Entangled: Technology and the Transformation of Performance, by Chris Salter (Cambridge, Mass. and London: The MIT Press, 2010)

Abstract

Chris Salter’s MIT book, Entangled: Technology and the Transformation of Performance, is a major survey concerning the relationship between technology and art performance. While Salter’s study is an ambitious project, it is an important reference work that will assist to progress debates in theatre and performance studies, when art is increasingly technologised. Covering the periods between the late nineteenth century to the beginning of the twenty-first century, it discusses more than a thousand artists, writers, theorists, scientists, and engineers of the past and the present, whose works provide Salter with points of entry to consider ‘how technologies, from the mechanical to the computational, have radically transformed artistic performance practices’ (xiii). The ‘performances’ that Salter refers to are created not only by performing artists in theatre, dance and music, but also by visual and new media artists, interaction designers and researchers, and architects. This book discusses technology-based artworks that fall between the cracks of established art genres.