“(Re-) Producing Realities” Holds Kickoff Symposium

“This Stuttgart Research Focus (SRF) is an example of the Stuttgart Way, which enables the testing of innovative formats through unusual combinations of disciplines,” said Dr. Kirsten Dickhaut, who leads Re². “This approach not only shows potential to identify and close gaps in scholarship, but also strengthens all of the disciplines involved, enabling them to improve their methodologies.”

(Re-)Producing Realities brings together representatives of the University of Stuttgart, the Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach, the High-Performance Computing Center Stuttgart (HLRS), the Leibniz-Institut für Wissensmedien at the University of Tübingen, the Junges Ensemble Stuttgart (JES), the Staatstheater Stuttgart, and the Visualization Research Center (VISUS). As Dickhaut explained in a kickoff symposium held on June 26, 2024, their aim is to investigate multiple ways in which knowledge is produced and understood, including cognitive and imaginative realities, media realities, and communication realities. The symposium introduced the goals of Re² and presented compelling examples of the types of research it aims to facilitate.

Theater and technology help to explain one another

Many features of today’s digital world have their origins in theater. Creating scenarios, improvisation, and role playing, for example, are as much features of stage performance as of practices like scientific simulation or gaming. In each case, knowledge emerges from interactions among activities and perspectives involved in production, reproduction, representation, and interpretation. To gain a deeper understanding of theater, it is also important to investigate how practices and techniques intersect with discourses such as political ideologies or literary history, as well as material concepts related to theater’s production and consumption. In Re² such concepts become relevant for the study of digital technologies and their applications.

In one approach, Re² is exploring potential benefits of using digital technologies to reproduce historical realities. At HLRS, for example, visualization scientists have created a digital twin of the Ludwigsburg palace theater that preserves and displays its remarkable stage machinery in virtual reality. Re² is also involved in a collaboration to develop a digital reproduction of the Théâtre des Tuileries in Paris, once home to a stage machinery that no longer exists. Such projects demonstrate how digital twins can preserve knowledge about the craftsmanship involved in engineering. At the same time, simulations of such historical locations could enable new literary insights into the plays performed there. “Understanding theatrical machines is only possible in an interdisciplinary way, which makes the interplay of techniques and concepts transparent,” Dickhaut explained at the symposium.

In another approach, Re² will look at the role of performance in producing realities. As in the theater, computer simulation can create or expand realities by providing evidence or by making imperceptible features of the world visible. The two domains are also similar in that neither is possible without artifice and conscious decision making that affects how representations are created and how they are perceived. By looking at the digital world through the lens of theatrical performance, Re² could therefore offer a deeper understanding of the assumptions that go into technology development and usage.

One additional essential feature of cutting-edge digital tools like simulation, artificial intelligence, or drones is that each involves a human-machine interface. From puppets to special effects, theater history is also filled with analogous examples of human-machine interfaces. For Re², this offers an opportunity to investigate how theater can provide a lens for understanding today’s machine-enhanced society. As Dickhaut explained, this means not just describing interactions between humans and machines, but also showing how structures and frameworks embedded in digital technologies are incorporated by humans in ways that shape their experience of and interaction with reality.

Leading scholars give keynote lectures

Following introductory remarks by University of Stuttgart Rector Dr. Wolfram Ressel, three keynote talks enriched the Re² kickoff symposium with examples of research looking at the intersection of theater and technology.

Prof. Dr. Sylvaine Guyot of New York University explored the function of technologies of “bedazzlement” seen in stage productions in seventeenth-century France, and how analytical perspectives that consider both the machinery and the text of stage productions can open new interpretations of the plays and their political function. Prof. Dr. Chris Balme of the Ludwig-Maximilian-University Munich discussed the experimental theater of the Handspring Puppet Company, looking at how the artists use puppets and film to negotiate relationships between the audience and South Africa’s painful history under apartheid. Prof. Dr. Andreas Kibitz of the University of Cologne concluded the program with an essay on Heinrich von Kleist’s story “On the Marionette Theater,” elucidating complex aesthetic questions that arise when human dance is represented using mechanical means.

Upcoming plans

Looking to the future, Dickhaut noted that (Re-)Producing Realities will begin publishing a book series in 2024, and will hold early career events to encourage young investigators to explore the kinds of perspectives Re² aims to facilitate. From July 10-12, 2025, the program will also host the African Theater Association at the University of Stuttgart, organizing performances and an international conference.

For more information about Re², visit: https://www.re2.uni-stuttgart.de.

— Christopher Williams