Dramaturgical Matters in Mixed-Reality is an artistic research project (PhD in Art) by Marie-Claude Poulin. The project is presented as a performative exhibition-installation exploring dramaturgical configurations in mixed-reality environments.
The thesis will be defended in a lecture followed by a discussion with the examination board.
Supervisor: Ruth Schnell
Public Exhibition
May 2–4, 2025
12:00–19:00
Venue
Zentrum Fokus Forschung
Rustenschacherallee 2–4
1020 Vienna
Moving through the space, phone in hand – the Configurogram panels, stylized schematic drawings mapping relational configurations, seem to indicate an enigmatic path. Letters appear and words cluster together. A giant passes. Voices emerge from the device: a word, a sentence, a whispered fragment, a concept, an idea declaimed. The researcher and her questions fill the space. Who is speaking? Who is in control? The agents (doubles?), the others, or the one who is watching? Each moment feels both configured, as if the space had been waiting, and labyrinthine, as if trapped in a mise en abyme.
Public Defence
May 5, 2025
11:00–13:30
Venue
Zentrum Fokus Forschung
Rustenschacherallee 2–4
1020 Vienna
Candidate: Marie-Claude Poulin
Examination committee:
Ghislaine Boddington
Margarete Jahrmann
Armando Menicacci
Ruth Schnell
Diane Shooman
Miya Yoshida
Dramaturgical Matters in Mixed-Reality – Choreography, Performance, and Immersive Media explores how technological dispositives shape bodily perception and artistic languages in participatory and performative installations.
This research analyses dramaturgical models specific to mixed-reality environments and contributes to artistic inquiry into the hybridization of choreography, performance, and immersive media. The investigation, both practical and theoretical, is developed through a reflexive feedback loop centred on epistemic prototypes and seven iterations of the installation Swarming Lounge, documented on a website and presented in a final exhibition.
The documentation includes five sections: a self-reflective methodology; an analysis of visitors‘ hybrid perspectives; dramaturgical mechanisms in multilayered scenarios; configurations as a framework for an autopoietic score; and a synthesis of key findings and future perspectives.
Visitors are invited to experience dramaturgical dynamics directly through the installation. This research highlights how mixed-reality shapes interactions between spectators, performers, and digital entities, as well as the dramaturgical issues they raise. Practical experimentation reveals the importance of body and movement, fluid roles and viewpoints, and the coexistence of perceptual illusion and critical distance, forming an oscillatory quality of attention.
It examines the mechanisms shaping performative and choreographic structures in real time, including micro-narratives and recurring leitmotifs. Generative dramaturgy emerges as a flexible scoring system whose functioning still requires theorization. This research contributes to its formalization by identifying its underlying mechanisms.
