Dramaturgical Matters in Mixed-Reality – Choreography, Performance, and Immersive Media explores the relationship between technological dispositives, bodily perceptions, and the structuring of artistic languages in participatory and performative installations. By analysing dramaturgical models specific to these environments, this research contributes to artistic research on the hybridization of choreography, performance, and immersive media. The research is grounded in both a practical and theoretical approach, developed through a reflexive feedback loop centred on epistemic prototypes and the seven iterations of the mixed reality installation Swarming Lounge, which are documented on a dedicated website and contextualized in a final exhibition.

The reflexive documentation consists of five sections: a speculative methodology based on self-observation of the creative process; an analysis of visitors‘ hybrid perspectives; an analysis of the dramaturgical mechanisms in multilayered scenarios; an exploration of the notion of configurations as a structuring framework for an autopoietic score applied to immersive media; and a concluding reflection that synthesizes key findings and future research perspectives.

This research highlights the impact of mixed reality environments on the interactions between spectators, performers, and digital entities, and by extension, on the dramaturgical issues they entail. Practical experimentation played a central role in articulating concepts, revealing the fundamental role of body and movement, the fluidity of roles and viewpoints, specific performative and compositional strategies, as well as the coexistence of perceptual illusion and critical distance, thus forming an oscillatory quality of attention in this type of artistic experience.

It then examines the mechanisms shaping performative and choreographic structures in real time, notably the organization of micro-narratives and the recurrence of leitmotifs through cycles of transformation.

It confirms that this generative dramaturgy operates as a fully-fledged scoring system, functioning as an open and evolving structure. As these new dramaturgies develop within immersive environments, their functioning remains largely to be theorized. Finally, this research contributes to their formalization by shedding light on the mechanisms that underlie them.

Keywords: dispositive, mixed-reality, dramaturgical layers, autopoiesis, immersive media, performative installations