Teatr w Internecie - Internet w teatrze

Abstract

The author provides a characteristic of connections between theatre and new media, pointing out to their most important sources, such as avant-garde art, Arteaud’s idea of “virtual reality”, the concepts of “non-theatrical places”, “theatre without drama”, “post-dramatic theatre”, theatricalness of social life, connections of theatre with television, as well as video and experiments which have been going on since 1993, and which he labels as “electronic theatre” and “virtual theatre”. He ponders upon the issues of terminology and definitions of the Internet, the latest and the most complex form multimedia technique, assuming - after Erik Davis - that it is a hyper-text environment, in which various “net communities” may provide alternative descriptions of reality, being forms of theatre deprived of the pro-stage character. The author also makes efforts to be precise about communications strategies (navigating, interactive activities and “going virtual”), which dominate in multimedia art, he also wants to describe the existing models of Internet theatre, distinguishing Telnet (games based upon textual interface, for example the popular MUDs), IRC (a system that creates spaces enabling “meetings” and discussions between users), WWW (world wide web) environment (enabling the same ways of communicating using a standard browser), synchronic communication of the Direct Chat type (focused on prolonged maintenance of contacts) and World-Chat (creating the impression of 3D reality). In his opinion, those models are interconnected and it appears difficult to point out “genre” determinants Internet theatre and theatre competencies of users of the “web of webs”, especially as Internet - as the research made so far and forecasts indicate - is not to be the ultimate digital multi-medium.