Beyond the Here and Now: Exploring Threaded Presence in Mediated, Improvised Performance

Abstract

Presence is a prominent component of our conscious human experience. Many researchers and philosophers have described presence simply as a state of being there, or in improvisation, the here and now. We explore presence by examining performers’ experiences in an improvisational, telematic performance, Presence in a Box: Crossing Liminal Spaces (see Figure 1). Through our analysis of this performance we define the concept of “Threaded Presence” which we bridge to existing literature in “Situated” and “Extended Presence.” We discuss the role of technology in creating threaded presence by acting as an additional performer, adding a layer of glitch and unpredictability to a performance that requires negotiation from the entire team. We suggest that technology does not need to be transparent in order to experience presence in a performance space and focus on three main components of experiencing presence: creating a container of presence, blending boundaries of time and space, and implementing restraints. It is the collision of these elements that brings a new sense of agency into performance and contributes to one’s experience of threaded presence.