Performative Development

We used performance as an approach to development:

-as happening within a limited period of time in a process to develop design concept, Events that aim at generating new insights for participants

-set up a (public) installation, invite people to perform with it

-setting constraints, changing them, playing with them evaluate and re-design

-Borrowing practical wisdom from theatre practice


Performative uses of installations:
Actors collaboratively composing
Use of props - e.g. for triggering action, playing media
Use of ‘orchestrator’ or ‘conductor’
Use of bodies - expressive gesturing, mimicking, dancing media, synchronizing movement
Use of space - e.g. extending the installation into space
Use of media - e.g. as background, as narrative element

Use of constraints

Different types of constraints:
- those arising from the ‘givens’ of technology, material, space, time, and other resources
- those purposefully introduced to support creativity

To use constraints not as fixed parameters but as part of a process

- How to come to terms with the physical limitations of the interface
- What determines the rhythm of performance - the role of physical action (picking up cubes) and of a technology-based time lag
- How to encourage forms of expression other than words (e.g. gestures, use of props as shadow actors)
- Learning about how people move in space collectively, in a compositional way (extending the installation space)
- How to distribute and coordinate tasks, action and gestures
- How to find a balance between random factors and controlled results

Media literacy, authorship and participation
We focus on facilitating new forms of engagement
Looking at guidance and inspiration from practical approaches in the visual and performing arts

Relying on traditions and methods in the performing arts that:
(a) are loosely structured, (b) tend to put meaning at the end of the process, (c) avoid planning and control, and (d) aim to achieve ‘acting as play’.

From this perspective we can understand:
Authorship and participation as skilled appropriation

Working with ‘genres’, constraints, masks as giving
° to those who participate as authors stylistic guidelines
° framing peoples’ reading
° providing those who review the work of others with tactical means of evaluating a composition’s achievements.