Woyzeck

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Possibilities

In Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, Marshall McLuhan discusses various media as hot or cold. McLuhan writes "[...]hot media do not leave so much to be filled in or completed by the audience. Hot media are, therefore, low in participation, and cool media are high in participation or completion by the audience" (39). This Woyzeck project is a fusion of several hot and cold media. Film is a media full of information that saturates primarily one sense, the visual, and can be called a hot media especially when compared to a cooler medium such as live performance. Abstract dance, for example, seems a cooler media. While also primarily visual, there is more participation or completion required of the audience. McLuhan suggests that hot media generally create a state of hypnosis in the audience, while cool media tend to inspire hallucinations (50). How will audiences pay attention to Woyzeck? Will they feel hypnotized, or as though they are hallucinating? It is difficult to know in advance if audience members behave as they would playing a video game, watching a movie, attending a live performance, or reading a choose-your-own-adventure book.

A possibility for further research related to this project is the study of how audience members interact with the piece and how audience members' levels of connoisseurship with other media, such as video games or movies, may or may not determine the manner of their interaction. An installation of Woyzeck is planned for Spring 2008 at the Georgia Institute of Technology's Graphics, Visualization, and Usability (GVU) Center. This facility is equipped to conduct human computer interaction studies, quantitatively analyzing how an audience member makes decisions in an AR experience. It would be of great interest to study audience interaction in the AR installation in detail and compare this with a study of audience interaction with the other two forms of this Woyzeck project; the online Flash version and the downloadable Apple video iPod version.

Another aspect of the project worthy of further development is the investigation of ways to create Woyzeck as it was originally conceived, as an outdoor, public art installation. Sensory elements that can contribute to storytelling are readily available outdoors but would require vast amounts of work to simulate digitally, such as the feel of sunlight and wind and the smell and texture of grass. An outdoor setting would require a major redesign of the hardware involved in the project. Current hardware is not rugged enough to face weather elements outdoors and cost prohibits making it available to the general public.