Wayfarer apparently is a bit like a video game, and since I’m not into gaming, I’m not totally sure what I’m talking about here in this context 
. Nevertheless, this was the kind of process: like in a normal stage performance, there were audience and performance, except that like in a video game the audience became part of that performance by controlling the players. The ‘audience’ was split into four groups of probably 6-7 people each, with each group looking at their own large plasma screen (see left image) and controlling one of the four performers or players (called ‘avatars’) via headsets and lapel mikes. The task was to explore the backstage via the avatars, a place the audience had never seen before.
The ‘audience’ members of each group saw the space to be explored on their plasma screen through the ‘eyes’ of the avatars - a camera on a computer carried on each avatar’s chest most of the time. Based on these images, the avatars were used as agents that helped navigate through the space and - find the ‘triggers’. Apparently conforming to gaming tradition, the physical space was full of pick-ups that were both loot and task based. There were goals that had to be reached, puzzles to be solved, endurance activities to be undertaken by the avatars or keys to be found to get through to the next level; cooperation was needed in certain situations and blocking in others, and ‘triggers’ could be swiped by one avatar on the back of others, which would kill them. The survival of an avatar was dependent on the team’s skill at controlling him/her.
Overall it was a race against the clock and a race against the other groups’ members. A team won by completing all three levels of the game and collecting the most loot in the shortest time. But it also was possible that no team would finish - avatars for example could get lost in the backstage or, since they had (unlike in video games) some degree of autonomy, they could sabotage the efforts of their controlling team.
Not having been an active part of what took place that night, I was and still am more fascinated by the whole concept by this hybrid of stage play and game. Aspects I particularly liked were the
- interactivity which eliminated the demarcation between spectator and performer; it wasn’t even clear who actually was performing: the avatars (players) or the group members that controlled them (audience)
- improvisational elements of the game and the unpredictability that arose from them; they reflected much more accurately what actually is happening in complex human relationships and interactions than a scripted stage play does
- ‘audience’ (the controlling group members) themselves actually having had an audience in the people in the foyer who were waiting to get in to other plays or simply passing by; it was a case of an audience not only watching and judging the players but also the actions of another audience
- multimedia mediation of the physical performance of the avatars, allowing the whole theatre building to become the stage and requiring remote communication between ‘audience’ and players
The latter technological angle played a particularly important role in the concept behind Wayfarer as the following program excerpt testifies:
“Wayfarer is a true hybrid of live and mediated performance, and new media technologies. As artists we are influenced by urban choreography, neo-situationist strategies and parkour, in which space is revitalised through identity, movement and personal experience. With Wayfarer we’re exploring analogue and electronic gameplay, especially when it enables strategy, improvisation and experiential play for many. The Wayfarer system is created from mobile technologies that we have appropriated and adapted to engage and empower the performers and audience. These ubiquitous technologies are endowed with explicit issues such as voyeurism, exhibitionism, surveillance, group control and individual agency. Wayfarer aims to critique these by putting players in the hands of the audience. Improvising as they do, the audience become conscious, active players themselves by necessity engaging with the work’s themes. In Wayfarer we are aiming for a volatile synthesis of ethical spectacle and site specificity, where simple game rules and the architectural space of CarriageWorks become a performance score, with performance, narrative, media, site, audience and technology all participating on an equal level.”
Reading this I feel reminded of the educational role of theatrical elements for example in Brecht’s plays during the political upheavals of the first part of the 20th century and again street theatre in 1970s. Then like here today we had audience participation (even though to different degrees) and theatre was seen not as entertainment but as a medium to raise political consciousness. It is modern technology though that allows to unfold and deepen these theatrical form and educational (content) elements, which makes performances like Wayfarer so exciting.
[Wayfarer was first devised at Time Place Space 3 in Adelaide in 2004, and then prototyped at a Performance Space residency in Syndey in April 2006. The main creative driving forces behind Wayfarer are (see right image) Kate Richards, a Sydney-based media atist who works across multimedia, video, installation, interactivity and software art, and Martyn Cutts, performer, theatre maker, video artist and VJ; his artwork revolves around technology and the body in motion. The other two artists in the Creative Team were Mr Snow, technical producer and designer, and Jon Drummond, programmer and software designer.]
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