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.

DATA OCEAN THEATRE

Tragedy and the Goddexxes

II. PARODOS (After Joseph Furttenbach)

Wooden timbers, plywood

Fake ceramic masks (XL), leather belts

Gender-neutral deity names for fantasy games randomly generated by a name-generator online

Woodwork in collaboration with Aleksi Martikainen

6x6x4,6m/Size variable

Parodos (in Ancient Greek, πάροδος) is both the first entrance of the chorus in a tragedy prologue, and a passage in an ancient Greek theatre between the auditorium and the skene by which the spectators had access to the theatre and the actors might come and go during a play.

In 1626, Joseph Furttenbach publishes Architectura Navalis, a treatise in which he provides a detailed technical account of the construction of sailing boats, following the Italian way of shipbuilding. In 1640, he publishes Architectura Recreationis, in which he documents stage and light design, and the theatre machines and technologies developed in Italy. (The introduction page image and the second image of the second line on this page are from Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris - Gallica catalogue, on line, public domain)

PARODOS is the second scene of Tragedy and the Goddexxes; a series of XL fake-ceramic masks, inspired by ancient Greek tragedy headpieces and made from altered prints of contemporary scientific data from marine research are dormant in the basements of a theatre stage, or a ship deck. The ambivalence between theatre stage and ship deck references the historical fact that shipbuilding workers were often employed to construct theatres. This connection stems from the similarities in architectural and engineering skills required for both crafts: the expertise in timber framing, spatial planning, and the creation of structures designed for dynamic use and load-bearing. In the Renaissance and Baroque periods, in particular, shipbuilders were pivotal in constructing theatres, as both types of structures shared an intricate understanding of space and acoustics. By alluding to this overlap, the installation bridges maritime and theatrical histories, further blurring the boundaries between the realms of performance, labour, and perception. The ship deck, as a hanging fragment, evokes the Western legacy of perspectivist and anthropocentric architecture, while its unconventional setting in the exhibition space invites visitors to an experience of perceptual repositioning.

Kuva/Tila exhibition venue, Uniarts Helsinki (webpage)

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