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NICHOLAS E. JOHNSON, NEILL O’DWYER, AND ENDA BATES
replace the light as the interrogator; it must somehow integrate with it.
A variety of solutions were considered, including lighting the interior of the
urns with light-emitting diodes (LED) and programming these to trigger at
the same moment as the camera; we even assessed the camera housing itself to
see if it could allow for an attached light without affecting its mechanism. In
the end, because of its functionality and ease, a classically analogue solution
was found: the operator would be the interface between separate camera
controls and light controls, hitting two buttons at the same time on the two
different controllers.
VIDEOGRAPHIC INFLUENCES
The origins of the Intermedial Play project extend back to 2015, when Néill
O’Dwyer (then a doctoral student in the Department of Drama at TCD) was
approached by the head of department to conceive and exhibit a project that
would employ the specificities of recently installed hardware, namely a robotic
PTZ camera. This technology was initially developed for video surveillance,
because it affords the remote camera operator a hemispherical field of vision
through its built-in pan, tilt, and zoom functionality. As such, it operates
primarily with a live camera feed; although recording is an option, the power
in its functionality is through its harnessing of the live video stream. In
recent years the technology has been widely deployed in the more benign
context of video teleconferencing; it is particularly useful in roundtable
seminar formats, where any given present attendee can communicate directly
with a set of telepresent interlocutors. The objectives of the brief were to use
the technology to demonstrate the new digital video possibilities available in
the department, and to offer an inspirational reference point to students and
staff; it is therefore notable that this was a case where the technology was
more influential than the source, which was open to choice. O’Dwyer had
seen Johnson’s production of Ethica at the Samuel Beckett Theatre in 2012, as
well as engaging that same year with Jonathan Heron’s performance workshop
within the Beckett Summer School, which included workshops with Play
(including consideration of Minghella’s 2001 adaptation). The capabilities of
the PTZ camera were immediately suggestive of the moving-head light from
Ethica, meaning that the technological resonance between these devices,
neither of which was available to Beckett, nonetheless invoked a Beckettian
text as the most productive to investigate.
Bringing a playtext across media into the digital realm is a complex and
potentially costly transaction, but through the open-ended subjectivity of
digital artefacts, new epistemic possibilities and new forms of knowledge
are encountered. Digital media and other state-of-the-art tools afford the
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