Whether old or new, high or low, digital or analogue, technologies, or different tools, instruments, devices, equipment, machines, and machinery, are potential and potent resources in the scenographic process. The recent technological developments that require more specialized knowledge and expertise have brought on the need and the opportunity for scenographers and designers to collaborate with scientists, engineers, and industry partners. While pushing the boundaries of what is possible in performance, employing these most advanced technologies is conditioned by access, stemming from material, institutional, and political conditions in which we produce art. Moreover, our ideas of technologies are often reduced to Western notions of progress and innovation.

Together with more than 80 speakers from 30 countries across six continents – performance designers, scenographers, makers, artists, and researchers who work with and on technologies – we will be exploring the multi-dimensional dynamic of technologies in theatre, performance, and exhibition design.