PRAESENTIA EX MACHINA: The Millennial Technoculture, Liveness and Theatre

This work examines the modern technoculture, its component parts and the changing role of theatre in Anglo-American culture. Our contemporary society is marked by the ubiquity of digital technologies and has become reliant on their commodities. The emerging Millennial Generation has matured with many of these devices and has embraced the modern technoculture. Many changes in daily life brought on by new technologies are obvious, but fundamental shifts remain obscured by the nature of technology itself. These subtle transformations are cumulative and have caused a technological disorientation with broad reaching implications. Liveness, initially defined as that which is unrecorded, has been perceived in many new technological formats. This phenomenon, combined with pervasive digitization of information and entertainment has minimized the cultural significance of the theatrical arts. Theatre, however, offers a form of liveness that cannot be digitized. In its varied iterations, theatre may be a vital forum for combating technological disorientation and fostering pertinent social discourse as the technoculture develops.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts (MA)

Grantor dc:publisher

University of Montana

Year

2012

Author dc:creator

• Reimers, Reid J

• Technology
• Theatre
• Liveness
• Millennial Generation

Repository record dc:identifier

https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/1356

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarworks.umt.edu:etd-2375