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.

Click on the image to play the video

IKU-TURSO

DATA OCEAN THEATRE Tragedy & the Goddexxes V. KOMMOS

In collaboration with Outi Condit (Co-making/Performing) and Rosie Swayne (Sound)

Film, colour, 9'

The project took place in autumn 2021 on the Baltic Sea near Santahamina military island, within an authorised perimeter, above, or as close as permitted to, the C-Lion1 submarine communication cable. This cable has connected Finland with data hubs in Central Europe since 2016. An actor (Condit), equipped with diving gear, floats above the C-Lion1 cable on the surface of the Baltic Sea. They are remotely connected to the theatre (re)director (Roumagnac) via satellite. The (re)director communicates movement and text instructions to them from a remote shelter on an island, about the situation, the cable, and the mythology and poetry of Iku-Turso and the Kraken. The one-shot scene is simultaneously filmed by a drone equipped with a camera and an action camera placed on Condit's back. The communication between the actor and the (re)director is recorded.

The work is part of Roumagnac's project Tragedy and the Goddexxes, and of Condit's doctoral publication (incoming, 2025) based on their artistic research project How to Be a Medium?

With the generous help of Ville MJ Hyvönen (drone camera) and Sami Järvinen (boat, shelter, sauna)

Images:

Outi Condit, sound check @Roumagnac

Outi Condit and drone @Roumagnac

A diving bell built by Halley in 1691. Edmond or Edmund Halley, 1656 – 1742. English astronomer, geophysicist, mathematician, meteorologist and physicist. Stock Image/Internet Resource.

Ishigaki Island Diving - Submarine cable. Stock photo ID:1156844725/Internet resource.

Vincent Roumagnac (re)directing @Kellokumpu

Outi Condit acting @Roumagnac

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