sea-and-ocean-oriented myths and revisits theatre plays with a marine backdrop, looking simultaneously into contemporary nautical vocabulary and sea imagery used as metaphors for computational realities. D.O.T. proposes to re-mythologise Western theatre foundations by forming an alternative pantheon for a queer, hydrofeminist, and technoanimist reset of the “tragic,” at the interplay between a syncretic marine mythology and the ambiguities of “technology-as-monster” narratives. In D.O.T. project, the forces and fragilities of transforming marine ecosystems intersect with algorithmic-conditioned life and crossbreeding of diverse art disciplines and research fields based on collaborations, generating imaginary prototypes for future societal constructions in the floods. D.O.T. is structured around several key components: the prologue Simultaneous Environments, featuring a series of experimental works; the central project Tragedy and the Goddexxes, which culminates in three public exhibitions; and a series of workshops, residencies, and a final publication in the form of an exposition on the Research Catalogue. This final publication of the DATA OCEAN THEATRE postdoctoral artistic research project (2021–2024) titled 'DATA OCEAN THEATRE (OUT OF THE BLUE); A Discipline-Fluid Postdoctoral Artistic Research Project Exposition' performs on the Research Catalogue as both an aesthetico-epistemic object in its own right and as an a posteriori account, or catalogue raisonné, of the project. It also acts as a supplement to the author's doctoral publication, Reacclimating the Stage (Skenomorphoses), completing the latter to form a diptych on the Research Catalogue. Similar to the doctoral publication, the non-linear, non-hierarchical, and non-chronological reading, or hyper-reading, of Data Ocean Theatre (Out of the Blue) invites its visitors to navigate freely and compose their own fluid, archipelagic, and tidal experience to make sense of the project as a whole.
vincent roumagnac - DATA OCEAN THEATRE (OUT OF THE BLUE); A Discipline-Fluid Postdoctoral Artistic Research Project Exposition - 2025
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DATA OCEAN THEATRE

Prologue/Simultaneous Environments

V. THE_THEATER_REPRESENTS_A_SEA_AND_ROCKS_ON_ONE_SIDE/

AND_ON_THE_OTHER_SOME_TREES_AND_HOUSES_

(THE_BACKDROP_AND_ITS_DOUBLE)

video, colour, 9'

This work is part of: Condit, Outi & Kellokumpu, Simo. 2021. Networked Actor Theory. Nivel 14 Publication Series of the Theatre Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki. nivel.teak.fi/nat

The nine-minute video work was realised for the publication Networked Actor Theory. It comprises nine sequences, each showing a laptop on a table in an apartment by the Baltic Sea during (Covid) Midsummer 2020. On the laptop's full screen, nine different GIFs appear sequentially. These GIFs-screen savers are altered versions of photographs of various seaside landscapes that Roumagnac captured during his doctoral artistic research project Reacclimating the Stage (Skenomorphoses) in the Basque Country, Finland, Japan, and Portugal. Each GIF, named after a sea-themed theatre or opera play, presents a dual nature. It allows viewers to see both a sea landscape reminiscent of the dramatic representation of "nature" on theatre and opera backdrops and the simultaneous computational alteration of the same stage framing. By re-shooting the displayed GIFs with a digital camera through the computer screen's surface, a pattern-conflict moiré effect is appearing in the final rendering. The canvas-like stripes may evoke the materiality of painted stage backdrops.

Click on the image to play the video

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